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Hi Dan,dan said:Just curious.
Can you please clarify your concern with the chronology? Abraham came before Moses and the "fathers...worshiping the gods of the heathen" does not refer to Israel and the golden calf. I'm not sure if that's what you're thinking of or something else.Bennettresearch said:Hi Dan,
Well I no sooner started reading it when this appeared in the first chapter.
5 My fathers having turned from their righteousness, and from the holy commandments which the Lord their God had given unto them, unto the worshiping of the gods of the heathen, utterly refused to hearken to my voice;
:sarcastic Huh? A bit of displaced chronology here? How many years separate Moses and Abraham? It is no wonder to me why this book would be questioned.
You are forgetting Enoch, Noah, and many other prophets that predate Moses. This isn't referring to the 10 Commandments.Bennettresearch said:Hi Dan,
Well I no sooner started reading it when this appeared in the first chapter.
5 My fathers having turned from their righteousness, and from the holy commandments which the Lord their God had given unto them, unto the worshiping of the gods of the heathen, utterly refused to hearken to my voice;
:sarcastic Huh? A bit of displaced chronology here? How many years separate Moses and Abraham? It is no wonder to me why this book would be questioned.
That would mean that there were no rules before Moses. God always had commandments, but He never had a nation of followers large enough to collectively give them to. It's not like the tablets had a chiquita banana label across them that said "Ten Commandments" and everyone said, "What's a commandment?"Bennettresearch said:Heelllllooooooooo!!!!
If Abraham is talking about COMMANDMENTS then why was it Moses who brought them down from the mountain? It sounds like Abraham is writing this in the first person. I find it odd that these commandments wouldn't be found before Moses came along. That is the chronolgy.
Well, it was the habit of the ancient Egyptians to copy and recopy texts down through the centuries. One thing that they make sure to do is preserve the original author as such. Everyone took great care to see that no author was robbed his rightful honor. One way they insured this was keeping everything in the first person. This is seen in the Apocrypha of Abraham, a work uncovered right about the turn of the century that smacks of Egyptian authorship. Although we have texts in several different languages, they all contain phrases and compounds unique to the ancient Egyptians. The really cool part is that the story in it (as well as in the Testament of Abraham) parallels the Mormon Book of Abraham with uncanny accuracy. All three speak of an angel of some sort bringing Abraham into God's presence so that he may be shown the creation of the world and the state of things. All three accounts have Abraham speaking in the first person (an Egyptian habit). The Apocrypha version is assumed to be of Essene origin (from right after the time of Christ). The Testament version is best preserved in a Slavenic text, and is put at right about the same time. Another cool thing is that the stories parallel the Egyptian book of the dead, as does the Book of Abraham. All three stories can be illustrated in the three facsimiles contained in the Mormon Book of Abraham. The story basically came out of Egypt and bounced around for a while before being copied down much later. The church got a lot of flack when Egyptologists discovered that the heiroglyphics Joseph Smith used in his translation were from the book of the dead. It turns out that book is more closely tied to Abraham than anyone could have guessed.Bennettresearch said:Sorry Dan, no Cigar
I stated what my question was and you did not manage to explain it. Ok, granted that the Commandments predate everything. I find it odd that there is a first person account of something that happened 400 years or so after Abraham died. Why is there no mention of them in the OT in Genesis?
It's not coptic, it was written in hieroglyphic. Coptic is from a little later. Another interesting thing is the fact that Egyptian hieroplyphic had only been known for about ten years, and no one anywhere near Joseph Smith was among the privileged. Yet his translation of the papyri couldn't be a more accurate description of the facsimiles and texts.Bennettresearch said:Hi Dan,
That's better, it explains a lot. If it is egyptian, is it coptic? I must admit, that I can see all kind of questions arising about this which is no doubt why it is controversial. Maybe I'll get back to you later on it.
One of the things that irks me is that most people recognize how contraversial it is and literally dismiss it without any research whatsoever. One of the first real efforts to discover the veracity of the Book of abraham was begun by a Bishop Spalding in 1912. He enlisted the help of five of the most learned men of all time. Unfortunately, their report consists of no real evidence of any kind. Some of the experts didn't even look at the book. Allow me to quote from the report.Bennettresearch said:Hi Dan,
That's better, it explains a lot. If it is egyptian, is it coptic? I must admit, that I can see all kind of questions arising about this which is no doubt why it is controversial. Maybe I'll get back to you later on it.