Archea...

[Iluvatar]

That's not why I posted this. I haven't concluded that it was a fabrication. There is some very interesting circumstantial and anecdotal evidence supporting the content (if not the translation) of The Book of Abraham.

I know the arguments employed by farms, fairboard, etc. Most of them (specifically the "we haven't found the papyri that JS used" argument), are weak considering the real evidence. It's mostly spin, IMO.

That said, I don't need the papyri to tell me that JS had a gift for prophecy and revelation. That is self evident. The content of th Book of Abraham stands with or without the Papyri.

[Archaea]

I haven't taken the time to break down the relative interests. All I ever receive from parties are conclusory declarations.

First declaration, I don't read and write Hebrew, Arabic or Egyptian, so I'm left to the proverbial winds to believe whatever else someone who does tells me.

Second, if FARMS is spin, tell me how it is spin.

How do we have a firm conviction that we have some form of it and that it is only the Book of Breathings?

Just somebody who is anti-Church telling me it is so, won't enlighten me. I'm not saying you are or aren't anti-Church, just saying, you've done no better than most sources. I don't rely upon the Tanners for truth, because they're so crooked they'll be screwed in the ground when they die.

I've only read fragments of what people claim to know, basically the papyrii were in Chicago, a fire occurred, then somehow some part of what people believe or don't believe were the papyrii showed up in New York.

How many years intervened between disappearance and re-appearance?

Who had first hand knowledge of what the papyrii looked like?

In law, we have a concept called chain of custody, if it's broken, you can often throw out the evidence as being unreliable. In terms of the "documents", was chain of custody broken? It sounds like it.

So why do some people believe we have at least fragments of what JS had?