Rating: 
Summary: Not a documentary
Review: Upon seeing an advertisement claiming that this video is a "fair and balanced documentary", I became very interested and immediately began to investigate. The Institute of Religious Research? I had never heard of them. Are they really fair and balanced as they claim? My first stop was to look at the experts interviewed in the film. There I found Protestant Seminary professors, including Craig Blomberg of the Denver Seminary who along with Stephen Robinson of BYU wrote How Great the Divide. That's okay, but where was the balance? Where were the BYU and FARMS scholars? Where were Daniel Peterson, Hugh Nibley, and other renowned LDS scholars such as Richard Bushman of Columbia University? There were not there? Rather, those supposedly presenting the "balance" were former LDS Church employees, former BYU Professors, and former Utahns. The most glaring omission was Stephen Robinson. Why was Craig Blomberg appearing and not Stephen Robinson? I then followed the provided link to "find out more about the Book of Abraham". I assumed that the link would take me to the LDS church's website where the actual text of the Book of Abraham is available. Oh contraire, the link instead took me to a site called Mormons in Transition (definitely no balance found there). I then went to the Institute of Religious Research own web site to see what other publications they provided. No surprise this time. There was an arsenal of anti-Mormon books, pamphlets, and videos. The cat was now out of the bag. This is just another anti-Mormon production masquerading as a documentary. As with other anti-Mormon productions, the producers do their best to get the viewer to believe that the LDS view is being presented (the former employees and former BYU professors, and yes, even former Utahns are supposed to have some degree of credibility) when it really isn't. With the same tired, old scurrilous tactics employed here, this film can hardly be classified as a documentary of any sort.
Rating:
Summary: chain of possession of the evidence?
Review: When something disappears for over 100 years, can the chain of possession really be trusted?Given that throughout LDS history there have been fakeries created and lies told by those with an ax to grind against the LDS church, this so-called evidence doesn't stand up in light of the fact that it was missing for so long. I'm not saying that the "funerary documents" examined in the movie are fake. They are probably real funerary documents. But there is no guarantee that those documents are the same documents that Joseph Smith translated. There has been plenty of opportunity for swapping them out and/or removing what JS originally translated. Even a well-meaning LDS member during the early days could have removed the Book of Abraham from the mummies for safe-keeping, leaving the remaining "ordinary" documents with the mummies for someone later to mistakenly conclude that they constituted everything that was originally included. Even assuming the modern-day owners and investigators of the items are totally honest, the evidence is only as good as those who had possession of it in the past. All that's been shown is that _those particular_ documents were not the Book of Abraham, and that we don't know where the originals are that were used by JS.
Rating: 
Summary: Response to "Review" of Oct. 20th: "Not a Documentary"
Review: When the "Amazing" Randy revealed on national TV the preacher Peter Popoff for the total fraud he was in trying to claim "revelations" through the use of a hidden radio receiver in his ear, no one accused Randy of bias for not allowing Popoff and/or his cronies to rebutt the well-documented and irrefutible truths of the video. The proof of the fraud was overwhelming and indefensible. So also the case with J. Smith's "Book of Abraham." Today we can fully read and understand Egyptian hieratic, demotic, and coptic languages. And the actual papyrii used by Smith in this deception have been unequivocally identified and translated by true Egyptologists, which neither Nibley, Bushman or Peterson are. Thus, as none of these has any expertise in any relevant field, to have included them would have been bias in favor of Mormonism and completely contrary to determining the truth of the matter. Thus, it strikes me as a bit disingenuous to criticize the content of this DVD with no better objection than to find fault with who is in it rather than WHAT is in it. While so militantly concerned with bias, this reviewer attempts no rebuttal whatsoever to the facts so comprehensively and painstakingly documented in this DVD. Apparently for this particular reviewer, the "truth" of any message is contingent primarily (if not exclusively) on the pro-Mormon identity of its messenger(s), regardless of their lack of relevant credentials. Now... how unbiased is that?
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