Mormon Dilemma 489

AT LAST!!!  Here’s the final installment of our series on Smith’s Egyptian hypocephalus – Praise God!

Today we’re looking at Figures 19-23.

Remember how Joseph Smith translated figures 19-21? His interpretation was: “…will be given in the own due time of the Lord.”

Well the Egyptologists tell us that they really mean “You shall be as that god, the Busirian.”  The well respected and renowned Egyptologist Sir Wallis Budge remarked that Joseph Smith’s translation has “no archaeological value” in his work The Mummy, A Handbook of Egyptian Funerary Archaeology.   

Now this man who wrote his book in 1893 didn’t know Joseph Smith and had no vested interest in the hypocephalus either way. However, it’s interesting to note that no matter what book you read on Egyptology and which Egyptologist you speak to or read about that none of them endorse or recommend anything Smith translated.

Smith’s work which clearly had lacunae (missing portions or gaps) was filled in with texts taken from the Book of Breathings and Book of the Dead. I can’t imagine Joseph having the audacity to show up on a dig site and trying to pull off what he did with the unsuspecting of the American Midwest in the early nineteenth century.

The question in this set of figures for the Mormon is this: would you want to aspire to be as that god just as the hypocephalus states? Is this what you’re working for here and now? As you look upon your children is this teaching from Joseph’s mistranslated Egyptian drawings what you want for them to know and how does this line up with what our One and Only True God says?

As for our last set of figures…remember figure 1 at the beginning of this? Well the rest of that figure shows a set of “adoring baboons” on either side of the multi-headed ram god. Joseph took the liberty to draw him with two heads instead of the four headed ram god that is traditionally seen on Egyptian hypocephali.

You’ll notice a lunar disk sitting atop each baboon representing the god Thoth or Djehuty.  He was typically placed opposite of Re and associated with regulating time, record keeping and secret knowledge.

An example of these baboons is found on a hypocephalus in the British Museum shown below.

  In the end we’ve learned a lot about Ancient Egypt and how they obviously had rejected the God of Israel. So my question is once again the same.

Why? Why would you want this to be part of the holy canon you turn to for strength, comfort and reassurance? Is this the god you worship and if so then why do you call yourself a Christian?

If you’re a Mormon know that I am on my knees for you – literally. I pray you come to know the real Jesus of the Bible who isn’t represented in any of the Egyptian Facsimiles found from the Book of Abraham.

And just a parting thought on all of this…

I found it odd that Abraham wasn’t mentioned even once.

With Love in Christ;

Michelle Grim

1 Cor. 1:18