masonWallace
New Member
I don't know about you all, but have you ever had two young men knock on your door and if you're like me the conversation goes nowhere. You trade testimony for testimony.
The one place I have found traction is the book of Abraham for a simple reason. The source document still exists. With the Book of Mormon the golden plates are gone so it always comes down to "pray about it". The short version is in 1835 Joseph Smith bought Egyptian papyri from a traveling mummy exhibition. He said one roll was "the writings of Abraham while he was in Egypt" and published the Book of Abraham in 1842. The papyri were thought lost, then rediscovered in 1966. They turned out to be ordinary Egyptian funeral texts a book of breathings made for a theban priest named Hor from the second century BC. Thats 1500 years after Abraham. Egyptologists who have examined them agree including LDS ones. Now the part I think matters most for witnessing. Don't go swinging, becaues they have two answers and both are in the church's own published essay. The missing-scroll answer says the fragments we have are a small remnant and the Abraham text was on a portion now lost. The catalyst answer says the papyri merely prompted the revelation that God gave Joseph the Abraham material "even if that revelation did not directly correlate to the characters."
That second one is worth sitting with, because it quietly concedes the words were never on the papyri at all, but it's also unfalsifiable, and if you attack it head-on you just look like you won't accept any answer.
What's worked better for me is not arguing at all, just asking "The church says Egyptologists read these differently than he did. What do you make of that?" Then stop talking. It's their own essay, it's a real question, and it leaves then holding it instead of defending against me.
How do the rest of you handle the door? I'd genuinely rather learn a better approach that keeps using mine. I've written this one up with the sources and he church's own wording here if it's any use: Abraham's papyrus was a Theban priest's funeral text
The one place I have found traction is the book of Abraham for a simple reason. The source document still exists. With the Book of Mormon the golden plates are gone so it always comes down to "pray about it". The short version is in 1835 Joseph Smith bought Egyptian papyri from a traveling mummy exhibition. He said one roll was "the writings of Abraham while he was in Egypt" and published the Book of Abraham in 1842. The papyri were thought lost, then rediscovered in 1966. They turned out to be ordinary Egyptian funeral texts a book of breathings made for a theban priest named Hor from the second century BC. Thats 1500 years after Abraham. Egyptologists who have examined them agree including LDS ones. Now the part I think matters most for witnessing. Don't go swinging, becaues they have two answers and both are in the church's own published essay. The missing-scroll answer says the fragments we have are a small remnant and the Abraham text was on a portion now lost. The catalyst answer says the papyri merely prompted the revelation that God gave Joseph the Abraham material "even if that revelation did not directly correlate to the characters."
That second one is worth sitting with, because it quietly concedes the words were never on the papyri at all, but it's also unfalsifiable, and if you attack it head-on you just look like you won't accept any answer.
What's worked better for me is not arguing at all, just asking "The church says Egyptologists read these differently than he did. What do you make of that?" Then stop talking. It's their own essay, it's a real question, and it leaves then holding it instead of defending against me.
How do the rest of you handle the door? I'd genuinely rather learn a better approach that keeps using mine. I've written this one up with the sources and he church's own wording here if it's any use: Abraham's papyrus was a Theban priest's funeral text