The Abraham Facsimile Conundrum: Is it All or Nothing?

In Joseph Smith’s interpretations of the facsimiles found in our Pearl of Great Price, he ties all three of them to Abraham, yet when some modern Egyptologists look at those same facsimiles today, they say they have nothing to do with Abraham. One is simply an embalming scene, they say, one a disc representing the eye of Horus, and one a judgment scene from an Egyptian Book of the Dead. So, is this an either-or, sudden-death scenario? Must we, in the name of honesty and rationality, pick a side here? Must we either throw out modern Egyptologists by choosing to stand with the Prophet Joseph on the one hand, or throw out Joseph by choosing to align with modern Egyptologists on the other? Or is there a reconciliatory third path in which both interpretations can be true at the same time? In this episode of Church History Matters, we tackle this important question by looking at some of the best scholarship on this issue, and on our way, we’ll also briefly look at something called the Kirtland Egyptian Papers and discuss a minor controversy associated with those.