I started a Book of Abraham Thread here on the Terrestrial Forum a few months ago, however I decided to start a new Book of Abraham Thread now mainly because of a comment that was made from our friend Cogins7 here a little while ago, about of what he made about the source of the Book of Abraham on one of the Threads in the Telestial Forum. Here is what Cogins7 wrote:
The same problem exists for the Book of Abraham. There's not a shred of evidence that Joseph Smith believed that the text of the Book of Abraham was directly derived from the Hyphocephelas. There's circumstantial evidence that he believed there was some kind of connection, but we have no way of knowing what that was. There is also strong circumstantial evidence (the reams of papyrus material in the church's possestion at that time that is not now extant) that the text of the Book of Abraham was taken from other materials, most of which was never published or used before being lost.
(http://www.mormondiscussions.com/discus ... c&start=20)
I am sorry there Cogins7, you are dead wrong about that. The evidence is very overwhelming that the Book of Breathings text ((also known as Shait en Sensen) "Breathing permit" for the priest Hor text), is indeed the source from which the Book of Abraham came from. The following is a Post from our friend here 'Who Knows' from the CTR Message Board:
Here's some things to think about for those 'missing papyri' theorists:- Fac.1 is at the beginning of the BOB, as well as the beginning of the Book of Abraham.
- Fac.3 (though it doesn't exist today) is at the end of the Book of Abraham, and refers to the same story as told in the BOB. In other words, the text of the Book of Abraham is somewhere between Fac. 1 and Fac. 3, however, there's absolutely no justification for assuming any missing text between those, as the Facs. are 'bookends' to the same story (as noted by the translations of the Facs.)
- The text of the Book of Abraham refers to Fac.1 as being at the beginning of the record. And this text comes before Fac. 3.
- The characters next to the text in the KEP (whether put there by the scribes on their own, or at Joseph Smith's direction) come directly from the BOB - IN ORDER no less. In the very least - Joseph Smith's personal scribes for the translation of the Book of Abraham felt that the Book of Abraham came from the BOB.
- Joseph Smith's translations of the Facs. were clearly wrong. Yes, some have been able to find similarities for a few of his translations. However, they are wrong in the sense of being direct translations. Thus, Joseph Smith's method of translation (the way he 'translated') was clearly unconventional. I'm assuming the way he translated the Facs. is similar to the way he translated the text of the Book of Abraham. In other words, if his translations of the Facs. were not traditional, why would anyone expect his translations of the Book of Abraham text to be different?
- Some of the Facs. were damaged prior to Joseph Smith's purchase of them. Joseph Smith 'restored' these facsimiles - using characters from the BOB.
- Joseph Smith's translations as seen in the GAEL are clearly wrong. This should be some kind of indicator of the methods used to translate the text of the Book of Abraham. Also, the characters used in the GAEL come from the BOB.
Those are just some of the things that to me, indicate that the BOB is the source of the Book of Abraham. There is absolutely no evidence to assume the translation came from any missing records - other than the fact that the BOB is not the Book of Abraham.
(http://www.kevingraham.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=136)
Now here is what Kevin Graham wrote in a Post of his on that Discussion Thread over there:
kevingraham wrote:I would add that the original Facsimile #2 suffered from lacunae over to the right. Apparently Joseph Smith decided to fill in the holes while using symbols from the BoB - the text apologists tell us have nothing to do with the Book of Abraham.
The facsimile with BoB symbols was published as part of the Book of Abraham so it cannot be argued that some scribe decided to do this on his own without Smith's consent.
Rhodes argued that someone filled it in just to make it look better, but this is a lame argument without a shred of evidence to support it. to Especially since Smith filled in the lucuna of the BoB and indicated that he did so via inspiration. Thus, it follows that he did likewise with Fac 2.
(http://www.kevingraham.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=136)
The evidence is indeed very, very overwhelming that the Book of Breathings text ((also known as Shait en Sensen) "Breathing permit" for the priest Hor text), is indeed the very source from which the Book of Abraham came from.