Jump to content
Seriously No Politics ×

John Gee: "The Joseph Smith Papers Project Stumbles"


Recommended Posts

27 minutes ago, aussieguy55 said:

Would Ritner be concerned if he became aware of Gee's apologetic writings before he got his PHd.? If his student is publishing material on the BOA which in the eyes of many other Egyptologists is dead wrong would that not affect his reputation as a member of the committee granting him the PHd. 

That could be a possibility.  Ritner is probably the best source on his reasoning if he didn't detail it privately to Gee and then it might still have been misunderstood by Gee.  While there are reasons to doubt people's self description/analysis, probably the people themselves are still best source of actual thought process unless obvious reasonings for lying or there is evidence of mental disturbance.  I would include unrelated comments that might indicate bias as well as specific to the reasoning explanations from the individual.

Add-on:  I have known religious post graduate students (not just Saints) who have expressed the need to keep their mouth shut until after they get their degree because they have been told by faculty over them that the professor is looking for any excuse to boot them because they are religious (mostly from psych grad students), so imo it is not an uncommon situation.  I assume the same problem exists for agnostics/atheists at religious schools; some professors aren't able to distance themselves from their own prejudices or see them even as bias.

Edited by Calm
Link to comment
11 minutes ago, Calm said:

That could be a possibility.  Ritner is probably the best source on his reasoning if he didn't detail it privately to Gee and then it might still have been misunderstood by Gee....

I have no idea about their private conversations.  But years back,  someone posted, what they claimed was Dr. Ritner's response to repeated statements by Dr. Gee and Dr. Peterson that Gee had Dr. Ritner removed from his committee, he mentioned that he was concerned about his name being associated with Gee's apologetic output.  He also called their repeated posts regarding the change of chairs as false allegations. I'm not aware of Dr. Gee or Dr. Peterson publicly making those allegations in the years since that response. 

 

Link to comment
14 minutes ago, cacheman said:

I have no idea about their private conversations.  But years back,  someone posted, what they claimed was Dr. Ritner's response to repeated statements by Dr. Gee and Dr. Peterson that Gee had Dr. Ritner removed from his committee, he mentioned that he was concerned about his name being associated with Gee's apologetic output.  He also called their repeated posts regarding the change of chairs as false allegations. I'm not aware of Dr. Gee or Dr. Peterson publicly making those allegations in the years since that response. 

 

Gee was publishing religiously oriented work prior to working with Ritner, so it would be a logical concern from his POV, imo.  If Ritner had his own prejudices on top of that...(which given his later behaviour it seems like it to me), the two would be highly motivating, imo.

Given prejudices of professors, even comments or beliefs unrelated at all to their field affect how students and other professors are viewed.  One fellow professor claimed my husband wasn't able to fairly work with the female staff because he was Mormon (business school, he teaches entrepreneurship).  Apparently she was believed because an offered post was taken back.  The female staff wrote a group letter to the administrator involved supporting my husband, describing him as one of the most respectful professors they had worked with (privately I was told he was the best they ever had as he treated them as equals while the prof who libeled him treated the women staff like second class citizens, her personal servants; they were ticked about the attack on my husband).

Edited by Calm
Link to comment
12 minutes ago, aussieguy55 said:

Would BYU employ a biology professor if he or she has numerous publications in Creation Science Journals ?

If the question is to me, I have no clue (I am not familiar with the hiring practices of .BYU except for the fact that certain administrators were rotten about getting back in a timely manner when exchanging letters of interest, husband ended up at UVU probably 3 or 5 months  after UVU first expressing interest; granted they were under time pressure needed Ph.Ds to upgrade to a university), but I would hope they would at least look at the articles themselves rather than just dismiss based on the publication.

Link to comment
12 minutes ago, aussieguy55 said:

If they did hire that person they would be hiring someone who questioned carbon dating and tree rings for determining age

Not necessarily, there might be other reasons to publish in a creationist journal just as there might be reasons for a theist to get published in an atheism slanted magazine.  I would expect a lot of caution and questioning of their actual position even if there wasn't any red flags sciencewise and I think the probability would be low given what I have seen in such journals.  But it is what articles they actually wrote and what they say is their beliefs that should matter most imo and that should be where they go to see, not making assumptions imo.  

The person would have to have a good reputation outside the creationist journals, of course.  If they were solely publishing in those, just the quality of the publications lowers the significance of publishing.  I am not suggesting those publications should count towards getting him hired as they are not professional journals.  It matters where you publish in terms of what publications count for in salary improvements as well as reputation, competition with other professors for limited jobs, and just basic qualifications. I am assuming this person meets the qualifications for hiring in all other ways...perhaps you are assuming that is impossible.

Edited by Calm
Link to comment
On 9/7/2019 at 2:37 PM, aussieguy55 said:

This is a point by point response to the Gospel Topics Essay on the Book of Abraham

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LogowrocK8t2X9R-oXAUyte2Dg654Kjt40qOhleGrdc/edit

 

Why did Smith take so long to produce the book to be eventually published in the Times and Seasons?  It gave him plenty of time to research Josephus  and Book of Jasher and Clarke's Bible comments. 

You posted this before under a different link.  However, it was met w/a resounding silence, maybe loaded with overwhelming sangfroid.  I find this puzzling.  To me, Kellan's article was devastating, at least on first uncritical glance.  Maybe most of you folks have processed all of this negative assessment regarding JS's Book of Abraham, so nothing new or to see here.  I don't know.

Anyone care  to respond as to just how they reconcile Smith's apparent 'cobbling together' of the Book of Abraham vs. his coming up with the Book of Mormon, witnessed by multiple people, both physically and via heavy-duty spiritual manifestations?

I've been only mildly interested in the BoA questions, naively thinking Nibley probably handled it already . . . or at least had made a good start on it; and superficially thought a longer, but missing scroll was the answer.

 

Link to comment

How much evidence is there that Abraham even ever existed?  The use of camels is considered an anachronism. I  saw an apologetic book on this area of the Bible whose author used that catch phase  ""Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence,"  The author suggested that originally it was "donkeys" that Abraham used but it was not considered right that the patriarch should be riding a donkey. As well as the problem with camels  Finkelstein writes "an even more telling detail  the camel caravan carryig "gum balm and myrrh" in the Joseph story  reveals an obvious familiarity with the main products of the lucrative Arabian trade that flourished under the supervision of the Assyrian empire in the eighth- seventh centuries B.C.E. " p.37.

Link to comment
33 minutes ago, aussieguy55 said:

How much evidence is there that Abraham even ever existed?  The use of camels is considered an anachronism. I  saw an apologetic book on this area of the Bible whose author used that catch phase  ""Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence,"  The author suggested that originally it was "donkeys" that Abraham used but it was not considered right that the patriarch should be riding a donkey. As well as the problem with camels  Finkelstein writes "an even more telling detail  the camel caravan carryig "gum balm and myrrh" in the Joseph story  reveals an obvious familiarity with the main products of the lucrative Arabian trade that flourished under the supervision of the Assyrian empire in the eighth- seventh centuries B.C.E. " p.37.

Interesting problem I'd never thought of before.  The incense trade was apparently flourishing beginning from about 6,000 years BP.  Hard to believe camels weren't being used in that trade for most of this time.  They're all over the place and used for food and milk through much of southern Arabia, Oman/Yemen; and are a prime currency of ownership for many of the citizens of these countries.  Even more are found in Somalia.

What are we talking about for Joseph?  1600 to 1800 yrs BC?  My intuitive guess is they've been around and domesticated, a long, long time.  Certainly Lehi had them.  I don't quite buy the 1200 BC domestication advent.

Link to comment
On 9/8/2019 at 10:44 PM, blarsen said:

"You posted this before under a different link"?  " . . a different link."?   I'm either losing it or need to get to bed  earlier.

 

Link to comment

Here's a podcast where a fellow named Ed Goble (related to Clark?) is being interviewed on his views of JS's Egyptian 'Alphabet' located here:  https://pleaseleaveamessage.simplecast.com/episodes/37  and which may be of interest to some of you here.  He gives further explication of his views here:  https://egyptianalphabetandgrammar.blogspot.com/

I'm just getting interested again in this whole Book of Abraham topic, and have no point of view on Goble's information . . . yet.

Still surprised that no one has replied to my questions about the Kelan article, etc.  There seems to be a 'collective conscious' to this board that I don't quite understand yet.

Link to comment
4 hours ago, blarsen said:

Here's a podcast where a fellow named Ed Goble (related to Clark?) is being interviewed on his views of JS's Egyptian 'Alphabet' located here:  https://pleaseleaveamessage.simplecast.com/episodes/37  and which may be of interest to some of you here.  He gives further explication of his views here:  https://egyptianalphabetandgrammar.blogspot.com/

I'm just getting interested again in this whole Book of Abraham topic, and have no point of view on Goble's information . . . yet.

Still surprised that no one has replied to my questions about the Kelan article, etc.  There seems to be a 'collective conscious' to this board that I don't quite understand yet.

Clark would likely have been the one to respond at this time in the board's evolution and thinking of him answering was leading me to avoid the topic actually.  

Iirc, Clark said once they weren't related as far as he knew...though it might have been Ed.  He posts here every now and then and puts up links to his material.

I think the majority of posters don't feel educated enough in the area to comment on it, though there were some in the past who focused on it.  I may be projecting though.  I have been following the various arguments off and on since I got into online discussions, but still not sure if I got the details down well enough not to draw false conclusions (for example, discussion of timelines frustrate me because I need to constantly refer to written ones to keep it all straight), so I haven't even looked at the article for now (most of the time I would, right now I don't want to invest the time and effort to ensure I understand, just too mentally tired).

Link to comment

There seems to be so much internal conflict and debate over the Book of Abraham. Hauglid agreed with some of the work done by Dan Vogel. Blake Ostler has some negative comment about Vogel and others on  Faith Promoting Rumor. What surprised me was some of the potty language.   . I expected a blast against the paper by Kelan. He attends church with his wife. He said  "I'm nobody of any significance and I make no personal claims of authority or scholarship; I just thought a good way to illustrate the problems with the Book of Abraham would be to insert my notes directly into the text of the essay to underscore how fundamentally deceptive even the most official apologetics can be."

Link to comment
On 9/9/2019 at 1:16 AM, aussieguy55 said:
Noam Mizrahi seems to be suggesting that the introduction of domesticated camels came late to the Canaan region, not necessarily to Egypt or the southern parts of Arabia.  Though it does seem that if they were present for transport earlier in these areas, the use would rapidly spread to the Land of Canaan.
 
Isn't the 3rd letter of the modern Hebrew alphabet derived from or cognate w/our word for camel?  I.e., gee'mel?  Does this go back to proto-Hebrew writing, and are there any examples of proto-Hebrew that are earlier than the 10 Century BCE?
 
From an LDS position, with our awareness of Lehi/Nephi and his brethren being up to speed with Egyptian writing of some sort, and with Moses coming from the court of a Pharaoh, it doesn't make much sense to me that they would not have committed the stories of Abraham, etc., to writing fairly early, using Egyptian if nothing else, or the early Hyksos/Phoenician alphabet.
 
 
 
 
Edited by blarsen
Link to comment

Over at FPR, Dan Vogel has responded at length in the comments section to Lindsay's article criticizing the JSPP Book of Abraham volume.

See here.

 

I am cutting and pasting Dan's responses below for those who do not want to sort through the comments.

Dan's  first comment is in response to one made by Blake Ostler.

Quote

Blake Ostler, for you to praise Lindsay’s essay and his discussion of Hebrew in GAEL tells me you don’t know what you are talking about because Lindsay certainly doesn’t. Gee tried to date the GAEL to early 1836 by arguing that the GAEL shows knowledge of Seixas’ transliteration system, but so far no one can show it. Now, Lindsay want to date it to late November 1835 when Cowdery arrived with the Hebrew books. The problem is that the knowledge of Hebrew goes little beyond the Hebrew Alphabet. Besides, W. W. Phelps was involved and could have helped.

Some try to argue that the presence of Hebrew proves WWP wrote the GAEL, but those who date it to 1836 must allow for JS’s authorship. Can’t have it both ways.

WWP probably helped write the entries in the History of the Church in 1843 that date the Alphabets and at least the beginning of the bound GAEL to July 1835. The part of the GAEL (the end) that describes the Egyptian astronomy coincides with JS’s journal entry for 1 Oct. 1835. These entries also have WWP assigning authorship of the GAEL to Smith. Gee doesn’t quote these passages, but he does try to argue that the entire BofA was translated in July 1835 without giving a reference, but the only source to mention translating some of the characters is the HC.

Lindsay went on and on about the Hebrew influence on the GAEL, even arguing that the lines for the five degrees and dots (Iota) were influenced by Hebrew vowel signs. However, the lines probably came from the papyri and the dots were not meant to be dots on the papyri but JS and Co. interpreted the flaking of the ink as dots.

The old Nibley apologetic that the GAEL was written by JS’s scribes in an effort to reverse engineer JS translation of Abraham is dead. It was born out of ignorance of the actual documents and is maintained by Gee and Muhlestein, neither of whom know what they are doing when it comes to the English documents.

The Lindsay essay is a complete mess from beginning to end. His explanation for the two text of Abraham 1:4-2:6 being written simultaneously at JS’s dictation, that Parrish was copying from a complete text of Abraham while reading the same out loud so that F. G. Williams could make a copy as well, is complete nonsense. In his explanation of how we get several in-line corrections in both manuscripts shows that he doesn’t know what a visual mistake is (dittography or haplography). Lindsay is no better than Gee and Muhlestein for inventing the worst kind of apologetic.

Then this one.

Quote

Lindsay’s article is a slog for sure. Not only for its length—a full 91 pages—but because at times it is as if he were thinking out loud. Where were the editors? Interpreter is not only peer reviewed, it doesn’t seem to be edited either.

The whole section 7 of his article (pp. 87-88) could be cut. In this section, Lindsay wonders if JS’s handwriting has been correctly identified, without giving a reason, and complains that the transcriptions on the JSP website and in the book are sometimes different. Perhaps Lindsay wants people to think that there is a question about Joseph Smith’s participation in creating the Egyptian Alphabets, because Gee’s attempt to make it appear that JS was only half-heartedly following Phelps or that JS merely copied from Phelps and Cowdery is a complete failure.

And these two.

Quote

In Part 1 (pp. 21-24), Lindsay complains that Nibley’s work was not utilized by Jensen and Hauglid. “Yet Nibley is cited zero times compared to at least 49 citations of Ritner.” (23) Lindsay doesn’t get the difference between Nibley’s writings and Ritner’s. Nibley was not an Egyptologist. Ritner is. If, as Gee insisted in his review, Jensen and Hauglid can’t comment on things Egyptian, neither can Nibley. For sure, Nibley didn’t describe the papyri from a mainstream Egyptological standpoint. Nibley’s Message of the Joseph Smith Papyri: An Egyptian Endowment, for example, is not useful to Egyptologists. Using Ritner rather than Gee or Muhlestein removes suspicion of apologetically tainted opinion. Nibley’s 1971 essay in BYU Studies—“The Meaning of the Kirtland Egyptian Papers”—was preliminary and outdated, although Gee and Muhlestein continue his missing papyri and reverse translation apologetic.

In Part 2 (pp. 24-34), Lindsay criticizes Jensen and Hauglid for not being balanced and being more critical than apologetic. Basically, he refuses to accept the explanation that apologetics was outside the purpose of the JSP project. He even suggests that they smuggle Mormon apologetics into their work, so that it lends “first aid” to members and undermines critical points of view but in such a way as to not provoke non-Mormon scholars to label their book as apologetic.

He criticizes them for “hint[ing] that at least part of the Book of Abraham was produced from the GAEL,” but not mentioning the reverse translation theory (pp. 24-25). Lindsay sakes, “why not open the door to the possibility proposed by other scholars that the GAEL was derived in part from the existing translated text?” (p. 25) Why refer to the works of those who refuse to let a bad theory die?

The problem with the reverse translation theory is that the GAEL isn’t about the Book of Abraham. The characters in the margins of the BofA manuscripts come from JSP XI, or were invented to fill gaps in the damaged papyrus. Whereas the characters in the GAEL come from the Amenhotep papyrus (copied into the Valuable Discovery notebooks), Ta-sherit-Min papyrus, the pure language, and the vertical columns that flank Fac. 1 on JSP I. These characters are interspersed with invented or derivative characters. So there is no way that the KEP can be explained as coming from JS’s translation of the BofA.

Moreover, a close examination of the content of JS’s Egyptian documents, together with historical sources, shows the order and time of their creations. There was some overlap, but the chronology is basically as follows: Valuable Discovery notebooks > Egyptian Alphabets > GAEL > BofA.

The GAEL does contain material that was later used in the BofA, but the origin of that material was not the BofA but what was known as the epitaph of Katumin and the record of Joseph (aka Ta-sherit-Min papyrus). Part 1 of the Alphabets, which was expanded in part 1 of the GAEL, explains why the records of the Hebrew patriarchs were found with Egyptian mummies. In the process, it is stated that Katumin descended from the daughter of Ham, who discovered Egypt while it was still under water, presumably from the Flood. This information gets dropped into the text of Abraham, along with similar characters that coincide with a missing portion of JSP XI.

Do Gee and Muhlestein discuss any of this? No. They have merely asserted the reverse translation theory without any supportive arguments or evidence. Since there is no direct relationship between the GAEL and the text of Abraham, there is no need to have the entire BofA translated before the GAEL.

 

Lastly this.

Quote

Continuing my response to Lindsay’s Part 2 (pp. 24-34), Lindsay makes this incredible statement: “If the goal is not to promote faith, neither should it unnecessarily undermine it. Subjective bias that supports positions that can undermine faith and weaken respect for the scriptures must be avoided. Cited scholarship and perspectives on the complex interpretative issues around the KEP must not actively exclude and ignore relevant scholarship that refutes or undermines key positions of critics of the Church” (pp. 26-27).

Lindsay seems to suggest that Jensen and Hauglid protect members by self-censorship, while at the same time include material that undermines the critics. Here we see that Lindsay is not really interested in balance but is simply an apologist. If Jensen and Hauglid did as he suggested, then they would be obligated to include critical viewpoint as well to avoid criticism, and that would be a very different book.

Lindsay should seriously question his assumption that a rejection of Nibley’s old reverse translation theory undermines faith. It doesn’t. Apologists are not infallible and their theories are not dogma. If the theory is bad, you don’t keep performing “first aid” on it, you discard it and look for a better one.

Lindsay demonstrates that he doesn’t know what he is talking about when he writes: “In fact, for the GAEL and the Egyptian Alphabet documents, one can examine the characters, their definitions, and the existence of any apparently related glyphs on the key existing scroll (Fragment of Breathing Permit for Horus-A), and see that, of the 62 characters assigned a meaning, only four (2.32, 2.41, 2.42, and 3.11) have a clear connection to a character on the papyrus, with three more characters (2.36, 2.40, and 3.15) possibly, but with less certainty, being found on the papyrus” (pp. 30-31).

As previously explained, the Alphabets and GAEL do not relate to the BofA, which was taken from JSP XI. Whereas part 1 of the Alphabets and part 1 of the GAEL were taken from the Amenhotep papyrus and the Ta-sherit-Min papyrus. Part 2 begins with the pure language, and then copies from column 3 of JSP I, with derivative characters scattered between copied characters. Lindsay thinks this is a problem for the critics, arguing with Gee: “This raises serious questions about the purpose and use of these documents and calls into question claims that Joseph was using them to create the Book of Abraham as a translation from an existing papyrus fragment” (31). However, the critics do not need to see the GAEL as showing how JS translated the BofA, only that it shows JS incorrectly translating specific characters, but the apologists’ reverse-translation theory demands that the GAEL have a direct relationship to the BofA.

The reverse-translation theory is not simply a different way of looking at the evidence, it totally untenable to maintain once one understands the documents.

 

Link to comment

Here's a rather thoughtful and insightful piece from Ed Goble he produced at my request for his response to the Kellan article posted on this thread and his approach to parsing out the whole Book of Abraham controversy,.  He asked me to present it here, not having an MDD account, himself.  FWIW.  Also located here:  https://egyptianalphabetandgrammar.blog ... -book.html

 

Quote

I read through a lot of the Kelan article. My reaction to this is the same as my reaction always has been to works such as By His Own Hand on Papyrus by Charles Larson, or Joseph Smith Egyptian Papyri by Robert Ritner, or even the CES Letter. We can congratulate the authors for their attention to a lot of detail where they try to bombard us with so much technical detail about how things are supposedly "false", that as the author Kelan said, to quote, you have to "come up for air" sometimes. The importance of evidence is not lost on the authors of these materials. And sometimes they are very right about technical details.

But it is not the rightness of technical details that is all that impressive. It is whether they have focused so much on technical details that they are lost on things that really matter. that is where they fail. Because for some reason, they assume that all parties that are on the Church's side are agreed on all details, just because something is put out as authoritative by the Church, that is in fact ghost written by flawed apologists.

I am in fact not in agreement on all the details and claims made in the Church's apologetic production, just because I am a member of the Church. In fact, I am agreed on a great number of facts and details put out by the critics.

And by that, I mean, the fact is, it doesn't matter so much that a critic can be right to a great degree by bombarding us with a bunch of stuff that is true. That is not very impressive to me, because I actually agree with the great majority of facts that the critics are presenting. It is their interpretation of what those facts mean that is the issue with me. And so, by that, I mean that a lot of things are both true at the same time. For example, it is both true that Thomas ****'s Philosophy of a Future State contains items that resemble contents of the Book of Abraham, but it is also true that it is an authentic fact that Abraham also actually knew these things. But the same type of things exist for the Book of Mormon too about many things that Joseph Smith knew from his environment, that primed him for it. For example, the theories about the moundbuilders that they were the Lost Ten Tribes from Joseph smith's environment. Just because this stuff was in his environment did not stop the facts in the Book of Mormon from being true. So, the truth can actually be surprising sometimes that two things can be true at the same time. The critics bombard us with this stuff and then feed us the assumption that there is only one possibility, that Joseph Smith copied stuff from his environment. Even if he did, it doesn't mean that what he produced is not true. In fact, I embrace the fact that sometimes things from the environment are there in fact for the very purpose of priming him to receive revelations, and that people in his environment also were receivers of revelation and inspiration to make sure that those very things would be there for the prophet to be primed at the time he needed to be.

Secondly, the other common claim from the critic is that, just because it is technically true that Joseph Smith didn't get technical things right about the identification of the papyri that he was dealing with, that therefore was in fact no ancient source that once contained the information that he produced. Those things are not indicative that there was no ancient source that Joseph Smith reproduced.

In fact, what I am saying is that revelation many times does not actually resemble the parody of it that the critics would have us believe. For example, just because Joseph Smith had certain assumptions about his sources doesn't invalidate the end product that he produced as being a reproduction of authentically ancient material. It is the end product that ought to be put under the microscope, not Joseph Smith's assumptions about it, which in fact may be outright wrong, or incomplete. In this case, Joseph Smith's assumptions about the Hor Papyrus as being an autograph of Abraham is not technically correct. That is a fact. Joseph Smith did not understand technical details about it. Today we do, and both the critics and the apologists know this very well. We know very well that the Papyrus does not contain the Book of Abraham. What Joseph Smith was NOT wrong about was that there is an association between the symbols and the content of the Book of Abraham, and that that relationship is ancient. THIS is what my research shows. In other words, with modern research, we come to know in sharp focus HOW the Hor Papyrus has a linkage to the Book of Abraham, and that it does not CONTAIN the contents of the message of the Book of Abraham. Joseph Smith assumed too much about the identity of the papyrus. In other words the Holy Ghost used Joseph Smith, regardless of Joseph Smith's partially true or partially false assumptions about the identity of the thing he was working with. In other words, Joseph Smith knew things only partially, but the Holy Ghost used him anyway. And the Holy Ghost knew things fully. Therefore, Joseph Smith is still a vessel of receiving information from the Holy Ghost notwithstanding his failings or partial understandings, and notwithstanding what was in Joseph Smith's environment.

Therefore, as Church members, we still have enough evidence to indicate that we ought to to be grateful to Joseph Smith, that he is a conduit, notwithstanding he is human and fallible and not omniscient. And we ought to be grateful that the Holy Ghost still used him as a conduit anyway. And furthermore, we ought to be grateful that the Holy Ghost is the entity that is omniscient that worked with Joseph Smith as a tool. We ought to be grateful that there is an element in the equation that is indeed omniscient, in spite of the limitations of the conduit. Therefore, as Church Members, we ought to also be grateful to ALL researchers (including the critics) for bringing further facts to light about the matter. Because, as Church members, we aren't necessarily as interested in apologetics and being bamboozled by apologists when they make false or incorrect claims, and we are not even necessarily interested in Church sponsored claims when they are not entirely correct coming from apologists that are commissioned by the Church to produce something. We are interested in all truth, regardless from whence it comes. Therefore, we ought to be grateful to the critics when they bring truth to light, but we intend to circumscribe all truth into one great combination of truth. Therefore, we ought to be willing to recognize by the Holy Ghost when truth comes from critics, or from apologists, or from whatever source. Therefore, I am not interested in defending things even in the Church essay when the Church essay presents facts that aren't precisely correct. Ultimately, I am interested in coming to an understanding of truth as a whole. And if Joseph Smith only knew the truth partially, then I am undisturbed when facts come to light that show more of the truth. But that doesn't invalidate the parts of the truth, or even partial truths that Joseph Smith did in fact know.

Therefore, I say, I am as grateful for the facts presented in Kellan's article as I am from the By His Own hand on Papyrus book, or Ritner's book. I am just not impressed by Kellan's interpretations of those facts, and I say, none of those facts invalidate my research the least bit.

In other words, I am still asserting and am unswayed from the conclusion that the Hor Papyrus has a role where it is related to the Book of Abraham symbolically by the relational things of its ancient usage of its symbols, but it does not CONTAIN the text. And therefore, the contents are reproduced from a non-extant ancient source. The Holy Ghost knew this, but Joseph Smith didn't have to know these details to complete his work. And I am undisturbed by the fact that Joseph Smith didn't have to know all things or all technical facts of a matter to actually have performed his work, and the fact that we can come to know facts that Joseph Smith did not know is a testimony that the Holy Ghost continues to reveal important facts and does things incrementally according to our needs. Apologists need to strive to have their interpretations of things actually harmonize with known facts, rather than making crap up or outright lying or misrepresenting facts the way they do sometimes, because when they do that, they do damage to the cause. And this can be especially damaging when the Church relies on the "expertise" of apologists like that. I for one strive to have interpretations that harmonize with the evidence.

Thanks.

 

Edited by blarsen
Link to comment

Additional response by Dan Vogel @ FPR to Lindsay's article.

Dan Vogel @ FPR responding to Jeff Lindsay.

Quote

n Part 3 (34-58), Lindsay criticizes Jensen and Hauglid for assuming work on the Egyptian project ended when JS began studying Hebrew under Joshua Seixas in January 1836, arguing that there are clear signs of Hebrew influence in the GAEL and therefore Jensen and Hauglid are wrong to date it to “circa July-circa November 1835.”

Lindsay believes that evidence of Hebrew influence in the GAEL necessarily dates it to after the arrival of Cowdery with Hebrew lexicons, dictionaries, and lesson books on 20 November 1835, and therefore Jensen and Hauglid “may need to be revised to later dates more in line with the dates previously proposed by John Gee (e.g., Oct. 29, 1835 to April
1836 for documents in the handwriting of Warren Parrish)” (p. 35). Actually, Gee dates the GAEL to “Between January and April 1835” (Gee, Introduction, 33), because he incorrectly argued that “The system of transliteration that Phelps used in the [Grammar] book follows the transliteration system taught by Josiah [Joshua] Seixas beginning in January of 1836” (Gee, “Joseph Smith and Ancient Egypt,” in Approaching Antiquity, 440-41). To his credit, Lindsay questions Gee’s assertion (pp. 42-43) but instead argues that the GAEL was written in late November-December 1835, after the arrival of the books but before lessons with Seixas. This is because he recognizes that Hebrew influence on the GAEL is rudimentary, not going much beyond knowledge of the alphabet or a “very basic study of Hebrew.”

The problem with this timeline is that it requires very limited time for JS (or Phelps) to study Hebrew on his own, workout the “Egyptian Counting,” and dictate the entire GAEL. It also requires Lindsay to dismiss the entry in the History of the Church, written probably with JS’s and/or Phelps’ help, which dates the beginning of the Alphabets and GAEL to the latter part of July 1835, as well as the entry in JS’s journal mentioning working on the Egyptian alphabet and the unfolding of the system of astronomy, which appears at the end of the GAEL.

While there is some evidence of a rudimentary knowledge of Hebrew, Lindsay knows that it’s not enough to date the GAEL to after 20 November 1835. So he makes the astonishing claim that “one can readily find evidence of a more extensive impact of Hebrew study on the Kirtland Egyptian Papers, even to the point of being able to pinpoint specific content in some Hebrew books as potential sources of both characters and concepts in the Kirtland Egyptian Papers” (35). This overstates his evidence.

His evidence is a similar shaped character on the “Egyptian Counting” document representing the number 2 that looks a lot like an alternate shape for the character for Beth (the second letter of the Hebrew alphabet), which appears in a chart in Moses Stuart, A Grammar of the Hebrew Language, 5th ed. (Andover, MA: Gould and Newman, 1835), one of the books Cowdery brought from the East. Based on this one character Lindsay wants us to revise a carefully-constructed and sound chronology. I don’t think so.

However, this evidence has problems that even Lindsay seems to recognize. First, if one looks at the “Egyptian Counting” document the shape for 2 is similar to the Arabic 2, and therefore could simply be a disguised 2. This possibility is strengthened by the fact that the numbers for 1, 4, 5, 7, and 8 are also similar to their Arabic equivalents.

Second, Cowdery brought the 5th edition of Moses Stuart’s A Grammar of the Hebrew Language printed in 1835, but that doesn’t mean that no one had access to an earlier edition of Stuart’s book.

Third, the character was published in other similar charts by other authors as early as the eighteenth century. Lindsay himself gives an example from Thomas Astle, The Origin and Progress of Writing: As Well Hieroglyphic as Elementary (London: T. Payne & Son, B. White, P. Elmsly, G. Nichol, and Leigh and Sotheby, 1784), Table 1, p. 64.

However, I don’t see JS looking at the chart in Stuart’s book, or any book, and borrowing just one letter, no matter what date one wants to assign. Even Lindsay notes that these characters on the “mysterious Egyptian Counting document” aren’t Egyptian (p. 49). So where did they come from and how does this document fit into the Egyptian project? Despite the words at the top of the first page “Egyptian Counting,” there is no connecting to the Egyptian project. I think this document is best understood as part of the pure language project that predated the arrival of the Egyptian papyri and was subsequently carried over into the Egyptian project, as we see happening in the Alphabets. An examination of so-called the Book of Mormon characters shows that JS favored familiar shapes derived from English letters and Arabic numerals when inventing ancient-looking characters. So it seems probable that the “Egyptian Counting” document reflects an earlier rather than later time.

Besides, the one character from Stuart’s chart, Lindsay states: “No other clear correspondence exists with the Egyptian Counting document” (p. 50). Nevertheless, Lindsay attempts to compare Stuart’s characters with other characters in the KEP, but these are random, superficial, and limited to simple characters (characters shaped like a sideways F, a Y, and an inverted A, for example). There is nothing that could be considered compelling or striking. However, trying to locate Lindsay’s parallels is difficult because they are highly subjective, forced (by rotating or deleting parts of the characters), and downright silly.

Lindsay demonstrates that he doesn’t know the KEP well when compares a character on page 2 of the GAEL with an Arabic character corresponding with the Hebrew character daleth in Stuart’s chart (p. 52). Lindsay evidently doesn’t know that this character in the GAEL appears at the ends of the three Alphabets and was taken from the beginning of JSP XI, referred to as the w-loop character (by Nibley even), but has since flaked off.

Lindsay tries to suggest that the underlining of characters to indicate degrees and the Iota dot in the GAEL are like Hebrew diacritics or vowels. However, the lines come from the papyri and the dots come from JS’s misreading of the flaked ink.

This should be enough to show that Lindsay has no evidence from Hebrew that forces us to abandon dating of the GAEL to between July and October or November 1835. The rest of Lindsay’s discussion is weak speculation that should have been cut by the editors.

 

Link to comment

Robin Jensen, not sure if you are still monitoring this, but I wonder if you could comment on the Hor scroll length.  In your book, you used Cook's estimations for the scroll length, but he made those based on photographs.  The measurements posted in the JSP IV were not given to a super high degree of accuracy.

Has there been any attempt to verify Cook or Gee's calculations seeing as you have access to the actual papyri and not just the photographs?  Has anyone measured the thickness of the papyri?

Link to comment
3 hours ago, Pha ah said:

Robin Jensen, not sure if you are still monitoring this, but I wonder if you could comment on the Hor scroll length.  In your book, you used Cook's estimations for the scroll length, but he made those based on photographs.  The measurements posted in the JSP IV were not given to a super high degree of accuracy.

Has there been any attempt to verify Cook or Gee's calculations seeing as you have access to the actual papyri and not just the photographs?  Has anyone measured the thickness of the papyri?

Cook and Smith measured directly off the papyri itself. 

See https://www.dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/sbi/articles/Dialogue_V43N04_413.pdf

 

And thickness is irrelevant to measuring scroll lengths using the Hoffman formula. You can derive a maximum thickness from it.

Formulas and Facts

Edited by CA Steve
Link to comment
Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...