Kep: Sequence Of Characters

[Xander]

Here is the third character shown a second time later during the presentation, proving once again I had not misrepresented Gee as Wade insisted:

Here is the fourth character:

And the fifth:

Edited December 22, 2011 by Xander

[William Schryver]

... I'm not only misrepresenting ... I'm doing so intentionally.

Board guidelines prohibit: Altering members quotes on the board

Edited December 22, 2011 by Minos

[Minos]

Both Xander and Will Schryver are on notice to remove their taglines which are in direct violation of board rules

http://www.mormondialogue.org/index.php?app=forums&module=extras&section=boardrules

Quoting members in your signature without obtaining their permission

Edited December 22, 2011 by Minos

[Xander]

When you surround your arguments with insults the insults tend to take over the wheel.

I can control what I say but I cannot control the onslaught that wade and Loran so frequently engage. I began this thread discussing the Schryver/Gee presentation and I explained why it was completely wrong. None of my opening posts were censored by mods because I stuck to the evidence. I left the forum for almost two days only to find out that wade ignored my argument, the evidence and then launched a half dozen personal attacks based on a transcript he didn't even understand. For example:

Is there a link to Gee's presentation so we can see what was actually argued (I see now that Will just posted it)?

This he says before he even reads the transcript. He just takes it for granted that I've misrepresented Gee and feels free to pass along that meme for well-poisoning purposes. But it quickly got worse.

...and so the self-delusion continues

It would be counterproductive for me to attempt, once again, to disabuse Kevin of his false perception. Once a person has becomes so insulated from rational input as to think he knows better than the author what the author said and meant, and this in stunning defiance of compelling evidence to the contrary, pretty much all chances of having an intelligent discussion has evaporated. For that reason I will simply post a link to last in a series of stupifying threads on the so-called "cipher theory" in case the reader may wish to see for him or herself just how banal Kevin has gotten

I have begun reading Gee's presentation, and it didn't take long to discover the first of Kevin's ironic misunderstandings. Here is Kevin's interpretation:

Kevin mistakenly assumed that Gee was referring to the third character on the Abr. Ms., whereas Gee was actually referring to the third character...

All of this, before I ever said anything that could have been interpreted as insulting. He then tried to get everyone to address my "mistake" instead of Gee's argument:

Bringing things back on topic, what do you think about Kevin's first mistake in this thread, which I pointed out HERE?

Of course, that isn't the topic and there was no mistake on my part, as the images I provided today prove quite conclusively. I can't control wade's mouth or his propensity for ad hominem. I can't control who my opponents are for that matter. I really wish people in the know would step up to the plate and try to discuss these issues instead of leaving it all up to the amateurs who constantly try to attack me personally. But it is what it is. And yes, I do plea guilty to telling wade he was making a fool of himself for insinuating that I was wrong on a point when I clearly wasn't, and I apologize for that. It was in response to a half dozen personal attacks that no one felt the need to report and I let my emotions get the better of me when I saw that he and Loran had completely taken over my thread and recreated it in their image.

Loran was removed. When everyone is upset with the moderation it is a good indication that nobody is being given a pass. Since it is your thread it isn't unreasonable to expect you to always hold to a high standard so others will stick around. There is so much water under the bridge that even one word has become familiar code for an insult. You have been around long enough to know that.

Edited December 23, 2011 by Minos

[George Miller]

Apologists and critics both agree that the first two characters were visible on the papyrus when Joseph Smith had it, but have since flaked away. But Gee's implication that there's a genuine parallel between the manuscript characters and the Louvre characters for the rest of line 1 is not, so far as I'm aware, in agreement with any other Egyptologist who has looked at these documents. Perhaps Kevin could post screenshots of Gee's slides for characters 4-7 so we could judge the similarity for ourselves.

While I don't have the slides provided by Gee, I do have my own analysis that I thought might be helpful. As Wade noted, the important question that Gee is trying to determine is what the papyrus looked like in 1835 when Joseph Smith purchased the Hor Book of Breathings.

Figure 1- Reconstruction of the hieratic text of column one row one of the Hor Book of Breathings. (A) Sequence of hieroglyphs from Rhodes (2002). Gee believes that all these characters were extant in 1835. (B) Sequence of hieratic characters as reconstructed from Rhodes from various parts of the JSP1. © The same row as it appears today. (D) Reconstruction of hieratic characters as suggests by most Egyptologists and critics. (E) Composite hieroglyphs as recorded in AB1-4.

Reconstruction of the text in 1835 requires us to have some important information. First lets look at this portion of the papyri as it exists today (Figure 1C). As you can see there is a large lacunae in the papyrus due to its being torn when it was unrolled before it arrived in Kirtland. We can assume that all of the hieroglyphs presently observable on the papyri were also visible in 1835. However, because the scrolls were handled over the years, it is possible that the this portion of the papyri was damaged after Joseph Smith translated the scrolls, and thus hieroglyphs not present today were present in 1835. To test this possibility it is necessary to determine what would have been written on the papyrus prior to it being excavated in 1817-1822. Luckily by comparing this text to other copies of Book of Breathing texts, we can reconstruct the original content.

I make no claims to being a trained Egyptologist, but luckily our investigation is aided by reconstructions of the text by both Mormon and non-Mormon Egyptologists. Here I am going to rely heavily on Michael D. Rhodes transcriptions and translations. Figure 1A presents the hieroglyphs as given by Michael D. Rhodes. These are standard hieroglyphs, but this section of the papyrus is written in hieratic, and we must determine how these hieroglyphs would have looked written in the hand of the Egyptian scribe. In Figure 1B I have reconstructed what the original may have looked like by taking the appropriate glyphs from elsewhere on the papyri. Finally to determine what was actually on the papyrus in 1835 we need to have an independent copy of what was present in 1835; and Gee relies on the AB1-4 for his source (Figure 1E)

While Kevin has provided what Gee presented, I thought you might like to check to see if Gee was right. Above on the left are the hieroglyphs as provided by Rhodes. In the center are the hieroglyphs I culled from the papyrus. To the right are the characters from AB1-4. Now as you examine this you should note that the first two are very good matches, just as others have noted (Figure 1D). However, when it comes to the third hieroglyph there are some points to note. First while as Gee noted, these hieroglyphs don't appear together in any other place on the extant papyri, they do show up separately. Note that these don't match very well, even in Gee's pictures, but in order to make the match, Gee is leaving out the determinative glyph (the legs). The 4th and 5th also fair even worse, and I am unsure how Gee gets the picture for Glyph five that he provides.

So is Gee's reconstruction possible. There is of course one very large problem with Gee's reconstruction, these hieroglyphs were most likely absent because they were in the lacunae.

Above you can see JSP1.1 and the other two columns of text overlaid with each other. As you can see, while two hieroglyphs would have been present on the papyri, that the remainder would have clearly been in the lacunae.

[Note: This was typed during my Christmas break and has not been thoroughly checked for grammar or carefully checked for any problems. ]

Edited December 23, 2011 by George Miller

[wenglund]

Here is a screen shot of the FAIR presentation:

Let me try one more time to clarify,

There are two images shown here. The question is, which of the two is the one Gee was referring to when he said "...is not preserved on the papyrus, nor is it found elsewhere on the papyrus." Kevin assumes it is the one on the left, and I argue that it is the one on the right.

Here are the two clues Gee gives us for determining which of the two images he was specifically talking about:

1. Gee says: "The third character or rather a group of two characters..." So, of the two images shown above, we need but look for the one with "two characters." Clearly, the image with two characters is the image on the right, or in other words the image from the Louvre papyri that is presumable the same as was on the JSP XI fragment when it was originally composed, but as Gee surmised, was no longer extant today, and perhaps not in Joseph's day (given the disparity between the displayed images).

2. Gee goes on to say: "So I show it from the hand copy of the parallel text found in the Louvre." The image Gee had in mind, then, is the image from the "parallel text found in the Louvre." Is there any doubt that the image on the right is the one from the Louvre?

Now, out of respect for the moderators, I won't mention who has been wrong or right all along, but will leave it to the reader to decide.

Granted, up until now I still haven't viewed the presentation, though I have carefully read through the transcript. Did my having not viewed the presentation make a difference in whether I was correct or not in what I have said? Did Kevin having viewed the presentation make a difference in whether he was correct or not in what he said? Again, out of respect for the moderators I won't say here, but will leave it to the reader to decide for themselves.

Kevin goes on to remark:

Wade says I am wrong to think Gee was saying the one on the left was claimed to be a copy of the one on the right! Oh really? Then why in the beejeezus is Gee presenting it this way in a series of other juxtaposed characters he clearly claimed were directly copied onto the Book of Abraham manuscripts? And what character is he comparing it to if not this one?

What I actually said was:

What is implied here is that Gee used the Louve papyrus to determine what characters or characters would likely have been on the JSP XI, and then without explicitly saying as much, he compared the third character from the Abr. Ms. to the third characters on the Louve papyrus, and since there was sufficient difference between the two, he ascertained that the third character on JSP XI was not extant at the time....(emphasis mine)

In other words I wasn't stating what Gee had said, I spoke about what I thought Gee may have implied and not mentioned (see bolded portion above), I also explicitly stated that the third character in the two documents (Abr. Ms and Louvre papyrus) may have been compared (see underlined text above, particularly the italicized words), as well as why they may have been compared, and what may have been the results of the comparison.

This explains why the slide above shows the characters side-by-side (the one set from the Abr. Ms. and the other from the Louvre papyrus).

Now, once again out of respect for the moderators, I will not say who was right or wrong here as well, or whether viewing the presentation or not made a difference in who was right or wrong, but I will leave that to the reader to work out.

I hope this helps. If it does, then I may reconsider continuing my participation on this thread, particularly now that there are now other participants on this thread besides Kevin with whom to have a reasoned discussion.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

Edited December 23, 2011 by wenglund

[wenglund]

In Figure 1B I have reconstructed what the original may have looked like by taking the appropriate glyphs from elsewhere on the papyri. Finally to determine what was actually on the papyrus in 1835 we need to have an independent copy of what was present in 1835; and Gee relies on the AB1-4 for his source (Figure 1E)

While Kevin has provided what Gee presented, I thought you might like to check to see if Gee was right. Above on the left are the hieroglyphs as provided by Rhodes. In the center are the hieroglyphs I culled from the papyrus. To the right are the characters from AB1-4. Now as you examine this you should note that the first two are very good matches, just as others have noted (Figure 1D). However, when it comes to the third hieroglyph there are some points to note. First while as Gee noted, these hieroglyphs don't appear together in any other place on the extant papyri, they do show up separately. Note that these don't match very well, even in Gee's pictures, but in order to make the match, Gee is leaving out the determinative glyph (the legs).

Does the determinative portion of the third glyph (or set of glyphs) on the Louvre papyrus have legs?

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[wenglund]

The more I contemplate this third character the more I get the sense that it may hold a key to answering several mysteries regarding the relationship between the papyri, the EA/GAEL, and the Abr. Ms., not only in terms of direction of dependency, but also who may have been the lead in the KEP project at least up through Abr. Ms. 1a. Stay tuned.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[Cobalt-70]

There are two images shown here. The question is, which of the two is the one Gee was referring to when he said "...is not preserved on the papyrus, nor is it found elsewhere on the papyrus." Kevin assumes it is the one on the left, and I argue that it is the one on the right.

It doesn't really matter though, does it? Either way, Gee thought the third manuscript character corresponded to the Louvre characters, because he said that the fifth manuscript character was the "only one that is unidentifiable." This was the third character on the manuscript, so obviously he felt this third manuscript character was identifiable (as the Louvre characters). Plus, why otherwise would they have been put them on the same screen adjacent to each other?

Edited December 23, 2011 by Cobalt-70

[Xander]

There are two images shown here. The question is, which of the two is the one Gee was referring to when he said "...is not preserved on the papyrus, nor is it found elsewhere on the papyrus." Kevin assumes it is the one on the left, and I argue that it is the one on the right.

There is no need for anyone to "assume" this because it is obvious to anyone watching this presentation that Gee is claiming that the two characters are identical. The only person speaking of them as two different characters entirely is you!

According to Gee, the third character in the Book of Abraham manuscripts was copied from a non-extant portion of the papyri which, according to Gee, was on the papyrus in 1835. This is supported by the fact that Gee is going through the characters in the Book of Abraham manuscripts sequentially. Thus, the characters he identifies as fourth and fifth are the fourth and fifth characters from the Book of Abraham manuscripts. The first and second characters are the first and second characters from the Book of Abraham manuscripts. But for you, when Gee mentions the "third" character, suddenly he isn't talking about the third character from the Book of Abraham manuscript at all!?!?

Here are the two clues Gee gives us for determining which of the two images he was specifically talking about:

Until you watch the presentation you won't have a clue.

1. Gee says: "The third character or rather a group of two characters..." So, of the two images shown above, we need but look for the one with "two characters." Clearly, the image with two characters is the image on the right, or in other words the image from the Louvre papyri that is presumable the same as was on the JSP XI fragment when it was originally composed

But since he argued one was copied from the other, this is a distinction without a difference.

but as Gee surmised, was no longer extant today, and perhaps not in Joseph's day (given the disparity between the displayed images).

Gee never surmised that. He wasn't explicit on the point but he implied that it was on the papyrus in Joseph Smith's day, otherwise, how would they have known this character was there? And why use a parallel papyrus to claim a parallel exists? Again, Gee claimed that the first five characters from the Book of Abraham manuscripts were represented elsewhere on the papyrus, the first three being extant in the Louve papyrus, the others elsewhere on the JS papyri.

His point is they were copied. They're authentic Egyptian. Only with the sixth character does he claim no parallel exists, which he doesn't even attempt to reconcile (why disrupt the pattern by inventing a character from thin air?).

In reality, the third character was taken from the columns in JSP I, and characters 4-6 were "restored" via revelation.

2. Gee goes on to say: "So I show it from the hand copy of the parallel text found in the Louvre." The image Gee had in mind, then, is the image from the "parallel text found in the Louvre." Is there any doubt that the image on the right is the one from the Louvre?

Of course he is showing from the hand written copy, but that is only because he didn't have an original papyrus example to present. This doesn't change the fact that he argued these two images were two representations of the same character. It is the pattern of his presentation up to this point. He provided the first BoA manuscript character and compared it to the first character on the papyrus, then he did the same thing with the second character. And then he did the same thing with the third character. And then he did the same thing with the fourth character, which even though was copied "backwards", he said it was "identifiable." The fifth character is shown and he says it also has a clear parallel with the fifth character shown in the BoA manuscripts. Only with the sixth character does he say there is no parallel to be found. Everything from characters one through five were clearly argued to have been copied from portions of the papyrus that he believes were extant in 1835.

What is implied here is that Gee used the Louve papyrus to determine what characters or characters would likely have been on the JSP XI, and then without explicitly saying as much, he compared the third character from the Abr. Ms. to the third characters on the Louve papyrus

That last part isn't explicit in his presentation. He didn't explicitly say this was the third character on the Louve papyrus. When he refers to the "third" character he is referring to the third character from the Book of Abraham manuscripts. This is where your confusion begins and it is because you fail to understand the context of his presentation. What I say here is supported by the fact that when he refers to the fourth and fifth characters, he can only be referring to the fourth and fifth characters from the Book of Abraham manuscripts since their parallel examples were clearly not the fourth and fifth characters on the papyrus.

And you still have not explained the images I provided. Here is a second one where both characters are presented as equivalent and you can see a yellow area on the papyrus where he argues the third character was originally located:

The only explanation for providing two images for a spot held by one character is that he believed they were both the same!

This is an open and shut case wade. I can't believe you're still trying to find away to come out of this "right." Not only are you totally wrong, but so are your barrage of vicious comments accusing me of misrepresenting Gee. You should review your list of verbal assaults in light of the facts presented above and consider an apology. It would do you much credit.

Wade has been nothing but polite in his last posts so why are you are trying to start another fight? Move on.

Edited December 23, 2011 by Minos

[George Miller]

Does the determinative portion of the third glyph (or set of glyphs) on the Louvre papyrus have legs?

Louvre 3284 most definitely does have the motion (legs) glyph in the same position as shown in Figure 1A. Gee does not mention this in his presentation as far as I can tell. In ignoring this determinative hieroglyph it makes the third hieroglyph on AB1 look more like the one drawn by Gee from Louvre 3284. I find this omission to be misleading to the audience, especially since he completely ignores this hieroglyph in his analysis jumping over it to the next hieroglyph.

Edited December 24, 2011 by George Miller

[Xander]

Louvre 3284 most definitely does have the motion (legs) glyph in the same position as shown in Figure 1A. Gee does not mention this in his presentation as far as I can tell. In ignoring this determinative hieroglyph it makes the third hieroglyph on AB1 look more like the one drawn by Gee from Louvre 3284. I find this omission to be misleading to the audience, especially since he completely ignores this hieroglyph in his analysis jumping over it to the next hieroglyph.

Wow. This sounds very similar to what he did with the KEP photos back in 2001, providing only a few hue-manipulated photos that made it look like his "two ink" theory was on solid ground. When Brent posted the full blown color photos you could clearly see that the two sets of writings Gee claimed were in two different inks, were actually written in the same ink.

Edited December 24, 2011 by Xander

[Xander]

off-topic arguing deleted

As I said, I'd much prefer we get on topic, but there is little George and I can do if no LDS apologist is willing to step up to the plate and address the problems we've mentioned in the Gee/Schryver theories mentioned in this thread.

[wenglund]

It doesn't really matter though, does it? Either way, Gee thought the third manuscript character corresponded to the Louvre characters, because he said that the fifth manuscript character was the "only one that is unidentifiable." This was the third character on the manuscript, so obviously he felt this third manuscript character was identifiable (as the Louvre characters). Plus, why otherwise would they have been put them on the same screen adjacent to each other?

It does matter to whether Kevin was correct or not in his specific complaint about Gee and the third character. Kevin wasn't complaining about "identifiability." To see what Kevin was complaining about, feel free to read through his and my posts.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[wenglund]

There is no need for anyone to "assume" this because it is obvious to anyone watching this presentation that Gee is claiming that the two characters are identical. The only person speaking of them as two different characters entirely is you!

Folks, am I the only one who believes these two images below don't match up, or do you agree with Kevin that they do:

According to Gee, the third character in the Book of Abraham manuscripts was copied from a non-extant portion of the papyri which, according to Gee, was on the papyrus in 1835.

Here is what Gee said in the linked transcript of his presentation: "The third character or rather a group of two characters is not preserved on the papyrus, nor is it found elsewhere on the papyrus. So I show it from the hand copy of the parallel text found in the Louvre. This was the third person plural pronoun and the verb ‘sta’ ‘to induct’."

I will leave it to the reader to decide whether Kevin correctly restated what Gee had said.

This is supported by the fact that Gee is going through the characters in the Book of Abraham manuscripts sequentially. Thus, the characters he identifies as fourth and fifth are the fourth and fifth characters from the Book of Abraham manuscripts. The first and second characters are the first and second characters from the Book of Abraham manuscripts. But for you, when Gee mentions the "third" character, suddenly he isn't talking about the third character from the Book of Abraham manuscript at all!?!?

As previously indicated when earlier quoted directly from Gee's presentation, there are three documents to which he makes reference.

1) The JSP XI

2) The Louvre papyrus.

3) The Abraham manuscript.

Again, in regards to the quote in question, only the first two were specifically mentioned. The third wasn't mentioned, though it was displayed on the screen.

With this understanding in mind, the question once again becomes: There are two images shown here. The question is, which of the two is the one Gee was referring to when he said "...is not preserved on the papyrus [meaning JSP XI], nor is it found elsewhere on the papyrus." Kevin assumes it is the one on the left, and I argue that it is the one on the right (see above).

Here are the two clues Gee gives us for determining which of the two images he was specifically talking about:

1. Gee says: "The third character or rather a group of two characters..." So, of the two images shown above, we need but look for the one with "two characters." Clearly, the image with two characters is the image on the right, or in other words the image from the Louvre papyri that is presumable the same as was on the JSP XI fragment when it was originally composed, but as Gee surmised, was no longer extant today, and perhaps not in Joseph's day (given the disparity between the displayed images).

2. Gee goes on to say: "So I show it from the hand copy of the parallel text found in the Louvre." The image Gee had in mind, then, is the image from the "parallel text found in the Louvre." Is there any doubt that the image on the right is the one from the Louvre?

Now, out of respect for the moderators, I won't mention who has been wrong or right all along, but will leave it to the reader to decide.

This is the last I will say on this specific point.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

Edited December 24, 2011 by wenglund

[wenglund]

Louvre 3284 most definitely does have the motion (legs) glyph in the same position as shown in Figure 1A. Gee does not mention this in his presentation as far as I can tell. In ignoring this determinative hieroglyph it makes the third hieroglyph on AB1 look more like the one drawn by Gee from Louvre 3284. I find this omission to be misleading to the audience, especially since he completely ignores this hieroglyph in his analysis jumping over it to the next hieroglyph.

I believe the existence of the legs is actually good news, even for Gee. Stay tuned.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

Edited December 24, 2011 by wenglund

[rodheadlee]

Folks, am I the only one who believes these two images below don't match up, or do you agree with Kevin that they do:

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

They don't appear to be even close to matching each other.

[Xander]

They don't appear to be even close to matching each other.

Precisely our point.

But John Gee argued that they were. This is why he placed them side by side. Or I should say, he believed the Louve character was to some extent extant on the papyrus when the scribes started copying it into the BoA manuscripts.

John Gee coupled numerous characters that have no apparent relationship, but he did so with the intention of convincing his audience that they were related, and in fact that one was copied from the other. He did this in order to create his "zig-zag" effect. He created his "zig-zag" effect so he could say there was no sequence to the characters on the BoA manuscripts. That was the entire purpose of his presentation.

The argument is absurd. It is why the guy presenting it quickly abandoned it. So why is wade trying to salvage the Titanic? Lord knows.

What wade is doing here is just too nauseating to continue reading anymore. He's now trying to say that I am the one claiming these two are identical! No, John Gee is the one claiming one was copied from the other. But as George showed above, he had to manipulate the Louve character to such an extent to make the character look more similar than it really is. He completely chopped off the legs. That explains why he didn't provide a direct copy from the Louve. It wouldn't have come close to supporting his argument. So he drew in his own version of it that had a slight resemblance to the BoA manuscript character.

Folks, please read this thread from the beginning. I trust most folks can comprehend clear cut arguments.

Edited December 25, 2011 by Xander

[Xander]

1. Gee says: "The third character or rather a group of two characters..." So, of the two images shown above, we need but look for the one with "two characters."

In Gee's view, they are both developed by two groups since they are both identical. You can't reinvent what he argued with this tunnel-vision, context-free, perspective. John Gee argued the two were related, one copied from the other. That's why he placed them side by side. You don't address this nor do you explain why he did this. You just say, OK there is another character there but we don't know why it is there, all we know is that he must be talking about the one on the right because I don't think the one on the left comes from two sets of characters. This is as wrongheaded as his presentation.

Clearly, the image with two characters is the image on the right, or in other words the image from the Louvre papyri that is presumable the same as was on the JSP XI fragment when it was originally composed, but as Gee surmised, was no longer extant today, and perhaps not in Joseph's day (given the disparity between the displayed images).

You just made that last part up. He said no such thing. He obviously believed it was extant to at least some extent, which is how the scribes copied it into the form they did on the BoA manuscripts. All of this just goes right over your head because you keep wanting him to argue something else.

2. Gee goes on to say: "So I show it from the hand copy of the parallel text found in the Louvre." The image Gee had in mind, then, is the image from the "parallel text found in the Louvre." Is there any doubt that the image on the right is the one from the Louvre?

No. Is there any doubt that the one on the left is from the Book of Abraham manuscripts? No. So the question is this. Why is he setting them side by side in a string of other comparisons which he unambiguously claimed are identical? You have no answer. By no longer addressing me you think you can just ignore all questions. All you want to focus on is the Louve drawing and ignore the context and purpose of his presentation.

Now, out of respect for the moderators, I won't mention who has been wrong or right all along, but will leave it to the reader to decide.

You are most definitely wrong because you don't grasp the fundamental basics of this presentation. You admittedly jumped into this "discussion" claiming I has misrepresented Gee before you ever read the transcript. You felt like it was acceptable to form judgments of a visual, graphics based presentation, by isolated a sentence or two while ignoring everything else.

You have no case. None. All you've done is keep reciting Gee's short comment, insisting he cannot have both characters in mind while speaking, and you've been trying to get him to say what you want using different forms of highlights. You haven't even begun to address the purpose of his presentation, what he was trying to prove or why.

Edited December 25, 2011 by Xander

[wenglund]

At the very least, "George Miller" understands that Gee wasn't referring to the third Phelps character (or the characters on JSP I, column 3), but rather the third Louvre set of characters, when he said: "The third character or rather a group of two characters is not preserved on the papyrus, nor is it found elsewhere on the papyrus. So I show it from the hand copy of the parallel text found in the Louvre. This was the third person plural pronoun and the verb ‘sta’ ‘to induct’." Here is what George said earlier:

First while as Gee noted, these hieroglyphs don't appear together in any other place on the extant papyri, they do show up separately.

To me, the important thing that Gee may have intended for us to understand, isn't so much whether or not each of the two characters in the third set (for the purpose of clarity let's call the character on the right "3a" and the character on the left "3b") may be found individually on JSP XI, but rather that there isn't just one character, there are two, and as a set they can't be found elsewhere on JSP XI. This is important to understand because it impacts not only the question of what portion of the JSP XI was still extant in Joseph's day, but also the issue of character selection sequence for the 1835 Abr. Ms., but perhaps also the possible influence of that character selection sequence on the EA/GAEL, or in other words the matter of dependency.

Since "George" gets this, I will pursue this line of investigation with him.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

Edited December 25, 2011 by wenglund

[wenglund]

Louvre 3284 most definitely does have the motion (legs) glyph in the same position as shown in Figure 1A

Do you by chance have a digital image you can post of this glyph from the Louvre papyri? More important, do you have digital images showing characters 3b, 3a, 2, and 1, and/or even all of the characters in question?

Gee does not mention this in his presentation as far as I can tell.

If it isn't explicitly mentioned, I believe it may have been implied.

In ignoring this determinative hieroglyph it makes the third hieroglyph on AB1 look more like the one drawn by Gee from Louvre 3284. I find this omission to be misleading to the audience, especially since he completely ignores this hieroglyph in his analysis jumping over it to the next hieroglyph.

Again, whether it was explicitly stated or not, I believe it is clear from Gee's mentioning that the third character actually consists of two characters, indicates that he was aware of the determinative character (3b). This can certainly be tested by analyzing whether Gee's translation of the characters (i.e. "third person plural pronoun and the verb 'sta' 'to induct’") accounts for the determinative character (3b).

Also, as other participants on this thread have pointed out, it may be implied when Gee said that, "The next character [set #6] is not identifiable in the papyrus or the parallel text and is the only one that is unidentifiable. Evidently, Gee may have, at least in his own mind, identified the third character in the Abr. Ms. with at least one of the two characters in the third set of characters represented in the image from the Louvre papyrus (which is evidently what Kevin also had in mind).

I, personally, can't explain why the image from the Louvre papyrus may have been truncated-i.e. absent the legs (pun intended)--in Gee's presentation. However, it appears to me to have been inadvertent, as also may have been the absence of certain contextual explanations. Gee may have intended to provide the added context ad lib during the presentation, but since Will presented for Gee, it may have been unintentionally left out. But, that may just be my conjecture. Unlike some people, i am not looking for or seeing sinister plots in everything Gee may have to say. I trust he has a perfectly reasonable explanation, and perhaps he will state it at some time.

Again, as I see it, the important thing to keep in mind regarding this aspect of Gee's presentation is that JSP XI originally had two characters now marked on the papyri as area #3 (characters 3b and 3a), and that at least one of those two characters (3b) may have been identified with the third character on the 1835 Abr. Ms. (more on this later).

I believe it is also critical to keep in mind that this third set of characters, as well as the two characters preceding it, only show up on one of the 1835 Abr. manuscripts, and only in the handwriting of W. W. Phelps, whereas the remainder of the characters from JSP XI aren't in the handwriting of Phelps, but may be found on three of the 1835 manuscripts, two in the handwriting of Warren Parrish and one in the handwriting of Fredrick G. Williams.

I believe this, too, is critical to intelligently analyzing the plausible relationships between the various documents: JSP XI, Abr. Mss., and even the EA/GAEL. For this reason, I think it wise to focus attention on the first three characters or sets of characters (1, 2, 3) as a group (let's call them the Phelps character group), particularly the last character set (3b and 3a), before moving on to explore the other characters. I think it will prove quite enlightening.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

Edited December 25, 2011 by wenglund

[George Miller]

At the very least, "George Miller" understands that Gee wasn't referring to the third Phelps character (or the characters on JSP I, column 3), but rather the third Louvre set of characters, when he said: "The third character or rather a group of two characters is not preserved on the papyrus, nor is it found elsewhere on the papyrus. So I show it from the hand copy of the parallel text found in the Louvre. This was the third person plural pronoun and the verb ‘sta’ ‘to induct’." Here is what George said earlier:

To me, the important thing that Gee may have intended for us to understand, isn't so much whether or not each of the two characters in the third set (for the purpose of clarity let's call the character on the right "3a" and the character on the left "3b") may be found individually on JSP XI, but rather that there isn't just one character, there are two, and as a set they can't be found elsewhere on JSP XI. This is important to understand because it impacts not only the question of what portion of the JSP XI was still extant in Joseph's day, but also the issue of character selection sequence for the 1835 Abr. Ms., but perhaps also the possible influence of that character selection sequence on the EA/GAEL, or in other words the matter of dependency.

Since "George" gets this, I will pursue this line of investigation with him.

What George "gets" is that it is very clear from what is written that Gee most definitely IS discussing the Ab1 character first when he says "The third character or rather a group of two characters is not preserved on the papyrus, nor is it found elsewhere on the papyrus." The only reason Gee would need to say this was "two characters" instead of one is because he was showing the single character from Ab1. If Gee had been referencing the two characters from the Louvre 3284 at this point then he would not have referred to it as "the third character" but as the third and fourth character. Referring to Louvre3284 Gee goes on to say he will "show it from the hand copy of the parallel text found in the Louvre." When we further take into account the remembrance of Chris Smith who was there when the presentation was made and Kevin's repeated listening to and presentation of the slides, it become completely clear that you are misrepresenting the clear meaning of Gee presentation. Additionally, if Gee was not referencing Ab1 in the first sentence above then he would have NO way of concluding like he later incorrectly does that these hieroglyphs were extant on the papyri in 1835. Finally, this conclusion is supported by the Gee ignoring the determinative hieroglyph immediately below the hieroglyph on the left to improve the resemblance between the third hieroglyph from Ab1 with the 3rd and 4th hieroglyphs taken in combination from what was likely on the papyrus before it was damaged before its arrival in Kirtland.

Edited December 26, 2011 by George Miller

[George Miller]

Do you by chance have a digital image you can post of this glyph from the Louvre papyri? More important, do you have digital images showing characters 3b, 3a, 2, and 1, and/or even all of the characters in question?

You can find a complete copy of Louvre 3284 in The Hor Book of Breathings: A Translation and Commentary by Michael D. Rhodes.

I believe this, too, is critical to intelligently analyzing the plausible relationships between the various documents: JSP XI, Abr. Mss., and even the EA/GAEL. For this reason, I think it wise to focus attention on the first three characters or sets of characters (1, 2, 3) as a group (let's call them the Phelps character group), particularly the last character set (3b and 3a), before moving on to explore the other characters. I think it will prove quite enlightening.

I agree. Analyzing the Ab1 and Ab2-4 clearly shows that the translation methods and methodology was highly similar between the two documents. Additionally, since the only person that was involved in the translation of these documents throughout the entire period was Joseph Smith, it argues very strongly that Joseph Smith had the reigns for the entire translation project.

Edited December 26, 2011 by George Miller

[wenglund]

What George "gets" is that it is very clear from what is written that Gee most definitely IS discussing the Ab1 character first when he says "The third character or rather a group of two characters is not preserved on the papyrus, nor is it found elsewhere on the papyrus." The only reason Gee would need to say this was "two characters" instead of one is because he was showing the single character from Ab1.

The reason Gee mentioned the two characters is because that is how many characters were originally written on the JSP XI. Obviously. Since the third character on Ab1 consisted of only one character and not two characters it clearly didn't fit the bill for both characters, and thus it could NOT have been the character (or characters) that Gee had in mind for the specific statement above--though the Ab1 character did factor into his presentation.. Gee could NOT use the single Ab1 character to show what the now non-extant two characters on the JSP XI would have looked like. And, since the two characters didn't show up as a set on the extant papyri (as you admit), that is why he displayed the characters from the Louvre papyrus so that the audience could see what he meant.

Simply put, it was the two characters (3b and 3a), as a set, originally written on JSP XI, represented to the audience by the image from the Louvre papyrus, that "is not preserved on the papyrus, nor is it found elsewhere on the papyrus."

If Gee had been referencing the two characters from the Louvre 3284 at this point then he would not have referred to it as "the third character" but as the third and fourth character.

The reason Gee referred to the two characters both as a single character and as two characters, is to maintain continuity with the numeric naming system between the JSP XI and the Abr. Mss. Obviously. He wouldn't have needed to mention that the one character was actually two characters if he was only speaking to the one character.

Referring to Louvre3284 Gee goes on to say he will "show it from the hand copy of the parallel text found in the Louvre." When we further take into account the remembrance of Chris Smith who was there when the presentation was made and Kevin's repeated listening to and presentation of the slides, it become completely clear that you are misrepresenting the clear meaning of Gee presentation....

Not only am I obviously not misrepresenting what Gee said, but it is obvious to me that my interpretation is the only rational way to interpret what Gee said. As, such, I have to wonder why opponents to Gee are the only one's seeing it differently. It makes me wonder if there may be some strained agenda-driven self-protectiveness going on. Who knows?

This puts me in mind of a discussion years ago on ZLMB where critics of Gee had interpreted his statement about "overrun" to mean "overwrite," and certain apologists had said otherwise, and the debate went on and on, only to find out from Gee that the apologists were correct, and even after Gee set the record straight the critics could not be dissuaded.

By way of explanation, after first having read your response I was inclined to just let it go, but the reason I didn't is because, as previously mentioned, I believe it will factor into the discussion down the road. To me, it is critical to understand that what is referred to as the third character on JSP XI, is actually two characters, whereas the third character on Ab1 is a single character. Can we at least agree on that?

Now, I really am not going to say anything more specifically about this, say whatever you may.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

Edited December 27, 2011 by wenglund

[wenglund]

You can find a complete copy of Louvre 3284 in The Hor Book of Breathings: A Translation and Commentary by Michael D. Rhodes.

This doesn't really answer the question I asked, though I will take it to mean that you don't have digital images that you are willing or able to post. I will see if I can find or make some digital copies myself so as to facilitate the discussion here.

I agree. Analyzing the Ab1 and Ab2-4 clearly shows that the translation methods and methodology was highly similar between the two documents. Additionally, since the only person that was involved in the translation of these documents throughout the entire period was Joseph Smith, it argues very strongly that Joseph Smith had the reigns for the entire translation project.

We'll see.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-