How to Approach the Book of Abraham

When Reading the Book of Abraham we must approach it with a very critical eye. There is a significant difference between reading what is written and accepting it and reading and questioning what the book says. It is widely known that the Book of Abraham bears little resemblance to what the actual Papyrus said in Egyptian but I don’t think that devalues what is said in the Book of Abraham. We can still read it and examine the points that don’t appear to be from 2000 BC and understand Mormonism better.

           One thing I think is interesting is that it still uses “and it came to pass” as a popular phrase because it makes the Book of Abraham sound exactly like the book of Mormon. This could just be a coincidence of Joseph Smith translating it into king James English. However I think it more likely suggests that Joseph Smith simply created the Book of Abraham and was not translating anything.

            Also the story of creation is very similar to the story in the Bible. The bible was not written in 2000 BC so I think it’s unlikely that the Book of Abraham was written around then. The story even includes Adam and Eve. I found this resemblance strange also because this was not the actual story of creation that the Egyptians believed in so it doest make sense that it was written in Egyptian hieroglyphics. Also the story of Genesis is essentially recreated when Abraham goes into Egypt he lies to the Egyptians with God's permission. 

            The Book of Abraham also showed a fair amount of bias toward the people of Egypt. The narration said that the people of Egypt would kill Abraham because his wife was so beautiful. I don’t think this is really a fair characterization of the Egyptians. It makes them seem like savages when they were actually very advanced people. This is more of a 19^th century belief that native people were inferior. It is a similar characterization that is present in the Book of Mormon when Smith is talking about the Native Americans. I don’t think that people in 2000 BC would have looked at the Egyptian civilization as being uncultured ignorant savages.

            While the book of Abraham may not have been written in 2000 BC it provides interesting insight into how that culture was viewed by society in the time of Joseph Smith. It’s also interesting and somewhat fighting that someone could read that and accept his bias as truth and assume that’s what Egypt was like in 2000 BC. I think we need to treat all religious text with great care and not necessarily accept what we read as truth right off the bat because it can be misleading. The book of Abraham provides an excellent example of something that seems normal enough on the surface but if we read it with a critical eye there are many unusual fallacies and inconsistencies.