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William Schryver

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Posts posted by William Schryver

  1. I haven't posted here in ... well, so long that I really can't remember when it was. Anyway, I'm only doing so now because I'm in the midst of an uncontrollable impulse to self-promote.  Yes, it happens from time to time.  Not exactly sure why, but when it happens, I've decided to just go ahead and yield to it without any tortured self-examining questions.

     

    Anyway ... I've recently purchased a new digital piano (Kawai MP11) and have recorded, over the course of past few days, a couple new songs.  Or rather, my interpretations of a couple quite old songs.

     

    The first is one of my all-time favorite classical pieces:

     

    Frederic Chopin - Prelude in E minor

     

    This second one is my own arrangement of one of our Sacrament songs, one composed by Brigham Young's grandson, Hugh W. Dougall:

     

    Jesus of Nazareth, Savior and King

     

     

     

     

  2. Well, if that's already been done, then there's this:

    Hamblin takes Maxwell's Charge to Heart: Announces MI Basketball Team. Players include Dan "All D[efense]" Peterson, Greg "The Hit Man" Smith, Louis "Lock em Down" Midgley, and John "Good Luck" Gee.

    Hey, hey, hey! Midgley and Gee ahead of me? What, didn't anyone know I was available? I may not be 6' 5" anymore, but I'm still 6' 4 1/2". That's two Midgley's right there. Not sure I can still dunk anymore. But I'm pretty sure I can still touch the rim, and beat most of the BYU basketball players in best of 25 foul shooting contests, not to mention I'm still deadly from "beyond the arc." (No, not Noah's!) Man, I'm crushed ...
  3. I'm going out on a limb as I also go on the record with the following prediction:

    A year will not pass before the Bradford Junta and the ambitious interlopers it has dredged up in its wake will have been dislodged from within the walls of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship.

    In the immortal words of Jeffrey Lebowski: "This will not stand."

    slibwslibd

  4. I was never under the impression that modern revelation trumped scripture.

    Really?

    Wait a second ... what Church do you belong to? It must not be the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, since in that church, the living prophet does trump anything ever said by a dead one.

    Of course, this has always been a stumbling block for people, from the very beginning -- always talking about how good the manna was that their fathers ate ...

  5. I will always remember the first time I saw Raiders of the Lost Ark, in the fall of 1981, at the old, classic Villa Theatre on Highland Drive in Salt Lake City. It was one of the few times I saw fulfilled the old sales pitch of, "You pay for the whole seat, but all you need is the edge." Of course, it was, as everyone knows, a really great film. That said, I always found it humorous that Rene Belloq was apparently convinced that all he had to do was don the vestments of the high priest in order to open and then (presumably) assume all the powers attendant to the Ark of the Covenant.

    Of course, it didn't work out quite as he had planned ...

    raiders-pf33.jpg

  6. Ludd and Nomad are especially guilty of this type of behavior.

    I know who "Nomad" is (he actually lives closer to you than to me), and to my knowledge, he only ever used one handle in the years he posted on these boards. He retired from the message boards altogether about a year or so ago.

    I'm not familiar with "Ludd" beyond the fact that I'm aware he read MsJack's "hit piece" ... er ... "scholarly exposé," and came away unimpressed--and for that grievous sin he was accused of being my sock puppet. Quite ironic, that. But not nearly as ironic as the fact that the people at MDB have spent much of the past month waxing "morally outraged" about "scholarly exposés" ... er ... "hit pieces."

  7. I recognize that the interview was from the late 90's, but as far as I can tell, both the "couplet" and the supporting Joseph Smith quote from the King Follett Sermon have been regularly taught in official Church lessons and publications over the last century, up to today.

    I don't dispute that, for the most part. I agree that the concept of theosis is frequently discussed. My qualification arises from the fact that I have no recollection of anyone ever talking in church about the idea that God was a mortal man like us, mainly because I don't think we know much about it, beyond Joseph Smith's somewhat vague reference to the concept.

    I suppose it's possible that Joseph Smith wasn't saying that God was once as we are now, but that's what it sounds like to me.

    I agree that he said that, but I don't agree that its meaning is all that clear, and, to my knowledge, he never elaborated on the concept.

    Was God the Father once "as we are now" in the sense that he lived a mortal life like Jesus did, or in the sense that he lived a mortal life like you and I have--was born into an average suburban family where the parents got divorced when he was young, got married young himself, was compelled to work a job he didn't much like, sometimes fought with his wife, sometimes yelled at his kids, and even, as a teenager, drove his Chevy to the levy and drank whiskey and rye?

    I believe it was the latter. In fact, I want to believe it in those terms. Because otherwise I don't really know how he can understand what it's been like for us down here.

    Here is what I might have wanted/expected/wished to hear as follow up in Conference:
    The media have been kind and generous to us. This past year of pioneer celebrations has resulted in very extensive, favorable press coverage. There have been a few things we wish might have been different. I personally have been much quoted, and in a few instances the answers to my questions weren't as clear as I wish they had been. I think that's to be expected. In one exchange, regarding Joseph Smith's teachings about "God having once been as we are now", my answer was incompletely reported. You need not worry that I do not understand this doctrine. I affirm, as Joseph Smith and Lorenzo Snow did, that "As man is God once was, as God is man may become." This is just as true today as it was in 1844 when Joseph Smith first* taught it.

    Fair enough. I agree that it might have been better had he said something along the lines of what you suggest. That said, I honestly do not believe his intent was to obfuscate.

  8. I don’t know why this is so hard for some of you??

    What is so hard?

    Through inspiration and by using his seer stone Joseph translated the writings of Abraham.

    Probably true, although we don't have conclusive evidence that he used the seer stone.

    Out of shear (sic) curiosity he and others tried to translate the other writings by comparing the symbols back and forth.

    The evidence won't support this conclusion.

  9. As best I could tell from what was argued on that thread, of the first 46 character in the EA's, there was alleged that the 23 characters in Part One may, for the most part, have been bits and pieces (graphemes as Chris calls them) of Egyptian characters picked randomly from the various portions of various papyri.

    For a number of reasons, this seems more than a bit of a stretch to me.

    Yep. A HUGE stretch. Just like Don Bradley's Kinderhook Plates arguments -- but that's another topic for another day. Don is a good guy, and I honestly believe he means well, but it is very important for people to understand how grossly mistaken his KP thesis truly is. I actually had hoped that someone else would recognize the many flaws in his argument and take it upon themselves to write a paper explaining the reasons why. <sigh> But apparently people are so naively enamored with the argument that they simply haven't examined it critically. So I guess I'll have to do it -- hopefully before the end of the year. (The problem is that there are other, higher priorities at the moment.)

    Anyway, back to the topic at hand: keep in mind that we know perfectly well that the six characters Phelps included in his earlier "pure language" table don't come from any Egyptian papyri!

    That one simple fact right there proves that whatever these guys were doing with this Egyptian Alphabet project, they weren't attempting to translate Egyptian papyri!

    Anyway, I don't have time to say anything else today. I'm getting together with Royal tomorrow afternoon and I have to finish something I'm delivering to him then.

    Good luck with these guys, Wade. You have more patience than I do.

  10. You're not saying you believe Schryver's theory that the Egyptian Alphabet was an artificial cipher made up to encode secret Mormon spy messages (all, evidently, relating to Egyptian pharaohs and astrology), are you?

    This is not an accurate description of my thesis. But, of course, your intention wasn't to accurately represent what I have argued, was it? It's always much easier to erect and knock down a straw man than to actually engage real arguments.

    BTW, Wade: It is not true that none of the first 46 EA characters are Egyptian, and that none of them come from the papyri. I initially believed that, too. But it's not true. Some of them do come from JSP-I.

    There is a thread on this board, from about a year ago, where this topic was discussed. See if you can find it. Maybe search for "characters", "EA", "Egyptian", and "papyri", looking for posts I made. Chris Smith participated in the thread, too, iirc.

  11. While I've criticized President Hinckley's response, I think ultimately it's just proof that President Hinckley didn't know what he's going to be asked in the interview.

    Huh. That's interesting, because my impression was just the opposite: that, in fact, President Hinckley had anticipated the question and that his ultimate response was well-considered.

    Ok, what is missing from that statement? How about actually clarifying what the doctrine is, he being a Prophet speaking to the faithful in General Conference, and all that? He doesn't say which doctrine he is referring to, and then assures us he "understands them thoroughly" but doesn't share his thorough understanding with us. So we're left with two evasive interviews and a non-clarification.

    Well played, President Hinckley. Well played.

    Seriously?

    You are such an enigma to me, at times.

    First of all, I find it hard to believe that you don't recognize that Pres. Hinckley was responding to only the one aspect of the famous Lorenzo Snow couplet: the question of whether or not God was once a man like us. So, assuming that you do recognize that, I find it hard to believe that you feel his reply to the reporter was somehow less than forthright. I mean, I don't recall it ever being taught beyond recitations of the Snow couplet and the one JS statement from the KFD. I don't believe we know much about it. I haven't even heard much speculation about it over my years in the church. So, from my perspective, his answer to the reporter was an accurate reflection of the status of that "doctrine" in the church.

    Now, as to what he might have said in General Conference in terms of "clarifying what the doctrine is": What would you have had him say? Seriously. Unless he had received some new revelation in relation to this topic, what more could he have said? And to what end?

    ETA: Incidentally, I'm not sure the Lorenzo Snow couplet is an accurate reflection of what Joseph Smith taught in the KFD. Joseph Smith did NOT suggest that, "as man is, God once was." That is NOT what he said. Not at all.

  12. Hi, I'm Kristin; you can call me Keyoshi if you prefer to use usernames.

    I'm obviously new to this site... and have many reasons for joining.

    I have been dating someone for a month now that is a dedicated Mormon and will be leaving in a few months for his 2 year trip. Which of course if tearing me up inside because I care for him so much, but I respect him so much because he is so dedicated to his faith, more so then I have ever seen in someone.

    His religion is a huge part of his life and I really wanted to learn and understand it; so I started to read The Book of Mormon. I'm a Baptist, but I'm very open minded. I have spoken to my boyfriend and two missionaries that are in town and have found that there are many things that are similar between Mormon and Baptist, but there are tons of differences.

    While reading, I have become sucked into the story (I'm only on the First Book of Nephi, so I'm not that far). I find it very interesting and I really just want to keep reading.

    There is a huge part of me that wants to keep learning and possibly convert because I do believe the things that I have learned so far from him and the missionaries. But the other part of me is dedicated to my current religion.

    I do believe that God will push me towards the right decision. But for now, I think he just wants me to read, ask questions, and learn.

    I'm really just looking for people to talk to about this. I have so many questions (which I really need to write down... because I keep forgetting them).

    Anyway, Thanks for reading. : )

    Kristin,

    Your opening post attracted my interest, and I find myself feeling quite excited for you as you have set out to read the Book of Mormon for the first time. I was born and raised in Farmington, Utah, which is just north of Salt Lake City. I grew up in a family that was nominally LDS, but not particularly involved in church activity in my youth. Despite all this, I was blessed to live in an area where our neighbors were mostly LDS and who very mindful of my family's needs, especially our spiritual needs. I was very fortunate to therefore come into contact with and be positively influenced by several good bishops and youth leaders. Consequently, as I reached my late teens, despite the fact that I had not been taught much about the church at home (nor did we read the scriptures, or watch/attend LDS general conferences), I had had enough favorable contact with the church that I could turn to it during a time of intense spiritual turmoil when I was 18-years-old.

    Immediately after high school, I got a job as a carpenter, and "struck out on my own." I rented an apartment in the "Avenues" district of downtown Salt Lake City -- an area that, to this day, is predominantly non-LDS, extremely liberal, and (at least when I lived there in the late 1970s) quite the "party zone." It was not hardly the kind of environment in which someone looking for spiritual meaning in his life was likely to be led in the direction of Mormonism. Even so, I awakened on the morning of Sunday, April 2, 1978 to an empty apartment reeking with the odors of empty pizza boxes and stale cigarette smoke, and strewn with overflowing ashtrays, beer cans, and all the detritus consequent to the "party" that had taken place there the previous evening.

    I opened my windows to air the place out, poured a fresh cup of coffee, turned on my stereo, and sat down expecting to hear the live CSN&Y album I had been listening to immediately prior to falling asleep the night before. Much to my surprise (and to this day I have no idea whatsoever how my stereo receiver could have possibly gotten tuned to AM station KSL), the voice from my speakers was not of David Crosby, Steven Stills, Graham Nash, or Neil Young ... but rather that of one of the general authorities of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Somehow, my radio had gotten tuned to the station carrying the church's annual general conference!

    Well, for whatever reason, I did not immediately get up from my chair and switch the stereo to the music I had expected to hear. Rather, I sat there and listened to speaker after speaker, until the conference was concluded later that afternoon. I don't recall who spoke. I don't recall what was said. The only thing I recall very distinctly was one hymn sung by the choir, entitled Lead, Kindly Light.* What I do remember above all else was how I felt as I listened to the words of the prophets and apostles who spoke that day. Their words pierced me to my very soul and left an impression upon me that I have never, ever forgotten.

    After the conference was concluded, I walked down to Temple Square and obtained a copy of the Book of Mormon which I began reading later than evening. I continued reading it, almost non-stop, until I finished it a couple days later, and then began reading it again. As I read, I was consumed by the same spirit that had enveloped me as I listened to the conference speakers. As I read, I was consumed by what I can only describe as a certain knowledge that it was true.

    Anyway, to make a long story short, from that day forward I began to change to my life. I applied to serve a mission and was called to serve in Italy. In August of 1978 I entered the missionary training center in Provo. Just a few weeks earlier, a girl from San Jose, CA who had followed a path similar to my own, had also entered the MTC to prepare for a mission to Italy. A little more than two years later, she and I were married. That was 31 years ago. In the meantime, I have (as does everyone on this earth) struggled with the various challenges of life. But, through it all, I have been strengthened by the power of God, and enlightened by His spirit. And, through it all, I have never ceased to know that the Book of Mormon is the word of God.

    I pray that, as you now embark on your own spiritual journey, that our heavenly Father will bless you with the knowledge of truth -- the sure knowledge of "things as they really are."

    * = The hymn

    has remained one of my favorites to this day:

    Lead, kindly light, amid the encircling gloom, lead thou me on.

    The night is dark, and I am far from home; lead thou me on.

    Keep thou my feet; I do not ask to see

    The distant scene; one step enough for me.

    I was not ever thus, nor prayed that thou shouldst lead me on;

    I loved to choose and see my path; but now, lead thou me on.

    I loved the garish day, and, spite of fears,

    Pride ruled my will. Remember not past years!

    So long thy power hath blest me, sure it still will lead me on.

    O’er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent, 'til the night is gone.

    And with the morn those angel faces smile,

    Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile.

  13. I've been playing around on the Joseph Smith Papers website this morning. Found out I was wrong on at least two counts:

    1. Egyptian Alphabet documents EA-OC and EA-WP are available online.

    2. I haven't verified this in terms of the KEP yet, but the scans of the papyri appear to be 1200dpi, meaning they have performed a new set of digital scans of all of these things since I obtained my set of images in 2010 (which are 600dpi).

    I would hope no one will ever complain again that the Church is attempting to hide its history.

  14. At just over 1:16 into the video the first very serious mistake was made by the maker of the "response" video. It states that Joseph Smith translated Facsimile 1. He did no such thing. There is only one partially extant column of text on the original vignette and Joseph Smith did not translate that. All he did was to offer an explanation of the elements of the vignette, based upon the storyline of the Book of Abraham, but no actual translation.

    Exactly!

    And as for those who claim that the Abraham manuscripts "prove" that Joseph Smith believed his translation of the Book of Abraham was based on the Book of Breathings, I would again recommend the portion of my presentation at the 2010 FAIR Conference wherein I present persuasive evidence that the translation of the Book of Abraham pre-dates the preparation of those manuscripts: Dependency of the Alphabet and Grammar on a Pre-existing Text of the Book of Abraham.

  15. That's unlikely to happen. These folks have always published their smears anonymously.

    Besides, Kishkumen, my Malevolent Stalker, and "Rollo Tomasi" are so precisely identical, ideologically, that it's really hard to know how many distinct people actually stand behind their "names."

    Not only that, but among the lesser lights in the MDB mob, there are many who will post for several months under one name, and then make themselves a new avatar, and start posting with it. So you've got many posters who only have a few hundred posts, but who have clearly been around for years and years. So it's hard to say who is who even from year to year.

  16. I believe that it's at about this time, according to the dogma over at the Contempt and Defamation Board, that I'm supposed to instruct my brain-dead robotic minions here to ban you.

    The truth is, though, that I don't do that -- I'm not even sure who the moderators here are -- and also, for what it's worth, that I'm fine with your or anybody else's posting of "Rollo Tomasi's" essay.

    I don't know whether or not Greg Smith plans a response to "Rollo Tomasi" -- Greg is both a physician and a bishop, so he has a life offline and he's rather busy -- but I rather hope that he will.

    If I were Greg, I would only respond to the "review" on the condition that the cowardly "Rollo Tomasi" attach his real name to it.

  17. John Dehlin is back to demonizing his chosen enemies, I see.

    Yeah, that didn't last long, did it?

    Speaking of "demonizing ... enemies" ... earlier today I was searching through Bridget Jeffries' "infamous 2011 hit-piece" on yours truly* and couldn't help but be quite amazed that it has stretched to 77 pages and has more than 48,000 views! Yes, you read correctly: 77 pages and 48,000+ views! Unless I am mistaken, that is far and away the record for any thread on any Mormon-related message board.

    There is a delicious irony at work here when you consider that these same people who have condemned Greg Smith for writing what they characterize as a "hit-piece" have no problem whatsoever when one of their own produces a classic specimen of an ad hominem attack piece designed to achieve the censorship of an article written by someone they don't like. (An article which, ironically enough, contains not one sentence that could be accurately characterized as "apologetic" in nature.)

    Something else I find ironic (and which I was reminded of as I searched through that massive thread earlier today) is the reaction of Jeffries and her anti-Mormon cohorts whenever anyone showed up on that thread and expressed opinions contradictory to those of the majority mob: unless it was definitively known otherwise, in each and every case the poor souls were accused of being my sock puppets. Then they were subjected to a good old-fashioned MDB mobbing and harassed until they finally just left the place, never to return. I only know the IRL identity of a couple of those who spoke in my defense. One of them was a very intelligent, well-educated young woman, formerly from my ward, who was ultimately banned from MDB, that bastion of "free speech." :lol:

    Oh, well ... as the old saw goes: "All's well that ends well." And this, too, will end well.

    * = One can read my summary reply to Jeffries' hit-piece here: The Calculated Suppression of Mormon Apologetics: The Case of William Schryver. I am also in the process of preparing a much more detailed reply to Jeffries' May 2011 "hit-piece," as well as her ongoing malevolent online stalkeresque obsession with me, as also with Dan Peterson, Bill Hamblin, Lou Midgely, and (more recently) Greg Smith – all from this self-proclaimed "friend of Mormon apologetics."

  18. I wanted to point something else out here. I love the fact that the Church pas put the higher resolution photos of the papyrus fragments online on the Joseph Smith Papers website. Take a closer look at the broken area of the papyrus fragment containing the first vignette, where the hands are.

    You can almost completely see the directions of ink flow (I say "almost" because one would need a higher resolution photo to see this clearly and completely in all places) and definitely can see the way in which hands were drawn and that both of them contain the same kinds of marks found in a hand.

    One also can see the missing piece of fiber intersecting a break in the line in the upper hand, and also one can see closer the breakage of the papyrus where some have imagined feather "spots" or mottling but where breaks and gouges make what once were solid lines of ink into "spots" there.

    post-7377-0-14584000-1362758538_thumb.jp

    Compare that closely with the actual feather mottling that was deliberately painted to represent feathers by the draughtsman responsible for the first vignette. Look at the angle of the lines and how they match. These are both hands, which puts this vignette in a class by itself.

    As to your original question, I am unaware of a full translation of Facsimile 3 done by Gee but I do know that he has made suggestions to Rhodes and has edited the reprint of Hugh Nibley's The Message of the Joseph Smith Papyri: An Egyptian Endowment. He has also stated somewhere (I do not recall where I read that at the moment) that the text in the column above the "Isis figure" does not actually say "Isis" but that "Isis" has to be 'reconstructed.'

    MormonMason:

    Your observation is correct. Here is a somewhat enlarged, contrast-boosted crop from JSP-I that demonstrates even better that this is a hand, not a wing:

    Fac1-Hand.jpg

    I've also examined this locus under magnification (while looking at the original). The "blank spaces" (where no ink is visible) seen in the "ring finger" are actually a combination of two things: instances where "cracks" and/or "wrinkles" in the papyrus cross the finger and caused the pen to skip over an area, and also instances where the top-most (ink-bearing) layer of the papyrus has flaked away. There would have originally been a continuous line for the finger.

    ETA: That this is a second hand signifies that the person lying on the lion couch is alive, not dead, thus making this vignette extremely unique among similar lion couch vignettes, and thus making Joseph Smith's interpretation of the vignette much more likely accurate.

    2nd Edit: clarified explanation concerning "cracks" and "wrinkles" in the papyrus.

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