If you deal much with LDS apologetics on either side of the fence then you know that the Book of Abraham and the Kirkland Egyptian Papers are very difficult to follow and argued by many as the weakest link in the Joseph Smith as a prophet chain. If you have put much time into this at all then enjoy this presentation given at a recent FAIR conference. Two great videos that potentially restart the entire game on the BofA.
http://vimeo.com/user439270/videos
3 comments:
I was at his presentation, and was a bit disappointed. While he presents a new interesting theory, his over-hyping of the event (which worried some of the FAIR board) ruined it for me.
A few problems I had with his presentation. He claims at the beginning that he is going to conclusively prove that chapters 3-5 were written in 1835, but does not provide a shred of evidence to back up this claim. He does not prove directional influence for the KEP and BofA. And finally, I think he reads too much into the use of "non-Egyptian" character--for Joseph Smith it is quite possible that he thought that Masonic symbols and cyphers were Egyptian in origin, because, for Joseph, the Egyptians, Freemasonry, and the ancient Israelites were all a part of a shared ancient world.
Also, Will completely ignored the work done by my friend Chris that was recently published in the John Whitmer Historical Association Journal.
If anything, this confirms my view that Joseph had a much larger (and much confused) fascination with Masonry that we are perhaps unaware of.
There are some weaknesses in his presentation for sure. Hopefully some of them will be ironed out more when he puts it in complete essay form. More than anything, I like his outside the box approach that will definitely stimulate some good discussion that will hopefully bring more insights to this subject.
BTW, I don't know that he completely ignored Chris's article as much as he wasn't aware of it. It is fairly new.
Will knew of Chris's work. He just chose to ignore it. When Will announced that no work had been done on it, several around us--including Brian Hauglid--looked over at Chris with a look of bewilderment.
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