This is an archived copy of a post written by Conflict Of Justice (conflictofjustice.com). Used with permission: Conflict Of Justice may not agree with any alterations made.
- “Sweeney: Mr. Smith got this papyri and he translated them and subsequently as the Egyptologists cracked the code something completely different…
- Holland: (Interrupts) All I’m saying…all I’m saying is that what got translated got translated into the word of God. The vehicle for that, I do not understand and don’t claim to know and know no Egyptian.”
(CES Letter quoting BBC)
Out Of Context
This interview was a hit piece by BBC News, snipped and placed into a different context. The BBC documentary The Mormon Candidate was created to spread fear and bigotry about Mitt Romney’s 2012 candidacy for U.S. President. They wanted to make people freak out about having a Mormon as president. BBC snipped Elder Holland’s comment so we don’t know what they talked about before or after. It sounds like Holland went on to give more explanation and the BBC journalists snipped it all out. They wanted to smear Mormons in order to attack Mitt Romney’s religious image.
This is worthless to discuss two sentences that are snipped completely out of context. It is a case of fake journalism and bigoted propaganda from Great Britain’s mainstream media. This fake journalism from BBC News should be denounced for what it is: a political slime job.
Why Would Elder Holland Know Egyptian?
Elder Holland said he doesn’t know Egyptian, the “vehicle” for the translation. So what? Why would Elder Holland know how Joseph Smith translated the Book of Abraham from Egyptian? Is he a professor of linguistics? CES Letter sets up this expectation where prophets and apostles are like Dumbledore the wizard and they know everything about everything. It is condescending and nonsensical. Elder Holland did not go to school a school of Egyptology. Elder Holland was not around when Joseph Smith translated the book, so how would he know how he did it? How could anyone know? BBC should instead interview an Egyptologist.
The scriptures give us a clue about how it was translated: “you must study it out in your mind; then you must ask me if it be right.” Joseph Smith did not just have words appear to him through a stone in a hat. The stone and hat narrative is an Anti-Mormon lie. Joseph Smith had to study it out just like anyone else who is translating, though the Urim and Thummim gave him a lot of help. The Book of Abraham took many years to complete and was by all accounts a very laborious process. Why would Elder Holland just one day out of the blue be able to speak Egyptian and describe how the entire process went?
Don’t Feed Fake News
Why should Elder Holland jump through hoops and give answers to this BBC journalist? All John Sweeney wanted to do was attack Mormons so he could tear down the Republican presidential candidate. Sweeney wasn’t interested in how Egyptian is translated. Honestly, when BBC asked Holland for an interview, I wish he would have told Sweeney to go pound sand. Jesus told us not to open our mouths to deceitful wolves like John Sweeney. Don’t feed the narrative. These journalists are wolves who will do anything to tear down the gospel.
The more we try to explain ourselves to people like this, the more we feed this Anti-Mormon narrative that we must either know everything or we don’t know anything. The truth is, we do not need to be professors of Egyptian to know the truths in the Book of Abraham. We do not need a play-by-play explanation for how Joseph Smith translated it. The first time you bought a car, did you study car mechanics, pull apart the engine of your car, and examine every single piece to make it is a true engine? No, you knew that the engine runs and that by all appearances it was an engine. Likewise, we have sufficient evidence that this book is true scripture. And if that is not enough for you, then by all means look at the physical evidence and look into the Egyptian origins. And talk to a car mechanic, not a gutter-rat reporter like John Sweeney.
Do mainstream Christians need to be fluent in ancient Hebrew to believe in the bible? Do believers in evolution need to know every detail of evolution that has been discovered? Do we need to have proof that dark matter exists to believe that the universe is expanding (because no such proof exists, by the way). Well, CES Letter incorrectly claimed quantum mechanics taught scientists that the sun’s energy is internal, so I guess that shows how much they know about what they believe in!
CES Letter spins the narrative around this BBC interview:
“Elder Jeffrey R. Holland was directly asked about the papyri not matching the Book of Abraham in a March 2012 BBC interview… Is ‘I don’t know and I don’t understand but it’s the word of God’ really the best answer that a ‘prophet, seer, and revelator’ can come up with to such a profound problem that is driving many members out of the Church?”
(CES Letter)
I didn’t hear anything in BBC’s question about recovered papyri, but the answer would be very simple: The recovered papyrus fragment is not the source for the Book of Abraham. If Sweeney did ask about the recovered papyrus, my guess is BBC clipped out his answer to because it did not fit their narrative. Either that or BBC never addressed it. BBC was interested in pushing the lie that the Book of Abraham source was unrelated to Abraham.
We need to be very careful about fake news organizations like BBC. We cannot look to the media for fair portrayals or truthful information. The fact is, the source for the Book of Abraham perished in the great Chicago fire, and the fragments we have today prove the parallels between their Egyptian context and Joseph Smith’s Abrahamic interpretation. We do not need to be Egyptologists to see it was a miracle that Joseph Smith provided these meanings before the Rosetta Stone cracked the code of Egyptian theology.
CES Letter Logical Fallacies
| Strawman Fallacy | The LDS church has never said anything to lead us to believe that apostles should know the process of translating Egyptian. BBC News and CES Letter’s transcription take Elder Holland’s comments totally out of context, clip out much of his explanation, and falsely implies that he provided no further explanation. |
| Emotional Language | “Profound problem”… What profound problem? |
| Argument From Ignorance | How many people leave the church because of the Book of Abraham? My guess is few or none. Some might say that is the reason but it is just justification for the real reason, such as social issues like gay marriage or someone that offended them. |
| Circular Argument | We know Elder Holland can’t explain it because he is a fraud, and we know he is a fraud because he can’t explain it. |
Use Opponent As Authority Tactic – This is a popular Anti-Mormon tactic. There is a lot of solid LDS literature about Book of Abraham evidence, and CES Letter has a hard time twisting them. So they instead take a snippet of quote totally out of context (I don’t think CES Letter ever quotes a Mormon not out of context) to make it sound like we don’t know anything, and ignore the vast explanations we do give. They pretend like the church hasn’t explained anything about how the Book of Abraham was produced, and that is totally false.
What makes this argument powerful is that it quotes an apostle. It:
- Deceptively discredits the vast libraries of study on Book of Abraham by LDS professionals.
- Gives more focus to a phony frame that attacks the Mormon church.
- Divides the ranks of the church.
- Establishes a frame that demands a clear, modern explanation in the Book of Abraham for every religious issue in existence, and that it be exactly corroborated by every other Mormon source.
The church has been up front since the beginning. Back when the papyrus fragment was first discovered, Dr. Hugh Nibley, wrote a monumental explanation, ‘Joseph Smith Papyri,’ at the behest of the church, and it pretty well explains everything. But CES Letter doesn’t bother looking at it.
Finding Answers – Satan tempts followers of Christ by telling them that God hasn’t answered their questions. This places the burden on “church authorities” to answer every little question in life instead of people finding out answers for themselves. It is up to apostles now to explain the process of translating Egyptian? CES Letter‘s logic reflect the simplistic idealism that we see in the Plan of Satan. This idealistic standard for “correctness” makes people bitter that God allows tragedies to happen in their lives, like everything should be micromanaged. It makes them skeptical of any opinion that doesn’t fit their narrow preconceived view of perfection. It thus sets a narrative that destroys Mormons’ testimonies and promotes Satan’s agenda.
God As A Dictator – Anti-Mormons want everything spelled out for them. Do this. Say this. Don’t even bother thinking critically or making judgement calls for yourself. This is the heart of their argument that scripture should be a perfect, crystallized model of truth for every word we say and movement we make. They are authoritarian personalities who want a dictator.
Then again, Anti-Mormons actually have no sturdy model for truth. They only have their ideology, and they follow an ever-changing narrative to suit whatever helps the Satanic ideology in that moment. So, if you can’t trust ancient scripture to be infallible truth, who can you trust? Science! Science will tell you all you need to know. Science is great for Anti-Mormons because conclusions are always changing, always updating, and are easily manipulated. The frequent shifts in science can be exploited to push their ‘s ideology, which is an ideology of universal salvation and no personal responsibility.
So if fake news organizations like BBC can convince you that the Book of Abraham is not trustworthy as ancient, unchanging truth, then they can also convince you that a good alternative to scripture should be constantly edited to fit modern circumstances and push this oppressive gospel of Satan. They make the case that modern “scripture” should direct every explicit part of your life, from the way you tie your shoes in the morning to which words you are allowed to speak.
Do You Want Evidence Or Relics? – Why does there need to be smoking-gun physical evidence? We are not a church that deals with relics, like pieces of Noah’s ark or the cup of Jesus Christ. CES Letter sets the narrative that we need to have some kind of physical object, like the Catholic crusaders who scoured the Holy Land for objects from the bible. Well, the Mormon church does not do this, because any archaeological finding could be called a fraud, or dismissed as a coincidence, and real faith is not built on this kind of physical pursuit.
Superstition is spiritual belief built on a physical premise. Why is there lightning in the sky? Must be a manifestation of the gods! I think a better path toward truth is physical conclusions based on physical evidence and spiritual conclusions based on spiritual evidence.
Does CES Letter believe in human evolution? Well, plenty of bones have been found to support this scientific model but there is no smoking gun; there are missing pieces of the puzzle, and it has not been reproduced in a laboratory or demonstrated in real life. It is still just a scientific model for what could have happened. The same goes for Book of Mormon archaeology. So many physical pieces of the puzzle have been found, but there are always going to be missing pieces, because we are talking about an ancient civilization that got wiped out. Anti-Mormons can always fall back on the missing puzzle pieces and claim “no archaeological evidence exists.”
But lots of archaeological evidence does exist. The Book of Abraham is miraculous. There are many parallel themes and stories that match other ancient Abrahamic texts, documents that were recently discovered and Joseph Smith couldn’t have known about. The media gives us political hackjobs and bigoted propaganda pieces, but the holy scriptures give us eternal truth and uplifting ideas. Its principles ring true and bring us closer to Jesus Christ.Complete answers to CES Letter questions about Mormons: