Confronting Missionaries [LDS]

[Gawdzilla Sama]

ETA:  The Rosetta Stone was discovered in 1799 but it's translation capabilities were unknown by the general population and especially by someone the likes of Joseph Smith. Using the Rosetta stone would have clearly translated the subject depicted as Oisris being embalmed.

But would that have been sufficient evidence for the hillbillies in the US?

[Dancefortwo]

ETA:  The Rosetta Stone was discovered in 1799 but it's translation capabilities were unknown by the general population and especially by someone the likes of Joseph Smith. Using the Rosetta stone would have clearly translated the subject depicted as Oisris being embalmed.

But would that have been sufficient evidence for the hillbillies in the US?

The Rosetta Stone was found in 1799 but it took a while for Frenchman, Jean Franscois Champollion to sift through the Rosetta Stone and break the language code and even then his work was only know to few of his colleagues.  He died in 1832 or so, but it still took quite a while for his work to be accepted by his peers.  The task of decoding the stone was taken over by another fella named Thomas Young who worked for years on the Stone.   It was somehwere around 1840 that anything was published on the stone and even then it took a while for this information to circulate among the regular folks and it certainly would have takens some time to reach Ohio and Missouri where Joseph Smith was located at the time.

Joseph Smith had some other Egyptian document he was going to "translate".   I can't remember what it was called but whatever it was he never got around to it.  Perhaps the news of the Rosetta Stone finally reached Ohio and he knew the jig was up.  Anyway, he had a falling out with other church members over the direction the church should take plus he proposed marriage to their wives, which didn't go over too well.....I can't imagine why.    Joseph was put in jail on charges of staging a riot and his former colleagues stormed the jail and shot him when he jumped out of a second story window in 1844.    

Joseph Smith never spoke any other language except English.  

Oh, and don't forget, Sceintology was invented so Mormons wouldn't look quite so ridiculous.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Today, at work: Customer comes up to my register with a couple of drinks, sees my crossword puzzle, and asks me "What's your word of the day?" So I says, "Give me a topic." He replies "theology", and I reply "seminary".

He then starts telling me about waking up early to attend "seminary" at his Mormon private school. I nod and say, "Yeah, before I lost my faith, I had to do the same sort of thing as a Southern Baptist, after services on Sunday, Wednesday nights, yadda yadda, I hated people spending my time for me."

His reply: "But did you lose your faith, or give it up?"

I spent a couple of minutes trying to explain that yes, I lost my faith even as I struggled to hold on to it, for several years of grappling with the Problem of Evil. But it was clear that he had blue-pilled himself and so I cleared out from the conversation.

Very weird. Why can't believers just understand that not everyone goes along with their programming? Or why do teenagers think they know everything?

It was a gentle and friendly convo, but I think the next time someone asks me for a "word of the day", I'll reply, "awareness".

Very rare for me to get the pushy type, but today the fish jumped out of the water.

[Dom]

Somehow that reminds me. Some 30 years ago I was sitting in a greyhound bus going to California. I was reading. A young guy sat down next to me. He asked: "Can you read this?" and pointed at a sign in front of the bus. I read it to him. He says" Oh good, then you can read all the church signs to me along the way. "

I said something like "hmmmm" and started reading again. 

After a while he says: "What does it say?"

"what does what say?"

"The church sign".

"what church sign?"

"oh, we're past it now". 

He gave up after church #3. 

He was on his way to some seminar. I didn't ask for details, and have no idea what his religion was.

[skyking]

Welkommen!

Very much what he said ^ !

We are so far apart in background, Teddy. It helps to know how you got where you are, and explains some of the differences.

Once again welcome to your freedom from the cult.

[Bucky Ball]

ETA:  The Rosetta Stone was discovered in 1799 but it's translation capabilities were unknown by the general population and especially by someone the likes of Joseph Smith. Using the Rosetta stone would have clearly translated the subject depicted as Oisris being embalmed.

But would that have been sufficient evidence for the hillbillies in the US?

The Rosetta Stone was found in 1799 but it took a while for Frenchman, Jean Franscois Champollion to sift through the Rosetta Stone and break the language code and even then his work was only know to few of his colleagues.  He died in 1832 or so, but it still took quite a while for his work to be accepted by his peers.  The task of decoding the stone was taken over by another fella named Thomas Young who worked for years on the Stone.   It was somehwere around 1840 that anything was published on the stone and even then it took a while for this information to circulate among the regular folks and it certainly would have takens some time to reach Ohio and Missouri where Joseph Smith was located at the time.

Joseph Smith had some other Egyptian document he was going to "translate".   I can't remember what it was called but whatever it was he never got around to it.  Perhaps the news of the Rosetta Stone finally reached Ohio and he knew the jig was up.  Anyway, he had a falling out with other church members over the direction the church should take plus he proposed marriage to their wives, which didn't go over too well.....I can't imagine why.    Joseph was put in jail on charges of staging a riot and his former colleagues stormed the jail and shot him when he jumped out of a second story window in 1844.    

Joseph Smith never spoke any other language except English.  

Oh, and don't forget, Sceintology was invented so Mormons wouldn't look quite so ridiculous.

There was a YouTube that was about an hour long we used to post on TTA that had a lot of the BS Smith did with his fraudulent Egyptian scrolls and other crap, and his hitting on the wives of his associates. I can't find it. He claimed he could translate hieroglyphs and papyri. As was just about everything he did, it was all total crap.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Oh, and don't forget, Sceintology was invented so Mormons wouldn't look quite so ridiculous.

Every religion in the world was invented. They graduate from "cult" to "religion" as they gain followers.

[Minimalist]

https://www.amazon.com/His-Own-Hand-Upon...0962096326

This book examines one of the most significant events in modern Mormon history - the rediscovery in 1967 of the Egyptian papyri from which Joseph Smith claimed to translate the Book of Abraham in the Pearl of Great Price.

In the first two chapters of By His Own Hand Upon Papyrus, former Mormon and Brigham Young University graduate Charles M. Larson, recounts the circumstances under which Joseph Smith acquired the two Egyptian scrolls, and his claim to have identified one of them as an account by the Biblical patriarch Abraham of his sojourn in Egypt (as described in Genesis 12:10-20). Then in chapters 3-10 Larson steps the reader through a detailed array of primary physical evidences which establish four major points: (1) the papyri which came to public attention in 1967 (color photographs of which are reproduced in the book) are indisputably those which Joseph had in his possession when he produced the Book of Abraham, (2) Joseph Smith did purport that the Book of Abraham was a translation from one of these papyrus scrolls, (3) the scrolls are now known to date from around the time of Christ, 1  some 2,000 years after the time of Abraham, 2 and (4) the scrolls have been identified by Egyptologists - including LDS scholars - as common, pagan Egyptian burial documents, that do not mention Abraham and have no connection to the contents of the Book of Abraham in the Pearl of Great Price.

1  There was no "time of christ."

2   Nor was there a "time of abraham"

It's all shit.

[Gwaithmir]

Interestingly. although there are Mormon churches in this area (W. Massachusetts), Mormon missionaries have never shown up at my door. It's always the Jehovah's Witnesses who visit me.

[Dancefortwo]

But would that have been sufficient evidence for the hillbillies in the US?

The Rosetta Stone was found in 1799 but it took a while for Frenchman, Jean Franscois Champollion to sift through the Rosetta Stone and break the language code and even then his work was only know to few of his colleagues.  He died in 1832 or so, but it still took quite a while for his work to be accepted by his peers.  The task of decoding the stone was taken over by another fella named Thomas Young who worked for years on the Stone.   It was somehwere around 1840 that anything was published on the stone and even then it took a while for this information to circulate among the regular folks and it certainly would have takens some time to reach Ohio and Missouri where Joseph Smith was located at the time.

Joseph Smith had some other Egyptian document he was going to "translate".   I can't remember what it was called but whatever it was he never got around to it.  Perhaps the news of the Rosetta Stone finally reached Ohio and he knew the jig was up.  Anyway, he had a falling out with other church members over the direction the church should take plus he proposed marriage to their wives, which didn't go over too well.....I can't imagine why.    Joseph was put in jail on charges of staging a riot and his former colleagues stormed the jail and shot him when he jumped out of a second story window in 1844.    

Joseph Smith never spoke any other language except English.  

Oh, and don't forget, Sceintology was invented so Mormons wouldn't look quite so ridiculous.

There was a YouTube that was about an hour long we used to post on TTA that had a lot of the BS Smith did with his fraudulent Egyptian scrolls and other crap, and his hitting on the wives of his associates. I can't find it. He claimed he could translate hieroglyphs and papyri. As was just about everything he did, it was all total crap.

Beating a dead horse with this papyri subject, sorry.

I was in error in my previous post that Smith looked at the papyri and claimed it was Abraham sacrificing his son Isaac, it was another story from the book of Abraham Smith claimed it to be.   Whatever the case, Smith in his utter stupidity looked at the papyri which had pieces missing and sketched in the missing parts to make it align with his claims.

This is the papyri and what he sketched in to make it fit his bible story....



He claimed the four funerary urns at the bottom were four characters from the Bible when they were actually the internal organs of the deceased person on the table. 


But the head of the person with the knife, missing in the papryi, is Osiris and should have looked like this.




And then he went ahead and translated a bunch of Egyptian hierglyphics which are to the left of the scene (not in the photo) and unsuprisingly, it turned out to be so far off the mark it's laughable.

He sketched in several missing pieced from other papyri to make it work for his worldview.

Now remember, Egyptian items were pretty much unknown to the general population, particularly in Ohio and Missouri.  These papyrus were strange curiosities and oddities from a world unknown to farmers in the Mid-West.   Everyone today knows about Egyptian mummies and Egyptian culture, even little kids, but in the mid 1830's that wasn't the case. That's not to say people didn't know about Egypt because there are pharaohs in the Bible but they didn't know the details of it's culture so one could only imagine where these foreign and antique things came from and what they represented and that's exactly what Joseph Smith did.     

These papyrus went missing for about 100 years and when they resurfaced in 1967 the Mormon church had a problem on it's hands because this was so blatantly stupid.  Their founder looked like a blundering idiot and a fool.     

There's a good reason Mormons and all other religions discourage it's followers to investigate the claims being made.  It's gotta be pretty tough in this age of the internet though.

[Teddy]

My daughter is transgender - MTF.  She came out to me when she was 18.  I wish we had been aware of her gender identity much earlier but she hid it from us until she just couldn't anylonger.  And it's weird because my husband and I are pretty liberal minded people. I'm an atheist and he's an agnostic.  We're theatre people and around all types and sorts of creative folks but even so my daughter couldn't bring herself to tell us.   Some of that was just teenage angst and even in the best of teen-parent relationships there is a communication gap between generations. But it turned out great in the end.  She has a fantastic job in IT and married another transgender girl over a year ago.  I married them.  I'm an ordained Dudest Priest curtesy of this The Big Lebowski website....https://dudeism.com/ordination/    



Anyway, thank you for this thread and what must be a rather cathartic expression of your recent life.  It's very interesting to hear from someone who has gone through what you have experienced.  

A little side information on the Egyptian papyrus Joseph Smith "translated".  Twenty-some years before Joseph first laid eyes on that papyrus, Napoleon and his army invaded Egypt and pilfered several of the sites and brought back Egyptian iconography and other items which became all the rage in Europe.   Egyptian styles influenced a lot of the decorative arts, jewelry and other crafts throughout Europe and some of the papyrus scrolls floating around Europe eventually made it's way across the Atlantic to America as curiosity items and this is how Joseph Smith came in contact with the Embalming of Osiris from the Book of the Dead.  So we can thank Napoleon Bonaparte for all this.  

ETA: The Rosetta Stone was discovered in 1799 but it's translation capabilities were unknown by the general population and especially by someone the likes of Joseph Smith. Using the Rosetta stone would have clearly translated the subject depicted as Oisris being embalmed.

Thank you for sharing about your daughter as well. We all have different journeys and it sounds like your daughter felt enough safety and love from her parents to reveal who she was and be open about it. My siblings and parents have made it clear that if it's a choice of losing me or keeping me in their lives, they'll treat me and call me whatever I like. So, often, the horrible thing we imagine might happen as a consequence, turns out to not be as awful as anticipated or imagined.

[Minimalist]

There is always the Los Lunas Decalogue Stone in New Mexico.  Mormons, it seems, were as adept at forgery as any early jesus freak.

[Teddy]

Sorry took me a minute. I was trying to gather my sources for the Book of Abraham stuff. Because... As I was deconverting, this was one of the pet issues that I obsessed about for a little bit. The history of the Rosetta Stone and the trendy Egyptian artifacts at the time and all of that is fine and very interesting in its own right. But the thing that bothered me was as I was looking for answers, for the first time, I became aware of cognitive dissonance. Like, I had passed my head through the veil and could look at what they were trying to do to me.

Is it alright to post sources? I don't know. I don't want to seem spammy, especially considering it's a religious cult website and apologetics.

On the lds website, their official, sanctioned website, in the gospel topics essay, TRANSLATION AND HISTORICITY OF THE BOOK OF ABRAHAM ESSAY, they admit that the papyrus found does not translate into the Book of Abraham. Period. They just admit it straight out that not only is it a funerary text but that it is aged way after Abraham supposedly lived, LDS scholars and non-LDS scholars agree.

By the by, that admission itself had my Mormon self at the time saying "No! What do you mean??? What do you mean???" in disbelief. In the Pearl of Great Price, where the fascimile of Anubis and Osiris is printed, JS included a numbered translation of every symbol and figure. He called Anubis some false priest who was sacrificing Abraham upon the altar, with the bird being an angel of the Lord, etc. So, this admission by the church in this hidden part of their website is damning. Because the prophets are never supposed to be wrong. How can I follow them unquestionably as if they were God himself on earth, if they can't know all languages, or things might be found out later to be a mistake. It really broke my heart. But it kept going.

The church and FAIRMormon have said that "translated" merely means writing down religious scriptures from God. That Smith didn't translate it how we define it(taking something written in one language and transferring it into a different language) but that he took "inspiration" from the papyrus for historical events that really happened to Abraham and he wrote those down from his head, or rather, "revelation from God". 

Okay. 

But it says in the chapter header for the BoA that this book was written by Abraham's own hand upon papyrus. With the fascimile images right next to it, numbered for the symbols meaning, it heavily directs you to conclude that the papyrus Abraham wrote upon and the papyrus with pictures that JS found were one and the same.

FAIRMormon says this about the chapter header text in the BoA:

However, Kirtland Egyptian Paper (KEP) - A1 has the following caption: “Translation of the Book of Abraham written by his own hand upon papyrus and found in the catacombs of Egypt.” This seems to indicate that the phrase "by his own hand upon papyrus" is a 19th-century addition to the text by either Joseph Smith, or the two scribes in whose handwriting the documents are written in, viz., W. W. Phelps and Willard Richards, respectively. This is bolstered by the addition of the phrase “and found in the catacombs of Egypt” that appear in KEPA 1. The phrase "found in the catacombs of Egypt" would not have appeared on the papyrus itself.


What are you talking about? What does any of that matter? How can you explain the "why" of such a phrase used and the age of the document when he didn't even use it to write the words down? 

Then, FAIRMormon in their article on the BoA say that the papyrus JS used was burned in a fire. Apparently, he had tons of these scrolls laying around and the only ones that survived the fire are not actually the BoA and have nothing to do with Abraham. Yes. They say that right after already redefining translation to not even need a physical papyrus to look at.

And this is ignoring all the quotes from prophets, including Joseph himself, who have made the equivalence between the book of Abraham and the papyrus JS found. 

I know that FAIRMormon is just offering up explanations and possibilities because they're just an apologetics site. They don't actually know the answers. But it can only be 1 of these explanations. Either the papyrus is a newer edition of older texts(which doesn't solve the problem that it doesn't say what it is supposed to say), the original was burned up and JS was just messing around to put numbered translations on the existing papyri figures, or he never used a papyrus at all. None of any of those is what I was taught in any of my classes. Not in Sunday school, not in study guides, not at BYU-I when I went to that college. So, the church making up their own definition of translation without telling anyone... Is lying.

The men who speak for God, that I was supposed to obey unflinchingly were deliberately misleading me by their own admission.

[Dom]

Sorry took me a minute. I was trying to gather my sources for the Book of Abraham stuff. Because... As I was deconverting, this was one of the pet issues that I obsessed about for a little bit. The history of the Rosetta Stone and the trendy Egyptian artifacts at the time and all of that is fine and very interesting in its own right. But the thing that bothered me was as I was looking for answers, for the first time, I became aware of cognitive dissonance. Like, I had passed my head through the veil and could look at what they were trying to do to me.

Is it alright to post sources? I don't know. I don't want to seem spammy, especially considering it's a religious cult website and apologetics.

On the lds website, their official, sanctioned website, in the gospel topics essay, TRANSLATION AND HISTORICITY OF THE BOOK OF ABRAHAM ESSAY, they admit that the papyrus found does not translate into the Book of Abraham. Period. They just admit it straight out that not only is it a funerary text but that it is aged way after Abraham supposedly lived, LDS scholars and non-LDS scholars agree.

By the by, that admission itself had my Mormon self at the time saying "No! What do you mean??? What do you mean???" in disbelief. In the Pearl of Great Price, where the fascimile of Anubis and Osiris is printed, JS included a numbered translation of every symbol and figure. He called Anubis some false priest who was sacrificing Abraham upon the altar, with the bird being an angel of the Lord, etc. So, this admission by the church in this hidden part of their website is damning. Because the prophets are never supposed to be wrong. How can I follow them unquestionably as if they were God himself on earth, if they can't know all languages, or things might be found out later to be a mistake. It really broke my heart. But it kept going.

The church and FAIRMormon have said that "translated" merely means writing down religious scriptures from God. That Smith didn't translate it how we define it(taking something written in one language and transferring it into a different language) but that he took "inspiration" from the papyrus for historical events that really happened to Abraham and he wrote those down from his head, or rather, "revelation from God". 

Okay. 

But it says in the chapter header for the BoA that this book was written by Abraham's own hand upon papyrus. With the fascimile images right next to it, numbered for the symbols meaning, it heavily directs you to conclude that the papyrus Abraham wrote upon and the papyrus with pictures that JS found were one and the same.

FAIRMormon says this about the chapter header text in the BoA:

However, Kirtland Egyptian Paper (KEP) - A1 has the following caption: “Translation of the Book of Abraham written by his own hand upon papyrus and found in the catacombs of Egypt.” This seems to indicate that the phrase "by his own hand upon papyrus" is a 19th-century addition to the text by either Joseph Smith, or the two scribes in whose handwriting the documents are written in, viz., W. W. Phelps and Willard Richards, respectively. This is bolstered by the addition of the phrase “and found in the catacombs of Egypt” that appear in KEPA 1. The phrase "found in the catacombs of Egypt" would not have appeared on the papyrus itself.


What are you talking about? What does any of that matter? How can you explain the "why" of such a phrase used and the age of the document when he didn't even use it to write the words down? 

Then, FAIRMormon in their article on the BoA say that the papyrus JS used was burned in a fire. Apparently, he had tons of these scrolls laying around and the only ones that survived the fire are not actually the BoA and have nothing to do with Abraham. Yes. They say that right after already redefining translation to not even need a physical papyrus to look at.

And this is ignoring all the quotes from prophets, including Joseph himself, who have made the equivalence between the book of Abraham and the papyrus JS found. 

I know that FAIRMormon is just offering up explanations and possibilities because they're just an apologetics site. They don't actually know the answers. But it can only be 1 of these explanations. Either the papyrus is a newer edition of older texts(which doesn't solve the problem that it doesn't say what it is supposed to say), the original was burned up and JS was just messing around to put numbered translations on the existing papyri figures, or he never used a papyrus at all. None of any of those is what I was taught in any of my classes. Not in Sunday school, not in study guides, not at BYU-I when I went to that college. So, the church making up their own definition of translation without telling anyone... Is lying.

The men who speak for God, that I was supposed to obey unflinchingly were deliberately misleading me by their own admission.

It's fine to post links to any supporting material. (Except porn)

[Inkubus]

There is always the Los Lunas Decalogue Stone in New Mexico.  Mormons, it seems, were as adept at forgery as any early jesus freak.

What's that church in Europe that has a collection of Jebus foreskins, all genuine.

[SYZ]

What's that church in Europe that has a collection of Jebus foreskins, all genuine.

Yes... apparently they were recovered off the coastline of the Mediterranean Sea by four skin divers.

[Minimalist]

The men who speak for God, that I was supposed to obey unflinchingly were deliberately misleading me by their own admission.

Standard fare for all churches.

[Dom]

The men who speak for God, that I was supposed to obey unflinchingly were deliberately misleading me by their own admission.

Standard fare for all churches.

Yep, but they don't tend to admit it.

[Minimalist]

Most of them have the advantage of having destroyed the original sources which could disprove their bullshit.

That's where the mormons fucked up.

[Inkubus]

What's that church in Europe that has a collection of Jebus foreskins, all genuine.

Yes... apparently they were recovered off the coastline of the Mediterranean Sea by four skin divers.

Groins.

[airportkid]

... What's that church in Europe that has a collection of Jebus foreskins, all genuine ...

They kept growing back.  They finally nailed the entire man to damn cross but that only kept him still for a few days before "coming back".

[Inkubus]

[Minimalist]

There is always the Los Lunas Decalogue Stone in New Mexico.  Mormons, it seems, were as adept at forgery as any early jesus freak.

What's that church in Europe that has a collection of Jebus foreskins, all genuine.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Prepuce

Mary Dzon says that for many people during the Medieval period, devotion to the Holy Prepuce reflected a focus on the humanity of Jesus.[4]
According to Farley, "Depending on what you read, there were eight, twelve, fourteen, or even 18 different holy foreskins in various European towns during the Middle Ages."[6] In addition to the Holy Foreskin of Rome (later Calcata), other claimants included the Cathedral of Le Puy-en-Velay, Santiago de Compostela, the city of Antwerp, Coulombs in the diocese of Chartres, as well as Chartres itself, and churches in Besançon, Metz, Hildesheim, Charroux.[9] Conques, Langres, Fécamp, and two in Auvergne.
One of the most famous prepuces arrived in Antwerp in Brabant in 1100 as a gift from king Baldwin I of Jerusalem, who purchased it in the Holy Land in the course of the first crusade. This prepuce became famous when the bishop of Cambray, during the celebration of the Mass, saw three drops of blood blotting the linens of the altar. A special chapel was constructed and processions organised in honour of the miraculous relic, which became the goal of pilgrimages. In 1426 a brotherhood was founded in the cathedral "van der heiliger Besnidenissen ons liefs Heeren Jhesu Cristi in onser liever Vrouwen Kercke t' Antwerpen"; its 24 members were all abbots and prominent laymen. The relic disappeared in 1566, but the chapel still exists, decorated by two stained glass windows donated by king Henry VII of England and his wife Elizabeth of York in 1503

[Dancefortwo]

Sorry took me a minute. I was trying to gather my sources for the Book of Abraham stuff. Because... As I was deconverting, this was one of the pet issues that I obsessed about for a little bit. The history of the Rosetta Stone and the trendy Egyptian artifacts at the time and all of that is fine and very interesting in its own right. But the thing that bothered me was as I was looking for answers, for the first time, I became aware of cognitive dissonance. Like, I had passed my head through the veil and could look at what they were trying to do to me.

Is it alright to post sources? I don't know. I don't want to seem spammy, especially considering it's a religious cult website and apologetics.

On the lds website, their official, sanctioned website, in the gospel topics essay, TRANSLATION AND HISTORICITY OF THE BOOK OF ABRAHAM ESSAY, they admit that the papyrus found does not translate into the Book of Abraham. Period. They just admit it straight out that not only is it a funerary text but that it is aged way after Abraham supposedly lived, LDS scholars and non-LDS scholars agree.

By the by, that admission itself had my Mormon self at the time saying "No! What do you mean??? What do you mean???" in disbelief. In the Pearl of Great Price, where the fascimile of Anubis and Osiris is printed, JS included a numbered translation of every symbol and figure. He called Anubis some false priest who was sacrificing Abraham upon the altar, with the bird being an angel of the Lord, etc. So, this admission by the church in this hidden part of their website is damning. Because the prophets are never supposed to be wrong. How can I follow them unquestionably as if they were God himself on earth, if they can't know all languages, or things might be found out later to be a mistake. It really broke my heart. But it kept going.

The church and FAIRMormon have said that "translated" merely means writing down religious scriptures from God. That Smith didn't translate it how we define it(taking something written in one language and transferring it into a different language) but that he took "inspiration" from the papyrus for historical events that really happened to Abraham and he wrote those down from his head, or rather, "revelation from God". 

Okay. 

But it says in the chapter header for the BoA that this book was written by Abraham's own hand upon papyrus. With the fascimile images right next to it, numbered for the symbols meaning, it heavily directs you to conclude that the papyrus Abraham wrote upon and the papyrus with pictures that JS found were one and the same.

FAIRMormon says this about the chapter header text in the BoA:

However, Kirtland Egyptian Paper (KEP) - A1 has the following caption: “Translation of the Book of Abraham written by his own hand upon papyrus and found in the catacombs of Egypt.” This seems to indicate that the phrase "by his own hand upon papyrus" is a 19th-century addition to the text by either Joseph Smith, or the two scribes in whose handwriting the documents are written in, viz., W. W. Phelps and Willard Richards, respectively. This is bolstered by the addition of the phrase “and found in the catacombs of Egypt” that appear in KEPA 1. The phrase "found in the catacombs of Egypt" would not have appeared on the papyrus itself.


What are you talking about? What does any of that matter? How can you explain the "why" of such a phrase used and the age of the document when he didn't even use it to write the words down? 

Then, FAIRMormon in their article on the BoA say that the papyrus JS used was burned in a fire. Apparently, he had tons of these scrolls laying around and the only ones that survived the fire are not actually the BoA and have nothing to do with Abraham. Yes. They say that right after already redefining translation to not even need a physical papyrus to look at.

And this is ignoring all the quotes from prophets, including Joseph himself, who have made the equivalence between the book of Abraham and the papyrus JS found. 

I know that FAIRMormon is just offering up explanations and possibilities because they're just an apologetics site. They don't actually know the answers. But it can only be 1 of these explanations. Either the papyrus is a newer edition of older texts(which doesn't solve the problem that it doesn't say what it is supposed to say), the original was burned up and JS was just messing around to put numbered translations on the existing papyri figures, or he never used a papyrus at all. None of any of those is what I was taught in any of my classes. Not in Sunday school, not in study guides, not at BYU-I when I went to that college. So, the church making up their own definition of translation without telling anyone... Is lying.

The men who speak for God, that I was supposed to obey unflinchingly were deliberately misleading me by their own admission.

The church and FAIRMormon have said that "translated" merely means writing down religious scriptures from God. That Smith didn't translate it how we define it(taking something written in one language and transferring it into a different language) but that he took "inspiration" from the papyrus for historical events that really happened to Abraham and he wrote those down from his head, or rather, "revelation from God". 

Red flags always go up when holy text has to be defined in a way that explains problems away.  "Oh, Smith didn't really translate text the way we think of translating text so we'll re-define the word "translate" to make our religion work."  

[Minimalist]

D42, that's the very definition of "apologetics" or, in plain English, "Bullshit makes the flowers grow."