How We Know Things

When we know all there is to know about Egyptology along with how other ancient cultures used that language, and we know all there is to know about God’s intentions and methods with the Book of Abraham, there will be no conflict. At this time we know very little about either.

What if English speaking USA were being researched 2000 years from now as an ancient civilization and the people of that day had only broken the code of deciphering our language 150 years earlier. Imagine a researcher doing a paper on how this civilization used sports as entertainment. He finds interest in the excavation of a football stadium. Researchers at that site know that something called football was played there, but know very little about what it involved. In his research of what appears to be ruins of residences in the vicinity, he discovers a journal of what appears to be a sports enthusiast who writes a lot about football and even describes some of the rules. Because of this groundbreaking research, archaeologists assume that football involved a round ball that was to be advanced toward a goal net at either end of a long field mostly with the feet and without the use of hands. What the archaeologists have no way of knowing is that the writer of the journal was from England, and was a big soccer fan, even though he was living in Green Bay for a time.

In this case, the translation of the journal was perfectly accurate, but their assumptions were completely off base. There were many countries and cultures who used the Egyptian language anciently. We need to not be too hasty in jumping to conclusions about what is an accurate translation or interpretation of an ancient Egyptian document based on the small thumbnail sketch of those ancient civilizations which we have today.