The article does not explicitly state, but seems to imply, that there have been discovered purportedly Christian writings which predate the canonical New Testament texts and which contain doctrines that conform to LDS theology.
Is the argument that these texts are simply fragments of or paraphrases of the Book Of Mormon?
Or is the argument that these texts supplement the Book Of Mormon?
If so, this would be an enormous archaeological breakthrough.
To date there has never been found a non-canonical Christian document that definitively predates the canonical documents. The only non-canonical document that any claim can be made for at all is the purported "Gospel Of Thomas", but even the earliest daters of that text give a compositional range that falls after the composition of the canonical Gospels on the late end. There are no internal historical details in the Thomas text that give any clue to when it was written and the parallels between the layout of Thomas and the Diatessaron indicate that it was probably cribbed from the Diatessaron - which is a much more well-attested text - some time in the 170s or 180s.
So if papyri were found that are undeniably Christian and likely predate the canonical texts, this would be a major finding that would be reported in organs besides The Deseret News.
I really wish the article had given more concrete details of who found these texts, exactly where they were found, which scholars have made these analytical comments, etc.
I agree, this would be an incredible discovery and there would at least be pictures.
Of course I still have problems with the claim that Egypt was the “fountain” of Christian knowledge for a thousand years.
What was found? Who found it? When was it found? Where was it found? How do they support Mormonism or Joe Smith? I’d actually be interested in this topic, but as it stands, this article reads like, “Some guys found some stuff which proves we’re right!”
Restornu, do you have a more useful article?
From wikipedia: “The Deseret News is owned by Deseret News Publishing Company, a subsidiary of Deseret Management Corporation, which is a for-profit business holdings company owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (widely known as the Mormon or LDS Church).”