Response Page So many of those who want to examine the credentials of Joseph Smith think that it is simple since we have some of the papyrus that Joseph had when he translated the Book of Abraham. My belief is that Joseph Smith found the scrolls interesting and that they contained remnants of the gospel of Jesus Christ. I believe that the scrolls that Joseph received however were not written by Abraham. But the genesis of what was on those scrolls came from material that were indeed written by Abraham. What Joseph "translated" were those original scrolls. Very similar to the Book of Moses which he "translated" without access to any document. So the issue becomes not a matter of testing the translating capability of Joseph using the manuscripts we have but instead we need to test the text to see if it matches with what we have learned about Abraham. Information that wasn't available in Joseph Smith's day.

The best way to expose a forgery is to examine the contents, which the critics have steadfastly refused to do. Hugh Nibley has given us a good review of this in: Neglected Evidence for the Book of Abraham .

The other major attack against Joseph Smith and the Book of Abraham is directed at a manuscript which came from the Nauvoo period called The Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar. There was never a claim that the "Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar" was revelation. We don't even know if it was written by Joseph. And even it if was it could have been merely his preliminary work. If so, I would guess that it might be his attempt to correlate the characters on the papyrus with the original foundation of those documents.

Comparison of Joseph Smith explanation of the Facsimilies

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