Missing Scroll Theory

[Sky]

If somebody come along and said to have translated an ancient record from golden plates, but later on other people theorize that the golden plates never actually existed but were supposedly discerned with “spiritual eyes”, it calls into question the whole story.

It all just sounds a little bit too kooky to swallow.

That is why I find it much easier, and more plausible, to simply take Joseph at his word.

[wenglund]

Whether this is a secret code, or just an encoding for translation from English to pseudo-Egyptian or Adamic, it would still have to be just about the useless code in the entire history of codes. What sort of "new document" could ever be created other than the supposed Egyptian or Adamic version of the Book of Abraham itself?

First, your question and comments appear to suggest that the KEP documents were somewhere near completion, and that they were only intended to contain the content of the BoA. I disagree. I believe the project was far from complete, and was discontinued very early in the intended process, perhaps after the participants figuring out that it wasn't all that practical.

After all, the EA/GAEL had only assigned 39 characters English explanations, and most of those were nouns. And, as you apparently noticed, and as Will pointed out in his 2010 FAIR presentation, those explanations are "focused on a narrow subject matter," which makes intuitively evident that the EA/GAEL was "driven by an already known text."

Second, are you aware that what you found useless as a translation device or a "code" in terms of enciphering, also applies to deciphering? In other words, your question may be rephrased to ask: "What sort of translation of an 'old document' could ever be created other than the Book of Abraham itself?

Third, again, we aren't dealing here with your typical lexicon (or code book) or your typical language, where a single character represents a single letter of the alphabet or part of a word. Rather, we are talking about parts of a single character (graphemes) that supposedly represent expandable concepts (depending upon the degree), that when combined into a given character represent complex and lengthy notions.

Now, there are advantages and disadvantages to the KEP linguistics over typical linguistics. With the KEP, you have the advantage of conveying large amounts of information with relatively few characters, and the chances of breaking the code (if that is what one intends) using things like frequency analysis, is near impossible; whereas the disadvantage, as you surmised, is the lack of versatility and the need to create a host of different characters and pieces of characters, each to represent a single concept or complex notion. In cryptography, it is the difference between a code book (like what was used during the Civil War, in which there was a whole book created where single letters or words each stood for but a single concept) and a simple substitution cipher (like the Masonic cipher).

Since the KEP documents have more of a look and feel of a code book, rather than your typical alphabet and lexicon or substitution cipher; and since code books were written to encipher and then decipher new documents, rather than decipher old documents that predate the code book, this supports my contention that the KEP were intended to encipher new documents rather than decipher ancient documents.

And in that case, what is the point? They already thought they had it in Egyptian, directly from the scroll. Their efforts only make sense if the direction of translation is from Egyptian to English.

Actually, given what I stated above, I believe that what little sense can be made of the KEP documents, the most sense that can be made of them is where the direction of translation/cipher is enciphering new documents from English explanations to KEP characters (not all the characters are from the papyrus or are they all Egyptian).

This belief of mine is further supported by layers and layers of arguments I am in the process of presenting HERE.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

Edited November 23, 2011 by wenglund

[wenglund]

I choose to take Joseph at his word. He either saw the plates with his eyes or he didn't. I don't really buy into this whole "spiritual eyes" business. And based on his description in JS-History, the plates were something real and tangible.

Actually, it could simultaneously be both physical and spiritual eyes. However, it doesn't really matter since both eyes perceive reality.

Anyway, this is tangential to the topic of this thread.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[Cobalt-70]

First, your question and comments appear to suggest that the KEP documents were somewhere near completion, and that they were only intended to contain the content of the BoA. I disagree. I believe the project was far from complete, and was discontinued very early in the intended process, perhaps after the participants figuring out that it wasn't all that practical.

After all, the EA/GAEL had only assigned 39 characters English explanations, and most of those were nouns. And, as you apparently noticed, and as Will pointed out in his 2010 FAIR presentation, those explanations are "focused on a narrow subject matter," which makes intuitively evident that the EA/GAEL was "driven by an already known text."

that the explanation are "focused on a narrow subject matter" means that it was not a cipher. That someone would create a cipher (or translation code, or whatever you want to call it) that could only be used to encode long, esoteric English phrases is, perhaps, only "intuitively evident" in the mind of you and Will. It makes the least sense with the Book of Abraham transcripts, where single characters are linked to extended English scriptural text. How could this, in particular, represent enciphering from English to Egyptian? To people who are not trying desperately to divorce the KEP from the Book of Abraham for religious reasons, it is not intuitive at all, and you are going to have to do a lot better than this type of intuitive hand waving.

Second, are you aware that what you found useless as a translation device or a "code" in terms of enciphering, also applies to deciphering? In other words, your question may be rephrased to ask: "What sort of translation of an 'old document' could ever be created other than the Book of Abraham itself?

I have no issue with the idea that Smith believed that Egyptian characters could represent long strings of text. Going from Egyptian to English presents no problem, and does not strain the very meaning of an Egyptian "Alphabet" or "Grammar." Going the opposite direction, from English to Egyptian, makes no sense in the context of the EAP, because the long "translations" of each character or grapheme are too esoteric and specialized.

Third, again, we aren't dealing here with your typical lexicon (or code book) or your typical language, where a single character represents a single letter of the alphabet or part of a word. Rather, we are talking about parts of a single character (graphemes) that supposedly represent expandable concepts (depending upon the degree), that when combined into a given character represent complex and lengthy notions.

Now, there are advantages and disadvantages to the KEP linguistics over typical linguistics. With the KEP, you have the advantage of conveying large amounts of information with relatively few characters, and the chances of breaking the code (if that is what one intends) using things like frequency analysis, is near impossible; whereas the disadvantage, as you surmised, is the lack of versatility and the need to create a host of different characters and pieces of characters, each to represent a single concept or complex notion. In cryptography, it is the difference between a code book (like what was used during the Civil War, in which there was a whole book created where single letters or words each stood for but a single concept) and a simple substitution cipher (like the Masonic cipher).

Since the KEP documents have more of a look and feel of a code book, rather than your typical alphabet and lexicon or substitution cipher; and since code books were written to encipher and then decipher new documents, rather than decipher old documents that predate the code book, this supports my contention that the KEP were intended to encipher new documents rather than decipher ancient documents.

This is another example of intuitive hand waving. X "feels like" Y, and Y is typically used for Z, therefore X was used for Z. This is not evidence at all, and I disagree that anything you have said is intuitive. If you can show me another example of a "code book" that is intended to encipher long esoteric English phrases like "a distinction of Royal female lineage or descent, from her whom Egypt was discovered while it was under water, who was the daughter of Ham--a lineage with whom a record of the fathers was entrusted by the tradition Ham and according to the tradition of the elders: by whom also the tradition of the art of embalming was kept," then maybe we can begin to have this argument.

Edited November 23, 2011 by Cobalt-70

[William Schryver]

The only thing that Will shows is that there are correlations between the EA/GAEL and the Book of Abraham. What he does not show is that the dependency goes from the EA/GAEL to the Book of Abraham, rather than the other way around. That's where the hand-waving came in.

No hand-waving necessary.

The direction of the dependency is established by the fact that the EA/GAEL makes contextual reference to large swaths of a pre-existing text of the BoA. In other words, it would have been impossible to produce the EA/GAEL without already being in possession of the text (not just the general story) of the Book of Abraham.

See here: Dependency of the Alphabet and Grammar on a Pre-existing Text of the Book of Abraham

Dan McClellan also presents several compelling arguments concerning the direction of dependency in this thread (which provides a direct counter-argument to Chris Smith's 2010 JWHA paper): "Zub Zool oan" dependency on Abr. 1:2b - 3

Before my 2010 FAIR conference presentation, I presciently predicted that the critics would fight tooth and nail against these findings. They recognize that forty years of critical arguments hang on this question of dependency, therefore they will fight to the last man and the last bullet for this particular hill. Then, after all else has failed, they will retreat to the line of last resort: that Joseph Smith merely had the entire Book of Abraham memorized prior to the production of the EA/GAEL. This last ditch argument has already been referenced a few times. It will become more prominent as time goes on. Then we shall see that it, too, cannot stand.

Edited November 23, 2011 by William Schryver

[Xander]

I think it’s pretty obvious that the EAG is just an extension of what the Phelps letter represents.

The letter to his wife represents a letter to his wife. To say the Alphabet and Grammar of the Egyptian Language - which Joseph Smith says he engaged for weeks immediately after acquiring the papyri - is nothing more than an "extension" of some letter Phelps sent to his wife, requires far more explication and far more evidence than a simple anecdote of similar characters.

You're being deceptive here.

For enlightening the audience about crucial evidence that would dissuade them of WIll's argument? I'm being informative, not deceptive. Will is trying to pin the whole thing on Phelps, and so far the only piece of evidence he has presented is this letter to his wife. But the prospect of this representing strong evidence for Will's theory was nullified a year ago when Metcalfe and others brought the "sample" to his attention.

The "sample of the pure language" doesn't have any characters with explanations

Of course not. There was no need to scribble in characters. It was a transcribed interview and Joseph Smith provided meanings of certain words from the pure language of Adam. The letter Phelps sent contains the same translations, which ruins William's intended usage of the letter. Why? Because this tells us precisely where this "pure language" stuff came from. It came from Joseph Smith's previous revelation. Phelps simply shared some of this with his wife except this time it came with corresponding symbols. Since we know for a fact that he got the explanations from Joseph Smith, then why is it such a leap to say he got the symbols from him as well? He never once said it was something he came up with on his own. Not once. That is something William and a couple of his followers keep repeating as though it were established fact.

Phelps is the one that came up with that idea, and he made a table like the ones we see in the EAG, and put it in a letter to his wife.

Where is your evidence that he came up with it?

Joseph Smith didn't make up any characters and then put them in a table that looks like a cipher key.

It doesn't look like a cipher key, and unlike Joseph Smith, W.W. Phelps doesn't have a documented history of restoring missing characters from lost languages.

Phelps did. He did it weeks before the Egyptian stuff ever arrived in Kirtland.

He shared with his wife what Joseph Smith revealed to him that day, period. There is no reason to speculate or assert that anyone besides Joseph Smith had the ability or was in the practice of restoring lost languages. He also restored missing portions of the papyri and "translated" them accordingly. Phelps never engaged in any of this, nor would we expect him to.

Exactly. It was a translation key that Phelps seemed to believe was "typical of language as practiced by 'the ancients'."

Again, there is no evidence that this was Phelps' idea. All the evidence points to Joseph Smith being the man behind the project. His own journal entry says he is the one who suggested it. The hoopla surrounding the pure language was largely a product of Joseph Smith's desire to restore it.

It's just like he did in the table he put in the letter to his wife

The "table" was a simple translation including characters and sounds. That's it. This has no resemblance to a "cipher key." And contrary to your denial, William claimed the intent of the project was to encipher Joseph Smith's revelations. This again, makes absolutely no sense. Why encipher the scriptures when they were already available in print, and they had already planned to publish the Book of Abraham? What William has never explained is why they'd want to do this.

[Xander]

Phelps is the one making up characters that he thinks correspond to "pure language".

Again, you present no evidence for this.

But just so we're clear, according to you, Phelps knew he was making stuff up, but he had reason to believe the stuff he made up pertained to the original Adamic language? The only logical reason for him to believe this would be because it was revealed to him by his Prophet.

Just like he did with the EAG. Who knows what he was thinking? None of it makes much sense to me.

It makes perfect sense. The GAEL represent exactly what Joseph Smith said it was, and the critics can accept that without trying to turn it on its head. Joseph Smith spoke of it in his journal on multiple occasions, and never once did he describe it as someone else's idea. How many times does Phelps refer to the EAG as his idea? Not once.

I've noticed that you like to make assertions and then pretend that the "evidence" you post supports those assertions. Except that it doesn't.

I'm willing to let rational folks make that judgment for themselves. But to say I've done nothing but assert is beyond ridiculous. I present evidence to support all my arguments.

He says his primary theory about the KEP is that they are based on a pre-existing text of the Book of Abraham.

OK, but you didn't answer the question. I asked you what was the meaning and purpose of the Kirtland Egyptian Papers. This was the advertised title of Will's presentation. To say the "meaning and purpose" was that it was "based on a preexistent text," doesn't even make sense. This is like saying the meaning and purpose of the Printer's manuscript, is that it was based on the Original manuscript.

Imagine this scenario in an American History class:

Student: Professor, what is the meaning and purpose of the Declaration of Independence?

Professor: Obviously, the meaning and purpose is that it came after Thomas Jefferson wrote an original draft in France.

Student: What?

The fact is the cipher stuff was all the rage for the first couple of weeks after his presentation. This is what everyone took away from it. All the Mormon blogs and newsletters spoke of how Schryver revealed the secret of the KEP - the cipher. But then after critics started punching holes in his theory, William began to distance himself from the idea, insisting that it didn't mean much anyway and that his main point was the preexisting text theory. Well, this makes little sense because 1) the vast majority of his presentation discussed the cipher and 2) only a handful of folks following these internet debates would have had any idea why a "preexistent text" theory was of any apologetic significance.

The evidence he shows to prove that point is very strong.

So he says. In my experience, people who need to constantly decorate their presentation with flowery rhetoric, do so because weak, unpersuasive arguments need all the help they can get. For example, he doesn't present his stuff as just evidence for a theory. Instead, he immediately refers to it as "compelling" evidence before the audience has a chance to decide that for themselves. Theory is then spoken of as if it were "confirmed" and "established" fact, before anything has been peer-reviewed.

You can see exactly how the KEP are based on the text of the completed BoA.

No you can't. You're simply repeating what Will tells you the "evidence" does. But the group of people he has managed to convince is rather small, even from his own side.

That explains a lot about their meaning and purpose, if you ask me

OK, I'm asking. How does that explain their "meaning and purpose"?

For one, it disproves the idea that the KEP were "translation manuscripts" of the BoA or that they were used to translate the papyrus to produce the BoA.

Telling us what they aren't, doesn't tell us what they are. The fact is no one from the LDS side has come up with a plausible or realistic explanation that accounts for all the evidence supplied in the KEP. Will is just content to keep denying anything the critics say. In fact, his work is designed specifically to negate all critical claims, without really coming up with his own theory that holds explanatory power. Ultimately, he is content to just throw his hands up and say it was all nonsense and that is why it was quickly "abandoned." But as I explained to wade, this simply won't do, because we know from Joseph Smith's journal that he wanted to recommence with the Egyptian Grammar as late as 1843.

Also, the connection between the EAG and the pure language translation table that Phelps put in the letter to his wife shows that the whole project had a similar purpose to the table in the letter.

Oh?

It appears to be related to their ideas about how "pure language" worked. That a single character could somehow be used to represent entire sentences or even multiple sentences. I think it's ridiculous, and I think that's why they gave it up so quickly. It just didn't work.

It wasn't ridiculous to him. Joseph Smith believed one character of Reformed Egyptian could represent multiple lines of English text. And thanks to agents of misinformation, like Athanasius Kircher, it was generally how Egyptian was understood in his day. We also know from David Whitmer that in Smith's translations of ancient texts, "Frequently one character would make two lines of manuscript..." Ridiculous you say?

[Xander]

forty years of critical arguments

??

It has been repeatedly shown that William's "forty years of critical arguments" is based strictly on an obscure comment by an RLDS historian "forty years ago," in conjunction with a comment from something Ed Ashment wrote more than ten years ago. This is how he managed to mislead people into thinking he has actually refuted arguments presented by his critics. But he has been told by numerous critics, quite recently, in fact, that he has misunderstood those arguments. Yet he refuses to drop his claim. His refusal demonstrates that he is unwilling to let the critics make their own arguments.

Of course, to do so makes it harder to knock over preferred straw men.

And William seems to think that by advertising a failed presentation over and over, that somehow it will become "compelling" to those who have seen it ... over and over. The main problem I have is that he has yet to explain his justification for employing a methodology which he created from whole cloth. A system of "substantial word" analysis that was clearly designed to produce conclusions he had already assumed to be true, years before he began to make his argument. I've asked him this for years, and he has yet to provide an answer to the question. Maybe the sixth time is the charm...

[William Schryver]

/snip another in a long, long, long string of examples where Graham throws out a mountain of rhetoric whose essence is nothing more than "nuh uh"/

All Nomad really needed to do is post the image of table from the Phelps letter along with the corresponding portion from EA-WP, where this set of invented characters is assigned an entirely different set of "sounds" and "explanations".

This, folks, is what a substitution cipher looks like: a static set of characters to which different meanings are assigned. However, lest the misunderstanding concerning my hypothesis be perpetuated, I want to repeat what I said in my 2010 FAIR presentation:

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’s revelations into some kind of cipher that these men apparently believed to be typical of language as practiced by “the ancients.”

Not that they would have called it a cipher.

No, I believe the term they would have used to describe what they were doing is “translation”—not of Egyptian papyri, mind you, but of already written English texts—into a set of characters of their own selection and invention. Nevertheless, these tables they produced in the process of their translation project have the effective function of a “cipher key.”

Let me emphasize: I don't believe they were attempting to craft an actual cipher. I believe a good explanation for the textual evidence we see is that they were engaging in an experimental and speculative project to produce a lexicon that they believed corresponded to how "pure language" worked. To them, the phrase "pure language" described what they believed was the language spoken by Adam in the Garden of Eden. Their thoughts concerning "pure language" had been influenced by authors who had been writing on this topic for centuries. There was a prevalent notion that a single character could represent entire sentences or even paragraphs of meaning. William Phelps was particularly influenced by this centuries-old concept of ancient language. The EA/GAEL represents an ill-conceived and quickly aborted attempt by these early Latter-day Saints to mimic what they believed were the linguistic practices of the ancients.

[William Schryver]

??

It has been repeatedly shown that William's "forty years of critical arguments" is based strictly on an obscure comment by an RLDS historian "forty years ago," in conjunction with a comment from something Ed Ashment wrote more than ten years ago. This is how he managed to mislead people into thinking he has actually refuted arguments presented by his critics. But he has been told by numerous critics, quite recently, in fact, that he has misunderstood those arguments. Yet he refuses to drop his claim. His refusal demonstrates that he is unwilling to let the critics make their own arguments.

Of course, to do so makes it harder to knock over preferred straw men.

And William seems to think that by advertising a failed presentation over and over, that somehow it will become "compelling" to those who have seen it ... over and over. The main problem I have is that he has yet to explain his justification for employing a methodology which he created from whole cloth. A system of "substantial word" analysis that was clearly designed to produce conclusions he had already assumed to be true, years before he began to make his argument. I've asked him this for years, and he has yet to provide an answer to the question. Maybe the sixth time is the charm...

It is very instructive how Graham insists my thesis has absolutely no relationship to what critics have been arguing for the past forty years; that it is a mere strawman argument, and yet he and his cohorts are nearly desperate in their attempts to disprove those arguments!

If, according to Mormon critics, my arguments concerning the dependency of the EA/GAEL on a pre-existing text of the Book of Abraham are so irrelevant, then why are these same critics working so hard to discredit them?

[William Schryver]

For those who are interested in this topic, I recommend Samuel Brown's 2009 article Joseph (Smith) in Egypt: Babel, Hieroglyphs, and the Pure Language of Eden. I believe Sam's paper is terribly flawed in many ways, and especially speculative--beyond redemption--when it comes to his interpretations of the meaning and purpose of the EA/GAEL. But it still contains much valuable background information concerning the concept of "pure language" and the fascination that William Phelps had for what he believed to be the language of "the ancients."

I am preparing a critical review of Brown's paper that will (along with a review of Chris Smith's 2010 JWHA paper) be published sometime in 2012, assuming all proceeds according to current plans.

[William Schryver]

You're being deceptive here. The "sample of the pure language" doesn't have any characters with explanations. Phelps is the one that came up with that idea, and he made a table like the ones we see in the EAG, and put it in a letter to his wife. Joseph Smith didn't make up any characters and then put them in a table that looks like a cipher key. Phelps did. He did it weeks before the Egyptian stuff ever arrived in Kirtland.

Do not accuse others of deception if you want to stay in the thread.

Nomad is absolutely correct. "Xander" is being deceptive in this argument. Brent Metcalfe also made this argument almost immediately after my 2010 FAIR presentation, and Graham and others have frequently repeated it since then, despite the fact that it is patently deceptive. They are counting on the fact that readers do not understand enough of the topic in order to recognize how deceptive the argument is.

They are claiming that these tables with characters, sounds, and explanations did not originate with William Phelps, but with Joseph Smith. That is not true, and they know it is not true.

In this May 1835 "specimen of the pure language," as with the EA/GAEL, Phelps uses as "explanations" text from Joseph Smith's previously received revelations. In the May 1835 letter to his wife, Phelps introduces this "template" that contains characters in the left-most column, sounds, and explanations for the character. Phelps drew upon Joseph Smith's statements from an 1832 Question and Answer session recorded here: Pure Language 1832

But, as both Metcalfe and Graham know very well, the 1832 document bears no resemblance to the Phelps's May 1835 table included in the letter to his wife. That table introduces the use of characters to represent sentences of meaning; characters that are then used again in the July 1835 Egyptian Alphabet document, but with different sounds and meaning assigned to them, as can be seen here:

Graham is attempting to hoodwink readers into believing that Phelps's table was based on the 1832 Joseph Smith document. He says, "Joseph Smith was the guy behind it all, not W.W. Phelps." But the evidence clearly demonstrates that this is not so. The May 1835 Phelps letter to his wife is the first instance we see of these tables with characters, sounds, and explanations. Graham's attempt to trick readers into believing otherwise is, quite frankly, deceptive. It is not a sincere difference of opinion about the matter. It is a deliberate attempt to confuse and mislead readers of this discussion.

Edited November 23, 2011 by William Schryver

[wenglund]

that the explanation are "focused on a narrow subject matter" means that it was not a cipher.

To me, since the EA/GAAEL project had barely begun, and was far from complete, there is too little evidence to rule out what general type of instrument for which the EA/GAEL was intended --be it a cipher or a lexicon or a combination of the two or whatever. At best, the "focused on a narrow subject matter" may evince is the proposition of a preexisting source from whence the explanations may have been derived.

That someone would create a cipher (or translation code, or whatever you want to call it) that could only be used to encode long, esoteric English phrases is, perhaps, only "intuitively evident" in the mind of you and Will.

You evidently didn't correctly understand my comment. What Will and I believe was "intuitively evident" was the EA/GAEL explanations being "driven by an already known text." It was not said in relation to the use of long encoded phrases.

It makes the least sense with the Book of Abraham transcripts, where single characters are linked to extended English scriptural text. How could this, in particular, represent enciphering from English to Egyptian?

I didn't say that it did. What I reasonably suggested is that with the EA/GAEL as well as the 1835 Abr. Mss, the link represents enciphering complex notions into individual characters (some of which just happen to be Egyptian).

To people who are not trying desperately to divorce the KEP from the Book of Abraham for religious reasons, it is not intuitive at all, and you are going to have to do a lot better than this type of intuitive hand waving.

Besides projecting (in terms of "hand waving"), you are here ignorantly ascribing motives to me that aren't true. I am arguing against the EA/GAEL as a deciphering device for producing the BoA from the papyri because I believe the evidence overwhelmingly is against such a proposition. It wouldn't matter to my faith one whit were the EA/GAEL to be definitively confirmed as the modus operandi for portions of the BoA. Truth be told, my motives in setting forth all my counter arguments is in hopes of persuading the critics to not wasting so much of their time trying to prop up such utter nonsense, and devote their attention instead to BoA issues that portend to greater credulity.

I have no issue with the idea that Smith believed that Egyptian characters could represent long strings of text. Going from Egyptian to English presents no problem, and does not strain the very meaning of an Egyptian "Alphabet" or "Grammar." Going the opposite direction, from English to Egyptian, makes no sense in the context of the EAP, because the long "translations" of each character or grapheme are too esoteric and specialized.

You are here simply re-stating, sans reasoning, your earlier assertion without considering or perhaps comprehending my counter arguments. That is too bad.

This is another example of intuitive hand waving. X "feels like" Y, and Y is typically used for Z, therefore X was used for Z. This is not evidence at all, and I disagree that anything you have said is intuitive.

Again, you evidently didn't correctly comprehend my counter argument, but reacted in a knee-jerk fashion. Oh well...

If you can show me another example of a "code book" that is intended to encipher long esoteric English phrases like "a distinction of Royal female lineage or descent, from her whom Egypt was discovered while it was under water, who was the daughter of Ham--a lineage with whom a record of the fathers was entrusted by the tradition Ham and according to the tradition of the elders: by whom also the tradition of the art of embalming was kept," then maybe we can begin to have this argument.

Your missing the point. Try thinking principally in terms of orders of magnitude.

To re-clarify, here is what I said to floatingboy in another thread: "the supposed uselessness of the extent of meaning assigned to each character is just as applicable to deciphering as it is to enciphering. Either way, a single character is assigned a large amount of text. So, the existence of such supposed useless relationship between character and text, isn't necessarily evidence one way or the other in favor of or against deciphering or enciphering. As such, determining the direction of translation (decipher or encipher) must needs be determined in some other way. And, given the layers and layers of arguments I present in the other thread against the EA/GAEL as a deciphering device for the BoA, which arguments extent to the 1835 Abr. Mss., I tend to believe the Abr. Mss., like the EA/GAEL, to be an enciphering translation."

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

Edited November 24, 2011 by wenglund

[wenglund]

The letter to his wife represents a letter to his wife. To say the Alphabet and Grammar of the Egyptian Language - which Joseph Smith says he engaged for weeks immediately after acquiring the papyri - is nothing more than an "extension" of some letter Phelps sent to his wife, requires far more explication and far more evidence than a simple anecdote of similar characters.

Nor, for that matter, can it be so easily dismissed. The "Specimen" in the Phelps letter is evidence that reasonable and open minds would want to consider.

For enlightening the audience about crucial evidence that would dissuade them of WIll's argument? I'm being informative, not deceptive. Will is trying to pin the whole thing on Phelps, and so far the only piece of evidence he has presented is this letter to his wife.

I don't agree with Nomad's use of the word "deceptive" (even if accurate). However, I believe you do have a significant problem accurately representing your opponents arguments. Even in your brief statement above you falsely characterize what Will has argued (while he, like me, believes that Phelps may have played a dominant role in the project, he acknowledges the participation and possible collaboration of Oliver and Joseph and others, which is a far cry from trying to "pin it all on Phelps"), and you way understate the evidence he has presented and may yet present (not the least of which is the correlation he has pointed out between the spellings in the EA's as compared with those in the GAEL).

But the prospect of this representing strong evidence for Will's theory was nullified a year ago when Metcalfe and others brought the "sample" to his attention.

Perhaps in your opinion it was nullified. But not in mine. Far from it. To me, at best it suggested a possible source from which Phelps derived only a portion of his Specimen.

He shared with his wife what Joseph Smith revealed to him that day, period. There is no reason to speculate or assert that anyone besides Joseph Smith had the ability or was in the practice of restoring lost languages. He also restored missing portions of the papyri and "translated" them accordingly. Phelps never engaged in any of this, nor would we expect him to.

While you may not think so, I believe there is good reason to consider whether people like Phelps may have had more advanced academic knowledge and experience with foreign languages and may have been in a better position than Joseph for creating secular documents like lexicons or ciphers or whatever.

Again, there is no evidence that this was Phelps' idea. All the evidence points to Joseph Smith being the man behind the project. His own journal entry says he is the one who suggested it. The hoopla surrounding the pure language was largely a product of Joseph Smith's desire to restore it.

Again, you are incorrect about what evidence has been and will yet be presented in favor of Phelps as the project leader. Besides what was mentioned above, see also: HERE.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

Edited November 23, 2011 by wenglund

[wenglund]

Lest this gets lost yet again amidst the tangential discussions:

Kevin,

You and I agree that the 1835 Abraham manuscripts represent a translation--i.e. there is a translational relationship between the Egyptian characters and the English text.

Where we disagree is whether that translation takes the form of deciphering or enciphering. I view the 1835 Abraham manuscripts as an extension of the EA/GAEL project, and given the many arguments I have presented against the EA;GAEL being intended and used to decipher the BoA from the papyri (see the other thread on the Joseph Smith Egyptian Papers), the same arguments, for the most part, apply to the 1835 Abr. Mss. And, since I don't' view them as a deciphering--meaning that I don't view the characters in the 1835 Abr. Mss. as the source from whence the BoA was translated/deciphered by the gift and power of God, then to me the BoA was translated from some other portion of the papyrus, and therefore the issue of missing papyri is relevant to my point of view.

That you may have a different opinion, is fine for you, but my reasoning isn't based on your opinion, but mine.

Even if one were to believe the 1835 Abr. Mss represent a deciphered translation, one may also conclude that Phelps, Williams, Parrish, and perhaps Joseph, were incorrect in assuming that the revelatory deciphering was derived from the characters represented in the Abr. Mss and the extant portion of the papyri, but rather from some other part of the papyri. This then would make relevant the missing portion of the scrolls.

In short, while you may reasonably view things in a way that would render irrelevant the issue of missing portions of the papyri, there are at least two other reasonable ways that people may view things where this issue is relevant. To each their own.

Does this compute with you?

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

Edited November 23, 2011 by wenglund

[Nemesis]

Guys can't you play nice? Seriously whats the point if there can't even be a discussion because we have to shut it down? This is the last warning.

Nemesis

[Xander]

All Nomad really needed to do is post the image of table from the Phelps letter along with the corresponding portion from EA-WP, where this set of invented characters is assigned an entirely different set of "sounds" and "explanations".

You are ignoring the point that the "translation" material in the letter from Phelps contains more or less, the same information provided by Joseph Smith in 1832. For example, where the letter says "ahman" refers to "God," the earlier samples of the pure language provided by Joseph Smith, says "awmen" refers to the "being which made all things." Where the letter says "son ahman" refers to the Son of God, the "sample" provided by Joseph Smith says "Son Awmen" refers to the Son of God. The letter translates "sons ahman" as the sons of God whereas the previous sample translated "sons awmen" as the children of God. This is what you fail to disclose to your audience, and you still refuse to acknolwedge their striking similarities, let alone the clear trajectory of dependence.

Of course the sounds are different between the EAG and the Phelps letter, and the translations are slightly different. And that's easily explainable by the fact that the former was supposed to be the "pure language" of Adam while the latter, the Egyptian language. You avoid this obvious fact by dismissing the entire GAEL as having nothing whatsoever to do with the Egyptian language, despite the fact that this is exactly how the project refers to itself. For you, it is important to reinvent basic definitions of terms.

This, folks, is what a substitution cipher looks like: a static set of characters to which different meanings are assigned.

It has more in common with a typical explanation between two languages, provided in a number of grammar books, and since this is precisely what is claimed to be happening here, there is no reasonable basis to inject a cipher theory in the middle of it all. The intent to create an Egyptian "grammar," as indicated by Joseph Smith, makes perfect sense as it is. Your theory runs away from all the evidence. It doesn't account for it. This is why it is important for you to do creative reworking of what the evidence says. For exmaple, yoru conclusion doesn't allow for the fact that the "G" refers to grammar or that the "E" refers to the Egyptian language. You've ignore so much evidence and reinvented so much already that you might as well come up with your own acronymn to describe the project.

Schryver 2010:

the Alphabet, Grammar, and Counting documents appear to have been intended to render the English text of the Prophet’s revelations into some kind of cipher that these men apparently believed to be typical of language as practiced by “the ancients.”

Schryver 2011:

Let me emphasize: I don't believe they were attempting to craft an actual cipher.

As I said, you have every right to distance yourself from your original claim. Just don't complain when people take notice.

I believe a good explanation for the textual evidence we see is that they were engaging in an experimental and speculative project to produce a lexicon that they believed corresponded to how "pure language" worked.

Except there is nothing in the GAEL referring to the Pure Language. It has Egyptian qualifiers written all over it, including the title of the project. You're focusing on the wrong things here. Instead of focusing on the data provided in the table, all you do is say hey, there is a table, and a table is used in ciphers, therefore this is a cipher! But tables are used for all kinds of instruction, including translations.

To them, the phrase "pure language" described what they believed was the language spoken by Adam in the Garden of Eden.

Correct.

Their thoughts concerning "pure language" had been influenced by authors who had been writing on this topic for centuries.

As was pointed out to you by George Miller.

There was a prevalent notion that a single character could represent entire sentences or even paragraphs of meaning.

As I pointed out earlier.

William Phelps was particularly influenced by this centuries-old concept of ancient language.

And yet most of the evidence referring to the pure language comes from Joseph Smith. I'm still waiting for someone to explain to us why Phelps believed the stuff he was "making up" would have any revelance to the Pure Language of Adam.

The EA/GAEL represents an ill-conceived and quickly aborted attempt by these early Latter-day Saints to mimic what they believed were the linguistic practices of the ancients.

Assertion sans evidence. In fact, it runs contrary to the evidence. Why did Joseph Smith resurrect his desire to work on an Egyptian Grammar in 1843, if he thought the project of 1835 was such a waste of time? The only evidence that it was "aborted" is the fact that they didn't publish their work in 1835. But then, they didn't publish their work on the Book of Abraham in 1835 either. That was put on hold for seven years, but not because they "abandoned" it.

It is very instructive how Graham insists my thesis has absolutely no relationship to what critics have been arguing for the past forty years; that it is a mere strawman argument, and yet he and his cohorts are nearly desperate in their attempts to disprove those arguments!

This is false. Shortly after your presentation I presented multiple statements from all of your critics, me included, who explicitly rejected your attempt to reinvent "the" critical argument. Metcalfe, Vogel, Smith and I all explicitly denied ever arguing what you claim has been the "critical argument" for forty years. Analytics recently brought this to your attention and you dismissed it with hand waving. You simply refuse to let the critics make their own arguments. This in and of itself reveals the weakness of your own.

If, according to Mormon critics, my arguments concerning the dependency of the EA/GAEL on a pre-existing text of the Book of Abraham are so irrelevant, then why are these same critics working so hard to discredit them?

They're not. You're misrepresenting what they're arguing now in the same way you've misrepresented what they've always argued in the past.

Edited November 24, 2011 by Xander

[Xander]

For those who are interested in this topic, I recommend Samuel Brown's 2009 article Joseph (Smith) in Egypt: Babel, Hieroglyphs, and the Pure Language of Eden. I believe Sam's paper is terribly flawed in many ways, and especially speculative--beyond redemption--when it comes to his interpretations of the meaning and purpose of the EA/GAEL. But it still contains much valuable background information concerning the concept of "pure language" and the fascination that William Phelps had for what he believed to be the language of "the ancients."

I also recommend Brown's paper, for a corrective to many of the baseless assumptions you present as fact.

I am preparing a critical review of Brown's paper that will (along with a review of Chris Smith's 2010 JWHA paper) be published sometime in 2012, assuming all proceeds according to current plans.

This is almost identical to what you said four, three and two years ago. At what point is it safe to consider this a bluff?

Nomad is absolutely correct. "Xander" is being deceptive in this argument. Brent Metcalfe also made this argument almost immediately after my 2010 FAIR presentation, and Graham and others have frequently repeated it since then, despite the fact that it is patently deceptive. They are counting on the fact that readers do not understand enough of the topic in order to recognize how deceptive the argument is.

Um, no. We are counting on readers to have the sense to see the obvious similarities between the pure language "sample" of 1832, and Phelps' letter of 1835. I know it rains on your intended argument, but you shouldn't howl at the moon because someone presents further evidence you weren't aware of. The only thing clear here is that you do not understand this topic well enough to present an accurate description of the source documents. You've been misrepresenting them for years, as I have repeatedly shown. You never respond to my thorough reviews of your arguments. Or are you finally ready to explain to your intended audience why you were unable to properly describe Ms 2, despite having "Hi-Res" scans of the originals?

They are claiming that these tables with characters, sounds, and explanations did not originate with William Phelps, but with Joseph Smith. That is not true, and they know it is not true.

Based on what evidence? You refuse to provide any. All you have is a letter, and then you use that to launch into all sorts of speculations about how Phelps concocted the entire GAEL project. But what you refuse to answer, for obvious reasons, is why Phelps would have ever believed he could reproduce the pure language of Adam. This is something a Prophet Seer and Revelator would be expected to do. In fact, Joseph Smith has a record of doing precisely this. Phelps does not. You keep ignoring this fact and all other facts that disrupt your intended argument.

But, as both Metcalfe and Graham know very well, the 1832 document bears no resemblance to the Phelps's May 1835 table included in the letter to his wife.

That's because the former contained no "table" to begin with. What it did contain were the same "pure language" terms with the same English translations. Now this is instructive folks. According to William Schryver, an 1832 document discussing the pure language, translating "A[w]men" to mean the "being which made all things" has absolutely no resemblance to an 1835 document referring to the pure language, translating "ahman" as "God."

But it gets worse for Schryver. According to Schryver, an 1832 document on the pure language translating "Son Awmen" as the "Son of God" has absolutely "no resemblance" to an 1835 document on the pure language translating "son ahman" as the "son of God." Further, according to Schryver, an 1832 document on the pure language translating "sons awmen" as children of God" has absolutely no resemblance to an 1835 document translating "sons ahman" as "sons of God."

"No resemblance" at all, according to Schryver.

Graham is attempting to hoodwink readers into believing that Phelps's table was based on the 1832 Joseph Smith document.

I'll let the readers decide who is doing the "hoodwinking." All I did was present a document that clearly served as the basis for Phelps' 1835 letter, and you have declared with bombastic certitude that the two share "no resemblance" whatsoever, simply because Phelps shared the information in table form with his wife. Yes, I'm glad to let readers decide for themselves who is doing the hoodwinking.

He says, "Joseph Smith was the guy behind it all, not W.W. Phelps." But the evidence clearly demonstrates that this is not so.

What evidence? You keep repeating this over and over but you present nothing. I on the other hand, presented numerous questions that challenge and your thesis. Questions you refuse to answer, for obvious reasons. Ultimately, all you are left with are assertions that you are relying on evidence which you never present.

The May 1835 Phelps letter to his wife is the first instance we see of these tables with characters, sounds, and explanations

So? As a language teacher, I can state with absolute certainty that a table is an appropriate tool by which languages and translations are frequently taught. I can show you how this is the preferred method of instruction in a number of grammar books. So it makes perfect sense that words, sounds and translations appear in table form.

Graham's attempt to trick readers into believing otherwise is, quite frankly, deceptive.

Again, all I did was present evidence that you ignored. I'm happy to let readers make their own judgment as to whether or not it weighs on your hypothesis. I don't think you are happy about that, otherwise you wouldn't feel the need to constantly engage in well poisoning by accusing me of deception, trickery, hoodwinking, etc. I suspect that you're just trying to have these threads shut down by intentionally going against the moderators who just reprimanded "Nomad" for doing the same thing. Now that I have been welcomed back at your favorite hiding place, there is nowhere else for you to go. So you have to give the mods every reason to shut down these threads?

Edited November 24, 2011 by Xander

[wenglund]

To show that Will and Kevin aren't completely at odds, here is what Kevin has said about the relationship between the "Sample" and the "Specimen":

All I did was present a document [the "Sample"] that clearly served as the basis for Phelps' 1835 letter [the "Specimen"]

And, here is what Will has said about the same:

In this May 1835 "specimen of the pure language," as with the EA/GAEL, Phelps uses as "explanations" text from Joseph Smith's previously received revelations [the Sample].

Both agree that the "Specimen" was dependent upon a preexisting text, the "Sample."

What they disagree upon is whether that dependency is sufficient, in itself, for determining who was the lead on the "Specimen" project, and by extension, the EA/GAEL project. Kevin evidently believes it is, and Will believes otherwise.

Were I to now take an Ogden Nash poem and dissect it into a number of pieces; and were I to place those dissected pieces into a table under a column titled "explanations", and also assign each piece a character and a sound in their respective columns; would it make sense for someone to suggest that since the "explanation" column of my table was dependent upon Ogden Nash's poem, that he, instead of me, was the lead on this project?

I don't think so, and I believe the same principle applies to the "Specimen" project. The agreed-upon fact that the explanations and the names in the "Specimen" were dependent upon the "Sample" (material produced by Joseph), doesn't mean that Joseph was the lead in that projects.

And, as Will intimated, the same principle applies in terms of the EA/GAEL.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

Edited November 24, 2011 by wenglund

[Cobalt-70]

Graham is attempting to hoodwink readers into believing that Phelps's table was based on the 1832 Joseph Smith document. He says, "Joseph Smith was the guy behind it all, not W.W. Phelps." But the evidence clearly demonstrates that this is not so. The May 1835 Phelps letter to his wife is the first instance we see of these tables with characters, sounds, and explanations. Graham's attempt to trick readers into believing otherwise is, quite frankly, deceptive. It is not a sincere difference of opinion about the matter. It is a deliberate attempt to confuse and mislead readers of this discussion.

It is not the first instance, however of Joseph Smith writing a "dictionary" of ostensibly ancient characters with their translations. He is said to have done this with the golden plates.

There is every reason to think that this dictionary of "Adamic" came from Joseph Smith. In the spring of 1835, Smith had briefly returned to his "Book of Enoch" which he had begun in 1830, including some Enoch material for the D&C and a promise that new Book of Enoch excerpts would be forthcoming. (D&C 107:57). Enoch, of course, spoke Adamic. Smith was thinking a lot about Enoch and, apparently, Adamic at this time. As Chris Smith has pointed out in his CJMS article, during the editing of the D&C, Smith altered several of the older United Firm revelations to make them appear like they were written in the time of Enoch, and to create "Adamic" codenames for various people referenced in the revelations. I haven't studied the issue enough to know if we can say whether these edits were made before or after May 26, but if at least some of this activity was before, there is plenty of reason for Smith to have been working on a rudimentary dictionary of "Adamic" characters and words. On May 16, Phelps had just come to Kirtland from Missouri, and it makes no sense that within the week or so that he was in Kirtland, that Phelps would have usurped Joseph Smith's role as revelator and translator. But since he was new to this effort, it is not surprising that he would send a copy of Smith's nifty table of ancient "Adamic" characters to his wife.

[wenglund]

Kevin,

If you would please take some time out of your lengthy responses to tangential issues, and address my repeated on-topic query, I would appreciate it:

You and I agree that the 1835 Abraham manuscripts represent a translation--i.e. there is a translational relationship between the Egyptian characters and the English text.

Where we disagree is whether that translation takes the form of deciphering or enciphering. I view the 1835 Abraham manuscripts as an extension of the EA/GAEL project, and given the many arguments I have presented against the EA;GAEL being intended and used to decipher the BoA from the papyri (see the other thread on the Joseph Smith Egyptian Papers), the same arguments, for the most part, apply to the 1835 Abr. Mss. And, since I don't' view them as a deciphering--meaning that I don't view the characters in the 1835 Abr. Mss. as the source from whence the BoA was translated/deciphered by the gift and power of God, then to me the BoA was translated from some other portion of the papyrus, and therefore the issue of missing papyri is relevant to my point of view. Agreed?

That you may have a different opinion, is fine for you, but my reasoning isn't based on your opinion, but mine.

Even if one were to believe the 1835 Abr. Mss represent a deciphered translation, one may also conclude that Phelps, Williams, Parrish, and perhaps Joseph, were incorrect in assuming that the revelatory deciphering was derived from the characters represented in the Abr. Mss and the extant portion of the papyri, but rather from some other part of the papyri. This then would make relevant the missing portion of the scrolls. Agreed?

In short, while you may reasonably view things in a way that would render irrelevant the issue of missing portions of the papyri, there are at least two other reasonable ways that people may view things where this issue is relevant. Right?

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[wenglund]

It is not the first instance, however of Joseph Smith writing a "dictionary" of ostensibly ancient characters with their translations. He is said to have done this with the golden plates.

There is every reason to think that this dictionary of "Adamic" came from Joseph Smith. In the spring of 1835, Smith had briefly returned to his "Book of Enoch" which he had begun in 1830, including some Enoch material for the D&C and a promise that new Book of Enoch excerpts would be forthcoming. (D&C 107:57). Enoch, of course, spoke Adamic. Smith was thinking a lot about Enoch and, apparently, Adamic at this time. As Chris Smith has pointed out in his CJMS article, during the editing of the D&C, Smith altered several of the older United Firm revelations to make them appear like they were written in the time of Enoch, and to create "Adamic" codenames for various people referenced in the revelations. I haven't studied the issue enough to know if we can say whether these edits were made before or after May 26, but if at least some of this activity was before, there is plenty of reason for Smith to have been working on a rudimentary dictionary of "Adamic" characters and words. On May 16, Phelps had just come to Kirtland from Missouri, and it makes no sense that within the week or so that he was in Kirtland, that Phelps would have usurped Joseph Smith's role as revelator and translator. But since he was new to this effort, it is not surprising that he would send a copy of Smith's nifty table of ancient "Adamic" characters to his wife.

I think there is an important distinction between Joseph translating some characters from the gold plates and maybe calling it an alphabet, and Joseph conducting a question and answer session where he runs through several Adamic names/titles and indicates who they were in reference to.

There is also an important difference between the latter, and Phelps drawing up a multi-column table where, in separate columns, he (or someone) comes up with characters and sounds that he associates respectively with each of the aforementioned names and explanations--all of which could easily be done in less than an hour, and without needing to be in the role of revelatory and translator.

There isn't all that much difference between the latter and Phelps creating, with the EA/GAEL, a similar table and, among other things, assigning the same character somewhat different sounds and explanations..

Do you see where this may be headed?

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

Edited November 24, 2011 by wenglund

[why me]

Guys can't you play nice? Seriously whats the point if there can't even be a discussion because we have to shut it down? This is the last warning.

Nemesis

I am afraid that there is too much history between the main gladiators on this thread. It is usually a fight to the end with no end but only draws. Not much to do but let the struggle continue until they all tire, rest and then continue again when well rested.

[Xander]

Nor, for that matter, can it be so easily dismissed. The "Specimen" in the Phelps letter is evidence that reasonable and open minds would want to consider.

And they should. No critic is "dismissing" the letter. In fact, who do you think brought it to Will's attention?

I don't agree with Nomad's use of the word "deceptive" (even if accurate). However, I believe you do have a significant problem accurately representing your opponents arguments.

Then you should be able to provide an example. Nomad took a stab at it but I proved it was he who was not entirely familiar with William's original claim. WIlliam can back off his original argument if he wants, but he cannot show that he has been misrepresented.

Even in your brief statement above you falsely characterize what Will has argued

Another bald assertion.

(while he, like me, believes that Phelps may have played a dominant role in the project, he acknowledges the participation and possible collaboration of Oliver and Joseph and others, which is a far cry from trying to "pin it all on Phelps")

Your logic is unsound. This is like saying Joseph Smith wasn't the main guy behind the Book of Mormon translation, because others participated in his efforts to have it translated and published. How does this change the fact that he argued Phelps was the guy taking the lead? The lynchpin to his apologetic is that Phelps was the man with the plan, not Joseph Smith. This is not a misrepresentation of William's argument.

and you way understate the evidence he has presented and may yet present

He hasn't presented any evidence beyond the letter. The bulk of his argument rests on assumptions he takes for granted. Saying we dismiss or understate the evidence is simply not true. We simply understand that there is no reason to make the illicit leaps in logic he needs to make.

Perhaps in your opinion it was nullified. But not in mine. Far from it. To me, at best it suggested a possible source from which Phelps derived only a portion of his Specimen.

Well, at least Will's critics cannot be characterized as anti-Mormons. A good portion of them are in fact LDS believers who see no reason to adopt his assumptions. Not including those using pseudonyms I think you're one of only two or three people who have defended his arguments to any extent. So if you want to boil it down to a contest of opinions, I think William is clearly on the losing side, especially when he cannot even convince all LDS apologists.

While you may not think so, I believe there is good reason to consider whether people like Phelps may have had more advanced academic knowledge and experience with foreign languages and may have been in a better position than Joseph for creating secular documents like lexicons or ciphers or whatever.

You're still missing the point and avoiding the problem. The issue isn't whether Phelps had expertise in "foreign" languages. The issue is not only foreign languages, it is about lost languages. There is no conventional means by which an expert in languages could ever hope to restore lost languages like those used by the Egyptians and the first Adamic society. This requires divine revelation, by necessity. It requires someone who could translate ancient documents without the document in hand. Someone who could restore missing text. Now who do you think that could be? Joseph Smith, obviously.

You keep calling the GAEL a "secular" document for rhetorical purposes, but you're ignoring the fact that the content was based on revelation. Thus, the premise for Will's theory is shattered on that basis alone. You guys haven't even accepted or dealt with the fact that all of this stuff appears in a volume explicitly described by Joseph Smith in his journals. He said he wanted to create an Alphabet and Grammar of the Egyptian language. No mystery here. That was his suggesting. His idea. So when a project turns up with a volume with the same exact title and description, there should be no question whose idea it was.

William turns this on its head, saying the GAEL had nothing whatsoever to do with the Egyptian language. Never mind the fact that it claims to be dealing with precisely that. For William, Egyptian can't really mean Egyptian to these men. He does this without explaining Joseph Smith's statement to the contrary. He accepts this premise despite the evidence, because he needs it to be true in order for his theory to get off the ground. But as is the case with most bad theories, the evidence won't let it fly.

Again, you are incorrect about what evidence has been and will yet be presented in favor of Phelps as the project leader. Besides what was mentioned above, see also: HERE.

I am blocked from viewing that thread. Why not just post the evidence here?

Edited November 24, 2011 by Xander

[Xander]

I am afraid that there is too much history between the main gladiators on this thread. It is usually a fight to the end with no end but only draws. Not much to do but let the struggle continue until they all tire, rest and then continue again when well rested.

It is usually a fight to the end? Please. William has avoided me and my counter-arguments since 2007, all the while claiming no one has challenged his arguments. We haven't had a healthy exchange of ideas since I first introduced him to the KEP back in the summer of 2006. If you have nothing constructive to add to the subject matter, then please, don't bother posting. I happen to know there are more than a few people who are viewing this thread with interest, even if there are others who wish it would just go away.

Edited November 24, 2011 by Xander