“The Apocalypse of Abraham: An Ancient Witness for the Book of Moses. ,” a presentation (PDF format) ny Jeffrey Bradshaw from the 2010 FAIR Conference, explores the surprisingly rich parallels between the Book of Moses and an ancient text that Joseph Smith could not have known, the Apocalypse of Abraham. Understanding the parallels and the ancient perspective found in both documents may, by the way, be a helpful way to better appreciate some of the ancient elements of the LDS temple experience, which I believe to be an important part of the Restoration.
Parallels Between the Book of Moses and an Ancient Text
Ha, well. I can't wait to read the presentation (time constraints are crazy these days), but I'm reminded of a more tongue-in-cheek post you made one time about the parallels of, I think, Ethan Smith's book and the BoM. Or maybe it was of the story of the founding of the BoM.
Anyways, you ended up drawing parallels to the moon landing as well in an attempt to show how easy drawing parallels can be.
Is this lesson still relevant?
openminded presents to my mind a fascinating third option. Either Joseph got things they way he said, or this is an example of another of many chance encounters with people from time machines, or Joseph has this moon landing thing that no one except readers of Jeff's blogs have heard about.
Fascinating!(wink)
Nice post!
hold on, I read part of the presentation.
Isn't this for the Book of Moses instead of Abraham?
Uh, yes, you passed the test! You were paying attention. Now I'll correct the title in your honor. 🙂
This is an amazing read, and a "mysteries of God" moment for me. I think my testimony in the truthfulness of Joseph Smith and Temples just went up another notch.
It really makes me think of how incredibly inspired Joseph Smith was to reveal these lost truths for our time. Come on, a farm boy with a 19th century 4th-grade education could not come up with this stuff on his own, especially when these ideas had been completely thrown out by mainstream theology for hundreds and hundreds of years.
The errors in the concept of the relationship between God and man in modern mainstream Christian theology become strikingly obvious when you consider patterns like this.
The prevailing message throughout, not only the Bible, but through subsequent writings and illustrations in early Christianity is this: mankind has fallen, but through repentance, can ultimately become perfect like God. This is the ultimate, incredible message of the Gospel of Christ. Joseph Smith had these concepts revealed to him once again in modern times after a very long period of darkness and misconception.
Thanks for posting this Jeff! You've made my day.