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William Schryver, on Aug 17 2006, 07:58 PM, said:
bentleye:
By making this statement, I'm afraid you're exposing your apparent unfamiliarity with the relevant facts. The vignettes we know as Facsimiles #1 and #3 are not stereotypic (sic)-al at all. In fact, these illustrations are nowhere else associated with a Book of Breathings text. Rather, they are typically associated with the Book of the Dead, which book was present on one of the other scrolls Joseph Smith purchased from Michael Chandler in July of 1835. However, even at that, these particular illustrations deviate in very unique ways from other Book of the Dead lion couch and "judgment" scenes. As Nibley has noted in his The Message of the Joseph Smith Papyri, Facsimile #3 is more representative of an "endowment" rather than a "judgment" scenario, which is extremely interesting when one considers the message of the Book of Abraham alongside other ancient Abrahamic lore, such as the Apocalypse of Abraham.
So, in short, your haste in dismissing these examples of Semitically-adapted Egyptian iconography is simply indicative of your apparent ignorance of the significance of these things. I must encourage you, as has David, to familiarize yourself more with the various apologetic arguments that establish strong links between these Egyptian icons and the story of Abraham.
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Then we have the question of how this redaction ended up looking like a stereotypic Book of Breathings with regular text and standard scenarios of the deceased and various deities.
So, in short, your haste in dismissing these examples of Semitically-adapted Egyptian iconography is simply indicative of your apparent ignorance of the significance of these things. I must encourage you, as has David, to familiarize yourself more with the various apologetic arguments that establish strong links between these Egyptian icons and the story of Abraham.
Those facsimiles appear in the published version of the Book of Abraham, with english text to indicate that they are relevant to the story told in the Book of Abraham and that they illustrate it. But the English text does not match the egyptian text and the figures in the scenarios are completely mislabeled. Mind you, everything in the scenarios makes sense in pure Egyptian terms. What an unlikely coincidence it would be if that text and those scenarios also tell a different, a Jewish story about Abraham.
I've read lots of apologetic arguments as well, so there is no real point to rehashing them all here.
As to Professor Nibley, I have read some of what he had to say about the matter as well. Nibley made an interpretation of what HE saw. But Nibley was no egyptologist. No non lds egyptologist made that conclusion. And again, the papyri contained pretty ordinary egyptian funerary/afterlife stuff. And although Nibley's Abrahamic tradition material may have had some value in legitimizing the B of A, it did nothing to validate it as connected to the papyrus. And I'm giving Professor Nibley the benefit of the doubt. I've seen him lambasted for sloppy and misleading scholarship. I'm not pushing that though, because I've not looked into it myself.
Thanks for your reply.
David
