PAUL - Do YOU believe that if Egyptologists today had all of the papyrus purchased by the Church in 1835 that they would translate the Book of Abraham? Would they also be able to translate the Book of Joseph?
Note, now that Nibley is gone it's time for LDS apologists to move on and find better ways to defend the BofA. You don't have to remain loyal to Nibley or his ideas about the papyrus and Kirtland Papers. He was wrong.

JOEL - You mean "in your opinion" Nibley was wrong :-) Paul, I know you have an entire website mostly dedicated to this subject(myegyptology.net) and I am sure you have studied this much more than I have. But if you really want my opinion, here it is. First of all the question can of course never be answered because we don't have all the papyrus that were used for the translation. So to me it seems to be a waste of time to even speculate about this. But I suppose it is an interesting subject to study about. But even if we did have all the papyrus I don't believe Egyptologists could provide proper translations because, in my opinion, the true translations of the books of Abraham and Joseph would require prophetic revelation from God; which of course any modern day egytologist is not going to have. The same could be said for the Book of Mormon plates.
It has been proposed that the scrolls may have contained some informaton that originated with Abraham, but through time and rewritings by many scribes became corrupted. It nevertheless could have served as a catalyst to prompt Joseph to receive revelation about it, making it posible for him to recreate original writings of Abraham. I believe this is similar to some of what you have proposed. I don't think we will ever have enough evidence to understand how it was done, but I do have faith that the writings of Abraham contain important information that God wanted us to have, and so I am willing to accept it without completely understanding how it was obtained.

PAUL - Thank you for your reply. I’m always interested in hearing what other apologists have to say in a private conversation. We really have nothing to argue about. Your perspective is quite sound.

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