For many Latter-day Saints, the Book of Abraham is a sacred and inspiring part of the Pearl of Great Price—one that offers profound insights into the cosmos, the priesthood, and the life of the prophet Abraham. And maybe more importantly the Book of Abraham is evidence of Joseph Smith’s prophetic ability. But have you ever wondered where it came from, or how it was translated and why some have lost their faith over it?
Today we take a thoughtful and respectful look at the history behind the Book of Abraham—its discovery, Joseph Smith’s translation process, and how modern scholars understand the Egyptian papyri it came from. Along the way, we’ll also explore how Church leaders have approached this text over time and why it’s become such an important topic for many who are studying Church history more deeply.
Whether you’re simply curious, seeking clarity, or looking to understand the past with a little more accuracy, this episode offers a careful, well-researched exploration of a subject that’s often misunderstood—but deeply worth understanding.
00:00 – The Arrival of the Egyptian Mummies in Kirtland
01:50 – Joseph Smith Declares New Scripture: The Book of Abraham
04:10 – Abraham’s Story: Sacrifice, Covenant, and Cosmic Vision
09:05 – Kolob, Premortal Life, and the Council of Gods
13:25 – Facsimiles and Doctrinal Uniqueness in LDS Theology
17:40 – Origins of the Papyri: The Mummy Craze and Antonio Lebolo
21:30 – How Joseph Acquired the Mummies and Papyri
26:00 – Translation Begins: Revelatory Claims and Seer Stones
30:45 – The Kirtland Egyptian Papers and Grammar Experiment
36:20 – Was It Translation or Revelation? Early Evidence of the Catalyst Theory
41:00 – Publication of the Book of Abraham in 1842
45:30 – Joseph Smith’s Explanations of the Facsimiles
51:10 – Modern Egyptology Challenges Joseph’s Translations
56:00 – Facsimile 1: Human Sacrifice or Funeral Scene?
01:01:00 – Facsimile 2: Kolob and Cosmic Symbolism or Standard Hypocephalus?
01:06:00 – Facsimile 3: Abraham on Pharaoh’s Throne or a Misidentified Scene?
01:11:45 – The Missing Scroll Theory: Is the Original Text Lost?
01:16:20 – The Catalyst Theory: Inspired Fiction or Revelation?
01:21:15 – Apologetics vs. Scholarship: LDS Defenses Under Fire
01:25:00 – Why the Book of Abraham Still Matters Today
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If the Book of Abraham content came via direct revelation, why'd it take so long? Why'd it take years to get 5 chapters, where 200,000+ words of BOM content came in about 3 months?
I'm wondering if anyone knows why phrases like "the god of Elkenah" , "the god of Libnah", "the god of Korash", "the god of Mahmackrah" and "the god of Pharaoh" are believed to be the names of gods, whereas the phrase "the God of Abraham" gives the name of the human associated with that God. When Mormon scholars like John Gee scour ancient records looking for gods with those names to be able to claim Joseph got a "hit", why do they assume those are the names of gods rather than the name of an associated believer? This doesn't make sense to me. Why wouldn't any phrase like "the god of …" be giving the name of a believer, rather than the god's name? Mormons could say "Yahweh is the God of Abraham" and it makes perfect sense. But what is the name of Elkenah's god?
Balanced. Conprehensive. And devastating. You have here steelmanned everything and given every conceivable benefit of the doubt to all involved parties. You have also provided the very best summation of the revelation and its doctrinal implications I have ever heard. Even complete strangers to the weird ways and beliefs of the Mormon movement are quickly brought up to speed on what is at stake here. Nicely done!
Someone who knows me recommended this video to my attention. I see that you guys are priestcrafters claiming to be "press" fair and impartial to the current Mormon church yet know nothing of the subject matter in this case and in supporting the current church deny and defame your claimed founder Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. But I see your followers are indoctrinated loyalists kept misinformed to be loyal to the current church too. Yet as Benson quoted Joseph from the D&C this whole church is still under condemnation for their disbelief and you are perpetuating it.
Occam's razor..the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. Joseph Smith was a fraud
It was the dealbreaker for me. There is no explaining it away. The first domino to fall.
Nice job
Even when I was a teenager and had absolutely no knowledge of Egypian, I would look at Fax #3 and think, "those sure do like girls", wrt Isis and Ma'at.
Bill, if you are not responding to the latest arguments on the topic of the Book of Abraham by Denver Snuffer, then your information is outdated and it makes you look silly. Search for the 2021 PDF by the author, The Religion of the Fathers. One example: Willard Richards’ introduction that claims the book is “purporting to be the writings of Abraham while he was in Egypt” is demonstrably wrong from the text itself. When nothing in the text reckons from Egypt, it is questionable how useful criticism is of the Book of Abraham from an Egyptological vantage point. We should expect there to be some deviations from Egyptian religion, language or culture in the book of Abraham. The account only covers events among an ancient people in an uncertain location called “Ur” located somewhere in Chaldea. Those people were only imitative of Egypt. They were not Egyptians. And the events in the book did not happen “while [Abraham] was in Egypt.”
Your anti-Mormon and Egyptologist cult have been debunked, proven stupid. Care to refute?
FOLK THIS IS HOW THE NAZIS CONVICTED THE GERMAN PEOPLE TO HATE JEWS. I POST A RESPONSE THAT DEMONSTRATED EXACTLY HOW THE LDS BOOK OF ABRAHAM WAS TRANSLATED USING DETERMINASTIVE HIEROGLYPHICS … THESE NAZIS DELETED IT
These time stamps don’t make sense
Bill always has a way of presenting information in easily understood language. Thanks you sir!
I always sh*t my pants whenever I heard mormon apologists trying to proof their faith based on objects which were lost in history (if it even existed at all!) and therefore can't be debunked one on one 😆
One of the major issues that lead me out of the church was lack of transparency. As AI becomes more and more ubiquitous and harder to discern from original content, I feel it imperative that creators retain their audiences' trust by openly acknowledging its use, and to what extent. Without that information, I'm left to assuming this entire product was the invention of AI; from churning out the script by dumping in a comprehensive list of other peoples' sources to training a model on one's voice to narrate it. Allowing people to believe this was original content is akin to picking out a Hallmark card and trying to pass it off as your creation. Other than that, solid work Bill.
Clearly God didn’t know Egyptian either. Joseph just dictated what God got wrong.😂😂
Very clear and concise expose of the Book of Abraham's absurdities and fraud. I give the content an A but Bill's sing-song delivery a C-.
It is beyond ironic that true believing Mormons claim the Mormon church is God's only church on Earth and that the church's truth claims are literally true and that the church teaches eternal truths, but are forced to vomit outrageous lies and absurdities to attempt to prove their obviously false and fraudulent claims. Mormonism is a pile of…..
Why are Europeans and Americans the ones saying Joseph Smith was wrong? What about the Egyptians, the ones who read the language
The gunpowder residue, smoke, and bullet casing do not prove a smoking gun. It could have been angel dust.
Very, very well done Mr Reel.
Paul Gregersen clearly debunked the arrogant Egyptologist opinions against Joseph Smith back in 2014.
Very well put together 👏👏👏 going on the top of my list for BOA debunking ha
WHY do Mormons hold to a religion that has sooooo MANY problems ( Such as: -versions of "First Vision", -the "Gold Plates", -Book Of Mormon errors!!!!!!!, -feelings = truth, -Israel's history, -Satan & Jesus, -scrying, -Adam-God doctrine, -Eden in the U.S., -eternal marriage, -branches of the Mormon church { LDS, RLDS, FLDS, P-LDS, Bickertonites, Temple Lot, etc.}, and others) with it?
Love these with your voice over instead of the ai.
History is full of Monomyths. All of Abraham is so. Called hero's start with Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Moses, all prophets, Jesus, King Arthur et al. Joseph Smith was clueless as to this technique and obviously made a forgery that was just good enough to function with fearful, ignorant, greedy Americans who still wanted more than one wife. Humans are not very interested in truth. Only feeling good from their local flavor of man made, ever evolving religion.
Monomyth template steps. Motifs. Watch for conceptual patterns.
1. Jesus is called as the son of God, has supernatural powers, travels with hand-picked disciples and seeks the Kingdom of Heaven within.
2. Jason is called as the rightful ruler, has Hera for supernatural powers, travels with the Argonauts and seeks the Golden Fleece.
3. King Arthur is called, as the only one who could extract Excalibur, has Merlin for supernatural powers, travels with hand-picked Knights and seeks the Holy Grail.
The template was used for the first Star Wars trilogy
4. Luke is called as the son of Vader, has the Force for supernatural powers, travels with special selected rebels and seeks to save the Alliance.
Notice they all feature a doubter or problem in their midst of travelers. Judas, Lancelot, C3PO, Acastus, son of Pelias.
FYI: At the 30 min mark,you get the point about was Joseph called a slave wrong. It is Anubis as labeled about the head. This is the jacket headed god which you can see what is left of the ear and damaged nose.
Excellent video. Very middle of the road. I really enjoyed the imagery. The AI trickster God image was particularly well done. The apologetics make the Mormon God completely inept.
An excellent presentation. Thank you.
that’s fair to say it’s rational that there is nothing miraculous. I’d have to say also that’s it’s more rational than the new testament and the Moses story. There is More evidence for the book of Mormon and it’s miraculous translation/transmission with extent evidence and autograph documents and the testimony of the three and eight witnesses, especially the three witnesses who saw an Angel and heard the voice of God from heaven, who kept those testimonies to the end of their lives. it’s rational to say that that never happened, but it’s definitely more evidence than we have for the resurrection and for the Bible, which I also believe. Faith apparently is not rational and we’re discussing an issue of faith. We’re not trying to prove anything in a court of law.
This is a fantastic video – the best produced on the Book of Abraham. Great work!
Funny, I just made a TT about finding out about this. I was shocked. -Egyptologist
If God can reveal an accurate KJ Translation of Deutero-Isaiah, taken by Nephi 60 years before it was written, then God can reveal the Book of Abraham written his own hand via Egyptian funeral text written 2K years after Abraham. God works in mysterious ways. What better way for God to challenge his people than to require them to buy worthless Egyptian mythology texts for $73K, when they have important sacred temples to build for their eternal salvation & that of their ancestors.
this is bogus….. the Chicago fire destroyed all but a few fragments . The fragments do not include the sections that were translated. the Septuagint i.e. the Old Testament was written in 300 BC in the same place in Egypt as the LDS Book of Abraham. Not in the time of Abraham. either thus his time line argument is pointless. This guy pretends that one hieroglyph can translate as 72 plus words. That is ridiculas. Therefore his claim is incorrect. The LDS Book of Abraham says it " made to represent" meaning the writer uses the text to represent another usage other than the original words. The Testament of Abraham a scriptue from the Ethiopian Christians uses the same Egyptian Book of the Dead to tell the life event of Abraham as well. Clearly Jews were using Egyptian funeral texts and overlaying them with stories about the prophets. This guy fails to point out this is also apparent as the fact that Hebrew words are found in the text. This guy does not know how the ancient Jewish scholars used Egyptian texts . Therefore the question is are the elements found in the LDS Book of Abraham found any where else. If so then the Book is true. The answer YES! Each time I post them I am deleted.. Let see if I am deleted….
Bill I like you narrating more than an AI voice. Great work!
Could someone help me with what the controversy is? Joseph Smith stated that he did not know Egyptian and that he relied on revelation from God to transmit what we have as the book of Abraham. So regardless of what it said, this is what God wants. Most of the scrolls and possibly images were burned in the Chicago fire. Sure we’re not even sure if the fax me or images that survived are the ones Joseph Smith was referring to. We also know that it was quite common to re-interpret Egyptian stories using Horace from Egypt to represent Christian ideas. An example is how Christ used a famous Egyptian story and retold it as Lazarus in hell and wanting to warn his brothers. That’s a well-known Egyptian story that was adopted by Christ many other examples exist of Christians using Egyptian stories for their own. So I just don’t get it. Why is it a controversy, Joseph Smith wouldn’t know either way what’s in the facilimies or in the text since he doesn’t know Egyptian he is transmitting what God wants him to do into English just like the book of Mormon or other books of the pearl of great price and even the doctrine and covenants. he’s receiving inspiration. Now, if he was claiming to be an Egyptian translator, which didn’t exist in his day, then I guess.
A very cogent and well articulated presentation. Excellently done. Thank you!
How many pages of 12 point font is the mormon book? How many pages of 20-point heiroglyphics is the papyrus? Did each egyptian symbol equal an entire chapter in English????? And how do mormons deal with the REAL translation of that papyrus?
'The golden plates were often hidden from direct view during translation' ? You can't hide something that doesn't exist.
On today’s episode of “How the fuck did I believe this shit…”
I'd steer away from remarks like 'Joseph Smith believed this scroll contained the book of Abraham' I think it's highly unlikely that he thought that. Its more likely that believed it was a good opportunity to write 'the book of Abraham' and say it was from that scroll.
If you're interested in human behaviour and belief-defence, this is one of the best petri-dish test cases, bringing the most fascinating responses from apologists. When its not an option to consider the glaring and obvious conclusion ( ie, that Joseph Smith saw an opportunity with a biblical-seeming object with 'undecipherable' writing on it, giving him an ideal opportunity to write some more 'scripture' ) some very peculiar logical contortions occur in order to maintain faith.
The whole key to the validity of the Mormon faith is in its foundational claims and documents. If these are found to be untrue, then members of the church can only believe…they cannot know something is true when it isn’t. Bill Reel is an honest man. I trust him in his efforts to bring to light the foundational inadequacies of the Mormon church. Thank you my friend.
There is no controversy on the accurateness of Joes interpretation. Only the deceived are controvers'ing…….Joe should have purchased a copy of American Antiquities and Discoveries in The West, 1828 onward. I have a few copies, they were cheap on ebay. There's 40 pages on a guy named Champollion. And the book's full of stuff like Jews in America, Tartars in America, Egyptian writing and other glyphs from … . well, full of nonsense. There is a nice map of Cahokia and the serpent mounds. But the Champollion, that would have helped Joe and saved him a lot of trouble…. could have saved a lot of Mormons. an 1833 copy of this book calls Mormonism A fraud
The Book of Abraham was the final straw that broke my faith shelf. I have out of the church for 8 years now.