Will Schryver's Book of Abraham talk

[Chris Smith]

Not much of a point. Secret codes are meant to be secret. Calling it Egyptian for the unawares was the entire point.

These were relatively private manuscripts. It doesn't make much sense to falsify them in this manner. It makes even less sense to show them off to visitors or pretentiously quote them as if they represent "real Egyptian" in letters and pamphlets if in fact that was all an elaborate pretense of some kind designed to hide the true purpose of the cipher.

This, to me, is a fairly blatant case of ignoring the obvious in favor of the highly improbable.

[Chris Smith]

Are you saying there are, then, actual Egyptian characters on the Counting documents that real Egyptologists would advance as actual Egyptian? Which ones? I saw Arabic and Sanskrit as Will presented, but nothing Egyptian. It appears to me that Will has a rather solid case with this.

The quote referred to the KEP in general, not to the Egyptian Counting manuscript specifically. There are very many Egyptian characters on the KEP. And the remainder, IMO, Joseph believed were Egyptian.

[e=mc2]

I second this.

I third this.

[e=mc2]

The quote referred to the KEP in general, not to the Egyptian Counting manuscript specifically. There are very many Egyptian characters on the KEP. And the remainder, IMO, Joseph believed were Egyptian.

If I understand correctly, Will was quite specific that it was the counting documents which were not Egyptian characters, not the entire collection of manuscripts.

[Chris Smith]

I think Gee is onto something as well. If I am understanding what Will showed, Gee has a VERY powerful refutation that the Sensen document CANNOT be a translation document, based on where from the document the characters came from which are supposedly being translated. The pattern absolutely FLOORED me. WHY didn't I think of seeing WHERE from the document the characters came from? Gee brilliantly showed that there is no logical pattern whatever, but there appears to be a hop skip and jumping all over the loving place in the document to get some characters.

I had some inkling in advance of what Gee was going to argue, but that didn't stop me from being a little horrified that he actually went through with it.

The only time characters are taken "out of order" from elsewhere on the papyrus are when we come to the lacuna in the papyrus. Gee failed to point this out in his paper. At least two historical sources indicate that Joseph claimed to be able to restore and translate the lost portions of the papyrus. It seems clear to me that this is what he was doing with the lacuna in pJS XI. As is well known, he used precisely the same method to fill the lacuna in Facsimile 2.

The Tanners were well aware that the characters corresponding to the lacuna in the margins of the translation manuscripts were an exception to the pattern of sequential copying from pJS XI. They speculated that these characters might have been invented, or might have been borrowed from elsewhere on the papyrus. It is nice that Gee has provided evidence for the latter interpretation, which helps resolve a previously unanswered historical question. But to spin this as if it is some kind of blow to the critics' theories, or as if he has proven that there is "no logical pattern whatever," is simply a misrepresentation both of what the critics have argued and what the manuscript evidence reveals.

[e=mc2]

I had some inkling in advance of what Gee was going to argue, but that didn't stop me from being a little horrified that he actually went through with it.

The only time characters are taken "out of order" from elsewhere on the papyrus are when we come to the lacuna in the papyrus. Gee failed to point this out in his paper. At least two historical sources indicate that Joseph claimed to be able to restore and translate the lost portions of the papyrus. It seems clear to me that this is what he was doing with the lacuna in pJS XI. As is well known, he used precisely the same method to fill the lacuna in Facsimile 2.

The Tanners were well aware that the characters corresponding to the lacuna in the margins of the translation manuscripts were an exception to the pattern of sequential copying from pJS XI. They speculated that these characters might have been invented, or might have been borrowed from elsewhere on the papyrus. It is nice that Gee has provided evidence for the latter interpretation, which helps resolve a previously unanswered historical question. But to spin this as if it is some kind of blow to the critics' theories, or as if he has proven that there is "no logical pattern whatever," is simply a misrepresentation both of what the critics have argued and what the manuscript evidence reveals.

Hop, skipping, and jumping all over various lines, in no particular order is what Gee's presentation showed. If that horrifies you, it is because it realistically shows that this is absolutely, in no possible way the way to treat a document that one wishes to translate Chris.

It would be akin to me wanting to translate the first chapter of Genesis. I take the beth, then the resh of the first word, then skip down a line and take another letter, say a nun, and then go back to the first line for a letter, then back to the second line, then the third line. And then to boot, I put in ENTIRE PARAGRAPHS for EACH letter?!? This is simply NOT how one translates...... that was the entire point of Dr. Gee. It is patently obvious to one who sees it without rose colored glasses. Smith did NOT systematically, or logically cull various letters in any order whatsoever to translate. That is what Gee demonstrated. I have it on video, I shall review it again as well just to make sure.

[USU78]

Mola Ram Suda Ram, on 06 August 2010 - 06:37 PM, said: "The fact that there is hardly any egyptian charactors on the KEP. Whoa.

FWIW, that is not, in fact, a "fact".

Seems to me, since Will did in fact assert in his presentation that the grammars and alphabet and counting document all had a great deal of non-Egyptian material, including inter alia sanskrit, arabic, and arcane characters from other sources in addition to the Egyptian ones from the papyri, that it's incumbent upon Chris to make specific, contrary assertions rather than leaving us quite perplexed by challenging Mola's statement, which is not largely inconsistent with Will's stuff.

[Mola Ram Suda Ram]

If I understand correctly, Will was quite specific that it was the counting documents which were not Egyptian characters, not the entire collection of manuscripts.

Will did mention that the counting documents contained no egyptian characters. The rest of the documents did contain some egyptian. If I remember correctly it was that non of the characters used were from the papyri.

Darn it now I am going to have to watch it again. The one thing that seems to be certain (unless otherwise proven) is that there is a substantial body of characters that are not egyptian. One will need to explain how this could have been a translation in the traditional sense if there are a large body of characters that are not egyptian. I hope I worded this better as to be a little more accurate.

[Wiki Wonka]

Are you saying there are, then, actual Egyptian characters on the Counting documents that real Egyptologists would advance as actual Egyptian? Which ones? I saw Arabic and Sanskrit as Will presented, but nothing Egyptian. It appears to me that Will has a rather solid case with this.

Back near the end of June, I visited Will at his house. He happened to be working on his presentation at the time and the first item he showed me was a high resolution printout of the Counting document. Without telling me anything, he asked me if I could identify any of the characters on my own. This was the first time I had ever seen it, and I was very surprised that the first thing that I noticed was that many of them were easily identifiable as Arabic numerals. He then pointed out the remaining numerals and identified where they came from. None of them were Egyptian characters. I haven't viewed his latest video presentation yet, but I distinctly remember that he made the point to me back in June that none of the characters in the Counting document were Egyptian.

WW

[Chris Smith]

Kerry,

The images below show sequential characters from Book of Abraham Manuscript # 1 juxtaposed with sequential characters from the Hor Document of Breathing. As should be evident from these images, the characters come sequentially from the Breathing Document except where there is a lacuna. It is to fill the lacuna that Joseph draws characters from elsewhere on the fragment. This is what Gee failed to tell his audience.

Peace,

-Chris

[Chris Smith]

Seems to me, since Will did in fact assert in his presentation that the grammars and alphabet and counting document all had a great deal of non-Egyptian material, including inter alia sanskrit, arabic, and arcane characters from other sources in addition to the Egyptian ones from the papyri, that it's incumbent upon Chris to make specific, contrary assertions rather than leaving us quite perplexed by challenging Mola's statement, which is not largely inconsistent with Will's stuff.

Note that I am not denying the Papers contain some non-Egyptian material. Rather, I am affirming that they did contain a lot of Egyptian material.

Here is a chart from my JWHA Paper explaining where the characters in the Egyptian Alphabet documents appear to come from. You will note that the "second part" is where we find a series of characters not found on the papyrus. (This chart does not discuss the Egyptian Counting manuscript, but those characters also are not from the papyrus.)

In my opinion, the characters in the "second part" were partly invented and partly taken from the Anthon Transcript and the "specimen". Also in my opinion, this section was meant to provide a lexicon for the basic graphemes from which the supposedly composite symbols on the papyri were comprised. Thus it is not so much that none of these characters appear on the papyrus at all, as that the prophet anticipated that some of them would be found on the papyrus as sub-components of larger characters. Hopefully that made sense. I can explain further if I'm not communicating correctly. Or you can watch part 2 of Kerry's video of me discussing this very issue with Wade England.

By the way, "Joseph Smith Papers" in the chart below should read "Joseph Smith Papyrus". This was an editorial error on the part of the good folks at JWHA.

Peace,

-Chris

[jmordecai]

maklelan

Not much of a point. Secret codes are meant to be secret. Calling it Egyptian for the unawares was the entire point.

Keep in mind he was quoting from a host of languages (i.e. German, French, Portuguese, etc.) and in the midst of it he quotes "Egyptian".

Where does Will simply dismiss the rest of the KEP? Certainly you don't mean to insist that any research on any section of the KEP is obligated to address the entire KEP and it's relationship the the Book of Abraham.

In video 2 @ 25:54 he displays and reads this text:

"Nothing in the collection of documents known as the Kirtland Egyptian Papers was used in the translation of the Book of Abraham"

I've yet to see if the GAEL is a cipher, how that sweeps the BoA manuscripts under the rug.

I understood it to be a method of encoding the scriptures, thus the incorporation of the Book of Abraham and other scriptures.

I'm still lost on this one... why would they bother to develop a cipher to encode three year old D&C revelations?

[Alf O'Mega]

For those who might be interested, there's a nearly-five-minute video interview with Will Schryver regarding his FAIR presentation on the Mormon Times Facebook page:

http://www.facebook.com/mormontimes

Brushing Dan aside for Will was a little cheesy, but it made me laugh anyway.

Okay, here's the game changer: it's pronounced SKRY-ver? Who else thought it was SHRY-ver?

[USU78]

Brushing Dan aside for Will was a little cheesy, but it made me laugh anyway.

Okay, here's the game changer: it's pronounced SKRY-ver? Who else thought it was SHRY-ver?

Dutch names are hard.

[e=mc2]

Brushing Dan aside for Will was a little cheesy, but it made me laugh anyway.

Okay, here's the game changer: it's pronounced SKRY-ver? Who else thought it was SHRY-ver?

I confess, I have been calling his SHRYver for years, and he has been overly patient with me.

[e=mc2]

Kerry,

The images below show sequential characters from Book of Abraham Manuscript # 1 juxtaposed with sequential characters from the Hor Document of Breathing. As should be evident from these images, the characters come sequentially from the Breathing Document except where there is a lacuna. It is to fill the lacuna that Joseph draws characters from elsewhere on the fragment. This is what Gee failed to tell his audience.

Peace,

-Chris

Thanks Chris. I shall review the video again as well.

[William Schryver]

FWIW, that is not, in fact, a "fact".

No, it's not.

And, as a matter of fact, a substantial portion of this discussion is starting to take on aspects of the old "Chinese Whispers" party game. ( <sigh> )

I suppose that was inevitable in any case, but it is frustrating. At any rate, I will clarify this one point as a post on this message board, but my subsequent clarifications are going to take the form of blog posts, on a site to be announced soon.

In my presentation, I said:

Most of the characters explained in the Egyptian alphabet documents are not Egyptian, and do not appear on the Egyptian papyri in question.

To reiterate: of the 69 characters to which sounds and explanations were provided in the Alphabet & Grammar, most of them are not Egyptian and do not come from the papyri.

None of the characters on the Egyptian Counting document are Egyptian.

Finally, here is an exact quote from my presentation script:

Simply put, the evidence strongly suggests that these documents were never designed as a tool to translate the Book of Abraham. Joseph Smith did that by revelation. Rather, the Alphabet, Grammar, and Counting documents appear to have been intended to render the English text of the Prophet

[MAsh]

Thanks Chris. I shall review the video again as well.

Unfortunately Kerry, this isn't in Will's video. It's in Gee presentation.

[William Schryver]

Here is my favorite photo from the FAIR conference: Best Buddies

Incidentally, there is no truth to the rumor that Chris is my love child.

[maklelan]

I'm relatively new to this discussion, but it's one that seems like it would benefit from the participation of trained textual critics. I'd like to eventually throw my hat into this ring, but first I'd like to get caught up on the landmark publications on the KEP and, if possible, get pointed in the direction of good photos of the primary texts. I don't know where to find either. Is there anyone who can provide some assistance in either of these regards?

[wenglund]

Part of the reason that I think Will's presentation is such a game changer, is because rather than focusing on individual pieces of the KEP and extrapolating from those pieces to conjecture about the whole (as seem to have been the practice for the last 40 or so years), Will insteads attempts to formulate a coherent theory that best explains all of the KEP.

Sure, you can look close up as if through field glasses at select pieces of the KEP puzzle, and make rather pursuasive arguments based on that limited perspective.

However, when you draw back and look at the entire puzzle, then suddenly what may have made sense close up, no longer makes sense at a distance.

In other words, you can look close-up at certain Egyptian characters that appear on the papyri, the alphabets and the GAEL, and the so-called Abraham manuscripts, and draw reasonable correlations (both in terms of a translation key or reverse engineering).

However, when you pull back and realize that there are a significant number of other characters on the alphabets and GAEL and Counting document that aren't Egyptian, then the reasonable correlations made in looking close up at the Egyptian characters no longer make sense in terms of the whole. It makes no sense to use non-Egyptian, non-papyrial characters as a key to translate Egyptian papyri. One cannot logically reverse engineer from an Egyptian papyri using non-Egyptian characters.

The latter is why I had to reasonably abandon my own narrowly focused theory upon hearing Will's more coherent theory.

What should have clued us in long ago, is, if I remember and understand things correctly, the salient point that the "translations" associated with the Egyptian characters in the KEP, bear little or no relationship to what modern Egyptologists view the characters to meaning.

Mind you, I am speaking only about the KEP, and not the revelatory translation of the BoA.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[e=mc2]

Unfortunately Kerry, this isn't in Will's video. It's in Gee presentation.

Yes, I am aware of that. I probably didn't word it correctly.

[Ariarates]

Hey Wade,

This is a bit of an off-topic remark but I don't know where else to make it. I was struck by your words below:

Part of the reason that I think Will's presentation is such a game changer, is because rather than focusing on individual pieces of the KEP and extrapolating from those pieces to conjecture about the whole (as seem to have been the practice for the last 40 or so years), Will insteads attempts to formulate a coherent theory that best explains all of the KEP.

Sure, you can look close up as if through field glasses at select pieces of the KEP puzzle, and make rather pursuasive arguments based on that limited perspective.

However, when you draw back and look at the entire puzzle, then suddenly what may have made sense close up, no longer makes sense at a distance.

This is exactly what I have been saying about BoM historicity for a while now on this board. I'm going to save this statement and bring it up whenever some apologist focuses at select pieces of Mesoamerican history while ignoring the bigger picture. Of course, credit will be given where credit is due ;-)

Thanks, -Ariarates-

[wenglund]

Hey Wade,

This is a bit of an off-topic remark but I don't know where else to make it. I was struck by your words below:

This is exactly what I have been saying about BoM historicity for a while now on this board. I'm going to save this statement and bring it up whenever some apologist focuses at select pieces of Mesoamerican history while ignoring the bigger picture. Of course, credit will be given where credit is due ;-)

Thanks, -Ariarates-

I think it is a sound principle with broad application, and I have no problem with you mentioning it in terms of BoM historicity. Don't be surprised, though, if it comes back to bite you.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[jmordecai]

Part of the reason that I think Will's presentation is such a game changer, is because rather than focusing on individual pieces of the KEP and extrapolating from those pieces to conjecture about the whole (as seem to have been the practice for the last 40 or so years), Will insteads attempts to formulate a coherent theory that best explains all of the KEP.

Sure, you can look close up as if through field glasses at select pieces of the KEP puzzle, and make rather pursuasive arguments based on that limited perspective.

However, when you draw back and look at the entire puzzle, then suddenly what may have made sense close up, no longer makes sense at a distance.

I missed in the presentation where it dealt with MSS 6 and 7, which are obvious translations? Nor did I see anything tangible that defines the translation manuscripts... other than "the GAEL is a cipher, so the manuscripts must be also."

... It makes no sense to use non-Egyptian, non-papyrial characters as a key to translate Egyptian papyri. One cannot logically reverse engineer from an Egyptian papyri using non-Egyptian characters.

I believe the symbols in the GAEL are subparts that when connected make whole symbols, thus why we come up short finding Egyptian characters. I explain my reasoning here:

http://www.mormonapologetics.org/topic/50675-more-thoughts-on-the-kep-the-gael/page__view__findpost__p__1208892275