I am truly curious. If there are non-Mormon supporters, I would like to read them. All of the non-Mormon experts that have been persuaded to take a look at the papyri that I’ve read have rejected Joseph Smith’s interpretations. If it is true that non of the examining non-Mormon Egyptologists have endorsed his interpretation, that makes a pretty clear case for the biased nature of the conclusions of the Mormon Egyptologists who have endorsed it.

Let’s say that we were talking about the Raëlian human cloning program. If only Raëlian experts confirmed the success of their program, isn’t it perfectly reasonable to call foul?

Nibley et al. help those who want to believe that Joseph Smith was on to something with the Book of Abraham. I personally don’t trust his scholarship on this subject.

No one else CARES about this issue. The non-Mormon scholars have better things to do with their time than play referee between FARMS and the Tanners.

So in summary, the Mormon scholars have plenty of ammo, but are suspect in their biases. The anti-Mormons are too stupid to respond coherently. And the scholars who might claim objectivity frankly don’t give a damn.

So there you are.

The thing about Nibley is that he pulls all these threads from his voluminous knowledge of ancient history and weaves them together into a fabric which awes the non-expert. I could probably do the same in my own field of expertise, calling down a bewildering hail of jargon and abstruse concepts, leaving the non-expert reader convinced that I must be speaking the truth because they don’t understand what I’m saying when in fact I am talking nonsense. Nibley is impressive, but in my opinion too ready to play the apologist by drawing tenuous parallels.

In the end, I’m no ancient historian and I’m forced to let the experts argue it out. Nibley’s ideas smell fishy to me, but what do I know? The citations at the end of the FAIR Wiki article on the papyri seem lacking in a way. So I have to ask, are there any non-Mormon scholars who specifically support Joseph Smith’s restoration and interpretation of these papyri?

If you haven’t already read the Nibley article, I suppose I can link to it…

I think we’re closer in that respect than you suspect, though I prefer to think of the scriptures as a chronicle of humanity’s struggle to understand itself, leaving aside the baggage associated with the idea of God.

This situation reminds me of the criticism that many progressive religious adherents level at the New Atheists. They claim that the New Atheists aren’t addressing their religious ideas, and that claim is mostly true. Your understanding of scripture shouldn’t be affected by my post, like liberal religion shouldn’t be affected much by atheist arguments. Secular humanists and religious humanists share much in common.

What those progressive religionists often neglect is that not all religion looks like their religion. The New Atheists aim their barbs at the heart of fundamentalist, scriptural-literalist religion. Such religion is a collection of irrational, toxic ideas and deserves the criticism of believer and non-believer alike.

This post is aimed at the literalist Mormon who believes every detail of the scriptures were set in place by an omniscient, omnipotent God, the believer who feels sure that the scriptures are perfect. I think this post demonstrates pretty well that Joseph Smith made stuff up as he went. Imagining things is fine, as long as you represent it to the world as such. That’s not what happens with the Book of Abraham. The LDS church represents Joseph’s fantasies as absolute truth. I seek to belie that falsehood with this post.

If we are to gain a hopeful future, we need to relegate this kind of superstitious belief in the literal truth of human-created scripture to the infancy of humanity.