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When the Book of Abraham was first published to the world in 1842, it was published as "a translation of some ancient records that have fallen into [Joseph Smith's] hands from the catacombs of Egypt, purporting to be the writings of Abraham while he was in Egypt, called 'The Book of Abraham, Written by his Own Hand, upon Papyrus.'" The resultant record was thus connected with the papyri once owned by Joseph Smith, though which papyrus of the four or five in his possession was never specified. Those papyri would likely interest only a few specialists--were the papyri not bound up in a religious controversy. This controversy covers a number of interrelated issues, and an even greater number of theories have been put forward about these issues. Given the amount of information available, the various theories, and the variety of fields of study the subject requires, misunderstandings and misinformation often prevail. The goal with the Introduction to the Book of Abraham is to make reliable information about the Book of Abraham accessible to the general reader.
Michael Servetus participated in the Protestant Reformation and translated the Hebrew Bible into Latin. In July 1531, he published his De Trinitatis Erroribus (On the Errors of the Trinity) in which he explained clearly that the Trinity was a 3-headed monster. Accordingly, Catholics and Protestants alike condemned him. He was then arrested in Geneva and burnt at the stake as a heretic by order of the city's Protestant governing council. This book was translated into English only in 1932, but still worse, the main arguments from part V were completely distorted. For example he explained that God's name was Iehouah because in Hebrew this name was close to the name of Iesuah (Jesus), or Iehosuah, which means "Iehouah is salvation". He also knew that according to Paulus de Heredia, a Christian Cabbalist, the meaning of God's name was "He causes to be" (yehauueh), but he never confused the pronunciation of God's name with its Kabbalistic meaning (yehaweh). For Servetus, Iehouah was the only true God.
Traditions about the Early Life of Abraham represents the first in a series of books in the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS) collection at Brigham Young University. Here the authors have assembled and translated more than 100 ancient and medieval stories from their original Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Persian, Coptic, and Egyptian sources, all in an effort to piece together the early life of Abraham. This unprecedented compilation sheds new light on the Book of Abraham as an authentic ancient text and will be a welcome resource for biblical and religious studies scholars.