The Biggest Evidence Against the Mormon Church

As an exm Mormon I think there are many reasons to find the Mormon Church objectionable but there is one thing that I have always felt is the number one testimony killer of all of the history and all of the culture and all of the doctrine this is the number one story in my opinion that proves the Mormon Church wrong within the set of scriptures is the Bible the Book of Mormon the Doctrine and Covenants and The pearl of great price the pearl of great price in my opinion is the Achilles heel of Mormonism this is

the book of Abraham which is one of a few books in the pearl of great price now I've shared a lot about the Book of Mormon and that's what most people know Mormons from The Book of Mormon uh The Book of Mormon musical was wildly popular if you ever encounter a Mormon missionary they're going to give you this book and not this book however Joseph Smith air quotes translated both of these books these were translated from gold plates he found in the side of a hill and Joseph Smith said that an angel took the gold

plates back into heaven and so we don't have access to the source text that he used to translate this book so without the source text we can't compare the words in this book with the gold plates to see if Joseph Smith really translated from this ancient text into what we know as The Book of Mormon today however that is not the case with the book of Abraham and that is why I say it's the Achilles heel of Mormonism because we do still have access to the source text that Joseph Smith used to translate this work

of Egyptian into what is now the Mormon scripture the book of Abraham the book of Abraham includes three different Egyptian fax similes and I remember these from when I was growing Up because as I was in church if you've ever been a kid in church you know you can get fairly bored pretty quickly and as I was in church I would find these within my set of Mormon scriptures or my parents scriptures and I would really study and look at these pictures because there are some of the only pictures you can find In This Very

text Heavy book and so I have very distinct memories of my childhood as I spent time looking at these Egyptian faximile the explanation For the book of Abraham is found in the pearl of great price and it reads a translation from some Egyptian papy that came into the hands of Joseph Smith in 1835 containing the writings of the patriarch Abraham the Abraham that the book of Abraham is referring to is the same Abraham that is discussed extensively in the Bible so it's it's the same person so what Joseph Smith essentially said was that he came

into possession of this of these Egyptian Writings and by God they were actually writings written by the very hand of the prophet Abraham from the Bible and because Joseph Smith had the gift of translation he was able to see the papy which were written in Egyptian and translated into English which is how we have this very inspired he would say book of scripture today today so there are a lot of through lines between the book of Abraham and the Book of Mormon because it's basically Joseph Smith Saying he has an ancient text translating it into

English and then showing it to his followers and Believers as inspired scripture to give a brief overview of the rest of the pearl of great price when I say pearl of great price think of it similar to a compilation of works such as the Bible or a compilation of works such as the Book of Mormon so it's essentially several different books by different authors compiled into a single book so The Doctrine and Covenants which is the early history of the church is one book The Book of Mormon which is the Joseph Smith said the record

of Native Americans coming into contact with Jesus and a lot of their other spiritual stories that's the Book of Mormon the New Testament and the Old Testament are compilations of prophets and inspired people uh put into a single book and so the pearl of great price is fairly similar in that sense uh the book of Moses uh kicks us off into the book of Abraham and the Book of Moses is basically uh kind of retelling it's more almost fanfiction of the Book of Genesis so I'll put a link to it below but basically it's just

Joseph Smith retelling the creation story with Adam and Eve and adding more details and more Doctrine and saying that this story that he's sharing with us is a more inspired and more accurate version of The Creation then we can find in the Bible Then we have the book of Abraham which we're going to jump into today we have uh Joseph Smith retranslating The Book of Matthew more of Joseph Smith's history where we have the first vision and stories of his early life and uh kind of coming up with the Book of Mormon and the Mormon

church and finally the articles of Faith which I memorized as a child which I'll put off to the side here and are essentially short simple statements as to what Mormons Believe at kind of a basic level I've shared a lot about Mormon deep Doctrine on my channel from the belief that man will someday become God and God was want a man like us to the Three Kingdoms of Heaven to really there there's a lot of kind of deep doctrine that is very different than what mainstream Christians believe and a lot of that Doctrine is found

in the pearl of great price and that's one of the reasons it's kind of a big deal to Mormons is that When you learn some of these more particular doctrines and then you go to look up the scriptural reference for it it doesn't actually come from The Book of Mormon like you might expect it is coming either from the book of Moses or the book of Abraham the book of Abraham also talks about kab which is the star closest to where God is we get the belief that faithful latterday Saints will become queens and kings

in the afterlife we get information about the Pre-earth life which is uh depicted in this Plan of Salvation map here so we learn what our souls were doing and what we were up to prior to coming to Earth today all of this to say a lot of important Doctrine comes from the pearl of great price and most specifically from from the book of Abraham The Book of Mormon was written before Joseph Smith even organized the church there's really nothing about Mormon temple ceremonies in here even though there is In the pearl of great price there

there's a lot of Doctrine missing from The Book of Mormon and I think the reason for that was is that Joseph Smith upon writing the Book of Mormon didn't actually realize yet what the Mormon Church would become and that he would have thousands of followers and so I think that because the church was kind of half-baked by the time the Book of Mormon was complete we don't find a lot of the do that are now Central to Mormonism in the Book of Mormon instead we find them in the Doctrine and Covenants and the pearl of

great price because these were written and constructed long after Joseph Smith had kind of realized just what he had going on with the church and followers and money and uh starting a bank and getting in trouble with the law and so here in the pearl of great price we see a much more focused set of doctrines because I think that he finally was comprehending That he was building a Doctrine in a church and kind of founding a new thing versus writing a book which is what he started off doing as part of endeavoring on the

process of translating or writing the Book of Mormon I also did write a blog post on my blog Mormon truths which you can uh click on below if you want to read just read a summary of this video go ahead and check out that article or stay with me here and I'll share everything from how Joseph Smith came Into possession of these Egyptian Scrolls and mummies and all of this Egyptian stuff and then how we now happen to have the source text with which we can compare Joseph Smith's translation with to read from the book

of Abraham it says a translation from some ancient records that have fallen into our hands from the catacombs of Egypt the writings of Abraham while he was in Egypt called The Book of Abraham written by his own Hand upon Papyrus so what this is claiming is that uh Abraham in Egypt hundreds of years ago wrote on a little scroll and he you know sealed it up and then somehow through the hand of God uh that scroll from hundreds of years ago traveled all the way through Egypt across the pond to America and landed in the

hands of Joseph Smith hundreds of years later so that that is what the book that that's the truth claim that the book of Abraham has for us that this Was all literally written by the hand of Abraham Joseph Smith translated it by the gift and power of God and so this the claim being made by this book is both that it's literally true that this these words are literally from the hand of Abraham and it's also saying it's spiritually true so that everything that uh we we discover and learned doctrinally in this book is Also

spiritually true and accurate so I really just wanted to hit that nail on On the head a final time before we jump into the story because I want you to keep in your brain that this is not kind of just theoretically true or a nice story Mormons like to tell or a folk tale of some kind this is literally true that Joseph Smith translated an ancient writing that was directly from Abraham in the Bible so let's go back a bit and I'm going to tell the story of how these ancient writings got into Joseph Smith's

hands to begin with the reason that These documents landed in America to begin with was because of looting that the French under Napoleon's rule did of Egypt this is also coincidentally how we have the Rosetta Stone in 1799 as part of Napoleon's campaign in Egypt some French soldiers discovered the Rosetta Stone and uh removed it from Egypt looted it from Egypt and this is one of the ways that we now know Egyptian translation is in large part due to the Rosetta Stone and the Rosetta stone is Actually going to play a key role in our

story today but just keep in mind that a lot of the Egyptian artifacts that came to America at this time were a result of Napoleon's invasion into Egypt and then a lot of these troops going and looting Graves uh the pyramids really taking anything they could get their hands on these are artifacts that people in America and really across the globe were really interested in they fetched a high price and so the Egyptian papy that Comes into Joseph Smith's hand was a part of this Looting of of Egypt and the subsequent removing of these artifacts

and taking them across the globe in efforts to sell them and make money if you're enjoying this video just a quick reminder to like this video subscribe to my channel if you have anything you'd like to share about the book of Abraham or any questions that I haven't gotten to yet I I'm sure I'll get to a lot of them because we have a lot of ground to Cover today but if you have any questions or comments please drop them in the comments below while the discovery of the Rosetta Stone happened in 1799 the discovery

of the artifacts that would end up in Joseph Smith's possession didn't happen until 1815 which was actually a little bit after the initial invasion of Napoleon a man named Antonio lebolo was the one who was responsible for Excavating and finding the Joseph Smith papy he regularly Employed hundreds of people to go and loot these Egyptian sites and basically then go and sell a lot of what he found to different museums and a lot of what he found is still found in major museums today this map shows where these pap came from 11 mummies and several

papy were found by Antonio in the city of Thieves between 1818 and 1822 after Antonio lebolo died all of the remainder of these artifacts that he had discovered or stolen and looted Throughout his life made their way to America with the direction to sell them in order to benefit his heirs a man named Michael Chandler eventually came into possession of the artifact and began touring the United States usually just showing off the artifacts but occasionally also selling them to interested buyers by 1835 Chandler made his way to Kirtland Ohio which is also where the Mormons

happen to be he had a flyer that said that the mommies may Have lived in the days of Jacob Moses or David so I feel I can just picture Joseph Smith coming across that flyer and uh suddenly having an idea about what he could do with these uh special Egyptian artifacts now little did Joseph Smith know that across the pond the Rosetta Stone which I mentioned earlier was being the the code of the Rosetta Stone was being cracked Joseph Smith knew that people could look at something and say yes that is Egyptian but Joseph Smith

still didn't think that anyone could translate it into coherent words paragraph sentences and so he was still under the understanding that if he looked at a character and put his finger on it and said that means water that no one would second guess him or his Believers wouldn't second guess him because he still didn't think that there was anyone who could definitively translate Egyptian into English this is a picture of the Rosetta Stone what made The Rosetta Stone so very important to understanding Egyptian is that this decree was written in Dem demonic I don't know

if I'm saying that right ancient Egyptian and ancient Greek so at this point when the Rosetta Stone was found we still were able to translate ancient Greek and so because it was the same decree written in three languages uh ancient Egyptian we didn't know a man named Jean franois chilon which I'm probably still saying incorrectly was Able to figure out the code of the the three different languages and so in 1822 he was the first man to be able to finally figure out how to translate Egyptian into English that Discovery was first made in 1822

and the papy made their way to Joseph Smith in 1835 but still by that point it wasn't widely known that Egyptian could be translated and from what I can tell of my studies it was still just something that was very much held within the scholarly Community it's not like had you stopped some Rand guy on the street and said can everyone figure out how to translate Egyptian he would have said no so Joseph Smith all of this to say was just still under the comprehension or the understanding that if he bullshitted about the translation of

Egyptian no one would be able to call his bluff and say no you're objectively wrong because we can definitively translate Egyptian into English by 1835 there were more than 8,000 members of the Mormon Church once Joseph Smith knew that these Egyptians Scrolls and artifacts were in the city in the town where all these Mormons were he took an immediate interest in them and he actually told Chandler the man who was uh touring with them and selling them Joseph Smith said I can translate these Joseph Smith upon seeing the documents said that they contained the writings

of Abraham and Joseph as well as a short history of an Egyptian Princess named kumin K a t u m i n so wow so conven venient I mean that to me already is a red flag according to biblical Scholars Abraham lived either 2,100 BC or 1900 BC so even if we took Abraham according to biblical Scholars you know if this really if this if any of this timeline is even true to begin with that means that Abraham lived approximately 3,734 years ago so if Abraham is Penning this document um on these rolls of paper

Almost 4,000 years later through some twist of fate these papers land in the hands of Joseph Smith um which to me is already a Fantastical story uh what a coincidence I mean if it's true what a what a coincidence I mean I guess Mormons would say that the Scrolls were moved by the gift and power of God fair enough but uh other than the power of God I'm not really sure how it's humanly possible for Joseph Smith to find documents written by a prophet 4,000 Years ago I also feel that there's this huge track record

that Joseph Smith has in my mind of finding something in real history and then kind of stealing it co-opting it to say that it uh fits into Mormonism so first we have the Book of Mormon which Joseph Smith is hearing the story of real Native Americans real ancient people and then saying this book is about Native Americans long ago so he's kind of sealing the story of the Native Americans and retooling it in Order to make a religion that says hey God visited them too and here's all this proof using Native American history so he's

taking a history he's retooling it to match Mormonism and then selling it as its own thing we also see this with masonry Joseph Smith's family was very involved with with masonry Joseph Smith became a Mason the temple ceremonies in modern day and what Joseph Smith you know introduced into to Mormonism really are so similar uh in so many ways to the Masonic temple ceremonies so much so that I got this comment when I talked about the the Mormon Temple ceremonies last which is a Mason basically saying I can recite the Mormon Temple ceremonies word for

word in some parts because what Joseph Smith introduced into Mormonism is so similar to the Masonic temple rituals so we've got the Masons we've got the Native Americans and now in this video I'm sharing with you about Joseph Smith encountering ancient Egyptian History and saying bye golly that belongs to me too and being able to say this is the writings of Abraham and don't you know that these Scrolls I found also are proof that I'm a prophet that I am leading Jesus Christ's Church and that I can you know translate and reveal doctrines and all

these kind of things we also see it with folk magic when Joseph Smith used rocks to find treasure in his early teens we later see him use a rock to translate The Book of Mormon by dropping that rock into a hat and then putting the Hat over his face and speaking words aloud which he then was saying was the translation of the Book of Mormon so folk magic there's a whole very interesting Wikipedia page about the folk Traditions um and origins of Mormonism so we have Native American history we have Masonic history we have Egyptian

history we have folk history so it's just fascinating to see how many times this pattern is played out over And over again where Joseph Smith brushes up against some portion of history in some way and then takes it retools it makes it his own and passes it off as his own proof of prophetic wisdom Joseph Smith wrote that with ww Phelps and Oliver cowry as scribes I commence the translation of some of the characters or hieroglyphics and much to our joy found that one of the Scrolls contained the writings of Abraham that is why as

I showed you at The beginning at the beginning of the book of Abraham which I once studied as scripture it says that it was the writings of Abraham written by his own hand Joseph Smith ended up purchasing four mummies and at least five papy documents for $2,400 which is the equivalent to $71,000 in 2023 probably like $500,000 now because of inflation I'll put a link to the book of Abraham if you're curious to go read read it yourself it is fairly Similar to Genesis in my mind it's almost like Joseph Smith read through Genesis he

had Genesis open while he was translating and was kind of making up in his mind what you know Abraham must have thought and said that's kind of an expansion of what you would read about in Genesis and so that's why it's similar to how the The Book of Mormon is Bible fanfiction it Joseph Smith just needed you know he wanted to get back into his fanfiction writing era and he Wrote more fan fiction with the pearl of great price I feel like talking about the doctrine held in the pearl of great price could be its

own separate video but I wanted to highlight three very uh fascinating and some awful doctrines that are found in the book of Abraham that Joseph Smith revealed by translating these ancient texts after we talk about the doctrine I'm going to share the story of how we have the source text and what the source text Says the book of Abraham and the Scrolls and the Papi actually say according to egyptologists in Abraham chapter 3 we learn about the war in heaven that happened in the prear life so the Mormon belief uh much of which comes from

the book of Abraham is that our souls existed prior to coming to Earth and our souls are the spirit babies of God and godmother heavenly mother and heavenly father got together knocked boots and made our souls which are now uh Inhabiting our bodies but our souls are Eternal so our souls existed before they shot down and inhabited our little baby bodies they were in the prear life according to verse 22 now the Lord had shown unto me Abraham that the intelligences that were organized before the world was and among all these were uh many of

the noble and great ones the interesting thing is that um basically before we our souls were even spirits the matter of our souls existed like Baby matter I guess our souls were organized out of intelligence out of pure intelligence so uh that's what um that verse is referring to the intelligences that were organized is that basically uh to make our souls this intelligence's soup was uh sculpted together to make our souls and then our souls come into our bodies when we're sent to Earth these verses that go on about the noble and great ones is

also the basis for something I was taught as A child which is that if you are if your soul is sent to a Mormon family it means that you were more Valiant in the pre-earth life and the prear life is the basis for a lot of really messed up doctrines and it's something that we learn a lot about in The Book of Abraham which we're discussing which was translated from Egyptian papy that was looted from a grave in Egypt and the reason that this was important to me as a child was I was told that

the reason My soul was sent to a Mormon family was because my soul was better in the prear life so more righteous in the prear life I was one of the noble and great ones you can see off to the side here I wrote we were there and it also later says Thou was chosen before thou was born and I wrote that is a fact there's also the conversation about the first estate and the second estate so if you go down to verse 26 it says and they who keep their first estate shall be added

upon and Those who keep not their first estate shall not have Glory in the same Kingdom as you know there's multiple kingdoms of Heaven in Mormon belief and so basically our first estate is our spirit and our second estate is our body so Satan never got his second estate because he um disobeyed God so there's a lot of like I said there's a lot of doctrine that comes from the pearl of great price a lot of chapter 3 and all of the book of Abraham it just shares a lot of Mormon Doctrine concerning what happened

before our souls were sent to Earth the book of Abraham coincidentally was also a way that was used the scriptures that were used to pro why black people should not receive the priesthood so that's another really effed up fact about the book of Abraham was that it was often quoted as the reason why black people were less Valiant also in the prear life this like I said the prear life this narrative about what we were all doing before we Got to Earth really is held for or against people depending on who you are so in

the book of Abraham 1:4 it says when this woman discovered the land it was underwater talking about Noah's Ark who afterward settled her sons in it and thus from Ham sprang the race which preserved the curse in the land so that verse along with the rest of this chapter which I won't read to you because it's reading scriptures is not very interesting uh but if you go and Read it which like I'll link uh you can read it for yourself if you want but these verses were cited multiple times as to why black people couldn't

have the priesthood in verse 26 it says that and also of Noah Noah's Arc his father who blessed him with the blessing of the earth and with the blessings of wisdom but cursed him as pertaining to the priesthood so you see it says that word priesthood very specifically so according to this scripture um Noah Ark Right you probably are familiar with that U most of the world died but one of Noah's sons was married to an Egyptian according to this and that Egyptian was cursed with the curse of ham meaning um you know ham and

Cain this lineage is all uh cursed with the skin of Blackness essentially was what Mormon prophets said and so basically this verse because uh the curse was preserved through this bloodline even after Noah's Ark uh the curse of ham this Egyptian woman who Married into Noah's family and then preserved the curse that kept them from having the priesthood it's a lot of mumbo jumbo is what it is but it was used to keep black people from receiving full Fellowship in the Mormon Church using scriptural proof so that's why it's even more Insidious in my opinion

is it's not just hey we're racist or we don't think you know whatever they said that was racist about why they they didn't think black people should be full Participants but what's worse is that they go a step further Joseph Smith even went a step further with the pearl of great price to say there is scriptural proof which was then used by later prophets scriptural proof to legitimize our belief as to why black people can't have the priesthood so that belief that written belief that is now still to this day enshrined in scripture came from

Scrolls looted out of Egypt and sold to Joseph Smith in 1835 before we continue I wanted to also just give a quick pitch for my book how to leave the Mormon Church an ex Mormon's guide to rebuilding after religion here are some of the reviews people have shared about it if you've read it please consider leaving a review I really love to read them even the angry ones um and so if you are someone who's recently left or if you're just curious to learn more about my story I have a lot of stories about my

uh upbringing in the church and Then my choice to leave the church what it was like for me to tell my parents so if you are curious to learn more about my story or if you're someone in the middle of a faith crisis and you're considering leaving the church please consider checking out my book the final belief um there's a lot so I could like I said I could go on but the final belief that I wanted to highlight shared in the book of Abraham is the belief about cab this is one of the most

Strangest and outlandish in my mind in Abraham 3 chapter 16 we learn that uh if two things exist there be one above the other there shall be greater things above them therefore cab is the greatest of all cab Bean uh I don't even know how to pronounce that that thou Hast seen because it is nearest unto me and the collab reference here there's the song called if you could hide a collab and I'll sing it for you because I always I like to include a little bit Of song um I'll put the words off to

the side here I sing I sang this quite a bit growing up so maybe you know every few months in church whether it was Sunday school or young women's or sacrament meeting I was singing the song you know from time to time the song goes like this if you could hide to C in the twinkling of an eye and then continue onward with that same speed to Fly do you think that you could ever through all eternity find listen to these words find out the J of where Gods began to be so if you ask

a if they're monotheistic they'll say yes but then if you point to that song where it literally says do you think we can ever figure out where Gods began to be and there's heavenly father and heavenly mother and we can becomes Gods too but essentially what that song Is talking about is how cab is a star and cab is a star that's closest to the planet or Star where God resides and that's why cab is so special that's why in the song we're singing I would love you know would if you could hide to cab

if you could go to collab um could you ever figure out where Gods began to be because Mormons are literally in the song dreaming of flying through space to go to uh collab and see where God is because he's going to be your next door Neighbor on the planet nearby this belief is also kind of poked fun out in the Book of Mormon musical where he said you know it's the song I Believe I believe that God lives on a planet called cab and actually God does not live on cab that's cab is the star

nearest to God so they actually got that a little incorrect but who can blame them when this is all so nonsensical as you can see in this publication from the church that was just published in the 2000s so not that long ago if I'm just using this to show that this is still very much a part of Mormon belief it says this means that kab is the star nearest to the presence of God see Abraham 3: 2 and 3 is the governing star in all the universe It also says in this manual that cab represents

Jesus because it's secondary to the planet where God lives so Jesus is second to God because they're two separate beings why did I want to discuss these doctrines because Not to bore you but the reason we know about cab is because a traveling salesman sold mummies in Papi to Joseph Smith in 1835 and here I am here I was you know eight years ago singing my hymns about how I wish I too could go to collab because if I only could go to collab then I could finally figure out where Gods began to be while

Joseph Smith got hold of these ancient documents in 1835 the book of Abraham was not Published until 1842 so that's how long the translation and printing process took I wanted to talk a little bit more about what we've learned about this translation process using some of Joseph Smith's journals the journals of the people who were his trans fellow translators and followers because it's actually even just how this was translated and all these documents that I found that I'm going to show you is actually pretty crazy also very Interesting Joseph Smith believed that Adam and Eve

spoke a pure language this is actually this was what it was called a pure language basically if you're familiar with the Tower of Babel the belief is that everyone spoke the same language before the Tower of Babel and then after the Tower of Babel everyone was cursed with all these different languages so that's kind of the reason that uh Joseph Smith believed that everyone spoke different languages Because of this Tower of Babel story the story of the Tower of Babel is of course also in the Book of Genesis this is another example of something that

I was taught from my family growing up but wasn't often discussed from the pulpit so a lot of Mormon belief is now really sanitized but my family and my family would we would learn a lot of the stories and the doctrines that were taught earlier in the church that the church basically slowly got rid of over Time but also they they never really say like we don't believe in that anymore they just stopped talking about it Joseph Smith believed that Egyptian and Hebrew most closely represented the adamic language or the pure language that everyone spoke

prior to the Tower of Babel this document shows an initial translation where Joseph Smith is basically saying that certain characters in Egyptian mean what what those characters mean in English and some of These characters that are in Egyptian he also said were part of the adamic language part of the pure language that was spoken by Adam and Eve also the adamic language was not something invented by Joseph Smith this was also a concept that existed in Judaism and some Christian Traditions so Joseph Smith didn't invent this himself I'm not sure how he came across this

this idea but it didn't he didn't invent it he basically happened upon it and then as he's going Through documents as he's translating these books he's basically saying this character here is a character that is also found in the adamic language this pure language Doctrine carried through not just from Joseph Smith but into briam young briam young basically invented this thing called the desert alphabet which you can see here this is still used to this day by uh some Mormons and exmormons as kind of like a cultural heritage thing where you'll see It on labels

or you'll see it on beer cans when briam young was around they went so far as to translate the entire Book of Mormon into the Deseret alphabet and brickham young really wanted this Deseret alphabet thing to catch on he believed that if everyone could speak the same language it would kind of be hearkening back to this adamic language concept and so he really pushed initially in the church the Deseret alphabet as a way for you know they Taught it in the schools in Utah um but it never really caught on in an older version of

the Mormon Temple ceremony I've talked before about how there is a prayer circle where you chant and you say oh God God hear the words of my mouth three times uh it used to be you know now when I did it I said oh God hear the words of my mouth but a while ago before I went through instead of saying oh God hear the words of my mouth they said Pay Al which Joseph Smith said Was words in the adamic language some believe that this comes from the Hebrew phrase pale L I don't know

if I'm saying that right which means mouth to God it seems to be conjecture if this was actually from that Hebrew phrase or if Joseph Smith invented it uh but whether it was or wasn't essentially when uh you were in the prayer circle you would say p ale P ale P ale so mouth to God essentially and one of my favorite riffs on this pale ale is that you can buy Beer in Salt Lake or in Utah that is pale ale which to me is one of the few reasons I would ever move back to

Utah or to Salt Lake specifically is because there's such an awesome ex Mormon counterculture out there where there's so many inside jokes that just really you can't beat the the ex Mormon inside jokes on this page you can see where Joseph Smith is pulling characters from uh the Scrolls he's reading and transcribing those characters onto this Paper and then to the side he's writing full paragraphs of what those characters represent this is a more detailed explanation from Wikipedia which I'll link below as you can see they're taking a small portion of the scroll and then

zeroing in on specific characters and then Joseph Smith went and took those characters uh kind of retranscribed them on his own paper and then wrote off to the side in English what he thought they meant this to me to go back to my Initial statement is why I consider the book of Abraham to be the Achilles heel or of the Mormon church or the one piece of proof that I think very clearly proves that Joseph Smith was a fraud because we we have the source document we we have Joseph Smith translation and so egyptologists people

who understand how to translate Egyptian into English can look at these characters and say Yes Joseph Smith did translate them Correctly or no he definitely did not translate these correctly the timeline of how the papy were lost after Joseph Smith's death and then refound was super fascinating and I'm just going to give you a brief overview here you can see a timeline of ownership so this is this is documenting you know because Joseph Smith was killed in Carthage Jail it's documenting after his death what exactly transpired so that the the papy and the mummies were

passed from hand to hand to Hand until they found them again and were able to say look we have these original documents that Joseph Smith took possession of in 1835 so after Joseph Smith's death these ancient artifacts went to his mother Lucy macsmith and I found this picture which is a mind-blowing picture I think Lucy macsmith really was into folk magic into mysticism and basically with her and her son William Smith they continu to exhibit the mummies and the associated Papy to visitors and they would basically charge a small fee and people would be able

to see these Egyptian artifacts one interesting fact that I discovered in my research that I'd never heard before is that Joseph Smith and Lucy Max Smith said that the mummies were the Pharaoh and his Royal household so they refer to them as Pharaoh onidas his wife and their two daughters and that's how we get back to the the princess that I was telling you about of Kuman so even that is like okay he's saying that these mummies that happen to come into his possession are literally the body of the Pharaoh and his wife so that

that's the claim you know as Lucy macsmith is kind of showing off these looted artifacts she's saying not only is this a mummy but this is the of the one of the Pharaohs which is a is not true after Lucy Max Smith died the artifacts went to Emma hail uh she at that point was already remarried and so They decided to sell four of the Egyptian M mummies along with the records to a man named Abel Combs this is where the timeline gets interesting in my opinion because Abel Combs sold them to the St Louis

Museum who then sold them to the Chicago Museum and then there was the great Chicago fire and that is when all of these records perish in the fire along with the mummies and the papy at this point it was fully believed that all of the Joseph Smith Papaye were completely gone off the Earth that they had been destroyed in the fire and we you know no historian or Mormon or whoever would ever see them again but what people didn't know is that Abel Combs had kept some of the artifacts for himself you'll remember these from

the beginning this is one of the fact similes that they said was burned in the fire so that's fa simile number two and this fa simile which is fact simile number three was also Destroyed in the fire so we don't have the original Joseph Smith documents those original ancient artifacts to compare as a source text with Jo what Joseph Smith Drew here that I have in my scriptures however Abel combes gave some of the fragments to his nurse known as Charlotte Weaver and so she had them she passed them down to Alice Weaver her daughter

who then sold them to the Metropolitan Museum of Art this means that we do not have the mummies so the M The two of the mummies perish in the fire two of the mummies we don't know where they ended up because they didn't go with Charlotte and they aren't with AEL so some of most of the documents are lost the four mummies were all lost but we do still have some of these fragments of the original ancient artifacts we we do still have those so those have been taken to the Metropolitan Museum of Art so

man these documents have been on quite a journey essentially in the 1960s So now we're decades past Joseph Smith uh in the 1960s the Metropolitan Museum of Art decided to sell a lot of their extra documents things that weren't that important in the sense that they were kind of common artifacts and they weren't very culturally significant or historically significant so they they started to sell off some of these you know some of the the collections of of their Museum and to just maintain what they they said was the most important And amongst the less important

artifacts that they decided to sell were the Joseph Smith papy in 1966 a scholar at the University of Utah uh named Aziz Atia was looking through all of these collections to say hey maybe you know maybe our University will buy something from this collection as this scholar was going through all of these documents he found the Joseph Smith papy and recognized it as a result he chose to you know let the church know hey we I Found your important document and as a result the church purchased the documents in 1967 I found this article which

I'll link below to be very interesting to read this is basically where they're celebrating the fact that they found these documents and talking about what they represent what they are and saying hey you have the book of Abraham in your scriptures we found the source documents from the the book of Abraham the most important document that They found amongst those those ancient artifacts was the original faximile 1 so this is faximile 1 you can see it right here uh so this this was you know something that Joseph Smith or another portion of the church some

somebody drew this out and put it in Mormon scripture and then in 1967 they found the original document that this was hand drawn from to compare it with by 1967 of course egyptologists can translate Egyptian into to English so this is where the Rubber hits the road people this is where they can finally say did Joseph Smith really translate this papii and is it really a writing from Abraham in ancient times as I've shown you with other documents from Joseph Smith's time and in his handwriting this is the Egyptian alphabet uh where he basically is

taking what he say are Egyptian characters and translating them into English none of these characters have been proven to be Egyptian but this is Just more evidence of how Joseph Smith said he was translating the book of Abraham into English he's basically just kind of pulling things out of his ass and saying this character means this this is in the handwriting of Joseph Smith himself and so this is clear evidence of him saying I can translate characters into English what's crazy about this um this website that I'm showing you is owned by the Mormon church

so these documents are being Published by the Mormon church so they are fully allowing you know Public Access if you go below you can click on these documents yourself in another section of the web page they summarize a lot of these documents and to read a sentence from this summary it says no evidence indicates that any of the individuals involved in creating these documents had knowledge of the unfolding of scholarly decipherment of the Egyptian language and their work does Not comport with modern egyptological understanding of Egyptian characters so they are just coming out and saying

it here they're saying Joseph Smith did not know how to translate Egyptian that's what that sentence says no evidence indicates they knew how to translate Egyptian so when you're seeing this Egyptian alphabet that Joseph Smith is very uh confidently writing on the page this isn't an anti-mormon website this isn't a critical website a website Critical of the church this is the church themselves saying Joseph Smith couldn't translate Egyptian this is another interesting page I found uh this is where Joseph Smith is saying that he is deciphering how to count in Egyptian so the document is

called Egyptian counting and if you look there's numbers in Egyptian numbers in English and how to pronounce the Egyptian uh pronunciation of the character to go back to what the church says no evidence Indicates that any of the individuals involved in creating these documents had knowledge of the unfolding of scholarly discip ment of the Egyptian language so whether it's the alphabet or the numbering system they are saying he didn't know how to translate Egyptian but even though they'll put that sentence uh they'll they'll bury that sentence on that web page this is still the scripture

that you will see every Mormon Youth and Mormon adult carrying Into church every day which says that this is writings of the book of Abraham written by his own hand and my feeling so what this is the these website this website I've been showing you is from something called the Joseph Smith papers and if you've seen vep there's a scene where she is getting into some trouble Selena Meyer is getting into some trouble and they are worried that some of their secret information is going to leak so she decides to publish every Single email facts

every single thing that has ever been produced by her office she's going to publish it all at once and basically the theory is that they're going to drown the press in so much information that they're going to be overwhelmed and they're going to throw up their hands and give up to me this is what the Joseph Smith papers are so for a very long time the church didn't publish any of this stuff you know you couldn't easily access it it Was all held with the church history Department in Saul Lake even most Mormons you know

even if you were a faithful member of the church you couldn't just Mosey in and say can I see that you had to be kind of approved whether it's because you were a historian or because whatever the approval process was what I'm saying is is that these were not open access they weren't easy to find the Joseph Smith papers project began in 2001 the first Volume was printed in 2008 and the final volume was printed in 2023 so this was a very long project and the Joseph Smith papers project includes 18,000 pages of documents including

journals letters Revelations and more the project includes 7 million plus words and 49,000 footnotes I feel from my uh skeptical point of view was that the Joseph Smith papers project was an attempt for the church to kind of drown the public in information about Joseph Smith they said Let's publish just like Selena Meyer and vep let's publish every single thing we have on him and by this information overload this is like 27 volumes of work if I couldn't even hold them all at once if I were to try attempt to do so uh to overload

them with information so that it's it's actually quite difficult to pick apart and find the most disfavorable aspects of Joseph Smith's life or if someone gets a be in their Bonnet and decides to do so it's going To be very timeconsuming this sentence that I read for you no evidence indicates that they knew Egyptian that was written by a faithful member of the Mormon church but it took me a while to find that I actually had to do a lot of clicking through multiple documents multiple pages to even find this specific web page I was

probably 2 or 3 hours into my research before I landed on this page and most people don't have time to do that kind of research what I Also think is interesting about this translation guide whether it's the alphabet or the numbers that Joseph Smith is using is that it allows him to have his uh translation be internally consistent but to not be consistent with real Egyptian so every time he encounters a character he can say oh that means Abraham cuz I have my little cheat sheet over here so if someone were to go to his

cheat sheets they could see that he was translating based off of a Methodology that he created so he's he's making something that's a translation that's internally consistent but he's not making a translation that is factually true I'm going to show you now what the book of Abraham is actually translated to be by egyptologists I suggest if you want a full translation I found this book somebody named Robert Ritner took it upon themselves to translate the entire Joseph Smith papy so that that's never been attempted Before this book essentially um people would just translate certain characters

but in this book he literally went you know character by character and translated the entirety of the Joseph Smith papy into what the real Egyptian translation would be here you can see that we have three images we have the image that is in my pearl of great price faximile one we have the Joseph Smith papy uh which is the original Papi that Joseph Smith translated from this is the Source text that was found in the Museum of Modern Art and then the final image is comparing with a similar image from the tomb of Kings so

they have Joseph Smith's version the original Source text and then a contemporary image and then as you can see if you look closely Joseph Smith has numbers placed next to each character that he then said corresponded to what the translation was so this bird he said was the angel of the Lord egyptologists say that this is The boss spirit osus miscopied with the head of a bird rather than that of a human I might pronounce some of these things incorrectly I apologize number two we see Joseph Smith said that this is Abraham fastened upon an

altar number two according to egyptologists is the prone image of Osiris number three we see the man holding the knife uh this is the idolatrous priest of el attempting to offer up Abraham as a sacrifice Joseph Smith said explanation by Egyptologist it's the jackal-headed Anubis God of mummification extending his hand to ensure the resurrection of the Mummy of the deceased Osiris although most of anubis's head is now missing the back of his wig still appears above his shoulder and his dark skin is evident so that was the other thing that I learned uh through my

research if you see this this Center image of the source text you'll see that there are pencil drawings where we Believe Joseph Smith went through and Drew what was missing from the papy from what I learned basically when the papy first came into his possession it was in Scrolls and some of it had a kind of you know glue on it so he kind of just ripped it apart and said I can use my Revelation to figure out what the ripped Parts said and so those pencil drawings are him going through and saying this is

what should have been there but got ripped away and so where you see here it Said that no that most of anubis' head is now missing but the back of his wig still appears basically egyptologists have said that the way that Joseph Smith went in and filled in the blanks was filled in incorrectly and that this third image is a greater representation of what this likely did look like had it still been not ripped apart but shown in completion I won't go through and read all of the translation because you know it's it's just completely

incorrect I Mean that's how that's my best synopsis for you is and I'll link all of this below if you want to go through and carefully read what each character represents the long and short of it is that every single thing that Joseph Smith said it meant is absolutely full stop not what it meant fa simy one in my mind is the most important because it's the one that we do have the true Source text on uh faimily 2 and three The Source texts were burned but the thing Is is that these are fairly common

symbols in egyptology so even if we don't have the source text there are still many texts that are very similar and egyptologists can also just translate the the version that we have in our scriptures so if you go to this website uh this is from the CES letter I suggest reading the whole thing if you're interested uh it also goes through faimily 2 and three to go through Joseph Smith's interpretation And the modern egyptological interpretation another thing that's important to note is that the book of Abraham is also full of anachronisms essentially an anachronism is

if you're reading a book That was supposed to be written in the 1700s and someone pulls out an iPhone then you know it wasn't written in the 1700s because no one in the 1700s had an iPhone so there are certain things that according to history we know only existed in certain Centuries or on certain continents and this is a way to prove that even if a document says it's historical that it actually isn't because if it truly was historical the people of the time wouldn't have had any knowledge of these items or these topics that

come up within the text to name some of the anachronisms we have the depiction of angles the word egyptus um in faximile 2 we have human sacrifice as an Egyptian religious practice we have Pharaoh Piper's Hill I won't go through each of these one by one but I just wanted to highlight that as another piece of evidence that Joseph Smith was totally making this up because he's putting things into his translation that are anachronisms and shouldn't have existed if they truly were written by the hand of Abraham no egyptologist or scholar regards the book of

Abraham as an ancient text according to the scholar Steven Edwards it's largely a piece of Imagination and lacking in any kind of scientific of value according to Dr Arthur mace uh he says that the pearl of great price the book of Abraham it is hardly necessary to say is a pure fabrication he goes on to say Joseph Smith's interpretation of these Cuts is a the farago of nonsense from beginning to end and that 5 minutes of study in an Egyptian gallery of any Museum should be enough to convince any educated man of the clumsiness of

the imposture as a Final quote from another egyptologist University of Chicago egyptologist Robert Ritner concluded in 2014 that the source of the Book of Mormon is the breathing permit of horror misunderstood and mistranslated by Joseph Smith and that any other papy are common Egyptian ferary documents like the Book of the Dead so those are quotes from three egyptologists and Scholars who all say the book of Abraham is not a translation of an ancient text it is something that Joseph Smith made up and yet I still spent a fair bit of time reading this as scripture

taking in its words about cab and putting them in my heart even though on the Mormon Church's own website they say that Joseph Smith could not translate Egyptian this still resides in Mormon scripture today as just as divinely inspired as the Book of Mormon the Joseph Smith translation of the Bible and any other doctrine that Mormons hold as scripture the Mormon Church also in addition uh released a separate essay where they say none of the characters on the papy uh fragments mentioned Abraham's name or any of the events recorded in the book of Abraham Mormon

and non-mormon egyptologists agree that the characters on the fragments do not match the translation given in the book of Abraham it goes goes on to say Scholars have identified the Papyrus fragments as part of standard funerary texts that were Deposited with mum mummified bodies so that is an explanation of the Achilles heel of Mormonism and why I think that a simple study I mean I agree with that person who said anyone walking around a museum an Egyptian section of a museum for more than five minutes could be like this that Joseph Smith totally concocted and

fabricated from his own head is not historically true also before we continue just a quick reminder and a pitch to consider checking out my Patreon I share a lot of of extra bonus content on there bonus video content I also share all of my YouTube videos early and adree if you join the espresso Martini tier you also get a signed book or t-shirt as part of joining that tier and so consider checking out my patreon if you are looking to get more of my content now there are two primary theories that Mormons still cling to

as to why the book of Abraham exists the first is referred to as the missing Scroll Theory this is a theory that essentially says that we still don't have the source text that Joseph Smith used for the book of Abraham and so because there's a missing scroll we still don't have the source text we still can't definitively prove that Joseph Smith's translation was incorrect and so this Theory kind of hides in the we don't really know side of the world which is kind of similar to how they say the Book of Mormon is we don't

have the Gold plates we haven't yet found proof of the lamanites and the Nephites talked about in The Book of Mormon and so because we don't know there's still a lot of wiggle room for belief because absence of evidence is not evidence however in 2019 the Joseph Smith paper documentary research on the book of Abraham and the Egyptian Papi makes it clear that Joseph Smith and or his clerks Associated the characters from the faximile one papy with the English Book of Abraham text so even though some apologists have said oh well there's still the missing

scroll Theory we still don't have the source documents in 2019 the the Mormon Church came out and said no we do we actually do that we've we've said that this is our definitive and authoritative statement that we do have the source texts and we've published them the other Theory which is I think the most mainstream theory is uh known as The Catalyst Theory and what this is Is that even if uh Joseph Smith didn't literally translate those ancient artifacts into English that the book of Abraham is still a catalyst for us to be closer to

God and to learn more truth and this is now kind of what they're Shifting The Book of Mormon to be and they recently rewrote the introduction of the Book of Mormon the standard is no longer you know ancient people existed in the Americas and they are the primary the principal ancestors of the Native Americans today that was a claim the the Mormon Church once made now they're saying the Book of Mormon brings me spiritually closer to Jesus Christ and that's why it matters and that's the same theory that they're using to apply to the book

of Abraham which is that even if uh as has been proven the book of Abraham is not a pure translation from Egyptian into English the book of Abraham though still brings us closer to God and Jesus Christ and so because it Brings us close to Jesus Christ and it's divinely inspired it's a catalyst for God to bring his church to the Earth and to bring his truth to the Earth so it doesn't actually need to be a true translation in order for it to inspire someone to believe more in God here is a quote from

Elder Holland where he addresses this form of thinking about the book of Abraham Apostles rarely speak to the media but I get to meet one of the Quorum of 12 Elder Holland Joseph Smith got these papy and he translated them and subsequently as the Egyptian egyptologist Crack the Code something completely different all I'm saying all I'm all I'm saying is that what got translated got translated into the word of God the vehicle for that I do not understand and don't claim to know and know no egyptian so um that there is is him speaking to

this Catalyst Theory where He says you know whatever whatever happened you know back in 1835 with the book of Abraham all I know is that it's scripture and that I have a testimony of it uh I don't claim to know Egyptian I don't claim to understand the translation at all what I'm just saying is is that this is a catalyst for me to be closer to God because it's scripture what I believe is that the Mormon church is kind of using the the concept of new speak so this is a concept popularized By the book

1984 where you're essentially changing the words the meaning of words themselves in a way that protects your point of view of the world or or uh encourages a new way of understanding The Facts of Life so in this case the new speak is the word translation because when I say translation you might think Source text translated into a new uh a new language that can be read by people who speak that language and this is in one Language that people can read who speak that language and that that's what translation means is you know I

speak English a translator translates into Spanish and that's what translation means and what what is the new speak of this is they're saying translation doesn't mean translation translation means that Joseph Smith got some ancient artifacts and he had some spiritual Revelations and as a result he said words that are now spiritually true and That's translation is that it inspired him to share doctrine that the translation that took place the vehicle is not language a to language B but it's language a through the prophetic brain into speaking things that uh he thinks are scripture this is

another video that the Mormon Church produced about the book of Abraham it just kind of reiterates what I've been reading that the church it's self has said about how the book of Abraham is not a real Translation I found this YouTube comment to be very interesting he said uh it doesn't matter how or where it was translated from I believe that it is from God no uneducated man can write such books and invent everything from his head if the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is not the Church of God which one is there

has to be a creator of all things in the universe and there has to be an explanation to things and this is the only church that Does provide uh so I just thought it was so interesting that he says it doesn't matter how or where it was translated from what I believe is that it's from God and that's what Holland is saying they're walking back the claim keep in mind this book was used to keep black people from having full Fellowship in the church and it is still used as the basis of a lot of

doctrinal claims of the church so they're not walking it back uh they and they've used it to do Harm but now instead of saying it's literally um it's literally a translation from Egyptian documents now they're saying I it doesn't matter how or where it's translated from I believe it's from God and that's what they're doing with the Book of Mormon too they're walking it back and they're saying well because we didn't find uh Middle Eastern DNA in Native Americans but they actually came over in on the land bridge um we're no longer making The claim

about DNA we're walking it back but we can say I feel like this brings me closer to God and that bar to clear is so much lower to the ground that it makes it much easier for them to hold up their heads and make their truth claims because they no longer are saying you know this is literally translated from Egyptian like they used to say now they can just say Well it inspires me to feel good uh so I can trip over that low bar And suddenly it's much more difficult to disprove Mormonism because if

it's only about how you feel uh feelings are harder to prove than DNA dates in history translations of real languages maps of real places so I think that this this choice in this new age of the internet and access to information and scientific discovery they are pivoting from making claims about history to making claims about spiritual feelings which are much easier for them to Legitimize and to say and just say like I feel like it brings me closer to God well I can't argue with you on that I can argue with you though that it

is literally translation of Egyptian to close in my opinion this is why ex Mormons are so angry so often because if you're basing your entire life off of this idea that the Book of Mormon is divinely inspired scripture that is non-fiction that is literally true that is a history book same thing about the Book of ab and then as you age and you do research and you realize that it really feels like a rug pole it feels like information was withheld from you because it's not Faith promoting it's really frustrating to have given so much

so much of your life I mean I left when I was 23 I left actually when I was able to still kind of like live a lot of my life outside of the church and make my own decisions but imagine somebody who's 80 finding this out somebody who's 50 finding this out I served a mission for a year and a half trying to convert people to this religion without even knowing some of the most basic information about it that can be easily found on Wikipedia pages I think my final thought to anyone who's still watching

by now who is an active believer in the church is just how long of your life do you want to commit to something that is so demonstrably false Like even if Mormonism makes you feel good even if you know you have a good Community how do you want to give 10% of your income to this this you know do you want to go every Sunday to worship this I mean I I just feel that committing so much of yourself Mormonism demands so much of yourself to something where we can prove that Joseph Smith did not

know how to translate things um he's making up colab he's making up the first and and second Estate he's making up why black people shouldn't be fully fellowshipped you know it's just he's just la la la la la I think it's worth deciding how much of your life you want to commit to something that isn't true I mean it it's not true I'm sorry I like I feel like to some extent sometimes I wish some of it was because I think it would be easier if you've already staked so much of your life on something

you kind of want it to be true out of convenience sake uh but Unfortunately if you go and read the CES letter it's just a church that is fairly easy to disprove many churches in my opinion are fairly easy to disprove and what's more that not only are you committing yourself to it but often you're also committing your children to it when I see kid people with kids young kids and I'm like you're going to send them to do a temple ceremony someday are you like you're really comfortable with that the idea that you're going

to Withhold that information from them and take them to this church year after year after year and then a week before their Mormon Mission you're going to Spring the temple on them you're okay like you're okay with that it actually is surprising to me that son parents are so H like happy to do that I guess because I I would not do that to my child obviously if you've made it with me this far thank you so much for watching I know we really got into some history Today I hope you enjoyed the video uh

if you still have any lingering questions please drop them in the comments below I definitely suggest checking out some of the resources I linked I really this was a fun research project just cuz I I learn so much every time I make one of these videos I always know the broad strokes but even the fact that Joseph Smith was claiming the mummy's word that Lit the body of a pharaoh I never knew that I that was new for me so um if you Have any other links to share or questions please drop them in the

comments don't forget to subscribe I have a new video every single week I also share all of my videos early and adree on patreon and I also share bonus content bonus videos consider checking that out and as always I will see you all next week