My JWHA Paper on the Egyptian Alphabet

[thews]

Another classic example of a common problem among the faithless.

Perhaps Egyptian temple motifs (as, in fact, is taught by the Book of Abraham) are rooted in even more ancient accounts of the creation, the plan of salvation, a Savior, the resurrection, etc., etc., etc.

Nice :highfive:. If you're refusing to answer/address the the data I posted, I don't think it's fair to do so through someone else's opinion to something I posted to them. I anxiously await your comments on the actual data posted.

[Vance]

Ranting and raving huh? I'm just pointing out the facts :shrug:. If the Book of Abrahamn is canon, then it is Mormon doctrine... please correct me if I'm wrong.

The BoA is LDS canon and it is doctrine, you got that part right.

It is the assertion that the BoA was "translated" (your definition, not the real one) from the BoD that is in error.

[Calm]

The idea for polygamy and racism did originate with Joseph. He was already secretly practicing polygamy and needed some doctrine to justify it, which is why he picked Abraham and sought out a vehicle to launch it as it was already being written. That vehicle was the book of breathings, so Mormon doctrine comes from the pagan book of the dead.

Or......

D&C 132:1

[Mola Ram Suda Ram]

Have you read any of what's been posted so far? How can you make this claim? Please support it with some data so that I might see how you come to the red herring conclusion?

I am so uninformed that I can hardly wait to read what you posted. I my it just might be the smoking gun that proves mormonism false.

You know what is sad is that others have offered you information you refuse to look at it. I am well familiar with what you are spouting. I have no interest in going over it again until you acknowledge certain things. What does the word "translate" mean to some living in 1830?

And you haven't done a very good job of showing the JS "mistranslated" the BoB.

The BoB is not the source of the BoA, sorry to burst your bubble. Nor is the facsimilies the source for the BoA either. You can try and make it the source all you want, others have tried but failed.

[wenglund]

I've enjoyed reading Wade's comments. They show true effort against a hurricane-force headwind from a determined apologist. But ultimately they are straining at gnats while swallowing some very large camels.

Perhaps the eye of the alleged hurrican has been hovering over this thread for the last several days because all I have felt so far were a few brief wafts of hot air. I suppose we'll see if the argumentational hurrican materializes, or amounts to little more than a tempest in the teapot of the critics imaginative minds.

Thanks, -Wade Englund

[thews]

The BoA is LDS canon and it is doctrine, you got that part right.

It is the assertion that the BoA was "translated" (your definition, not the real one) from the BoD that is in error.

Actually it was Joseph Smith's words I referenced. In case you missed it...

mormonthink.com

... with W. W. Phelps and Oliver Cowdery as scribes, I commenced the translation of some of the characters or hieroglyphics, and much to our joy found that one of the rolls contained the writings of Abraham, another the writings of Joseph of Egypt, etc. -- a more full account of which will appear in its place as I proceed to examine or unfold them (History of the Church, Vol. 2, p. 236).

[July, 1835] -- The remainder of this month I was continually engaged in translating an alphabet to the Book of Abraham, and arranging a grammar of the Egyptian language as practiced by the ancients. (History of the Church, Vol. 2, p. 238)

What part of, "I continually engaged in translating an alphabet to the Book of Abraham and arranging a grammar of the Egyptian language as practiced by the ancients." is being construed as anything but "translation" which Joseph Smith claimed he was doing?

[William Schryver]

Mortal Man:

If you're asking my opinion of Chris' paper, I think he makes a very strong case and, except for a very minor quibble, I'm inclined to agree with his thesis.

If your operative word is "only", then I don't think your line of attack will lead anywhere, since I see no reason to go further than the evidence takes us.

So, in your judgment, (assuming I understand your meaning) a

[William Schryver]

Recognizing that repetition is the best teacher, permit me to reiterate what I believe to be the unifying theory of the KEP:

The Kirtland Egyptian Papers are the evidence that those who produced them were attempting to decipher hieratic Egyptian using the previously revealed English text of a portion of the Book of Abraham.

(Yes, I've made an important refinement in acknowledgment of the fact that the KEP only refer to a portion of the BoA.)

[dblagent007]

Recognizing that repetition is the best teacher, permit me to reiterate what I believe to be the unifying theory of the KEP:

The Kirtland Egyptian Papers are the evidence that those who produced them were attempting to decipher hieratic Egyptian using the previously revealed English text of a portion of the Book of Abraham.

(Yes, I've made an important refinement in acknowledgment of the fact that the KEP only refer to a portion of the BoA.)

Will, how did "those who produced them" come to believe that the English text came from the Egyptian characters found in the KEP? I assume you agree that "those who produced" the KEP at least believed that they were reverse engineering the correct Egyptian characters?

Also, aren't some of the characters on the KEP supplied by JS to fill in gaps in the papyri? If so, then they must know that the text corresponds to those particular Egyptian characters. Or are you saying that JS supplied characters to fill in the lacunas so that he or his scribes could then try to reverse engineer the meaning of made up Egyptian characters from the English text?

As for the particular theory advanced by Chris, I haven't read his paper nor have I followed the last couple of pages in this thread discussing those arguments.

[William Schryver]

dblagent007:

[Chris Smith]

But Chris, these words are not found transliterated in Seixas (I know, I am sitting with both of his first two editions in front of me). But, I can find words like Olea and Gnolaum in other early 19th century lexical texts and etymologies. And this makes me wonder why you are so certain that they come from Seixas ...

Hi Ben,

Sorry, working off memory here. If the words are not found in Seixas then they follow his system of transliteration. Seixas, as you know, taught Hebrew personally in Kirtland. In addition to words from Seixas' grammar, many of Joseph's changes to the creation narrative in Abraham 4-5 follow Seixas' suggested translations, as documented by Michael Walton and Louis Zucker. Smith also owned Moses Stuart's grammar and Augustus Hahn's Biblia Hebraica, so these are additional possible sources, but I'm inclined to think Seixas was his primary source for Hebrew knowledge.

Peace,

-Chris

[dblagent007]

To which characters do you refer?

The ones on the left hand side of the pages. Do you have different theories for the different characters? If so, please explain.

I believe I have made it perfectly clear that

[Chris Smith]

In other words, the G&A is the means by which the first three verses (roughly 3% of the total text) of the Book of Abraham were produced, but have no similar relationship to [most] of the remaining 97% of its text.

I would add the word in brackets.

Therefore you are suggesting that Joseph Smith and his scribes spent the summer and early autumn of 1835 laboriously producing the means by which they intended to translate the papyri, but then abandoned its use after producing but THREE verses

[Chris Smith]

If you're asking my opinion of Chris' paper, I think he makes a very strong case and, except for a very minor quibble, I'm inclined to agree with his thesis.

I've been meaning to write you again about your quibble, but I keep forgetting.

In the 1835 D&C, the "United Order" revelations were disguised as ancient narratives of the City of Enoch through the use of Adamic "code names". A few of the Adamic codenames have a vague, anagrammatical similarity to the names of the people they denote. Thus Rigdon was Pelagoram, Oliver was Olihah, and Martin Harris was Mahemson. It is because of this precedent that I think Don's suggestion about the GAEL's Oliblish being Oliver and Waines being William Wines Phelps has merit.

But, it's just a suggestion, and not a major plank of my thesis.

[dblagent007]

Hey Will, didn't you write this?

[William Schryver]

The ones on the left hand side of the pages.

Right. Those. The ones that cannot be found in the grammar and alphabet.

You

[dblagent007]

I don't understand why this is hard. This comes for another thread on the Internet.

Now Ms1a uses 18 Egyptian characters, and below I provided photos with the characters taken from the 6 pages of the manuscript, in the order they appear:

Simple question Will. Were the people attempting to decipher the meaning of one or both the real and invented characters?

[Chris Smith]

Incidentally, I believe you have grievously misinterpreted the 1843 Nauvoo reference to an Egyptian grammar.

Sigh. One step forward, two steps back.

If you

[William Schryver]

dblagent007:

Simple question Will. Were the people attempting to decipher the meaning of one or both the real and invented characters?

Do you mean are these characters assigned meanings in the grammar and alphabet pages? Is that what you're asking? If so, my answer is: NO. With a few exceptions.

Are you asking if they tried to assign meaning to "made up" characters? Yes, they did. I don't think they thought they were "made up" in the same sense I think you're saying. They were experimenting with different ideas. And they crafted characters that, in their minds, at least, fit the methodology (such as it was) that they were working on at the moment. I'm not going to say much more along those lines, because then it will veer into an area I'm not going to discuss via message board at this point in time.

[William Schryver]

CS:

Of course you do. Because even though such material comprises the large majority of the Alphabet and Grammar text, your "unified theory" of the KEP has no explanation for it whatsoever.

Categorically untrue. It explains it perfectly, as a matter of fact.

I guess you better not quit your day job quite yet.

I, at least, have a day job. (Knock on wood.)

You have mom and dad.

[dblagent007]

Are you asking if they tried to assign meaning to "made up" characters? Yes, they did. I don't think they thought they were "made up" in the same sense I think you're saying. They were experimenting with different ideas. And they crafted characters that, in their minds, at least, fit the methodology (such as it was) that they were working on at the moment. I'm not going to say much more along those lines, because then it will veer into an area I'm not going to discuss via message board at this point in time.

Finally, we are getting somewhere. You have said repeatedly and in bold that

The Kirtland Egyptian Papers are the evidence that those who produced them were attempting to decipher hieratic Egyptian using the previously revealed English text of a portion of the Book of Abraham as the primer.

According to your theory, they invented characters to correspond to the gaps in the papyrus and then they turned around and tried to decipher the meaning of the characters they invented as if they didn't know they invented characters earlier. I've got to say that that theory . . . uh . . . leaves a bit to be desired to say the least.

I would love to hear more about this methodology you think they were working on, especially since you have been critical of Chris's explanations. Somehow I have a feeling that your theory will be a bit more of a stretch than anything Chris has ever proposed. Prove me wrong.

Contrast your explanation with the critical argument that JS invented the characters because he had to since he told his followers that this particular papyrus was written by Abraham. He had to come up with the missing characters or he wouldn't have a complete translation.

Btw, I love it how you hold out hope for the unwary reader that you have some super secret explanation that you can't share right now with this line: "I'm not going to say much more along those lines, because then it will veer into an area I'm not going to discuss via message board at this point in time." Yeah right. If you had the goods you'd show'em.

[William Schryver]

Finally, we are getting somewhere. You have said repeatedly and in bold that

According to your theory, they invented characters to correspond to the gaps in the papyrus and then they turned around and tried to decipher the meaning of the characters they invented as if they didn't know they invented characters earlier. I've got to say that that theory . . . uh . . . leaves a bit to be desired to say the least.

I would love to hear more about this methodology you think they were working on, especially since you have been critical of Chris's explanations. Somehow I have a feeling that your theory will be a bit more of a stretch than anything Chris has ever proposed. Prove me wrong.

Contrast your explanation with the critical argument that JS invented the characters because he had to since he told his followers that this particular papyrus was written by Abraham. He had to come up with the missing characters or he wouldn't have a complete translation.

Btw, I love it how you hold out hope for the unwary reader that you have some super secret explanation that you can't share right now with this line: "I'm not going to say much more along those lines, because then it will veer into an area I'm not going to discuss via message board at this point in time." Yeah right. If you had the goods you'd show'em.

Well, apparently no matter what I say you will just twist it back around to conform to your preconceived notions about this whole thing. I suppose that's to be expected. <sigh>

I realize that you're operating at somewhat of a disadvantage here in that you don't have the source materials (or at least a complete set of source materials) to analyze. Although I doubt it would make any difference in your case. It hasn't for Metcalfe and Smith. So, you see, I have no delusions whatsoever about convincing people like you. I don't believe there is any logic or evidence that could perform that kind of a miracle. You have already made up your mind, and nothing will sway you from it. And that's fine with me. You know, like the hymn says, "... every soul is free ..."

In any case, I am persuaded that my theory is sound. It answers to the evidence. I have tested it from several angles. I intend to keep testing it. But every new finding I make (now that my focus is on the grammar documents rather than the KEPA documents) confirms the correctness of the theory.

Incidentally, I've noticed slight variations in my articulation of it over the course of this thread. I think that indicates that I should stop trying to recite it from memory, and instead use a standardized quote from a saved document. So here is the "official" articulation of the theory as of October 16, 2009:

The Kirtland Egyptian Papers are the evidence that those who produced them were attempting to decipher hieratic Egyptian by using the previously revealed English text of a portion of the Book of Abraham as a primer.

[William Schryver]

I think I will comment on one thing you said:

dblagent007:

According to your theory, they invented characters to correspond to the gaps in the papyrus and then they turned around and tried to decipher the meaning of the characters they invented as if they didn't know they invented characters earlier. I've got to say that that theory . . . uh . . . leaves a bit to be desired to say the least.

This entire paragraph evidences the fact that you aren't really giving my KEP theory any serious thought, because you clearly haven't even stopped to think it through.

It is obvious that these men sincerely believed they had a "primer," but they didn't have any way (unlike Champollion) to determine which Egyptian characters from the papyri corresponded to that primer. So, until they could somehow focus on a particular part of the papyri, they couldn't possibly attempt to "decipher the meaning" of individual characters. What they had to do first was to somehow stumble on a pattern that would connect the primer to a specific set of characters on the papyri.

So, ................................

You know what, I've changed my mind. I'm not going to go there for your benefit. It's pointless. If you ever find it within you to want to seriously consider the explanation, you can seek out what I intend to get printed on this topic. I am convinced that I have nothing to gain at this point from wasting my time floating these things on this or any other message board.

I have articulated my theory. Of course, I take no credit for its fundamental notions. That goes to Hugh Nibley. I have merely focused and refined it. Those who are serious about "getting to the bottom" of these questions will be able, in the future, to test the theory against the documentary evidence, just as I have done and continue to do.

I am more convinced than ever that the text of the Book of Abraham was received via revelation, in precisely the same fashion as all of Joseph Smith's other revelations; in precisely the same fashion as was the Book of Mormon, the Book of Moses, and D&C 7, among others. That Joseph and his associates then sought to take that revealed text and use it to explore Egyptian is, to me, an entirely expected course of action for them to pursue. I would have done the same thing. That said, they faced numerous challenges in their undertaking, not the least of which was (in my judgment) the vanity of W. W. Phelps (and, to a lesser extent, Oliver Cowdery) in believing he already "had a handle" on these kinds of things; that he could "show the way" to figure it all out.

What it required was a scientific approach, and they tried to do it with a mystical one.

Anyway, they tried. They failed. They moved on. I'm convinced that they never gave these things near as much thought as we do today. The Kirtland Egyptian Papers were long forgotten, even during the lifetime of W. W. Phelps, and would have remained so had someone not stumbled on them one day in the archives. They were never viewed, even by their creators, as the "modus operandi" of the production of the Book of Abraham. If they had been, they would have been treated to a place of honor equivalent to the original manuscripts of the Book of Mormon. But they weren't. They were saved, but long forgotten, even by who I believe to have been their primary exponent and instigator: W. W. Phelps.

The KEP are an interesting piece of historical esoterica from a time when mainstream America was still making the transition from a culture that could believe in things like folk magic to one where such things would be forever banished to a past of so-called "ignorant superstition." They are not, however, the evidence of how Joseph Smith produced the Book of Abraham. Once you take a good long look at them, that much becomes perfectly clear.

.

.

.

Edited to insert a missing word.

[wenglund]

Over the last several days we have been debating:

1. What-all of the Egyptian artifacts was translated in July

2. When in July was it translated

3. And by what means was it translated.

Chris contends that the Egyptian alphabet/grammar were translated by revelation/inspiration throughout the month of July, and towards the end of July, the alphabet/grammar was used as a key to translate the first three verses of Abraham.

I have hypothesized that portions of the record of Abraham and Joseph were tranlated by the power of God early in July.

In support of my hypothesis, thus far I have inductively built a circumstantial case using several entries from the history of the Church dated from early to mid July of 1835, as well as two entries from the Messanger and Advocated dated December of 1835.

I am pleased to now present more direct testimony in support of my hypothesis. This is a statement made by John Whitmer, who was the official historian for the church, as written in his church history during July of 1835 (presumably the early part of the month):

"About the first of July, 1835, there came a man having four Egyptian Mummies, exhibiting them for curiosities, which was a wonder indeed, having also some words connected with them which were found deposited with the mummies, but there being no one skilled in the Egyptian language therefore could not translate the record. After this exhibition Joseph the Seer saw these records and by the revelation of Jesus Christ could translate these records which gave an account of our forefathers, much of which was written by Joseph of Egypt who was sold by his brethren, which when all translated will be a pleasing history and of great value to the Saints." (Book of John Whitmer 1832-1846--emphasis mine)

You will note that there was no mention of an Egyptian alphabet/grammar being created, but that at least a portion of the record (mostly of Joseph) was translated, not by use of the alphabet/grammar, but by revelation. Granted, there is no explicite date given for when the translation occurred (though implied to be "about the first of July"), but Whitmer is explicit about what was translated (portions of the record af Joseph of Egypt) and by what means the record was translated.

I just hope this new bit of supportive evidence can withstand the alleged hurricane-force winds of the critics' counter-arguments (assuming there are any).

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[Mortal Man]

Incidentally, I have noticed that Ed Ashment has been posting on another board (defending the Church no less!).

Could you please send me the link to this?