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Posted: **Sun Jun 03, 2007 4:13 pm**

bjw on MADB said,

I've heard it mentioned before the belief that Joseph Smith stole the names from facsimile 1 of the Book of Abraham from Exodus 6. However, does anyone on here believe that maybe this may lends support to the Book of Abraham since the names were around during the time that Israel was in bondage to Egypt. Since we know certain forms of the names were in Egypt at the time. The names I caught were Libni/Libnah (v.17), Elkanah/Elkenah (v.24), Korah/Korash (v.24), Mahali/Mahmackrah (v.19), and Pharoah/Pharoah (several places in ch. 6). Has anyone written any articles or any apologists tackled the similarities between facsimile 1 and Exodus 6?

I've never heard of this before. I mean, I knew about the Elkenah/Elkanah parallel, but I didn't realize there were possible parallels for all four names packed into a single Bible chapter. That's quite telling, I think.

-CK

Posted: **Sun Jun 03, 2007 10:10 pm**

I hadn't heard this before either, CK; but I'm glad to see it now. It's interesting to find so many parallels so tightly clustered. How meaningful the connection is seems to me an open question. The Mahmackrah/Mahali parallel is relatively weak. And the Exodus 6 is largely genealogical, so it naturally contains a few dozen names. In any case, this is fascinating stuff!

Don

Posted: **Sun Jun 03, 2007 10:21 pm**

Hey Don,

Another possible problem is that one of the names (I think it was Korash) does not appear in the earliest rescensions of the Book of Abraham. It appears to have been added to the Book of Abraham deity lists in the second generation of manuscripts. So if Joseph Smith modeled the other names on Exodus 6, he'd have had to go back to the same passage to find a model for the additional name.

Still, this is very interesting. Props to bjw for pointing it out.

-CK

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really interesting Book of Abraham post by bjw

really interesting Book of Abraham post by bjw