Customer Reviews

Abraham in Egypt

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Nibley delves into critics of Joseph Smith's Facsimiles and their qualifications. The facsimilies are also compared with knowledge currently available in the field of Egyptology. Comparative analysis of ancient Abrahamic texts (i.e. The Apocalypse of, and Testament of Abraham) with Joseph Smith's Book of Abraham is done. A history of Abraham's time, sacrifices of him, Sarah and Isaac and early history of Egypt is given. Possible historical figures for Isis, Horus, and Seth are discussed, as well as Egypt's type of government. This is broad in scope, yet detailed, with numerous footnotes, and sketches. Nibley's humorous style, coupled with a depth that leaves no doubt as to his scholarship expands the horizons of amateur and professional alike.

This book is well worth buying, even if you own the first edition. This edition is expanded and includes illustrations by the same guy who did "Temple and Cosmos." One thing I really liked was that the text was cleaned up so that references were changed to endnotes, instead of parenthetical citations which is how they were in the first ed. This really increased readability. Nibley's research is for obvious reasons dated, but he himself says that research is a process, not an end to itself. This book still contributes greatly to the understanding of the Book of Abraham.

It is facinating to compare The Book of Abraham (Joseph Smith) with similar books that have recently been unearthed. Harold Bloom, the Yale scholar of religion believed that Smith had it right because he had tapped into a universal flow of inspiration, but the names, myths and structure make the Book of Abraham the most accessible of the apocalpses of Abraham.

Nibley does an incredible job of bringing together scores of documents into one volume for comparison purposes. He also has some fun with various critics of the book, almost all of whom lack any background in the literature that the book claims to be a part of.

Reading the book, and checking the sources, one starts to wonder if a wandering Slavonic Jewish scholar of Abrahamic literature didn't spend a winter at the Smith homestead ...

Well written and a great Christmas gift.

This book is well worth buying, even if you own the first edition. This edition has been enlarged by several hundred pages. One thing I really liked was that the text was cleaned up so that references were changed to endnotes, instead of parenthetical citations which is how they were in the first ed. This really increased readability. Nibley's research is for obvious reasons dated, but he himself says that research is a process, not an end to itself. This book still contributes greatly to the understanding of the Book of Abraham.

Hugh W. Nibley (1910-2005) was a professor of Biblical and Mormon scripture at Brigham Young University. His was also a well-known defender of the Latter-Day Saints religion.

He writes in the Preface to this 1981 book, "This book is dedicated to the proposition that the Egyptians have something important and unfamiliar to communicate, and that such knowledge is to be found, among other places, in the Book of Abraham." (Pg. x)

Here are some other quotations from the book:

"To date, not a critic has laid a finger on the Book of Abraham. Instead, they have sought to discredit it by indirection, dwelling exclusively on the methods and person by which they assume it was produced." (Pg. 1)

"There is one piece of evidence that all by itself has sufficed for 140 years to discredit the Book of Abraham in the eyes of the world. One does not have to be an Egyptologist ... to recognize that at least two of the facsimilies illustrating the Book of Abraham are familiar motifs from the Book of the Dead. And that has been enough to exonerate any critic from having to investigate the Abraham claims any further... (T)hat has been the one definitive argument against the authenticity of the Book of Abraham, the one obstacle, pointed out again and again, that dwarfs all the others. So the first thing we should do is to show now neatly it has been removed by recent discoveries." (Pg. 7-8)

"The Book of Abraham must have come from somewhere. It is a document rich and clear in specific statements, inviting and never avoiding the closest attention of the critic. It is agreed by all that it could not have come from that papyrus called the Book of Breathings, nor can it possibly be the product of the clumsy and quickly abandoned gropings of the so-called Alphabet and Grammar... If it is a fraud, that should become quickly apparent without any back-door approaches seeking by a pointless preoccupation with method and intrigue to avoid a head-on confrontation with the text." (Pg. 51)

"Certain it is that 'the mark of Cain' goes along with a cursing, a wandering way of life, and a distinctive mark on the body. This writer has received considerable instruction on the subject from one who qualified in every respect to speak with authority." (Pg. 218)

"The Book of Abraham ... is routinely put forward as Joseph Smith's supreme indiscretion, his one fatal blunder, so gross and obvious that a casual word from any true scholar should be enough to blow it away. Unfortunately for the critics, they can make no real case against it until they do read it... (A student) will find that the Book of Abraham is a miraculous performance. He should note first of all that the book contains many things about Abraham not found in the Old Testament, but which do turn up in the apocryphal Abraham literature..." (Pg. 246-247)

If you understand the basics of the Egyptian and Hebrew connections, you can understand newer works such as the NT and BOM. Nibley makes it fun.

Promised to be an interesting topic for Nibley to discuss but the book is much more of an academic treatise and Nibley's usual bad mouthing of other academics than an insightful study of Abraham in Egypt. Having read a half dozen of Nibley's other books this one was a bit of a disappointment.