I'm not feeling too concerned if any particular Mormon wants to say something like, "well if you believe it then it doesn't really matter if there are problems." Honestly I don't know what else to expect. Believing takes a special kind of imagination.
I've found myself mostly disinterested in Book of Abraham stuff for years. I've tried to care but even as an active member I was confused why anyone did care. It's largely ignored in the church anyway. I mean that one passage in Abr 3 is fawned over to a ridiculous extent but other than that, I couldn't figure out why anyone cared and thus couldn't care myself. So, I wanted to comment on the values he mentions.
Premortal existence was already well establishing in Smith’s thought by 1832; in the Book of Abraham, we see ourselves in a primordial setting, acting as independent agents, participating in the counsel and decisions that resulted in our mortal embodiment.
That's not what I see. I see a few elites mixed in with a bunch of nobodies and the bunch of nobodies presumably making a decision based on little information, while otherwise fawning over big personalities. I mean it's a pretty silly scenario in the sense that it's extremely black or white. It's as if people are in a big group, there's a plain manifest God directly in front of them, a group of fancy-pants'd confident proud people shroud in elitist clothes or something, and a couple of the fancy-pants'd vying for the attention of the supreme leader and the group of nobodies by perhaps their sheer looks, and likely nothing more. It's like fans picking sides in a football game based on which mascot looks cutest or coolest.
As evident in a Creation account wherein the Gods work cooperatively, councils are introduced as the mode of government pertaining to Divine Beings. Joseph was, in fact, at this moment working to shift the burden of church leadership more emphatically from himself to presiding councils, and that principle of shared governance (in which women are increasingly participating) continues to unfold today.
He's getting far more out of this than I. I think it's true Joseph got acquainted somewhat with the divine council ideas in the Bible and ran with it, by saying Gods instead of God in this rendering of the creation account. But I don't know it explicitly teaches councils, nor that the Church should be presided by councils, nor that women should increasingly participate. That's some rather imaginative summary though.
The book also establishes priesthood as an eternal power, one that precedes the organization of the earth itself. It thus is not a temporary dispensation of ecclesiastical power effective in a mortal sphere, as it is for Catholics. It has cosmic, eternal significance, is participated in by women as well as men, and finds its fullest expression in those covenants and promises and binding rituals of the temple.
Women are participating with the priesthood? It mentions a couple of women and suddenly there is some explained order that is less than patriarchal in a strict sense? Where did he get that from? I mean, this appears to be not much more than taking liberties with creative license, hoping to make the record seem useful. But I don't see it saying much of any of this. And from my perspective the concept of priesthood is more of a detriment to the church than a help-meet (like a woman is).
