Is the Book of Abraham a Fraud?

Happy Sunday, everyone. Hope you're all doing awesome. Today we're talking about the Book of Abraham, a stumbling block for many unnecessarily, I think in part because I think many people don't really understand the full context of what's going on with the Book of Abraham and what we do and don't know. Therefore, many people I find to be influenced, overly influenced by the critics who make some assumptions and avoid some uncomfortable things that they omit from their criticisms that might lead individuals, particularly Latter-day Saints, to have a different perspective on the Book of Abraham. There's a lot of uneasiness about what this thing is or purports to be. There's a lot of people, you go online, you search for this topic, and there's people who have faith crises over it, and they're befuddled, and it's a point of a stumbling block and all that kind of stuff.

So I wanted to unpack this in part because, you know, in recent weeks of Come Follow Me, the Book of Abraham has been a part of that list of scriptures that we've been going over, so I thought it worth a mention here to talk about why I don't have a problem with the Book of Abraham. And not only do I not have a negative problem with it, I think it's kind of amazing and an additional witness of the prophetic and revelatory role that Joseph Smith was playing.

What does the Book of Abraham teach? Let's start there. There's a bunch of stuff that is covered in this set of scripture. I'm not going to be very exhaustive, but among the things that we learn about in the Book of Abraham are his near sacrifice and deliverance. You know, he's nearly sacrificed by idolatrous priests in Ur. He's saved by Jehovah, highlighting, you know, God is against false worship. The Abrahamic covenant is expanded in the Book of Abraham. He promises Abraham eternal increase, priesthood blessings, that his posterity will bear the gospel to all nations, etc. We learn about his use of the Urim and Thumm. He received one to receive divine knowledge, which demonstrates the access the ancient prophets had to these revelatory tools. Joseph Smith, Book of Mormon, prophets like Mosiah among them as well. Cosmology and Kolob is included as well. So God is revealing the order of heavenly bodies. Kolob is the greatest star nearest to God's throne, governing time and creation, hierarchy in the universe. Really interesting stuff. We learn about the eternal nature of spirits, including intelligences, that they have existed eternally with God, that they were organized before the world was formed. Premortal foreordination is included in their so-called noble and great spirits, including Abraham, Jesus, others. They're chosen in the premortal realm for specific roles in mortality. Of course, we get another perspective on the council in heaven that we read about in the Book of Moses as well, where the plan of salvation is presented. Satan rebels, Satan rebels, we get the war in heaven, and agency in Christ's role as a redeemer, not of all mankind, as Lucifer was proposing, but of those who choose to follow him and repent of their sins, is set forth in the Book of Abraham. As is, and I'll conclude my list here, the plurality of gods in creation. So multiple gods organizing the earth from existing material, not ex nihilo, not out of nothing, but organizing material. Christ is kind of the chief organizer. It's like this collaborative divine work almost.

We get the Book of Abraham as a result of some papyri. So I wanted to talk about the genesis or the origin of these documents on papyrus. Well, you have Napoleon, the French emperor with all of his kind of adventures down into Egypt as well. And as a result of Napoleon's campaign, the catacombs of Egypt are pilfered, you might say. A lot of antiquities are unearthed. And it creates this fascination across the Western world. This, of course, is where we get the Rosetta Stone in 1799 as a result of what Napoleon and them were doing. And so there's a lot of people who go start digging out or buying a lot of these relics. And they take them all over the world to sell them, to show them, including a man named Michael Chandler, who was touring the United States to charge people a fee to see these, selling them off along the way as well. He ends up in the summer of 1835 in Kirtland, Ohio, with some remaining mummies and papyrus scrolls in his possession. And he offers to sell them to any takers. A bunch of members of the church compile some funding and they purchase them. They were found in the early 1800s in Thebes, Egypt. Chandler claimed to be the nephew of the man who dug them up. This guy was named Antonio Le Bolo from Italy. And he was working with someone on the dig who had supposedly unearthed several hundred mummies, thought to be one of the largest discoveries of mummies and papyri in history. And so this other person took most of the items for his possession. But this Le Bolo guy, the uncle of the man who ends up in Kirtland, Ohio, kept a few for himself. And they were sent to the United States. And this Chandler guy, the nephew, tours around, sells them off to anybody willing to pay enough for them. So, you know, he ends up in Kirtland. He sells them four mummies and at least, I think, five papyri. And this member of church, members of the church, compile the funds necessary. It's about $2,400 for Joseph to be able to take possession of them. That price in today's dollars is roughly $100,000.

One important thing to note about the origin of the book of Abraham from these papyrus documents is that what we now have is very incomplete. And this is what the critics do not admit, do not concede, do not mention, as I'll talk about more in just a moment. But what we have is very incomplete. Joseph Smith originally had several papyrus scrolls. What remains now is only a handful of fragments of two of the scrolls. Hugh Nibley, for example, when he's talking about these scrolls in Joseph's possession, he says, So Joseph may have had roughly eight times more papyrus papyri than now currently exist. In other words, we've lost a lot. So how did that happen? In Nauvoo, Joseph turns over the mummies and the papyri to his mom. He was getting kind of tired of the obligation to exhibit them, to show people around. And he thought it was a way to provide for his widowed mother, because his dad had died by this point, as a means to support herself. Where she could charge, much like this Chandler guy was, she could, you know, you pay a little fee, you get in to see him, and that could be a way for her to sustain herself. And so Lucy kept the mummies and the papyri for the rest of her life. She'd show them to interested visitors for 25 cents a person. And on May of 1856, this is less than two weeks after Lucy Mack Smith dies, Emma ends up selling the, you know, Emma and her new husband, because this is like a decade after Joseph's dead, right? So Emma and her new husband, and then Joseph Smith III, they sell off the mummies and the papyri to a man named Abel Combs. So Combs splits up the papyri. He sells some to the St. Louis Museum, including at least two of the rolls and at least two of the mummies. So that goes to the St. Louis Museum. He kept some of the mounted fragments. They had torn out or some had fallen off. And so they had put some of the papyrus into kind of like a glass frame to protect it. So there were these rolled scrolls. And then there were parts of it that had come off or were taken off or were already separate that they were put into these glass frames. So Combs, this guy keeps some of those mounted fragments, but the rest, he's selling off a bunch to the St. Louis Museum, who or which the museum ends up selling the rolls and the mummies to a Colonel Woods Museum in Chicago. That museum, along with the possessions therein, burns down in the Chicago Fire 1871. So from all accounts, from all we know, presumably the papyri, the mummies are destroyed in that fire. So the mounted fragments, including the facsimile one, make their way to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Then they're sold back to the LDS Church, who shortly thereafter publishes what they have. So it's been out of the hands of the church and church leadership for over a century at this point.

So a lot of what the critics will complain about is this, you know, they'll look at facsimile one, for example, and they'll see what Joseph claimed it to be. And then they'll say, but all the Egyptologists say it's something else, right? Or, oh, look at this book of Abraham. And the critics will say, nowhere in the, you know, papyri is any of that there. Egyptologists have analyzed it and nowhere can it be found. Well, number one, again, we do not have, like, the vast majority of what Joseph had. Critics seem to latch onto this idea that, like, oh, look, the, you know, we're looking at the papyri that now exists, that the church is published, that's in the church's possession, and there's nothing in there that what's in the book of Abraham. Therefore, Joseph's just making it up, right? That's, like, one of the chief criticisms about the book of Abraham, which is completely disingenuous because there's simply no way to account for what Joseph actually had access to since the vast majority was destroyed or lost. What we now have is a tiny fraction of what Joseph had. So for critics to, like, conclusively affirm that, oh, it's a mismatch, it's completely ridiculous. They're totally disingenuous. But also, even if, let's say, let's say even if we had the full scrolls and there was still a mismatch, right? It was not a perfect one-to-one or whatever. If modern Egyptologists were to scrutinize the full and complete roles and come to a different conclusion about what they say, you need to also remember that Joseph had this very broadened notion of what constitutes translation. We tend to think of translation in the very modern conventional context where you're literally taking from one language to another. You have a source document and you're kind of transposing it in another language onto another document. But remember, section seven of the Doctrine and Covenants. I'll read the preface because I think few people really latch onto this, but it's so important when we're talking about what was Joseph doing, both with the Book of Mormon, by the way, but then his inspired version of the Bible and the, you know, Book of Abraham and these other projects. Section sevens introduction and the, whatever you call it, the little preface reads, So we have in section seven, a revelation, So we have in section seven, a revelation, which is a translated version of whatever John wrote onto a piece of parchment and hit. Joseph never had the parchment. He never claimed to have the parchment. The parchment never was discovered that anybody knows of, but it existed at one point. John wrote something down and then God told Joseph in English, here's what it said. And that was the revelation that's received. So this idea of translation is broader and includes direct revelation of something not explicitly even possessed. So even if the Abrahamic papyri didn't actually have what Joseph claimed they did and modern Egyptologists were saying, Oh, those words are different or whatever. Like Joseph was using things as catalyst. He was reading the Bible. He had this question about John and that became a catalyst to receive a revelation.

Now, the counter argument here is that when they published the book of Abraham revelation in the times and seasons in 1842, it says at the beginning, and I quote, a translation of some ancient records that have fallen into our hands from the catacombs of Egypt, purporting to be the writings of Abraham while he was in Egypt called the book of Abraham, written by his own hand upon papyrus. So one could argue, well, here's Joseph saying that it is a translation of some ancient records purporting to be the writings of Abraham that were written by his own hand upon papyrus. Well, first of all, it's acknowledging that it's a purporting thereof. Right. So even if Joseph gets access to something that wasn't actually from Abraham, but it was the previous owner was purporting that it did or whatever, Joseph can still use that as catalyst for revelation, just like he used reading the Bible as a catalyst for receiving this translated revelation of what John wrote on parchment and hit up somewhere else in the world. But also another counterpoint here to argue against the counter argument is that this was written by a scribe, likely Willard Richards, you know, and even if Joseph acknowledged it, approved it, included it, what the scribe did, like, could have just been assumption on Joseph's part or his scribes about what was actually going on. But again, Joseph's view of a translation, as we saw in section seven, is far broader than do I literally change the text? And is this precisely what it is? Like it can just be a catalyst. Joseph was just this conduit for revelatory insight, regardless even of what was on the scrolls. But again, we have no idea because we don't have the vast majority. If we could recover it and modern Egyptologists found it, it could very well perhaps say, oh, wow, yeah, look, you know, look, this purports to be from the book of Abraham. And maybe there's some slight difference of opinion on the translation because this is Egyptian we're talking about. And there's not like a full and complete, precise, accurate interpretation and all things hieroglyphics. But that'd be fascinating if the scrolls had survived and we might very well be able to validate what Joseph was translating.

So, you know, you get these critics out there, the CES letter chief among them, which are, again, totally disingenuous and stretching like crazy. And they use this tactic I've talked about in the past called Gish Gallop, where they just try and throw so much at you where you're like, oh, my gosh, like, look at all these problems. How can any of these be surmountable and have responses? And wow, you know, I should just throw it all away because look, there's all these problems. Right. And it's just a completely deceptive tactic, particularly because the criticisms from these people are unfounded, disingenuous, in many cases, flat out wrong. And in some other cases, making general assumptions to conclude their point that are based off of assumptions. And someone who has a different assumption might come to a different conclusion. For example, the CES letter says that despite Joseph's claim that this record was written by Abraham by his own hand upon papyrus, scholars have found the original papyrus Joseph translated and have dated it in first century CE, nearly 2000 years after Abraham could have written. Well, again, scholars have not found all the rest of the scrolls, but even if they did, and even if those other scrolls are also dated to a similar time in the first century, the phrase by his own hand upon papyrus could refer, does refer only to the original record, which could have been copied many times. Maybe past papyrus had degraded, and so future scribes copied it onto a new one. The original was from Abraham's in his hand upon papyrus, just as, again, the apostle John wrote something on papyrus, hid it somewhere, and Joseph still got it. You know, we say that Mormon wrote the Book of Mormon. That doesn't mean he wrote the English version or the physical copy that you're holding when you're reading it. It was the original source text. Very well the same thing with Abraham. You know, the CES letter also says, The original papyrus Joseph translated has since been found. Again, poppycock, right? Minimal fragments of what Joseph had in his possession have been found. Everything else was presumably burned in the fire. You know, it's just absolutely ridiculous. The critics just seem to always focus on what remains while not conceding that, Oh yeah, shucks, like the rest of it was just right. Because it undermines their argument. They simply can't conclusively say anything because Very well Joseph could be 100% accurate, according to modern Egyptological, you know, interpretation, translations. But we just don't have access to the source document.

Another argument goes like this. Egyptologists have found the source material for the Book of Abraham to be nothing more than a, common pagan Egyptian funerary text for a deceased man named Hor in 1st century CE. In other words, it was a common breathing permit that the Egyptians buried with their dead. It has absolutely nothing to do with Abraham or anything Joseph claimed in his translation for the Book of Abraham. Again, I stress, I cannot stress this enough. We do not have a complete record of what Joseph Smith had from facsimile one and these limited sources alone. Right. And so there is so much more that we don't have. And it's just disingenuous is the best and only word that I can come up with. I'm sure there's stronger words because when you see these critics say crap like that, it's just like, come on, guys. Like, are you even trying? You're relying on the fact that your readers don't know that the vast majority of it was burned. And you're relying on their ignorance and preying upon it to make them think, oh, well, if what we have in modern Egyptologists say it doesn't say that, therefore, Joseph must have been wrong. Like, you're just preying on their ignorance and perpetuating it by not conceding that there's a ton more that Joseph had. There's a lot more. I mean, I wrote down a lot of these, like, criticisms of the Book of Abraham. Um, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's, again, it's like gish gallop for this stuff to go through. Like, one of them is, is this idea of facsimile one being a common funerary document. And, and the argument that, oh, well, you know, Joseph must have been making it up because what he specifically says about that document is not what modern Egyptologists say. And the CES letter, for example, like, they, they have this person that they cite that's giving these counter interpretations of what facsimile one actually says. And that it's just this funerary document. Therefore, Joseph was wrong. You know, and, and, uh, they, they talk about the CES letter talks about a modern Egyptological interpretation. And when you dig into who they're citing as their source, his name is Kevin Mathey, a professional composer, music director, and pianist who has for more than 25 years, who has more than 25 years experience working in the music industry. And that's, and that's, and that's who's being cited as the modern Egyptological interpretation. You know, and critics are basing their objections, by the way, on the Rosetta stone that I mentioned, which covers like late Egyptian and some middle Egyptian, which is far removed from like early middle and, and, and early Egyptian when Abraham was alive. And Abraham was going to Ur, not to Egypt. And so he could have been using some hieroglyphic changes there that were different from the, like, there's so much here where it's like, oh, but the Rosetta stone says that these symbols mean this. But Joseph said they mean that, therefore anyone using the Rosetta stone can disprove what Joseph said, even though keep in mind the Rosetta stone only, again, pertains to later Egyptology and hieroglyphics and all of that. When Abraham came earlier and Abraham was, you know, the Chaldeans and Ur and all of this. And so could have been using some variant, you know, it's like Spanish versus Portuguese or, you know, what, like there could have been differences. There's all these, you know, arguments. And even if you look at Egyptian translations that are given of the facsimiles, they don't even all line up. They don't even all agree. They have their own interpretations, just like Joseph Smith has his. It's not like there's this consensus that everyone who knows Egyptian because of the Rosetta stone can conclusively at, you know, state one single common interpretation. Like, no, there's, there's variance.

What I find also interesting is that there's other unique elements in the book of Abraham, which get confirmed through other sources. And, uh, and, and you see a number of these, in fact, throughout the book of Abraham, which in my mind is a testimony to its veracity. In other words, things in the book of Abraham that have parallels in later Jewish and Christian, even Islamic stories about Abraham. Let's, let's take up a few. Think of, uh, Tara, Abraham's father. So, you know, the book of Abraham talks about how he was idolatrous and all of this, right? And that Abraham was calling him to repent and preaching against it and telling his dad and others to knock off their idolatry. Well, there's, you know, non-biblical Jewish and, and later religious texts that frequently portray Tara as an idol maker, an idol worshiper. This is expanding on a brief biblical hint in Joshua 24 verse 2, which says that Abraham's father served other gods. Fathers, plural. Abraham's fathers served other gods. Genesis, by the way, is silent on this. So there's this tiny little hint about father's plural, his lineage in Joshua 24. So then you get all these other texts and things that are talking about this. The Hebrew text, uh, it's called the story of Abraham, our father, from what happened to him with Nimrod. And in there it teaches that Abraham preached to his father to turn him away from idolatry. Uh, you got the Mishnah in, uh, Abath number five. This reports that is like Jewish commentary and interpretation saying that all the generations from Noah to Abraham, provoked God continually until Abraham, our father came and received the reward of them all. Uh, you get the apocalypse of Abraham dating to the first or second century AD says that Tara made sacrifices to gods of wood, of stone, of gold, of silver, of copper, and of iron, which Abraham then rejected. You get the, uh, uh, midrashic Hebrew text called Tana Debe Eliahu, which is around dated around 300 AD. This indicates quote that that household of Abraham's father, idolaters all used to make idols and go out and sell them in the marketplace. You got the midrash Rabah, most of which is like fifth century AD. This is says that Tara was a manufacturer of idols. A final one, the book of Jasher. This says that Tara with all his household were then the first of those that served gods of wood and stone. Echoing the reference from Abraham, the book of Abraham chapter one, verse 11. So these traditions parallel the book of Abraham's description of Tara as an idolater. So what Joseph revealed from the papyri from his translation from God, however, that happened matches all of these commentaries, interpretations, lore, uh, stories, uh, you know, from antiquity.

I'll read from Abraham one, uh, verses five through seven. It says, My fathers having turned from their righteousness and from the holy commandments, which the Lord, their God had given unto them under the worshiping of the gods of the heathen utterly refused to hearken to my voice for their hearts were set to do evil and were wholly turned to the God of Elkanah and the God of Libna and the God of Mamakra and the God of Khorash and the God of Pharaoh, King of Egypt. Therefore, they turned their hearts to the sacrifice of the heathen in offering up their children under these dumb idols and hearken not unto my voice, but endeavor to take away my life by the hand of the priest of Elkanah. The priest of Elkanah was also the priest of Pharaoh. We'll get into this in just a second. And then finally, verse 27. Now, Pharaoh being of that lineage by which he could not have the right of priesthood, notwithstanding the Pharaoh's would fame claim it from Noah through Ham. Therefore, my father was led away by their idolatry. All right. So Book of Abraham is talking about Abraham's dad in a significant way, being idolatrous. We get this tiny little hand from Joshua 24. Other than that, Genesis in particular is totally silent. But there's all this commentary, all this interpretation signifying that beyond Joshua 24, presumably, there were teachings and writings and stuff from way, way back talking about this. And it matches what Joseph is restoring and revealing in the book of Abraham.

Let's go back to that priest of Elkanah, Abraham being bound on an altar. There are several ancient and medieval sources to this that are describing an attempt to sacrifice Abraham, often tied to idolatrous worship or a tyrant king, especially Nimrod, including an account where Abraham is placed on or near an altar and is delivered by divine intervention. Jubilees, second century before Christ, Jubilees 12 and 13 portray Abraham or Abram as rejecting the idolatry of his father and country. He's being threatened by the king of Ur, sometimes linked with Nimrod. Abraham destroys idols. He's delivered by God from danger. And a later Jewish interpretation associates this with a death sentence for refusing idolatry. Okay. So then you get to the early Midrash. So this is like a, there's a well-known compilation of, of these Midrash commentaries telling how Abraham, after smashing his father's idols, is denounced to a king, usually Nimrod, who orders him to worship fire or be killed. Abraham refuses. He's thrown into a furnace, miraculously saved. There's a third century papyrus from an Egyptian temple library, connecting Abraham with an illustration somewhat similar to facsimile one in the book of Abraham. There's a later Egyptian text discovered in the 20th century telling how Pharaoh tried to sacrifice Abraham only to be foiled when Abraham was delivered by an angel. So again, this is paralleling the scene from the book of Abraham, where Abraham is bound to an altar. The details vary amongst the different, you know, traditions and commentaries, but their existence, I think, converges on this core theme of what the Abraham, the book of Abraham includes. That's interesting, right? Joseph didn't have access to these voluminous commentaries and so forth that all seem to confirm what is in the book of Abraham.

A final example, Abraham as astronomer, right? The teacher of astronomy. There's a number of ancient writings which portray Abraham as knowledgeable in astronomy, as someone who taught astronomical and related sciences to the Egyptians. So there's an early Christian author named Eusebius. He preserved an account of Abraham teaching the Egyptians astronomy. He says, and I quote, Abraham lived in Heliopolis with the Egyptian priests and taught them much. He explained astrology and the other sciences to them, saying that the Babylonians and he himself had obtained this knowledge. The ancient Jewish historian Josephus, he also recorded that Abraham taught the Egyptians astronomy. He said, and I quote, He communicated to them arithmetic and delivered to them the science of astronomy. For before Abraham came into Egypt, they were unacquainted with those parts of learning. Medieval Jewish sources also speak of Abraham having in his possession a glowing precious stone with which he read the stars and performed miracles. This is a quote from a book talking about it. Abraham wore a glowing stone around his neck. Some say that it was a pearl. Others, that it was a jewel. The light emitted by that jewel was like the light of the sun, illuminating the entire world. Abraham used that stone as an astrolabe to study the motion of the stars, and with its help, he became a master astrologer. For his power of reading the stars, Abraham was much sought after by the potentates of east and west. So too did that glowing precious stone bring immediate healing to any sick person who looked into it. At the moment when Abraham took leave of this world, the precious stone raised itself and flew up to heaven. God took it and hung it on the wheel of the sun. So, these sources seem to align with the book of Abraham depicting Abraham as receiving a vision of the heavens, teaching astronomical knowledge in Egypt. But again, like these are later interpretations and commentaries that seem to correlate, seem to be consistent with what we have in the book of Abraham itself. Not all of these authors and commentaries, you know, treat their sources about Abraham the same. Some of the tales differ than others. None of these, I would say, prove that the book of Abraham is true. But they comfortably demonstrate, reliably demonstrate that what Joseph Smith was revealing easily fits into this early worldview of Abraham, of the ancient worldview of Abraham. You know, not Joseph Smith's 19th century accessibility of what limited access they would have to these commentaries and traditions and all of that. Like, this just shows that what Joseph Smith was revealing is very consistent with what from antiquity was being discussed.

A final point that I wanted to bring up before I wrap. What we don't have access to, what I'm curious about, is not the book of Abraham, but the book of Joseph. There was just a few light, what would you call it, descriptions of the book of Joseph being included in the papyri. This text was not translated, but its contents was hinted at by Joseph Smith. So in an 1842 sermon, Joseph Smith taught, and I quote, Their records, plural. Their records, plural. And there were scattered references by, you know, W.W. Phelps and others about there being a record of Joseph while in Pharaoh's court. Included among the papyri, whether literally on the papyri that this guy brought to Kirtland from the whatever with the mummies and blah, blah, blah. Or that Joseph was just receiving these like he did the papyrus of the apostle John that was hit up and the Lord just gave it to him. Either way, it seems that there was also some direct knowledge being shared from Joseph to Joseph Smith, which is also fascinating when you go to what Nephi was talking about and how Joseph's writings would be, you know, shared in the future and so forth. Fascinating stuff, right?

There's a lot more here to unpack. I mean, there's a gospel topics essay that you can read that kind of goes over some of the basics. There's lots of scholarly stuff. There's lots of YouTube videos. To me, this is not a stumbling block. It's only a stumbling block if you're just being bombarded by the gish gallop of the CES letter critic types who are completely disingenuous, intentionally misleading, you know. And again, like we just don't know what we don't know because so much of it was burned and therefore it is inconclusive and no critic can demonstrably disprove anything. They just don't have the source material. But again, even if the source material even existed, we know that Joseph had this far more expansive and direct revelatory view of these ancient writings and teachings and sources. Right. As we saw in section seven, the doctrine and covenants. And so we have to conclude from that, that what Joseph was doing was he had direct access to God, this gift and power that would allow him to directly access knowledge from angels, from the Lord himself, from ancient records. Right. There was so much more going on. So I find the book of Abraham fascinating and not at all problematic. I have a lot of questions about it. I have a lot of curiosities about it. There's a lot of stuff in there, like the intelligences and the multiple gods and the, you know, there's just fascinating things that I would love to understand more. But I don't consider it problematic. I consider another witness of Joseph's gift. You know, and I wish we had this book of Joseph and access to more stuff. And apparently that was not done before he was killed. It's fascinating. So again, like, don't listen to the critics. They are not at all even going to tell you that we only have a tiny fraction of what Joseph himself had access to. And that, to me, moots all of their criticism, makes it all completely irrelevant because they just don't know what was in the rest. And had it survived and if we had it today, it could very well be that modern Egyptologists would say, well, yeah, it does say all that stuff that Joseph said it did. Maybe they would critique some of his specific translations because based on the Rosetta Stone, they would come to slightly different interpretations or whatever. But they can't do any of that. None of us can. We just don't have it. So it remains, therefore, a curiosity, an act of faith, an episode of historical curiosity and interestingness of this period of Kirtland and thereafter in Nauvoo. But it was mostly in Kirtland when Joseph was really engaged in this. So I hope for any of you who have considered the Book of Abraham to be a assembly block, just do a little bit of your homework. Recognize that the critics are being disingenuous. Take your time with it. Explore. There's so much here. Again, I'm only touching the top. Only to lightly cover some of these issues and then say, I don't have a problem with it. I've gone deeper. I've gone down rabbit holes with all this stuff. There's questions. There's curiosities. But again, like, from the Book of Mormon alone, let alone all of those other revelations, I see Joseph as having the clear fruits of being a prophet of God. Therefore, combined with that and the fact that we just don't have all the other scrolls, I take it as an act of faith based on evidence that I have from the Book of Mormon and testimony of it that this is what Joseph and others were saying it was. And therefore, I accept it as scripture and I accept it as additional revelation from God, whether the exact words were on the papyrus or not, or it was being received like section seven from God. I know that Joseph was a prophet of God. I believe his fruits bear that out. Therefore, I'm okay with the Book of Abraham. I'm fascinated by it. I want to know a lot more about it. Guys, there are so many more scriptures to be had and revelations to come forth out of the earth and the lost 10 tribes and all this stuff, right? I want all of it. I want more of it. I'm fascinated by it. I'm so curious what these other records say. And we don't have them. And the seal portion of the Book of Mormon, there's just so much more to be had. And so for me, this isn't a summary block. This is like, can we please elevate our collective righteousness to get out from being under condemnation and to gain access to and be worthy to receive so much more? You know, at this rate, I don't think we're getting anytime soon. But man, I wish we could because just even historically, I'm so interested in it. Spiritually, of course, as well. But like, man, there's so much more, so much interesting stuff out there. Anyways, Book of Abraham, thumbs up. I think it's cool. I'm fascinated by it. I have a lot of questions about it, but it's not a shelf breaker. It's not a stumbling block. To me, it's just an additional witness like the inspired version of the Bible and the Book of Mormon and all his revelations that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God. I am grateful for that fact. I'm so grateful that we have so much fruit from him to be able to process and share and read and study and embrace and live by. I wish we could get more, but I'll be content for now with how much we do get from Joseph. And I'll leave it there. Tell me what you guys think in the comments. You have any questions about the Book of Abraham, any other insights that you've had along the way with your studies that you can share with other people? Leave them in the comments. I'll see you there and I'll see you next week.