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Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

Authors

John Gee

Keywords

Book of Abraham, anti-Mormon, ancient Chaldea, ancient Egypt, Samuel Mercer, Crocodile God, Pharaoh, ancient Mesopotamia

Abstract

In the famous anti-Mormon crusade against the book of Abraham in 1912, one of the individuals involved asserted that the book of Abraham could not be true because "Chaldeans and Egyptians are hopelessly mixed together, although as dissimilar and remote in language, religion and locality as are American and Chinese." This exaggerated opinion was seconded by the Reverend Samuel A. B. Mercer: "I challenge any intelligent person who knows Chaldean and Egyptian history to read the first chapter of said book [of Abraham] without experiencing the same feeling. Chaldea and Egypt are hopelessly mixed . . . . No one can believe that Abraham made such a blunder in his geography."

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