Joseph Smith Egyptian Papers

[wenglund]

Rather than addressing the question of what was the intent and purpose of the Joseph Smith Egyptian Papers (JSEP), this thread is devoted to the presentation of arguments against the proposition that the JSEP were produced with the intent of "translating" or developing the Book of Abraham from the papyri. Including:

1) The proposition runs contrary to what the principles involve in the production of he Book of Abraham, as well as the Church, say was the means of translation.

2) The proposition runs contrary to the standard operating procedures for "translating" LDS scriptures.

3) The proposition is counter-intuitive and infeasible, particularly when compared with the standard operating procedure.

4) There is evidence that the EA/GAEL were dependent upon preexisting texts, including, but not restricted to, portions of the Book of Abraham. Since portions of the Book of Abraham predate the EA/GAEL, then logically the EA/GAEL clearly weren't intended to produce the Book of Abraham.

In the following posts, let's work through each of these arguments in turn.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[wenglund]

Okay, let's go ahead and look at the first arguement:

1) The proposition runs contrary to what the principles involve in the production of he Book of Abraham, as well as the Church, say was the means of translation.

In all my research, I have yet to find a single instance where Joseph Smith or his scribes said that the Book of Abraham was translated using the EA/GAEL.

What I have found consistently suggested is that the Book of Abraham was translated by the gift and power of God.

So, in terms of primary evidence (eyewitness statements) and authoritative declaration, the evidence is entirely against the Book of Abraham having been "translated" or developed from the EA/GAEL.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[wenglund]

I am so excited that this has become such a red-hot thread. It is hard to get the pages to load in my browser with all the traffic. LOL

Anyway, I will now present the second argument against the proposition that the Joseph Egyptian Papers were intended to translate the Book of Abraham from the papyri:

2) The proposition runs contrary to the standard operating procedures for "translating" LDS scriptures.

While there are a couple of obscure references from Joseph's parents to an alphabet that Joseph supposedly created in conjunction with the Book of Mormon, to my knowledge the so-called alphabet may have consisted nothing more than Reformed Egyptian characters copied from the gold plate. Certainly, there is no indication in the historical record that this alleged alphabet could have been used, let alone was ever used, to translate the Book of Mormon.

Rather, the historical record is clear that the Book of Mormon was translated by the gift and power of God, using divine implements like the seer stone and the Urim and Thummim. The same is true for translation of the Book of Moses as well as the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible.

This, then, is the standard method by which material in the LDS canon of scripture were translated.

Therefore, the proposition that the Book of Abraham, or portions thereof, were translated naturalistically using an the Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar and Alphabet of the Egyptian Language (EA/GAEL), significantly conflicts with the standard method for translating scriptures.

Granted, there is historical evidence that Joseph used Hebrew and Greek alphabets and grammars in translation exercises while learning those respective languages as well as when providing insights into certain biblical passages. And, evidence has recently come to light suggesting that Joseph may have once used the EA/GAEL to academically compare characters with those on the Kinderhook Plates, which some historians believe might have been the source for the "partial translation" of the Kinderhook Plates recorded in William Clayton's journal.

However, these naturalistic or academic translations were never used to produce scriptures, but were intended primarily for secular educational purposes, and thus have no meaningful bearing on the translation of LDS scriptures, like the Book of Abraham.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[William Schryver]

Wade,

I apologize for not taking part. I must confess that my enthusiasm for these discussions has been somewhat expended over the past few days as a result of the threads in which I was so heavily involved. Not only that, but I am exceedingly encumbered with "real work" today (and probably for the better part of this week). I'm eating my lunch right now and taking a break from "the grind" but will have to, very shortly, get back to it.

You, of course, know that I am convinced that the EA/GAEL were never intended to decipher Egyptian scrolls. I've laid out many of my reasons for my conviction in that respect in my 2010 FAIR presentation. I think the evidence for that is overwhelming and overwhelmingly conclusive. Indeed, it is rather easy, in that respect, to state what they were NOT intended to do. What they were intended to do is a stickier question, and one for which I do not yet have a comprehensive answer.

-WS

[wenglund]

Let's look now at the third argument against the proposition that the Book of Abraham was "translated," in part or whole, from the papyri using the Egyptian Alphabet and the Grammar and Alphabet of the Egyptian Language (EA/GAEL):

3) The proposition is counter-intuitive and infeasible, particularly when compared with the standard operating procedure.

This argument actually consists of a number of sub arguments to be set forth in multiple posts to follow, the first of which is:

a) The notion of creating the EA/GAEL to supposedly affect a "translation" of the Book of Abraham, is highly counter-intuitive, particularly when compared with the standard method for translating scriptures. It makes no sense to me for Joseph and others to use whatever means, and devote considerable time and resources, to "translate" or produce a highly complex, sophisticated, and largely esoteric instrument so as to then "translate" the Book of Abraham from the papyri, when that same means of "translation," and considerably less time and resources could have been employed in directly "translating" the Book of Abraham.

In other words, if Joseph and others had the ability to "translate" the EA/GAEL using either the gift and power of God or their creative skills, wouldn't it make more sense just to use that same power or skills to directly "translate" the Book of Abraham (i.e. the standard translation method), rather than using them to first "translate" the EA/GAEL and then employ the EA/GAEL academically to "translate" the Book of Abraham?

Metaphorically, it is comparable in principle to the senselessness of building a huge and elaborate factory in order to manufacture a single apartment, when it would have been far more simple and sensible to just build the single apartment.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[wenglund]

Wade,

I apologize for not taking part. I must confess that my enthusiasm for these discussions has been somewhat expended over the past few days as a result of the threads in which I was so heavily involved. Not only that, but I am exceedingly encumbered with "real work" today (and probably for the better part of this week). I'm eating my lunch right now and taking a break from "the grind" but will have to, very shortly, get back to it.

You, of course, know that I am convinced that the EA/GAEL were never intended to decipher Egyptian scrolls. I've laid out many of my reasons for my conviction in that respect in my 2010 FAIR presentation. I think the evidence for that is overwhelming and overwhelmingly conclusive. Indeed, it is rather easy, in that respect, to state what they were NOT intended to do. What they were intended to do is a stickier question, and one for which I do not yet have a comprehensive answer.

-WS

Hi Will,

I fully understand and appreciate you brief participation. Besides,y our salient arguments won't come into play much until I begin discussing argument #4, which wont be for awhile. And even then, I had intended to respect your busy schedule and preferred means of discourse and simply refer the kind reader(s) to the online material you have already produced, as well as your pending papers. Feel free, though, to jump in whenever you have the time or inclination.

To be honest, I am just using this thread to collect my own thoughts and to formalize my own arguments, in the hopes of maybe having them augmented, tested,, and honed a bit by believers and critics alike--a venture that apparently has sparked little or no interest. LOL

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

Edited October 31, 2011 by wenglund

[wenglund]

b) From what I have been able to tell from recent scholarship, at best the critics have been able to reasonably argue (that is, if one accept all the premises and interpretation of the data--which I don't) is that a handful out of the 136 passages in the Book of Abraham, and perhaps minor portions of the Facsimile explanations, might have been dependent upon or "translated" using the EA/GAEL.

In other words, even if one accepts the EA/GAE- to-BoA direction of dependency argued for by certain critics, they can only account for less that 6% of the BoA content. Logically, this raises a number of reasonable questions, not the least of which is how, or by what means, was the remaining 94% of the BoA content "transtated"?

And, in relation to what I have argued in my previous posts, does it make sense for Joseph and others to have expended all the time and resources in creating a complex, sophisticated, and esoteric translation devise only to end up supposedly using it to "translate" 6% of the Book of Abraham, when it would have been far simpler and less time consuming to have "translated" that 6% using the different means (presumably standard means) by which the 94% was "translated."

Metaphorically, it is comparable in principle to the senselessness of building a huge and elaborate factory supposedly intended to manufacture a single apartment, only to allegedly end up producing 6% of that single apartment.

Hence, given that it is a bit of stretch to argue that at best but a relatively few verses of the BoA may have been produced using the elaborate EA/GAEL, it seems more practical and likely to assume that the dependency in those few verses was the other way around, and that those few verses of scripture were more likely to have been "translated" using the standard method for LDS scriptures (i.e. directly by way of the gift and power of God).

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[Loran Blood]

In all my research, I have yet to find a single instance where Joseph Smith or his scribes said that the Book of Abraham was translated using the EA/GAEL.

I think this central insight is perhaps the most often overlooked amidst all the forensic text critical theoretical reconstructing of BofA production. In all the the ink and bandwidth that has been expended in attempts to explain - or, in many cases, explain away - the BofA's origins, always overlooked is the utter dearth of documentary record of just what took place regarding the production of the BofA. Joseph and the other Brethren most intimately connected to the BofA and its creation, did a great deal of teaching, writing, and record keeping, and yet, no one apparently thought to set down in writing the means, or technique used to produce the text of the BofA, as, for example, we have some knowledge of the means used to translate the BofM.

If the EA/GAEL was, indeed, intended as tools who's purpose was the ultimate creation of the BofA, why then is there no documentary evidence of this design? Why not simply openly claim the EA/GAEL as inspired tools of translation (or the contents thereof), and claim this as a matter of faith? If Joseph was, indeed, a prophet of God, are the specific means used to produce the BofA really so overwhelmingly relevant? It seems to me, in other words, that there is no requirement - none whatever - that the EA/GAEL be seen as source documents for the BofA. Other means of production were available to Joseph, so long as we can at least accept the possibility that he was, in point of fact, a prophet. That, it would seem, is the real upshot of the matter, not the technical aspects of the production of the BofA itself, which, given that upshot, could have occurred in any number of ways, all of them divine/revelatory in nature.

What I have found consistently suggested is that the Book of Abraham was translated by the gift and power of God.

Indeed, which can be ascertained by reading what the book actually says, a novel approach to many, it would seem.

Edited October 31, 2011 by Loran Blood

[Loran Blood]

a) The notion of creating the EA/GAEL to supposedly affect a "translation" of the Book of Abraham, is highly counter-intuitive, particularly when compared with the standard method for translating scriptures. It makes no sense to me for Joseph and others to use whatever means, and devote considerable time and resources, to "translate" or produce a highly complex, sophisticated, and largely esoteric instrument so as to then "translate" the Book of Abraham from the papyri, when that same means of "translation," and considerably less time and resources could have been employed in directly "translating" the Book of Abraham.

Quite. The entire scenario deployed by the critics would appear to be a far deviation from what the Church itself, and the 19th century apostles directly concerned with the production of our present corpus of standard works, understood as translation, or restoration of ancient records. The conclusions of the forensic text critical criticism of the BofA on this score are wholly inconsistent with what we do know regarding the production of the Book of Mormon, and with what Joseph and his contemporaries expected and understood such translation to be. Joseph, as has been endlessly stated, made no pretense of any knowledge of Egyptian, any more than of the ancient Reformed Egyptian he claimed to translate or the NT Greek that was the original language of the NT scriptures he claimed to amend and restore through divine revelation.

I think that once it is understood that Joseph himself nowhere claims to be attempting to translate Egyptian into English (as if the EA/GAEL could have been of any use in such an endeavor if the Egyptian language wasn't understood in the first place), or that the EA/GAEL is to be used for this purpose, we can begin thinking "outside the box" a bit more regarding the now rather tired and fruitless arguments of Ashment, Chris Smith, Metcalf etc.

In other words, if Joseph and others had the ability to "translate" the EA/GAEL using either the gift and power of God or their creative skills, wouldn't it make more sense just to use that same power or skills to directly "translate" the Book of Abraham (i.e. the standard translation method), rather than using them to first "translate" the EA/GAEL and then employ the EA/GAEL academically to "translate" the Book of Abraham?

Logically, this throws down the proverbial gauntlet. This makes a bit clearer the naturalistic/sociological assumptions underlying the longstanding text-critical approach, and asks critics to come face to face with the fact that the text-critical approach, as interesting as it may be as an intellectual exercise, is made necessary precisely by the dearth of documentary records of just what the EA/GAEL was and what its meaning and purposes were understood to be by those who created them. The crux of the matter is that we don't know what they were understood to be by those who created them, and hence, the necessity for painstaking and complex text-critical analysis, hypothesis and conjecture as to that meaning long after the fact.

Metaphorically, it is comparable in principle to the senselessness of building a huge and elaborate factory in order to manufacture a single apartment, when it would have been far more simple and sensible to just build the single apartment.

One wonders if Isaiah created his own version of the EA/GAEL in order to "kick-start" the production of his own prophecies. It would seem that Joseph understood the process of the translation of ancient records in a manner utterly inconsistent with modern critic's understanding of what Joseph considered to be the process. Tremendous leaps of inference and preconception seem necessary to keep this conception from jumping its tracks, given what modern text-critical bound critics have to work with, and given what we know from eyewitness accounts was the actual extent of Joseph's corpus of ancient texts.

[wenglund]

I think this central insight is perhaps the most often overlooked amidst all the forensic text critical theoretical reconstructing of BofA production. In all the the ink and bandwidth that has been expended in attempts to explain - or, in many cases, explain away - the BofA's origins, always overlooked is the utter dearth of documentary record of just what took place regarding the production of the BofA. Joseph and the other Brethren most intimately connected to the BofA and its creation, did a great deal of teaching, writing, and record keeping, and yet, no one apparently thought to set down in writing the means, or technique used to produce the text of the BofA, as, for example, we have some knowledge of the means used to translate the BofM.

If the EA/GAEL was, indeed, intended as tools who's purpose was the ultimate creation of the BofA, why then is there no documentary evidence of this design? Why not simply openly claim the EA/GAEL as inspired tools of translation (or the contents thereof), and claim this as a matter of faith? If Joseph was, indeed, a prophet of God, are the specific means used to produce the BofA really so overwhelmingly relevant? It seems to me, in other words, that there is no requirement - none whatever - that the EA/GAEL be seen as source documents for the BofA. Other means of production were available to Joseph, so long as we can at least accept the possibility that he was, in point of fact, a prophet. That, it would seem, is the real upshot of the matter, not the technical aspects of the production of the BofA itself, which, given that upshot, could have occurred in any number of ways, all of them divine/revelatory in nature.

Indeed, which can be ascertained by reading what the book actually says, a novel approach to many, it would seem.

Hi Loran,

I appreciate you eloquently underscoring my first point.

Really, as you suggest, this is all academic. If one wishes to know if the Book of Abraham is of God, one ought to use the means God has established for making such spiritual determinations, and this by asking him in earnest prayer and by applying in one's life the precepts found within that book of scripture to see if they don't expand one's spirit and soul. All the scholastic musings either may be interesting and informative, but not all that useful in determining the supernaturalistic origins of the text.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[wenglund]

It is likely that my 6% figure mentioned above may be overly generous because it is based only on the 136 verses in the published Book of Abraham. It doesn't factor in the non-extant portions of the Book of Joseph that had been translated and alluded to by Oliver Cowdery in the Messenger and Advocate (Dec 1835) or the non-extant portions of the Book of Abraham (there is evidence from a journal that the Book of Abraham translation consisted of about two hours worth of reading material, whereas what we have today only amounts to about 30 minutes of reading material--see recent BoA DVD).

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

Edited November 1, 2011 by wenglund

[Cobalt-70]

Not a lot has been said about how the Book of Abraham was produced, but there is a lot of internal evidence as to what happened. I think it is clear, based on the papyri, the EA/GAEL, and the Book of Abraham text itself, that Smith first spent a fair amount of time trying to decipher the text of the papyri in a quasi-scholarly way--that is, trying to establish a one-to-one correspondence between text and translation. Of course, not knowing a thing about the Egyptian language, his EA/GAEL is not accurate from an academic perspective. However, the exercise of producing the EA/GAEL must have energized his inspiration and imagination, and inspired him to produce the Book of Abraham story that we have today, through a process much like the way he produced the Book of Mormon.

It was much the same exercise Smith used for the Book of Mormon: spending some time copying characters and trying to give translations to those characters (ie, the Anthon transcript), and then putting that aside to use purely mystical means for producing the translation without reference to any source material.

[William Schryver]

I think it is clear, based on the papyri, the EA/GAEL, and the Book of Abraham text itself, that Smith first spent a fair amount of time trying to decipher the text of the papyri in a quasi-scholarly way--that is, trying to establish a one-to-one correspondence between text and translation.

How do you come to this conclusion when, in the first place, the EA/GAEL is clearly based on a pre-existing text of the BoA, and the vast majority of the characters in the EA/GAEL are neither Egyptian nor are they to be found on the papyri?

I think your conclusion has no reasonable basis. Upon what basis do you think your conclusion is reasonable?

It was much the same exercise Smith used for the Book of Mormon: spending some time copying characters and trying to give translations to those characters (ie, the Anthon transcript) ...

What evidence do you have that Joseph Smith attempted to "give translations" in a "quasi-scholarly way" to any characters from the plates of the Book of Mormon?

[wenglund]

c) It seems to me that if one wishes to create an instrument intended to even naturalistically or academically translate the Book of Abraham from the Egyptian Papyri, that at the very least that instrument would primarily entail characters from the papyri with corresponding English explanations. Yet, of the 65 characters that are given English explanations in the EA/GAEL, relatively few, particularly the first 39 of those 65 characters, have been identified on the papyri. The fact that so few of the EA/GAEL characters with explanation were taken from the papyri, logically militates against the proposition that the EA/GAEL was intended to "translate" the Book of Abraham from the papyri.

Metaphorically, it would be like building a huge and elaborate factory presumably with the intent of constructing a single apartment from wood, but tooling the factory primarily for metal fabrication. It just doesn't make sense.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[William Schryver]

c) It seems to me that if one wishes to create an instrument intended to even naturalistically or academically translate the Book of Abraham from the Egyptian Papyri, that at the very least that instrument would primarily entail characters from the papyri with corresponding English explanations. Yet, of the 65 characters that are given English explanations in the EA/GAEL, relatively few, particularly the first 39 of those 65 characters, have been identified on the papyri. The fact that so few of the EA/GAEL characters with explanation were taken from the papyri, logically militates against the proposition that the EA/GAEL was intended to "translate" the Book of Abraham from the papyri.

Metaphorically, it would be like building a huge and elaborate factory presumably with the intent of constructing a single apartment from wood, but tooling the factory primarily for metal fabrication. It just doesn't make sense.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

Not to mention the five characters from the Phelps letter that correspond to characters 27 - 31 in the EA/GAEL.

A passage from my 2010 presentation is also pertinent here, in the context of Cobalt70's assertion that the EA/GAEL was designed as a "quasi-scholarly" tool to translate the papyri:

One of the first things that became apparent in the process of this particular study [Substantial Word Study]—before attempting to quantify anything—is that we are quite obviously dealing with a very limited set of unique words, with very specific applications. As opposed to a more non-contextual selection of wide-focus building block words that one would reasonably expect to encounter in a document intended as a tool to decipher an unknown text, instead we encounter words and phrases focused on a narrow subject matter.

As a result, what was intuitively evident to me was that this thing was being driven by an already known text, rather than being a means by which to produce an as yet unknown text. The substantial words are almost all proper nouns that form a lexicon of people, places, and things—almost all of them from the Book of Abraham, and often very uniquely so.

If, as Mormon critics have argued for the past 40 years, the Alphabet and Grammar was produced before the text of the Book of Abraham was received, and was the means by which that text was subsequently “translated” from the papyri, then how likely is it that the would-be translators would include virtually nothing but unique words and phrases from an as yet unwritten book?

You see, the thesis of the Alphabet and Grammar as a papyri deciphering tool presupposes that the authors don’t already know the text their tool is being designed to produce!

And this:

... we see, in the explanations given to four successive characters from the Alphabet and Grammar, very particular references to specific passages from those two giants of Joseph Smith’s previously received revelations—sections 76 and 88. Right in order, this so-called Grammar and Alphabet of the Egyptian Language is making reference to the Celestial, Terrestrial, and Telestial kingdoms, followed immediately by the kingdom which is not a kingdom of glory!

I went on to identify several additional references that are clearly dependent on other passages from the Doctrine and Covenants.

... To the extent this lexicon was built partially on texts that have no relationship to the Egyptian papyri; texts that were written not in Egyptian at all, but in English, then the Alphabet and Grammar simply could not have been intended as a tool to decipher the papyri. Indeed, the more I considered the evidence in this new light, the more I came to believe that these men were not focused on translating the Egyptian papyri at all!

One of the keys to this conclusion was my discovery that, of the 69 characters to which explanations were assigned, most of them are not even Egyptian and do not appear on the papyri!

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

I think Cobalt70 has a lot of explaining to do in order to reconcile his assertions with the evidence.

Edited November 1, 2011 by William Schryver

[wenglund]

Not a lot has been said about how the Book of Abraham was produced...

As pointed out in the recent Book of Abraham DVD, and by John Gee in his 1992 article on A Tragedy of Errors, there is one instance within the historical record where the production process was alluded to. It is found, interestingly enough, in a newspaper interview with Warren Parrish months after his rancorous disaffection from the church: "I have set by his [Joseph Smith] side and penned down the translation of the Egyptian Heiroglyphicks [sic] as he claimed to receive it by direct inspiration of Heaven." (Warren Parrish, letter to the editor of the Painesville Republican, dated 5 February 1838, in Painesville Republican 2, 15 February 1838, 3.)

This is the standard operating procedure mentioned above for translating scripture, and it is the method consistently claimed to have been used to translate the Book of Abraham (i.e. by the gift and power of God). Again, nowhere in the historical record is there any mention of an alphabet/grammar used to translate scriptures, nor, as I have been pointing out, does it make sense to have used such a method except for secular educational purposes. Sorry.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

Edited November 1, 2011 by wenglund

[wenglund]

Not to mention the five characters from the Phelps letter that correspond to characters 27 - 31 in the EA/GAEL. A passage from my 2010 presentation is also pertinent here, in the context of Cobalt70's assertion that the EA/GAEL was designed as a "quasi-scholarly" tool to translate the papyri: And this:

I was blown away by those amazing insights when I first viewed your FAIR presentation a year and a half ago. If you hadn't quoted them now, I was going to do so myself, but I was waiting to quote the first until I got to argument #4, which speaks to the question of a preexisting texts, and which is, I believe, is the most powerful argument against the proposition that the Book of Abraham was translated from the papyri using the EA/GAEL. As you may guess, I am currently in the process of presenting the other three arguments first so as to set the stage for your argument--kind of like throwing a few carefully aimed punches intended to softening up the opponent before letting you deliver the knockout blow.

However, portions of you second quote fit very nicely with my argument 3c. [thumbs up]

I think Cobalt70 has a lot of explaining to do in order to reconcile his assertions with the evidence.

I wish him good luck with that, though I fear he is unwittingly shadow boxing.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[Cobalt-70]

How do you come to this conclusion when, in the first place, the EA/GAEL is clearly based on a pre-existing text of the BoA, and the vast majority of the characters in the EA/GAEL are neither Egyptian nor are they to be found on the papyri?

What evidence do you have that Joseph Smith attempted to "give translations" in a "quasi-scholarly way" to any characters from the plates of the Book of Mormon?

On the first question, the point is that some characters were from the papyri. Smith was trying to create an Egyptian alphabet and grammar based partly on characters from the papyri, and partly imagined characters. Alphabets and grammars are supposed to be comprehensive, and Smith knew that every Egyptian character was not going to be on these particular papyri. So he filled in the missing ones with his imagination.

As to the second question, by "quasi-scholarly," I only mean that he attempted to provide a one-to-one correspondence between characters and text--a process that he abandoned both for the Book of Abraham and for the Book of Mormon. For the Book of Mormon, read the history of the Anthon transcript. At the very beginning of the translation process between Dec. 1827 and Feb. 1828, Smith said he copied characters from the plates, and then translated some of the characters. (See DHC 1:19.) These characters, and Smith's purported translations, were then taken to Charles Anthon and others. We might have the Anthon transcript itself (though its authenticity is not absolutely certain), but Smith's translations of the characters appear to be lost.

Edited November 1, 2011 by Cobalt-70

[William Schryver]

On the first question, the point is that some characters were from the papyri. Smith was trying to create an Egyptian alphabet and grammar based partly on characters from the papyri, and partly imagined characters. Alphabets and grammars are supposed to be comprehensive, and Smith knew that every Egyptian character was not going to be on these particular papyri. So he filled in the missing ones with his imagination.

Someone is certainly using imagination here, but I'm not sure it's Joseph Smith.

You're making some bold assertions, Cobalt, but you continue to fail in the evidence department.

You say that Alphabets and Grammars are supposed to be comprehensive. I agree with you. However, the EA/GAEL is not comprehensive. As I stated above (in a citation from my 2010 presentation), the explanations in the EA/GAEL consist of:

... a very limited set of unique words, with very specific applications. As opposed to a more non-contextual selection of wide-focus building block words that one would reasonably expect to encounter in a document intended as a tool to decipher an unknown text, instead we encounter words and phrases focused on a narrow subject matter. ... If, as Mormon critics have argued for the past 40 years, the Alphabet and Grammar was produced before the text of the Book of Abraham was received, and was the means by which that text was subsequently “translated” from the papyri, then how likely is it that the would-be translators would include virtually nothing but unique words and phrases from an as yet unwritten book?

You write:

Smith was trying to create an Egyptian alphabet and grammar based partly on characters from the papyri, and partly imagined characters.

Why? Why would he need to "imagine" characters when he's got two full rolls--an unlimited supply--of characters in front of him? And why would he "imagine" characters that bear no resemblance to the characters on the papyri? What evidence do you have for such a bold assertion?

Your assertion is not only lacking evidence, but it is lacking reason.

Furthermore, how do you explain the fact that five of the characters given explanations in the EA/GAEL originate in a letter from W. W. Phelps to his wife several weeks before they even acquired the papyri--before they even knew about the papyri! In the letter to his wife, the characters are assigned entirely different sounds and explanations.

Edited November 1, 2011 by William Schryver

[wenglund]

On the first question, the point is that some characters were from the papyri. Smith was trying to create an Egyptian alphabet and grammar based partly on characters from the papyri, and partly imagined characters. Alphabets and grammars are supposed to be comprehensive, and Smith knew that every Egyptian character was not going to be on these particular papyri. So he filled in the missing ones with his imagination.

Are you supposing that Joseph et. al. created the alphabet and grammar for the purpose of translating the Book of Abraham from the papyri, or just a kind of warm-up exercise to prepare Joseph for the heavy lifting in translating the BoA? If the former, would you please respond to each of the arguments I have made above? If neither, then what do you believe was the purpose?

Do you realize that only a couple of the first 39 characters in the EA's may be found on the Joseph Smith papyri--one of which may come from a different papyrus than those that are extant and supposed by the critics to be the source document for the BoA?

What implications, if any, does this have on your perception about the intent and purpose of the EA/GAEL.

Are you aware of the Egyptian Counting document as well as the two notebooks that contain Egyptian characters copied from the various papyrus, and which contain a brief translation of several of the characters?

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

Edited November 1, 2011 by wenglund

[Analytics]

If, as Mormon critics have argued for the past 40 years, the Alphabet and Grammar was produced before the text of the Book of Abraham was received, and was the means by which that text was subsequently “translated” from the papyri, then how likely is it that the would-be translators would include virtually nothing but unique words and phrases from an as yet unwritten book?

What? Are you seriously claiming that Mormon critics have been arguing that Joseph Smith first sat down, wrote the Alphabet and Grammar, and then miraculously used it to literally "translate" the papyri?

CFR. Please provide a reference that is avaiable on the Internet of an anti-Mormon who claims this.

[wenglund]

On the first question, the point is that some characters were from the papyri. Smith was trying to create an Egyptian alphabet and grammar based partly on characters from the papyri, and partly imagined characters. Alphabets and grammars are supposed to be comprehensive, and Smith knew that every Egyptian character was not going to be on these particular papyri. So he filled in the missing ones with his imagination.

As to the second question, by "quasi-scholarly," I only mean that he attempted to provide a one-to-one correspondence between characters and text--a process that he abandoned both for the Book of Abraham and for the Book of Mormon. For the Book of Mormon, read the history of the Anthon transcript. At the very beginning of the translation process between Dec. 1827 and Feb. 1828, Smith said he copied characters from the plates, and then translated some of the characters. (See DHC 1:19.)

Let's look at what is recorded in the History of the Church by Joseph Smith:

"By this timely aid was I enabled to reach the place of my destination in Pennsylvania; and immediately after my arrival there I commenced copying the characters off the plates. I copied a considerable number of them, and by means of the Urim and Thummim I translated some of them, which I did between the time I arrived at the house of my wife's father, in the month of December, and the February following." (History of the Church, Vol.1, Ch.3, p.20)

Please notice that the translation of the characters was performed using one of the standard methods (Urim and Thummim), and not by way of his imagination or using a reformed Egyptian alphabet and grammar.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

Edited November 1, 2011 by wenglund

[wenglund]

What? Are you seriously claiming that Mormon critics have been arguing that Joseph Smith first sat down, wrote the Alphabet and Grammar, and then miraculously used it to literally "translate" the papyri?.

What are you supposing is the position of several of the key critics in the BoA debates, like Chris Smith and Brent Metcalfe, if not also Mortal Man?

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[William Schryver]

What? Are you seriously claiming that Mormon critics have been arguing that Joseph Smith first sat down, wrote the Alphabet and Grammar, and then miraculously used it to literally "translate" the papyri?

CFR. Please provide a reference that is avaiable on the Internet of an anti-Mormon who claims this.

I didn't say anything about the EA/GAEL being "miraculously used ... to literally 'translate' the papyri." But critics have certainly argued, to one extent or another, that Joseph Smith employed the EA/GAEL as his translation modus operandi.

I don't believe Richard P. Howard's 1970 article nor Chris Smith's fairly recent JWHA article are available online. But it is hardly any secret that Smith argues that Joseph Smith used the EA/GAEL to translate Abr. 1:1-3. Furthermore, from what I can gather (he can correct me to the extent I have misunderstood his plans), "George Miller" is apparently going to argue that Joseph Smith used the EA/GAEL as his tool to translate more than just Abr. 1:1-3.

Edited November 1, 2011 by William Schryver

[LeSellers]

Please notice that the translation of the characters was performed ... not ... using a Reformed [sic] Egyptian alphabet and grammar.

Please, Wade, edit your note to downcase the "R" in "Reformed [sic]Egyptian". There are already enough problems where people believe "reformed Egyptian" was a language, or even an "alphabet", used in Egypt, rather than characters the Nephites adapted to their needs.

Lehi