This an excellent account of how the Book of Abraham is not a literal translation as Joseph
Smith and the early church leaders claimed. It also includes the various
LDS apologist "answers" as to why the translation doesn't match. If you are unfamiliar with the
Book of Abraham problems, you must get this book.
Unfortunately, this book includes a bunch of Christian nonsense woven throughout--especially the end. I stayed up late to finish Charles Larson's book -- read part of it yesterday, and the rest of it tonight. Fascinating stuff.
He's not as scholarly as I had hoped he would be, though. When he focuses his discussion on the Book of Abraham, and on Joseph Smith's claim to be able to translate Egyptian and such things, he is riveting, and he succeeds very well. But too often he goes beyond that, and sets up the Book of Abraham as the very foundation of Joseph Smith's credibility so that he can sweep it and Mormonism aside once the Book of Abraham's modern origins are clearly established; and whenever he does, I think he betrays his second focus, one which I don't think he meets nearly as well, and which, frankly, I would rather have done without.
His "second focus" becomes painfully apparent in the last chapter of the book, when it suddenly becomes clear that his book is not only aimed at telling the story of the Book of Abraham, but also at persuading me to confess Christ and be saved. I do wish he had left this aspect out of the book; if he had, this would have been a much better book -- and I would have felt a lot better about recommending it to folks.
I mean, doesn't it seem sort of oddly incongruent, immediately after having made an earnest plea to the reader to focus on evidence and rational common sense and to put away religious superstition that can't be justified by observable facts, to then invite me to dive feet first into *yet* *another* *brand* of what amounts to pretty much the very same suspension of critical thought?
Oh well -- in fairness, I guess if I were a theist, and he were trying to sell atheism in place of Mormonism, I'd be upset about that, too.
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