Does the LDS Church Blame Jesus for Joseph Smiths Fake Translation?

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Does the LDS Church Blame Jesus for Joseph Smiths Fake Translation?

What the Church Now Admits About Book of Abraham

Christina R Darlington

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Joseph Smith claimed he translated the Book of Abraham (one of the four Mormon books of "scripture") from ancient Egyptian papyrus manuscripts obtained from Michael Chandler, an antiquities dealer visiting Smith's area in 1835. Egyptologists today have since examined Joseph Smith's "translation" of the text and found it to be completely false, with no reference whatsoever to the original meaning of the text. His inability to accurately translate these documents, puts into question Joseph Smith's ability to translate any document at all, even the Book of Mormon which he claims he translated from Reformed Egyptian plates.

If he couldn't accurately translate the Egyptian papyrus of the Book of Abraham, how do you know you can trust anything else he has created? What's worse is instead of admitting to Joseph Smith's fraud with the Book of Abraham, the LDS Church blames Jesus for his fake translation and claims "God gave to Joseph Smith a revelation about the life of Abraham, even if that revelation did not directly correlate to the characters on the papyri." (Translation and Historicity of the Book of Abraham) So the excuses for Joseph Smith’s lies continue to abound in Mormonism.

For more information, see our tract: What Does the LDS Church Now Admit About the Book of Abraham?

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