As Dr. Robert Ritner stated regarding Joseph Smith's reconstruction of Facsimile 1: "If you took a painting of Madonna and Child and you tore off the heads of both figures and you replaced them with a dog and a cat, it would be as obvious to us now that this is as wrong as the replacing of the clearly jackal head with a human head on this Egyptian piece because we know what these images actually look like. In the same way, we know that those figures (from Facsimile 1) would – never under any circumstance – hold a knife. And that’s critical to the text itself (Book of Abraham) because it’s not merely decoration for this text. It goes to the core of the supposed story that accompanies it. If you take the knife away, you take away the story as well. And clearly the knife had no reason to be there." (Interview with Dr. Robert Ritner)

What we're saying is that the differences in the lion couch scenes that FAIR Mormon is showing here don't solve the problems with Joseph Smith's recreation of Facsimile 1: The human head that was drawn over what should've been Anubis is simply wrong, and holding a knife as if an act of sacrifice is never a part of these funerary texts. Neither of those problems are shown in any of FAIR Mormon's alternate images, and the reason is because Joseph Smith incorrectly drew them in. It's really just that simple, which is why FAIR is working so hard to distract you from the actual problems.

Back to the video:

 

The letter claims that the Egyptian Book of the Dead in the Book of Abraham have no thematic ties, and that's false. The entire Egyptian Book of the Dead is online free for you to read and will even link it in the description below the letter claims, the church admits that they have no connection in the Gospel Topics essay. That's a lie. The church claims the literal exact opposite.

For one interesting part of the CES Letter is that it constantly cites non-LDS Egyptologists without actually citing these Egyptologists, only if you are cited and one is a musical theater director, some of the other three are Egyptologist who died two centuries ago. It's likely that modern Egyptologists wouldn't agree with their work, given they're outdated.

If I haven't made it clear yet, FAIR Mormon's commissioned TITS video here has spent the entire video distracting members from the problems by attacking a guy who decided to create an infographic, and their scholarship is an absolute dumpster fire of stale apologetics combined with an arrogance that can only come from a deep insecurity in the product they are selling to unsuspecting members.

And that becomes even more clear here, because they are purposefully ignoring that the advances in Egyptian scholarship have not helped the Book of Abraham's authenticity one bit. Not only that, but biblical scholarship's advancements have also helped to show us that it is 100% a 19th century work by Joseph Smith.

It's not "likely that modern Egyptologists wouldn't agree with their work, given they're outdated" because Dr. Robert Ritner just gave a three part series of interviews detailing not just the current scholarship but the evolution of the study on the Book of Abraham.

I want to be perfectly clear here: FAIR Mormon is lying here, they are knowingly lying here, and they are using the most abrasive and condescending tone to lie to you. This would be laughed at by any Egyptologist not employed by the church, because it is so insultingly dishonest that it would never, ever pass the church's own definition of honesty:

 

Lying is intentionally deceiving others. Bearing false witness is one form of lying. The Lord gave this commandment to the children of Israel: “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour” (Exodus 20:16). Jesus also taught this when He was on earth (see Matthew 19:18). There are many other forms of lying. When we speak untruths, we are guilty of lying. We can also intentionally deceive others by a gesture or a look, by silence, or by telling only part of the truth. Whenever we lead people in any way to believe something that is not true, we are not being honest.
 

If I seem annoyed here, it's because I value and want honest conversation, and FAIR has made clear with these videos that they have abandoned any pretense of even trying to approach these issues honestly, and are now turning their platform over to the worst kind of apologetics. I'm showing my work here, which is something that FAIR Mormon's TITS not only fail to do, but censor when others try to point it out in the comments.

Back to the video:
 

Also, these three Egyptologists quoted by Jeremy Runnells were literally open white supremacists. Hail our people! Hail Victory! No joke. Archibald Saysi thought African people were midway between white people and apes. James Breasted was a white supremacist who called Mediterranean's barbarians, who are holding back society. And Flinders Petrie was one of the founders of the eugenics movement. I kid you not. The CES Letter quotes modern Egyptologists that are either A: not Egyptologists but award winning pianist from the Salt Lake City area or B: were Egyptologist who died 200 years ago with discredited work or see people who were basically Nazi? Hi eso a musician and three Nazis Sounds like a weird sitcom. Hitler.

Does FAIR Mormon really want to go here? I mean, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints literally has, by the very definition, white supremacy embedded in their scriptures. The Book of Abraham is incorporating the Curse of Ham, which was used to rationalize slavery in America because black skin was a curse from God. Or this gem from the Book of Moses:
 

Book of Moses 7:8: For behold, the Lord shall curse the land with much heat, and the bareness thereof shall go forth forever; and there was a blackness came upon all the children of Canaan, that they were despised among all people.

It is just insane to me that FAIR Mormon is trying to discredit Egyptologists by pointing out their racism, when Brigham Young literally brought slavery to Utah and said some of the most damning things you'll ever hear from a prophet of God:
 

"You must not think, from what I say, that I am opposed to slavery. No! The negro is damned, and is to serve his master till God chooses to remove the curse of Ham." (Prophet Brigham Young, New York Herald, May 4, 1855)

"The moment we consent to mingle with the seed of Cain the Church must go to destruction, - we should receive the curse which has been placed upon the seed of Cain, and never more be numbered with the children of Adam who are heirs to the priesthood until that curse be removed." (Prophet Brigham Young, Brigham Young Addresses, Feb. 5, 1852)

"Why are so many of the inhabitants of the earth cursed with a sin of blackness? It comes in consequence of their fathers rejecting the power of the Holy Priesthood, and the law of God. They will go down to death." (Prophet Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, v. 11, p. 272)

"Shall I tell you the law of God in regard to the African race? If the white man who belongs to the chosen seed mixes his blood with the seed of Cain, the penalty, under the law of God, is death on the spot. This will always be so." (Journal of Discourses, vol. 10, 1863, p. 110.)

It is absolutely rich that FAIR Mormon is attacking Egyptologists by saying they are white supremacists, when the church itself has white supremacy in the scriptures today and for 140 years taught as doctrine that black skin was a curse from God.

This is embarrassing, but this is what apologists do to throw squirrels out there to keep you from looking at the problems.

And now we get to the evidences for the Book of Abraham. Back to the video:

 

Here to comment more is Stephen Smoot. Yes, hello, I am Stephen Smoot, another dude in a gray blazer. The Book of Abraham claims that human sacrifice was practiced in order the Chaldees after the manner of the Egyptians. While many scholars believe Abraham's Ur was in southern Iraq, others believe it was near the border of Turkey and Syria.

Evidence shows that this border area saw some influence from Egyptian culture in Abraham's day. It is also now an accepted fact that Egyptians during Abraham's Day did in fact practice human sacrifice during the life of Joseph Smith. This was not an accepted claim, however, Joseph was right.

We cover this in our Book of Abraham overview, but this is simply incorrect, and we'll let Egyptologist Dr. Robert Ritner explain the problem here:
 

“Kerry wrote his dissertation on this very topic, and he was very careful to describe these as political executions rather than human sacrifices. So he walked a careful line that passed muster with Egyptologists. He did not prove that there was human sacrifice. He in fact, just pointed these out as being human, as being political execution…

It's a death penalty for committing a crime. This is not for failing to worship the gods or failing to respect a deity or a ritual. It's if you commit a crime, there will be capital punishment that is not sacrifice. And yet this is the kind of example they want to choose. This is like saying, ‘If you kill someone and we hang you for it, it's a human sacrifice.’ If that's the way you want to understand it, fine. Any execution could be taken in a religious way and given a connotation, and we execute people now. Is that human sacrifice? For some, you would say yes, but it's a question of ‘Is this how the Egyptians are understanding it?’ And the answer is certainly not…

So all of the examples that they like to point to, the so called recent ones, are in fact either criminal published punishment or military activity. It's not a question of human sacrifice on an altar. There's no altar that's been found at this site. In the Delta, there's no altar that is found in mere guesses. There is no altar found adjacent to the never Hotel Stella, so all of that is smoke and mirrors and confusion of terms and attempting to juggle anything in order to make it all makes sense. But the bigger question is so what if the Egyptians practiced human sacrifice? Would the Egyptians have practiced human sacrifice in north Syria, where they didn't have any physical control? Would they have looked like that on that illustration [Facsimile 1], which we know is doctored and therefore cannot be an illustration of it? So it's not a question of finding one little thing that might work. You have to make all the pieces fit. And that is the continual problem with the apologists is they find one small aspect which, if you squint your eyes and look, you know, slightly to the left, you can say, ‘Well, it sort of looks like this,’ but then it doesn't fit the entire picture because you're asked to ignore all of that, and you can't ignore all of it. If the story is true, then all parts of it have to be true. Not just one aspect of one picture or two lines.” (Dr. Robert Ritner, Mormon Stories Part Two)

I know that's a long quote, but it shows the game apologists play with these issues, which will continue on through these evidences. Back to the video:
 

This infected occur much of this new scholarship, even as archaeologists moving proposed excavation sites. When I learned the book of Abraham wasn't taking place in Iraq, I guess you could say Iran well, Stephen. There are many correlations between the Book of Abraham and ancient accounts of Abraham not recorded in the Bible, such as Abraham learning the cosmos and a vision from God and Abraham being saved by an angel from Sacrifice and others.

The Book of Abraham literally contradicts itself when it comes to astrology, because it reworks Genesis while also adding new material. If you want to dig into this more, please listen to biblical scholar and former CES instructor Dr. David Bokovoy's interview that covers the astrology in the Book of Abraham. It is an excellent listen and shows why this apologetic is factually absurd.

Back to the video:
 

But do you really have any good correlation between ancient Abrahamic traditions in the Book of Abraham? Oh yes, the evidences are in fact, as endless as Abraham's descendants. See, that's that's funny, right? Because, you know, God promised Abraham and his descendants would, you know, be his numbered as many as the stars and the grains of sand, right? You know, the vital and and the humorous conceit of that joke is, you know, relies on the fact right, right, right.

So the Book of Abraham names the number of paying gods worshiped in Abraham's Day. Many people assume Joseph Smith simply made up these names like the God of Elkenah. However, in the last century, archaeologists have discovered information about the God El koneh aratz. This God was a Canaanite deity and was worshiped in Turkey and Syria. From the time of Abraham, all the way down to the time of Christ. In the Book of Abraham, the priest offers three virgins on the altar to the god of Elkenah. Little writing about El koneh aratz remains, But from the little that we do know, a narrative involving sexuality is present in one tablet. So the name of the God is correct. The time period is correct. The location is correct on, even though almost nothing remains regarding the specific myths of this God, a story involving sexuality is hinted at, um, as you see, for example, in the virgins that were sacrificed with the Book of Abraham. Hey, Stephen, can you explain it without putting me to sleep? Oh, quick. Oh, heavens, no.

Elkenah is simply not a recognized name from anywhere in antiquity and is only mentioned the Book of Abraham. A very quick Google search will confirm this very important detail, because FAIR Mormon here seeks to give the impression that scholars outside of the church have since found Elkenah to be an ancient evidence for the Book of Abraham where this clearly is none.

This claim is disingenuous and it is made on very shaky ground because if they want to tell the whole story they might also point out that Yahweh (Jehovah) made his first appearance as a pagan god in the pantheon of this same El.

Again, just a quick read above tells us that Elkenah, just like Olishem (which is coming up), is a name created by Joseph Smith for the Book of Abraham with no use validity outside of Mormon scholars. The name Elkanah is in the Bible, which is Joseph Smith’s Elkenah with the first “a” swapped out for “e.” Furthermore, what Joseph Smith translated as Elkenah was actually Qebehsenuef in Egyptian.

Back to the video:
 

Stephen. One name might be a coincidence. Any others? Yes. In fact, the book of Abraham's plane of Olishem, um, has very likely been verified. A place named Ulisim, in an inscription from the ancient Akkadian King NorAm since seems to correlate with this. The city of Olishem was located somewhere in southern Turkey or northern Syria.

This is often cited by church Egyptologist John Gee as a “bullseye” for the Book of Abraham, but it is not only problematic, but impossible to be a true connection between the Book of Abraham and the ancient world.

First, Joseph Smith puts Abraham in a Southern location by citing Ur of the Chaldees, but the “Ulisum” referenced as an ancient proof is in northwestern Syria. So right off the bat the location tells us these two are not connection, but the language itself is a bigger problem.

The word “Ulisum” is Akkadian, and this presents very basic problems for this connection that church apologists would absolutely be aware of when they present this as a bullseye. According to Dr. Bokovoy, the transliteration of Ulisum from the original cuneiform tablets would read “u-li-si-im.” There is no "sh" sound in there, and furthermore, there is no “O” sign in Akkadian, making it impossible that Olishem would be represented by the Akkadian word Ulisum.

Last, the entire premise of including the Olishem connection to Ulisum is from apologist John Gee, which was confirmed by Brian Hauglid in his interview with Radio Free Mormon. But when you dig into John Gee’s own statements about this connection, even he is way more tentative than the essay implies. From John Gee:
 

“At present, given the many uncertainties, we can regard this identification [Of Ulisim being the actual Olishem] as promising but not proven.” (John Gee)

Furthermore, in a recent interview that John Gee gave in response to the recent scholarship by Brian Hauglid and Dr. Robert Ritner about the Book of Abraham, he concedes that even he doesn’t believe that the areas that people are looking for Olishem are correct, but that the very idea that it might exist gives him a better understanding of the connection. That, of course, could be used for any idea such as Bigfoot, the Lochness Monster, or any other phenomenon that has had proposed sites, which is why this "evidence" for Olishem is so incredibly weak and misleading.

To be clear, John Gee is conceding that this connection is “promising but not proven” and that he knows they aren’t even looking in the right place (because the location does not fit the text), but he still put it in the church’s essay as a bullseye anyway. You can listen to this broken down in detail on a recent Radio Free Mormon podcast going over this John Gee interview.

We’ve discussed in other sections how many church apologists have been guilty of parallelomania, which is looking for anything that can give plausibility to something that simply does not hold up to evidence. In this case, John Gee and other apologists have clung to the Ulisum word to try and find something, anything that can make Olishem plausible. The problem, however, is that this connection doesn’t work not just for the location, but the language itself.

Back to the video:
 

Hmm. What about Shinehah Yes. Shinehah is attested in the ancient Egyptian pyramid texts and the coffin texts in these text of the path of the sun or the ecliptic eyes described as a celestial waterway. This description of the motion of the sun in the ecliptic is interesting because the Book of Abraham names the sun Shinehah on the ancient names for the sun's ecliptic in these texts is shen and neh in Egyptian.

The Book of Abraham also depicts the sun and a tiered cosmos, which is also consistent with ancient geo centric astronomy from the time of Abraham.

The problem again is that this is another example of parallelomania, where apologists are trying to find anything that could possibly connect the Book of Abraham to being an ancient source, but again it simply is not there.

According to Dr. Robert Ritner, the problem is that Shinehah is not a single word as the Book of Mormon, but two words: Shen (šn-(sh)n ) Neh (or nhh or eneh). When you put those two words, it means “the circle of eternity” in Egyptian.

Dr. Robert Ritner said the following about these two words:
 

“If you throw enough sounds together, you could get accidental sounds that sound like something Egyptian. So the question is not as the apologists proposed(?) it: If we make this sound, could it sound like something cobbled together in Egyptian? The question is, does such an Egyptian term even exist? You know, where is the proof? They [apologists] don't go there because they don't. And so I asked one of my colleagues to search in the Thesaurus Linguae Aegyptiae, otherwise known as the TLA, our reference work that includes all of the published Egyptian hieroglyphic inscriptions. So he did a global search for the number of times that the words Shen (circle) and Neh are put next to each other. Then he did a search to see the number of times that they are closer than 10 words apart. The number of hits he got was zero.

What I'm saying is there is not a single case of where ‘Shen neha’ occurs as a combination, not one. There's not even a case where Shen is 10 words next to Neh, So the combination of Shen next to represent the sun or anything else is a total fabrication. It's an accidental coincidence of sounds, but it's unsupported by any evidence whatsoever.” (Dr. Robert Ritner Interview Part 2, Mormon Stories Podcast)

To be clear, what apologists are doing here is to take two words that form something that sounds like Shinehah and then they mold the meaning of these words to fit the claim. In this case, Shen Neh means the circle of eternity, where in the Book of Abraham it is simply the sun. That’s a stretch to begin with, but when you realize those two words are never used next to each other in the history of Egyptian inscriptions, it becomes clear that just like the Olishem and Ulisum “bullseye,” this is a manufactured parallel.

In this case not only is Shinehah not an ancient term, but the terms within the same verse (Kolob, Olea, and Kokaubeam) have nothing to do with ancient Egyptian either. Often times the apologetic argument is to cherry pick a supposed “bullseye” while ignoring all of the problems surrounding it, and these two problems (Shinehah and Olishem) are examples of that strategy.

Back to the video:
 

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. So you're telling me that a Joseph Smith made up the book of Abraham? He gets a pagan god named Elkenah that matches up in name possible theme and supposed area of Elkana ARATS. He correctly guessed that Olishem was a plane that existed. He got the correct name of the sun's path the sky in the pyramid texts that line up with the description of the cosmos. He was right that ancient Egyptians in Abraham's Day performed human sacrifice. He correctly guessed that Abraham was rescued by an angel. That God showed Abraham the pre-existence and that he was taught astronomy in relation to the heavens.

As we outlined above, none of this is actually evidence but parallels that the church has clung to over the years to ignore that the translation is wrong, we have the source material, and these connections do not hold up to the evidence.

But the FAIR Mormon video ignores those pesky facts and presents them so confidently, even as John Gee himself has had to back off of the Olishem connection in interviews because even he knows that it's far from evidence based.

Let's wrap this up:
 

Yes, Just from that, it sounds like it would be literally impossible for Joseph Smith to have made up the book of Abraham. Well, one might say that with certain a priority paradigms assumed at the outset that one might reasonably affirmed such a conclusion. Does anyone know what this guy's? In other words, Yes. Okay, Stephen, people think that because the fragments we have of the papyri don't fully match up with the text written in the book that Joseph Smith just made it all up.

Okay. Okay. Quake. You okay? Listen up. Listen up, guys. Here, here. Here's the Okay. Okay. Ready? Look, look. This is God we're talking about here, right? So if you want to Joseph Smith to translate a ramen noodle packet if you find the Book of Abraham would still be true. Wait. You've been here the whole time. I can neither confirm nor deny that I have been sitting 3 ft away from you this whole time. It is a small budget. Back to you, Brad and Kwaku.

 

When I did the Seer Stone video, I wasn't sure if I would do another one or not, but this video again highlights just how dishonest FAIR Mormon is with these new TITS videos.

I hope we explained why the videos are deliberately dishonest, because FAIR Mormon is deleting every attempt from others to comment with links to Egyptologists who confirm this information. Like I said in other write-ups on our site, no one who is confident in the product they are presenting (in this case the Book of Abraham) would then delete every comment that corrects misinformation or disable the ratings.

The tone of this video is condescending and mean spirited, and they use that tone to distract members from the very real and confirmed problems with Joseph Smith's translation of the papyri fragments. That they spend so much time mocking Kevin Mathie, who simply put together an infographic of what Egyptoligists say the fascimiles actually mean, is just further proof that the entire intention of these videos is to discredit the CES Letter by any means necessary.

And while they're throwing the Kevin Mathie squirrel out there, they are very carefully finding a way to not discuss what the papyri fragments actually say, because the moment that they actually show members what they say, the game is over.

I don't know what more to say. These videos are mean spirited from the start, and the scholarship is so bad that they can't even allow for comments. That really tells you all you need to know, and FAIR's comments that we outlined at the top show you that their priority isn't honest research, but getting views no matter the cost.

Thanks for reading this, and I hope it was at least helpful in outlining how dishonest this video is with regards to not just the translation, but the evidences cited by apologists that would never pass peer review. If you found it helpful, please let us know on Twitter or Facebook, and share with those who might watch these videos and not understand that they are being outright lied to.