Points of View: Life of Abraham

One of the things which Joseph Smith wrote in the introduction to the Book of Abraham that they were The writings of Abraham while he was in Egypt, called the Book of Abraham, written by his own hand, upon papyrus.  What Joseph was telling us was that this is a first person account written by Abraham himself.  Because we no longer have the long scrolls of papyri from which Joseph translated, we don't know if the actual manuscript was old enough to have literally been written by Abraham's hand or if the papyri Joseph had was a copy of Abraham's life copied from the original scroll of Abraham by scribes over centuries.  Since the fragments of papyri we do have date to about the time of Christ, give or take 100 years and Abraham lived around 2000 B.C., that could very well be the case.  That does not make it any less scripture nor does it indicate error on the part of the Prophet Joseph.  What Joseph is telling us is that the original work was written as a first person narrative by Abraham himself.

The Book of Genesis, Chapters 11 - 25 which cover Abraham's life, are a third person narrative written by Moses.  These stories were given to Moses by God and have been copied hundreds of times by scribes over the centuries.  Just as we no longer have the original documents of Moses, we may not have the original documents of Abraham and it doesn't matter.  These stories of the great patriarch's life are about faith, gospel, obedience, and covenant.  Testimonies of the truthfulness of these stories as transcribed by two great prophets are a matter of testimony via the Holy Ghost and not scientific or linguistic study. I have no problem with differences in presentation of gospel truths in the two accounts. 

Moroni taught that by the Holy Ghost, we can understand the truthfulness of all things.  I am not a scholar who happens to be a Latter-day Saint; I am a Latter-day Saint who combines faith and scholarship to strengthen testimony I have from the Spirit.  When I feast upon the word rather than just read the word, I better understand who I am, who God is, and the depth of my relationship to Him. 

©Gebara Education 2016