I am NOT a Mormon, so I would NOT consider this to be a "Mormon view on the book of Abraham" ... but I found the question to be quite interesting ... it isn't "What is THE VIEW ..." ... it is "What is the MORMON VIEW ..." ... translation: "How do Mormons escape from the mounting piles of evidence against the book of Abraham?" ... there is a video at the bottom of this answer that I found to be quite interesting. Thank you. ---------- (the following information was taken from www.religioustolerance.org) "History of the Book of Abraham: In 1835, Joseph Smith, founder of the original Mormon church -- the Church of Christ -- purchased several Egyptian papyrus scrolls and fragments from the owner of a traveling road show which exhibited Egyptian mummies and documents. After translating them, he stated that they were a copy of a book by the biblical patriarch Abraham. This "Book of Abraham" was first published in 1842, and was recognized by the Utah branch of the Mormon church as scripture in 1880. It became part of "The Pearl of Great Price" one of their four divinely inspired and authoritative source texts -- the "Standard Works." The work, including pictures adapted from the papyri, totaled about 15 pages. It appears that the translation was never completed, as it ends suddenly at the beginning of the Garden of Eden story. Smith "...claimed that he received divine inspiration, not in writing a new book of scripture, but instead in having discovered and translated an existing ancient work." 2 He would have had to have been divinely inspired, because only a few academics could read some ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic text at that time. Translation only became possible following the discovery of the Rosetta Stone in 1799-JUL, in Rosetta, Egypt (near Alexandria). The stone included a decree that was translated into three languages: Ancient Greek, Egyptian hieroglyphics, and Demotic (a later Egyptian script). The Greek writings could be translated by Egyptologists. Over time, this led to the deciphering of the other two. By 1822, Jean Francois Champollion (1790-1832), the "Father of the Decipherment of Hieroglyphs," 3 was able to identify the names of a few pharaohs on some monuments. 4 The ability to translate hieroglyphics symbol-by-symbol came later -- long after Smith claimed that he translated the Book of Abraham. M. Theodule Deveria, a French Egyptologist inspected the copies of the original images on the papyri. He concluded that they were typical Egyptian funerary documents. He was able to decipher the name of the priest who authored the work, and of some Egyptian gods. He "dismissed Joseph's explanations as rambling nonsense. His comments first appeared in French in a two-volume work by Jules Remy entitled Voyage au Pays des Mormons (Paris, 1860)." In 1912, the Rt. Reverend Franklin S. Spalding, Episcopal Bishop of Utah, sent copies of the three facsimiles from the Book to world-class Egyptologists and Semitists. Eight responded with uniformly negative appraisals: the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City: "Joseph Smith's interpretation of these cuts is a farrago of nonsense from beginning to end...five minutes study in an Egyptian gallery of any museum should be enough to convince any educated man of the clumsiness of the imposture." "...difficult to deal seriously with Smith's impudent fraud." "Smith has turned the Goddess into a king and Osiris into Abraham." "...very clearly demonstrates that he (Joseph Smith) was totally unacquainted with the significance of these documents and absolutely ignorant of the simplest facts of Egyptian Writing and civilization." "...the attempts to guess a meaning are too absurd to be noticed. It may be safely said that there is not one single word that is true in these explanations." One of Joseph Smith's wives, Emma Smith, sold the material to a man who later sold it to the Chicago Museum. It was believed to have been destroyed in the Great Chicago fire of 1871. However, in early 1966, Dr. Aziz S. Atiya, a professor of Arabic Studies from the University of Utah was visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. He stumbled across 11 papyrus fragments and a letter from Emma Smith certifying that they belonged to Joseph Smith. The papyri had been glued to a paper backing which included a map of the Kirtland, OH area. They were returned to the LDS church the following year." Bob Blaylock wrote: "However, it is not established that these fragments are the source from which the book of Abraham was translated, and evidence is very strong that these are not the source." I am not aware of there being ANY evidence that supports the idea that the papyrus fragments found at the Metropolitan Museum of Art were NOT the/a source for the book of Abraham. There is, however, evidence that supports the idea that the papyrus fragments WERE INDEED the/a source ... For example, IF the papyrus fragments WERE NOT the/a source for the book of Abraham ... (the following information was taken from www.lds-mormon.com) ... "1. Why would Joseph Smith and his scribes have bothered to put characters from the Sensen portion next to the translation in Joseph Smith's Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar if the Sensen fragment was not the source for the Book of Abraham? 2. Why would Joseph Smith have used a piece of the papyrus as a source for the Book of Abraham that was not directly next to Facsimile 1 (which is where the Sensen portion is) when Facsimile 1 is what we have as the beginning of the Book of Abraham? 3. Why would only the supposed papyrus from 2,000 BC be destroyed in the fire? In other words, if Joseph Smith supposedly purchased two sets of papyrus, some from 2,000 BC containing the writings of Abraham and some more recent than 500 BC containing the existing Book of Breathings, why aren't any of the 2,000 BC papyrus remaining when numerous portions from post 500 BC are? 4. Why would the Book of Breathings be buried and unearthed with papyrus over 1,500 years older than it to begin with? 5. Why were the "restored" portions of the facsimiles incorrectly restored and why aren't they translated correctly? 6. How could Hebrew show up in a document that was supposed to be a translation of Egyptian?" Therefore, the papyrus fragments WERE the/a source for the book of Abraham ... and are nothing more than "typical Egyptian funerary documents", thus showing the fraudulency of Joseph Smith's prophetic claims. Also, please consider this: over 5,000 copies of the ancient Greek manuscripts of the New Testament exist today. Although there may be small grammatical differences when comparing certain copies to one another, they are not the SAME differences ... and therefore we can verify the accuracy and integrity of the copies down and through the centuries. The LDS church does NOT have this same luxury. The "golden plates" from which Joseph Smith "translated" the book of Mormon were "returned to the Angel Moroni in 1829" (the Encyclopedia of Mormonism) ... and therefore CANNOT be verified. "Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves." (Matthew 7:15) "Many false prophets will arise and will mislead many." (Matthew 24:11) "But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will also be false teachers among you, who will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing swift destruction upon themselves." (2 Peter 2:1)

The Book of Abraham is viewed to be scripture, just like the Book of Mormon and the Bible. It also must be understood that it is incomplete as is. (See: H. Donl Peterson, "The Story of the Book of Abaraham: Mummies, Manuscripts, and Mormonism", pp. 25, 128-130, 152-155) The exact process used to translate the papyrus is not known except that, very much as was the case with the Book of Mormon, it was a process which required revelation. It is also known, based on contemporary descriptions of both members and nonmembers alike, that the papyrus that Joseph Smith worked with was significantly longer than what has thus far been found. For an interesting history and discussion of the papyrus, I highly recommend the above cited book by H. Donl Peterson, "The Story of the Book of Abaraham: Mummies, Manuscripts, and Mormonism".