Joseph Smith And Ancient Egyptian

[PacMan]

CK:

You wouldn't happen to be SamMB of BCC, would you?

Noâ??I try to use PacMan as my handleâ?¦and have succeeded. But should I be flattered or offended? What similarity bought it up?

Will:

JNclone fails to note that I never suggested that Joseph Smith could translate Egyptian (at least not as we currently understand it) but only that he believed he could. It would seem that he was mistaken.

JNâ??s at times confusing arguments a bitâ?¦glad someone else pulled an example.

JN:

Iâ??m still waiting for a responseâ?¦mostly about the Romanization of Egyptian. How sure are we, and how do we know it?

PacMan

[Chris Smith]

CK:

Noâ??I try to use PacMan as my handleâ?¦and have succeeded. But should I be flattered or offended? What similarity bought it up?

Neither. He's shortly planning on publishing a cultural history of the BoA (Champollion, etc.) and I remembered you had said you worked on something along those lines. Just curious, that's all.

[furii]

Meanwhile, it does seem that the best judgement that can be made in the present state of our knowledge is that Joseph Smith:

a. Probably didn't know any Egyptian

b. Wrote a letter in a journal he edited which can only be read as intending to suggest he did.

And so .... what can we say about that?

What can we say about that? Oh, obviously Joseph was a fraud, or at the very least a fallen prophet.

Personally, if I was inspired to translate a 53(9?) page book all written in say...the language of the lost island of Atlantis, I might get a little cocky with what I felt my understanding of the Atlantisi language (that sounds like a good form right? Atlantisian? Atlantisese?) was as well. If I knew nobody around me knew a lick of it, I might be tempted to throw in pieces of what I thought I remembered from translating as well. Why not? How was I to know that people would find a way to translate ancient Atlantisi texts? I just wanted to sound smart because I grew up with about zero education and am surrounded by intellectuals.

It's a very human action to be sure, but if your two above points are meant to lead us to the conclusion that Joseph Smith was not inspired with the BoM, or that he was a fallen prophet and thus his church today is false, or some variation thereof, it's a very long stretch to get there. If it was proven that in no way whatsoever could his translation make any sense at all, and that he wrote the bit with the intent of deceiving people into thinking he was fluent in Egyptian, this doesn't make him a false prophet. It simply makes him a human, one who made many errors in his life just like the rest of us.

Him falsely thinking he knew Egyptian or falsely leading people to believe he knew it doesn't mean he didn't translate the BoM. The gifts given to him to translate as well as the Urim and Thummim weren't permanent brain implants to give him a perfect knowledge of the language, their purpose was to simply get the BoM in English for the present people.

[PacMan]

Neither. He's shortly planning on publishing a cultural history of the BoA (Champollion, etc.) and I remembered you had said you worked on something along those lines. Just curious, that's all.

Ah...my is probably much more specific. It relates to the spread of Egyptology in America, and what could have, and likely would have been known by Joseph and his scribes.

And it's also an opportunity to make Ritner eat his words.

PacMan

P.S. I do need to get writing again...it's sat for too long. Wanna proof it?

[Chris Smith]

Ah...my is probably much more specific. It relates to the spread of Egyptology in America, and what could have, and likely would have been known by Joseph and his scribes.

And it's also an opportunity to make Ritner eat his words.

PacMan

P.S. I do need to get writing again...it's sat for too long. Wanna proof it?

If you need a proofreader, I'd be happy to take a look. I do think your paper sounds like it's along the same lines as this Sam fellow (though I don't think he's particularly trying to influence Robert Ritner's ingestion). Maybe you should try to get ahold of him and compare notes.

-CK