When the BOA problem was discussed in the past it was always
some Egyptologist vs. some Mopologist. You kinda had to trust
one side or the other, and the Mopologists (Nibley especially)
did their best to tell you that the Egyptologists didn't know
what they were talking about.

But in the past few years things have changed dramatically.

Before reading ancient Egyptian was for a few scholars only.
If you wanted to become proficient you had to get Gardiner's
thick tome "Egyptian Grammar" and work through it (not easy
going--it's thorough and complete).

But, in the past few years the idea of lay people becoming
proficient in hieroglyphic Egyptian has taken off. I am part
of an online study group, "Glyph study" that studies ancient
Egyptian. Gardiner's book, though still indespensible for the
scholar is not even one of the three different books that the
group uses for it's courses. We use newer books which didn't
exist 20 years ago.

Here are a few of the books that are popular among people who
aren't training to be professional Egyptologists, and are just
hobbyists (there's a saying, "when the hieroglyphic duck bites,
it does't let go).

The first two are university textbooks suitable for Egyptology
students.

http://www.amazon.com/Middle-Egyptian-Introduction-Language-Hieroglyphs/dp/1107663288/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1449772627&sr=8-3&keywords=egyptian+grammar

http://www.amazon.com/Middle-Egyptian-Grammar-SSEA-Publications/dp/0920168124/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1449772627&sr=8-7&keywords=egyptian+grammar

Allen's book is now in a third edition. Hoch's book is 16
years old but he is just finishing up a second edition which
should be on the market soon. The fact that these books are
going into second and third editions shows that there is a
demand for them. Lots of people are learning ancient Egyptian.

The next level of books is not as complete (nor as difficult)
as Hoch and Allen

http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Egyptian-Grammar-Through-Writings/dp/1607973537/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1449772627&sr=8-6&keywords=egyptian+grammar

http://www.amazon.com/Read-Egyptian-Hieroglyphs-Step---Step/dp/0520239490/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1449772627&sr=8-5&keywords=egyptian+grammar

Toth uses his book for a university-level class he teaches.
The Collier & Manley book is a best seller. It's an excellent
place to start learning. By the third chapter you have enough
background to see Joseph Smith's fraud in the BOA.

Then come a lot of books which are no-where near complete, but
the fact that they are in print shows how much demand there is
among the general public to learn this stuff--this is not good
for TSCC.

http://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Hieroglyphic-Inscriptions-Introductory-Egyptian/dp/1494744554/ref=pd_sim_14_22?ie=UTF8&dpID=51iUa-pwWyL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR128%2C160_&refRID=03DCACTK41JGJ5MVXJ8G

http://www.amazon.com/Ancient-Egyptian-Hieroglyphs-Step-Step/dp/081094961X/ref=pd_sim_14_51?ie=UTF8&dpID=518CX497SHL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR105%2C160_&refRID=0NMMWCRJ3SY776CC129C

http://www.amazon.com/Egyptian-Hieroglyphs-Complete-Beginners-Manley/dp/0500290288/ref=pd_sim_14_1?ie=UTF8&dpID=51DOnuE-w1L&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR124%2C160_&refRID=0NMMWCRJ3SY776CC129C

http://www.amazon.com/Hieroglyph-Detective-Language-Ancient-Egyptians/dp/0811869857/ref=pd_sim_14_11?ie=UTF8&dpID=51dlAJWw8OL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR132%2C160_&refRID=0NMMWCRJ3SY776CC129C

http://www.amazon.com/ABC-Egyptian-Hieroglyphs-Paperback-Common/dp/B00FBBQNY0/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1449774129&sr=1-2&keywords=abc+of+hieroglyphs

All of these books and more have come into availability only in
the last couple of decades. It seems to be a hot topic. When
people who can actually read and decipher ancient Egyptian are
not rare, it bodes very badly for the Morg.

Just a thought

Thanks baura. Some fun resources there.
At least you're not using Budge...:)

Actually Budge was very prolific, which is why there is so much of his stuff out there, and why it is so unreliable--he was more into getting it in to print than in being careful and accurate.

When he wrote (around 1900) he was already behind the curve. Now he is quaint. However at least one of his books is rather useful--his "An Egyptian Reading Book for Beginners" has a lot of hieroglyphic Egyptian texts with his transliteration of them (using his idiosyncratic transliteration scheme). Last year the Glyph Study group used the section with Ramesses II's "Battle of Kadesh" for a group translation exercise.

666 pages free here:

https://archive.org/details/anegyptianreadi01budggoog

I remember as a lad being bored out of my mind during sacrament meeting so I was perusing the pics in the boa and the descriptions provided. Me: "hey, that doesn't look like no dude, I'm pretty sure that is a GIRL." Ooops. Even young kids know the difference.

Later as a new exmo, someone posted something about just figuring this stuff out for yourself once and for all by doing some research on what Isis and Osiris look like. Challenge accepted. I spent only about 30 minutes reading various things, it doesn't take long to become familiar with some of it and see that JS was making things up again.

Good work and topic Baura!

Once I learned that the carbon-dated age of the papyri dated from the time of Christ, not Abraham, a discrepancy of 2,000 years from what JS claimed, I didn't need anything else to decide it was bogus.

I don't think it has been radio-carbon dated. The "time of
Christ" date comes from other aspects of the papyri. I'm not a
philologist but I can tell from the writing on facsimile 3 that
it's a late-period version--a LONG time after Abraham would have
existed.

Interestingly the papyrus that JS thought was the BOA, was a
book of breathings for a priest named Hor. We know from the
provenance, and the text who this priest was. We know who is
father was, and there is a "sister" papyrus from the same group
currently in the Louvre. When it comes to the BOA, the jig is
definitely up.

And facsimile No. 2 is a hypocephalus. Those things didn't
start being used until about a thousand years after Abraham
would have existed.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 12/10/2015 03:06PM by baura.

I have also noted several books about Egypt for kids.

http://landofpyramids.org/hieroglyphs-and-hieroglyphics.htm

Of course Joseph Smith's Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar is the go to book in all university study now. What a scholar!

Haha.

that was a burn!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QG8sq6aCbYs

I had no idea that ancient Egyptian had become a popular study subject...but I'm really glad to know this is happening. :)

Thanks for this thread, and for the book cites, baura...the information is wonderful!!!

Actually the content of the BoA is easily refuted by standard non-controversial astronomy aswell. The sun, and all the stars, shine all by their own effort, no star anywhere in the universe is "borrowing it's light" (whatever that's supposed to mean) from some other celestial body. There is no correlation whatsoever between size, importance and the length of a day on a planet. In fact stars and gas planets do not even have well-defined rotation speeds. The sun for example are spinning much slower at the poles than at it's equator. Just because a day is thus "longer" at the poles should we assume that the poles on the sun are "greater" than the equator? If anything it's exactly the opposite since the spin makes the equator bulge out a little.

On the whole, every astronomical detail supposedly revealed by god to Abraham is wrong or nonsensical or both.

It could be that Abraham new nothing about astronomy, or our astronomy today is all wrong.

This is the trouble with all mormon history and theology. You can make an excuse for almost every single one of the arguments against in isolation but it is far easier to just assume they are all wrong.

Thanks for the info. baura. The book of Abraham facsimilies are how I found my way out of the church. I was going to prove to DH that the church was true. LOL! Even without all of your great information, I was able to see how Joseph Smith made it all up in only a matter of minutes worth of investigation.

The first thing I did was google images of ancient Egypt. Saw real-life pictures of what turned out to be canopic jars. Joe's credibility went straight down to 0% in that moment.

When I was a teenager back in the early '60s, I remember
leafing through the BOA one Sunday afternoon after Church. I
remember thinking that all we had to do was get the facsimilies
to some Egyptologists who would confirm Joseph Smith's
translations and explanations. This would establish for the
world that Joseph Smith was a true prophet etc.

Little did I know at the time that what I had proposed had
already been done half a century earlier with disastrous effect
for the Church. Eight of the world's leading authorities on
ancient Egypt and Hieroglyphic Egyptian were sent the
facsimilies by a minister in Salt Lake City. They replied,
unanimously, that Joseph Smith had no clue what he was talking
about. You can read their opinions here:

http://www.bookofabraham.com/boamathie/JSasTranslator.html

Reading one of Nibley's articles on the BOA which dealt with
this episode was one of the early blows to my testimony.
Nibley reported what the Egyptologists had said and then went
into apologist mode trying to explain why we should ignore it.
His defense was so pitifully weak that by the time I got to the
end I was shocked. I had expected a convincing defense of the
faith. What I got was disturbing.