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Here are a few additional thoughts and resources:
See “Anachronisms in the Book of Mormon” at mormonr.org, accessed April 14, 2024, for an overview of the arguments for and against the presence of anachronisms in the Book of Mormon.
The points made in this section are drawn and summarized from “Anachronisms in the Book of Mormon” in note 1 above, of which I was one of the lead authors and researchers.
Alan R. Millard, “Abraham,” in Anchor Bible Dictionary, ed. David Noel Freedman (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 1:37.
Daniel DeWitt Lowery, Toward a Poetics of Genesis 1–11: Reading Genesis 4:17–22 in its Near Eastern Context (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2013), 134.
“Preface,” NRSVue Holy Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2022), xii.
See Martin Heide and Joris Peters, Camels in the Biblical World (University Park, PA: Eisenbrauns, 2021).
See Stephen O. Smoot, “‘In the Land of the Chaldeans’: The Search for Abraham’s Homeland Revisited,” BYU Studies Quarterly 56, no. 3 (2017): 7–37. See also Paul Y. Hoskisson “Where Was Ur of the Chaldees?” in The Pearl of Great Price: Revelations from God, ed. H. Donl Peterson and Charles D. Tate Jr. )Provo, Utah: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 1989), 119–136.
See Stephen O. Smoot et al., “Zeptah and Egyptes,” BYU Studies Quarterly 61, no. 5 (2022): 101–106.
This is the implicit question Runnells raises in his objection, but which he does not bother to actually articulate.
Smoot et al., “Zeptah and Egyptes,” 103–104.
Incidentally, Runnells is mistaken when he claims the papyri date to the Roman Period (the first century AD). See Stephen O. Smoot et al., “What Egyptian Papyri Did Joseph Smith Possess?” and “The Ancient Owners of the Joseph Smith Papyri,” BYU Studies Quarterly, 61, no. 4 (2022): 13–18, 201–205.
Smoot et al., “Zeptah and Egyptes,” 104
Smoot et al., “Zeptah and Egyptes,” 104.
For just one instance, see the Fifth Dynasty tomb inscription of Ptahshepses (British Museum, EA 682, columns 2 and 3).
Stephen E. Thompson, “Egyptology and the Book of Abraham,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 28, no. 1 (Spring 1995): 154–155.
Again, this appears to be the implicit argument the author of the CES Letter is making but which he does not actually articulate, perhaps because he himself is unaware of precisely how Pharaoh is apparently anachronistic in the text.
See Ogden Goelet, “The Nature of the Term pr-‘3 During the Old Kingdom,” Bulletin of the Egyptological Seminar 10 (1989/1990): 77–90, esp. 86, 90.
See the discussion in Stephen O. Smoot, “Framing the Book of Abraham: Presumptions and Paradigms,” Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 47 (2021): 282–286.
See John Gee, An Introduction to the Book of Abraham (Provo, Utah: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2017), 143, who observed, “The references to the facsimiles within the text of the Book of Abraham seem to have been nineteenth-century editorial insertions.” I believe Gee’s conclusion is probably correct, although see Kerry Muhlestein, “Assessing the Joseph Smith Papyri: An Introduction to the Historiography of Their Acquisitions, Translations, and Interpretations,” Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 22 (2016): 29–32; “The Explanation-Defying Book of Abraham,” in A Reason for Faith: Navigating LDS Doctrine and Church History, ed. Laura Harris Hales (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book; Provo, Utah: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 2016), 82; “Egyptian Papyri and the Book of Abraham: A Faithful, Egyptological Point of View,” in No Weapon Shall Prosper: New Light on Sensitive Issues, ed. Robert L. Millet (Provo, Utah: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2011), 225–26, for an alternate explanation.
See additionally John Gee, “‘The Wind and the Fire to Be My Chariot’: The Anachronism that Wasn’t,” Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 50 (2022): 299–320.
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