Kep: Sequence Of Characters

[Xander]

Wade,

It isn't clear to me that Kevin has misinterpreted Gee's argument even on that minor point. The thing you have to understand is that the presentation was accompanied by slides. Each time Gee mentioned a character set from the papyrus, it was juxtaposed with a character set from the Abraham manuscript. So the third character from the manuscript probably was shown juxtaposed to the third Louvre character, though I don't have access to the slides to verify that.

Webbles,

I don't know if Kevin's images are of Gee's actual slides, but Gee's presentation did include an image like this one:

This was contrasted with "the order in which it's been insinuated [by 'the critics' that] the characters were drawn," illustrated by four straight horizontal lines across the first four lines of papyrus characters. The last few paragraphs of the text of Gee's presentation should make it clear enough that his account of the order-of-copying is meant as a refutation of the order proffered by "the critics". As Kevin illustrated in his OP, the attempt was bizarrely, head-explodingly wrongheaded.

Precisely. I saw the power point presentation and wade is trying to show that I misunderstood something based on his reading of a transcript! LOL.

And that slide isn't from the presentation. I made that slide.

[Xander]

Do those images you have come from the powerpoint presentation? And how could I see the powerpoint images. I read the talk and I think there some misunderstanding of what he actually meant (though that doesn't explain everything).

For one, he says "The next phrase that we expect to be found on the papyrus is fortunately found elsewhere on the papyrus in Column II." Is Column II the same thing that you were showing in your last image (the one about character #3)?

Also, it looks like he is using other copies of the "Letter of Fellowship" to identify what actually would fill the lacuna. That could be why he doesn't go in a straight line. It would be nice to find a picture of one of those.

I ordered the presentation from the FAIR website some time ago.

[Xander]

In the statement in question there was no mention of the manuscript character. There was only mention of the JSP XI and the Louve character. The same is true for the statement immediately thereafter. To see it otherwise is, in my estimation, to not fully or correctly grasp Gee's argument.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

Order the presentation and stop making a fool of yourself. The image I provided came straight from the presentation. You simply don't know what you're talking about as usual.

Gee's argument has been fully grasped. His argument insults the intelligence of his audience and is just one of the many examples of John Gee's bad apologetic arguments. I can't believe anyone here is actually trying to justify his argument somehow. At least William had the sense to abandon it.

Edited December 21, 2011 by Xander

[Ares]

Order the presentation and stop making a fool of yourself. The image I provided came straight from the presentation. You simply don't know what you're talking about as usual.

Don't get personal.

[Ares]

From now on any personal remarks - no matter how small or how cleverly embedded in a post - will get you banned from the thread.

Xander, Mola and Loran are already gone from this one for posting personal shots.

[wenglund]

Here, again, is what Gee said:

The third character or rather a group of two characters is not preserved on the papyrus, nor is it found elsewhere on the papyrus. So I show it from the hand copy of the

parallel text found in the Louvre. This was the third person plural pronoun and the verb ‘sta’ ‘to induct’.

According to the bolded portion above, there are two documents discussed in this paragraph: the papyrus in Smith's possession and the papyrus from the Louve. There is no mention of the manuscript. This obviously means that mention of the third character could not be in reference to the manuscript, but rather what was missing from the Smith papyri at the time, though showing on the Louve papyri. So, even if inexplicably there may have been a slide showing the third character on the manuscript, it wouldn't change what was actually said and meant. I am sorry, but Kevin is clearly wrong.

I will explain more of why Kevin is clearly wrong when next I am able to post.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[Minos]

I have Ares permission to keep this thread open. Loran, you are going to be automatically banned from these threads. You do nothing but snipe at posters and are on your way to another board banning.

Guys you are going to have to stop analyzing each other! It is excruciatingly boring to read psychoanalysis of what the other one is thinking and doing and especially repeated accusations that the other guy doesn't understand instead of being told why.

[Chris Smith]

According to the bolded portion above, there are two documents discussed in this paragraph: the papyrus in Smith's possession and the papyrus from the Louve. ... I am sorry, but Kevin is clearly wrong.

In the context of the talk, the juxtaposition of the KEP character with the Louvre character does seem to imply a copying relationship between them, especially in light of the graphic showing the direction of copying as a straight horizontal line across the first row of characters. But no, Gee does not explicitly say as much. *shrug* This is such a trivial point. Let's not lose sight of the forest for the trees.

Edited December 21, 2011 by Chris Smith

[wenglund]

I will explain more of why Kevin is clearly wrong when next I am able to post.

To see what I mean, let's put the quote in context (see the full text for Gee's presentation HERE, as Will posted earlier). This is the first two sentences of the paragraph in which the disputed statement is found:

We start with the first character on the papyrus. This is a rather standard reed leaf. Unfortunately the papyrus degraded a bit since 1835 and only the top part of the character is now visible. But a copy from 1835 shows us that the lower part was still intact in Joseph Smith’s day.

Evidently, there are two documents mentioned here: the JSP XI and an 1835 "copy". Since I don't have graphics to tell me what the 1835 "copy" is, I am left to guess, and I suspect it may be the characters on the Abraham manuscript. If so, then Gee starts of pointing out a relationship between the first character on the papyri and the first character on the Abr. Ms.

However, at this point in his presentation, the reason Gee pointed out the relationship was to evince that the first character on JSP XI was likely extant in Smith's day, though it is not entirely extant today. The reason this is important is because making such a determination factors into correctly analyzing the character selection process, specifically which characters were taken from the then extant papyrus, and which may have been "filled in" and how.

Gee goes on to say:

This is followed by the curly “W”. Since the papyrus is missing this common letter, I have taken another one from elsewhere in the papyrus to show you how the scribe writes this letter. This is an indication of this letter too, was part of the papyrus in Joseph Smith’s day.

Here, again, Gee is attempting to assess whether JSP XI character #2 was extant at the time. Evidently, by comparing the second character in the Abr. Ms. with how the "curly W" was written elsewhere on the papyrus, the two were close enough of a match to conclude that the 2nd character on JSP XI was extant in Joseph's day. Again, at this point in the presentation, Gee is simply determining which characters were extant and which were not.

Now comes the statement in question:

The third character or rather a group of two characters is not preserved on the papyrus, nor is it found elsewhere on the papyrus. So I show it from the hand copy of the parallel text found in the Louvre. This was the third person plural pronoun and the verb ‘sta’ ‘to induct’.

What is implied here is that Gee used the Louve papyrus to determine what characters or characters would likely have been on the JSP XI, and then without explicitly saying as much, he compared the third character from the Abr. Ms. to the third characters on the Louve papyrus, and since there was sufficient difference between the two, he ascertained that the third character on JSP XI was not extant at the time. And, so as to let the audience know what the non-extant characters looked like, and since the non-extant characters couldn't be found elsewhere on the papyri, he presented a slide with the characters from the Louve papyrus.

So, in addition to the context of the statement, and the fairly straightforward wording of the statement, itself, there are several things in what I just said which give clear indication that Gee was speaking about the non-exant JSP XI third character, and not the third character in the Abr. Ms. as Kevin mistakenly supposed. First, the non-extant character in JSP XI (i.e. the third character) actually consisted of two characters, and not just the single third character on the Abr. Ms. The difference in the number of characters tells us that Gee is referring to something other than the single third character on the Abr. Ms. Second, Gee showed the audience the two characters, as taken from the Louve papyri. These two characters look nothing like the single third character on the Abr. Ms. or it's dual counterpart in JSP I, the third column. The picture tells us that Gee was referring to the non-extant, third set of characters in JSP XI and not the single third character in Abr. Ms. or the dul characters in the JSP I, third column.

If this doesn't suffice in setting things straight, then perhaps we can appeal to the translation of column three of JSP I to see if the two characters Kevin pointed to mean "third person plural pronoun and the verb ‘sta’ ‘to induct’." If it doesn't, then that should end this once and for all.

Again, at this point in Gee's presentation, his intent was to determine which JSP XI characters were extant or not. His reasons for doing so will become apparent as I explore his arguments further.

My apologies for potentially boring people into submission with this rather tedious explication, STOP WHILE YOU ARE AHEAD. This---> but certain parties seemed not to have grasped what I said earlier, and so I thought it would help to make it painfully clear. Kevin was clearly wrong. And, because he was wrong at this juncture in Gee's presentation, I believe that set him off on the wrong foot in not correctly grasping the remainder of Gee's presentation, though we shall see. <----- is what we are sick and tired of.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

Edited December 21, 2011 by Minos

[wenglund]

In the context of the talk, the juxtaposition of the KEP character with the Louvre character does seem to imply a copying relationship between them, especially in light of the graphic showing the direction of copying as a straight horizontal line across the first row of characters. But no, Gee does not explicitly say as much. *shrug*

At the point in his presentation in dispute, Gee was looking at the sequence of character presumably originally written on JSP XI to determine which were extant in Phelps' day or not. This was logically laying the foundation for later determining which characters were copied from the JSP XI or not, and from where. Unless one understands this, one may not fully or correctly understand Gee's argument.

This is such a trivial point. Let's not lose sight of the forest for the trees.

I don't think it is that trivial. Metaphorically, it tells us, in a foundational way, what kind of trees we are dealing with so that we can correctly grasp the nature of the forest. And, if one doesn't correctly grasp the nature of the trees, one may confuse a wide-leaf forest for a conifer forest.

Besides, the only reason this so-called trivial point has been pursued to this mind-numbing extent is because certain parties have not only balked at my reasonable noting of a clear error, but have also asserted that I am the one who didn't understand.

Hopefully, it has now been set straight for all of us so we can move on to correctly examining the remainder of Gee's presentation.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

Edited December 21, 2011 by wenglund

[Mike Reed]

So has Xander been allowed back in this thread, or no?

Yes

[wenglund]

To see what I mean, let's put the quote in context (see the full text for Gee's presentation HERE, as Will posted earlier). This is the first two sentences of the paragraph in which the disputed statement is found:

Evidently, there are two documents mentioned here: the JSP XI and an 1835 "copy". Since I don't have graphics to tell me what the 1835 "copy" is, I am left to guess, and I suspect it may be the characters on the Abraham manuscript. If so, then Gee starts of pointing out a relationship between the first character on the papyri and the first character on the Abr. Ms.

However, at this point in his presentation, the reason Gee pointed out the relationship was to evince that the first character on JSP XI was likely extant in Smith's day, though it is not entirely extant today. The reason this is important is because making such a determination factors into correctly analyzing the character selection process, specifically which characters were taken from the then extant papyrus, and which may have been "filled in" and how.

Gee goes on to say:

Here, again, Gee is attempting to assess whether JSP XI character #2 was extant at the time. Evidently, by comparing the second character in the Abr. Ms. with how the "curly W" was written elsewhere on the papyrus, the two were close enough of a match to conclude that the 2nd character on JSP XI was extant in Joseph's day. Again, at this point in the presentation, Gee is simply determining which characters were extant and which were not.

Now comes the statement in question:

What is implied here is that Gee used the Louve papyrus to determine what characters or characters would likely have been on the JSP XI, and then without explicitly saying as much, he compared the third character from the Abr. Ms. to the third characters on the Louve papyrus, and since there was sufficient difference between the two, he ascertained that the third character on JSP XI was not extant at the time. And, so as to let the audience know what the non-extant characters looked like, and since the non-extant characters couldn't be found elsewhere on the papyri, he presented a slide with the characters from the Louve papyrus.

So, in addition to the context of the statement, and the fairly straightforward wording of the statement, itself, there are several things in what I just said which give clear indication that Gee was speaking about the non-exant JSP XI third character, and not the third character in the Abr. Ms. as Kevin mistakenly supposed. First, the non-extant character in JSP XI (i.e. the third character) actually consisted of two characters, and not just the single third character on the Abr. Ms. The difference in the number of characters tells us that Gee is referring to something other than the single third character on the Abr. Ms. Second, Gee showed the audience the two characters, as taken from the Louve papyri. These two characters look nothing like the single third character on the Abr. Ms. or it's dual counterpart in JSP I, the third column. The picture tells us that Gee was referring to the non-extant, third set of characters in JSP XI and not the single third character in Abr. Ms. or the dul characters in the JSP I, third column.

If this doesn't suffice in setting things straight, then perhaps we can appeal to the translation of column three of JSP I to see if the two characters Kevin pointed to mean "third person plural pronoun and the verb ‘sta’ ‘to induct’." If it doesn't, then that should end this once and for all.

Again, at this point in Gee's presentation, his intent was to determine which JSP XI characters were extant or not. His reasons for doing so will become apparent as I explore his arguments further.

My apologies for potentially boring people into submission with this rather tedious explication, STOP WHILE YOU ARE AHEAD. This---> but certain parties seemed not to have grasped what I said earlier, and so I thought it would help to make it painfully clear. Kevin was clearly wrong. And, because he was wrong at this juncture in Gee's presentation, I believe that set him off on the wrong foot in not correctly grasping the remainder of Gee's presentation, though we shall see. <----- is what we are sick and tired of.

I am confused. You AREN'T sick and tired of me painstakingly pointing out someone's interpretive error and why that interpretive error might lead to addition misunderstandings, but you ARE sick and tired of me apologetically and generically explaining that is what I was doing?

Whatever the case, it is evident to me that moderator patience, if not the interest of other board members, has understandably worn thin on this topic, particularly my and other apologist responses to a certain party, and since that certain party has been banned from this thread, I am not sure there is any point in me contributing further to this thread, or even to this topic, at least for awhile. So, I will do most everyone a favor and give it a rest--or at least I will keep my ongoing research in this area to myself, and let the unnamed party say here whatever he may.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

I apologize for the harshness, patience is indeed wearing thin. You just had the bad luck of being the most recent but everyone is telling each other they are wrong, don't comprehend, don't understand, to insult intelligence instead of clarifying the points of dispute. It needs to stop.

Edited December 22, 2011 by Minos

[webbles]

It is still wrongheaded for two reasons.

First, "the critics" have always held that the manuscript characters corresponding to the lacuna in the papyrus are Joseph Smith's "incorrect restorations," as suggested by William S. West's 1837 remark that "Smith is to translate the whole [papyrus] by divine inspiration, and that which is lost, like Nebuchadnezzar's dream, can be interpreted as well as that which is preserved." As Jerald and Sandra Tanner theorize on page 325 of Shadow or Reality?, "The gap in this papyrus existed in Joseph Smith's day and he tried to supply some characters to fill the gap. ... We do not know where Smith derived these characters, but they are not the characters which appeared upon the original papyrus. We must remember that he had manuscripts with hieratic, hieroglyphic and Arabic writing on them. He could have derived the characters from any of these manuscripts, or it is possible that they are the work of his own imagination. At any rate, they certainly were not found in this area of the 'Sensen' papyrus."

Nowhere in his presentation does Gee acknowledge this aspect of "the critics'" theory. Even if Gee's observations were entirely accepted, they would be entirely accounted for by the Tanners' theory. There is therefore zero justification for his assertion that the theory "does not pass the sobriety test; they cannot follow a straight line," or that "there remains a significant gap between the fantasy theorized [by 'the critics'] and the reality of where the characters actually came from." Still more problematic is Gee's claim in a letter, published elsewhere on the Internet, that there "is no pattern to the order in which they [the manuscript characters] are taken from one of the papyri. They seem to be taken at random." One wonders if Gee is even aware that all the supposedly out-of-order characters correspond to the lacuna in the papyrus. I don't see how he could fail to be, yet he nowhere mentions this fact, proffers any explanation for it, or shows any awareness of its significance.

Second, the correlations Gee proposes are simply not plausible. Those characters were not copied from the portions of the papyrus Gee claims they were, as anyone can see from the images provided in Kevin's OP.

I guess the question is how much of the lacuna existed in Joseph Smith's day. Reading Gee's talk, it seems to me that he is proposing that the lacuna didn't exist or was a lot smaller than what we have now. The reason why I think that is because of this quote from his talk:

The next phrase that we expect to be found on the papyrus is fortunately found elsewhere on the papyrus in Column II. The 19th century copy almost looks as though its copied backwards but it's still identifiable. The rest of the phrase “Osiris of Horus” follows, showing a clear parallel for the copy in the 19th century manuscript.

This is in relation to the very first line.

It appears that the characters that were supposedly "restored" to fill in the lacuna (according to the Tanner's theory) are in fact the characters that you would expect to find there. And so if the lacuna of the first line was almost non-existant, how much of the rest of the lacuna existed back then?

[Xander]

Evidently, Kevin mistakenly assumed that Gee was referring to the third character on the Abr. Ms., whereas Gee was actually referring to the third character, or the third set of characters, that were initially written on the papyri (as determined from the Louve papyri), but which were evidently missing in Smith's day as well as today.

Evidently, wade refuses to watch the actual presentation. Anyone who watches it will see I made no mistake at all. John Gee provided a photo image of each character when he made this comment so I "assumed" nothing. The fact that wade is making much ado about nothing is telling.

The whole point of Gee's presentation was to discuss the sequence of characters as they appeared on the Abraham translation manuscripts, and wade is sitting here telling us his point in this instance had nothing to do with any characters found on the Abraham manuscripts, simply because "In the statement in question there was no mention of the manuscript character."

Nor would there need to be since it is obvious to anyone watching the presentation that this is precisely the thing Gee is addressing. Hence, the title of his presentation, "Marginal Characters in the Book of Abraham Manuscripts."

Good grief!

Edited December 22, 2011 by Xander

[Xander]

I am confused. You AREN'T sick and tired of me painstakingly pointing out someone's interpretive error and why that interpretive error might lead to addition misunderstandings, but you ARE sick and tired of me apologetically and generically explaining that is what I was doing?

Wade, all you've done here is derail from the topic, which is John Gee's misleading argument regarding the sequence of characters. This should be straightforward for anyone. Do you want to defend Gee's thesis or not?

So far all you've done is claim I made an "interpretive error" on what Chris rightly called an irrelevant point, and you do so even though you haven't even seen the presentation. In reality, it is I who has had to be patient with your constant accusations that always begin with bravado and bombastic certitude, but once exposed, always end up fluttering into the bin of wishful thinking. You've never "corrected" me on any point regarding these matters, your numerous claims to the contrary notwithstanding. And I'm happy to let your audience make that determination for themselves.

[Xander]

With the exception of a couple humorous asides, I delivered the paper verbatim.

I did not endorse its findings.

I'm glad you no longer endorse his claims, but there was a time when you did. This didn't land in your lap unexpectedly the day of the conference. Some weeks before the presentation you had explained to Chris what Gee was going to argue and you told him that the critics were wrong to believe the "invented" characters were not from the papyri. You told him that Gee was going to show how they were copied from other areas of the papyri. I remember quite vividly Chris and I scouring the papyri trying to figure out what the heck Gee was talking about.

As it turns out, Gee didn't know what the heck he was talking about.

[Xander]

Though John Gee recently argued that the Abraham manuscripts contained Egyptian characters taken at "random", it was Will Schryver who argued something along these lines years ago.

The characters are not always associated with a discrete paragraph. It is especially evident with Williams' Ms. #2. The final two characters at the bottom of the first page are not clearly associated with the text. They appear to have been placed entirely at random in relationship to the text. They are not aligned with a paragraph break, nor the beginning of a sentence, nor even a specific line.

Do you even have access to any of the images? Or are you just going on what you've been told?

I'm sorry, but you don't know what you're talking about. The conditions you describe are simply not present throughout the manuscripts. Your description might be consistent with the handful of images from Ms. #3 that Metcalfe has posted on the internet, but they are not a valid description of Ms. #2, which is also one of the evidences that Ms. #2 is an earlier document than Ms. #3.

So, go convince Metcalfe to let you look at the photos of Ms. #2, or go up to the church archives and ask to view the KEP, and then come back and we can have a nice conversation about this stuff. Until then, you're just blowing smoke.

So is Will properly representing these documents or is he making it up? You be the judge, but keep in mind that if he is wrong, he has no excuse for being wrong since, as he loved to remind everyone: "I do have high-res images of the documents in question. I would love to post extracts from them in order to prove my point, but I don't have license at present to do so."

Will's problem was that we had high quality photos of these documents as well and these images made it perfectly clear that every single thing William said was wrong.

Consider the evidence. This is the page William referenced when he said the characters have absolutely no relationship to the text:

The most instructive aspect of this document is where the third character is inserted mid-sentence because the same phenomenon occurs in the Parrish manuscript at the same exact point.

Of course this only makes sense if these two documents were simultaneously dictated, as the critics have always maintained. But the point here is simply this: The placement of the Egyptian characters was critical to this project and contrary to apologetic claims, proves a direct relationship. In fact, below we can see the characters from the copied Ms2 were written, and then erased, and then written in again at different locations, in order to match up to the corresponding text.

So you be the judge.

In my view, there is every reason to believe these characters correspond to their English translations and there is every reason to believe the characters came first and were written in sequence as taken from the Sensen papyrus. The only mystery here is how William could have possibly misrepresented these documents to such an extent. He was taking full advantage of the fact that no one on the forum at the time was in a position to challenge his claims.

It is worth noting that all of these characters were taken in sequence from the Sensen text, or as the apologists maintain, "the wrong scroll." This begs several questions, not least of which is this. Why would those involved in the project, including Joseph Smith, fail to understand that they were taking characters from the wrong scroll? How is it possible for Will's argument to be demonstrably incorrect on every single point he asserted, especially when he had total access to this document in all it's brilliant color and "Hi-Res" detail?

[Xander]

It appears that the characters that were supposedly "restored" to fill in the lacuna (according to the Tanner's theory) are in fact the characters that you would expect to find there. And so if the lacuna of the first line was almost non-existant, how much of the rest of the lacuna existed back then?

As demonstrated above, Gee simply doesn't know what he's talking about. <---tired insult He has to make some truly bizarre assumptions before his theory could ever get off the ground. We know that these scribes were copying characters with excruciating precision, as they appeared on the papyri. But his examples of characters he needs to be "copies," are not even close. He'd have us believe that they threw their hands up and refused to be precise only with the characters that fall into the lacunae. This simply strains credulity beyond the breaking point.

In summary, both Gee and Schryver have presented baseless arguments that appear to have no justification aside from apologetic necessity. They present their theories with bombastic certitude, gloating <---- tired insult that theirs is "reality" vs. the anti-Mormon "fantasy." But at the end of the day the exact opposite is shown to be true.

Edited December 22, 2011 by Minos

[wenglund]

I apologize for the harshness, patience is indeed wearing thin. You just had the bad luck of being the most recent but everyone is telling each other they are wrong, don't comprehend, don't understand, to insult intelligence instead of clarifying the points of dispute. It needs to stop.

That is understandable. And, without intending to argue with you, it just caught me as a bit odd that you would say this on a thread that is specifically devoted to a certain party telling Gee and Schryver (and now me) what they got wrong and don't understand.

The good news is, with Loran and Will and now me somewhat out of the picture, the din of insults and pointing out opponent errors and claiming the other party doesn't understand, will now be reduced to a single party and his undying, and now unabated and uncritically assessed, if not Quixotic quest against Gee and Schryver. It should prove enlightening.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

Few are going to understand this at the participants' level but even fewer are going to be convinced by mean spirited tirades, cruel jibes, and junior high school bullying. If that is going on, it is always better to let the other guy be the one to attempt to win with these methods. That is what they will be known for instead of their knowledge.

Edited December 22, 2011 by Minos

[Xander]

There is nothing preventing you or Will from stepping up to the plate to make an argument wade. You removed yourself "out of the picture" because you obviously know by now that there is no possible way to defend Gee's thesis. It is why William abandoned it. And now you're not even interested in defending your baseless claim that I was "misunderstanding" what Gee argued. I highly recommend you download the video presentation in order to see how nonsensical and ironic your accusation really is. FAIR offers a streamed version for only $1.95.

At that point, I hope you come back to the thread and tell us if you still think I "misunderstood" what Gee was saying.

And there is a difference between "parties" here. I don't just tell people they misunderstand things, I demonstrate the fact. Case in point, Will's constant claim that I've misrepresented his thesis might have a chance of selling if he'd reconcile the evidence to the contrary; the numerous citations from his presentation that he absolutely refuses to address. You don't want to address them either. But you'll keep telling your audience that I'm not only misrepresenting, but that I'm doing so intentionally.

:::sigh:::: 3 paragraphs bursting with insults

Edited December 22, 2011 by Minos

[Xander]

Clearly wade doesn't want to defend Gee's thesis. But what he does want to do is poison the well by insinuating to his audience that I have completely misunderstood what Gee was trying to say. This is clear from a number of his comments:

Evidently, Kevin mistakenly assumed that Gee was referring to the third character on the Abr. Ms., whereas Gee was actually referring to the third character, or the third set of characters, that were initially written on the papyri (as determined from the Louve papyri), but which were evidently missing in Smith's day as well as today. The importance in noting this, beyond chronicling Kevin's remarkable penchant for misinterpretation, is that it is key to understanding Gee's approach and his argument.

Bringing things back on topic, what do you think about Kevin's first mistake in this thread, which I pointed out

Chris Smith kindly pointed out that wade was working from a transcript that didn't provide the images that flashed on the screen as he was describing the "third" set of characters. But this didn't phase wade, and he still insisted I was "wrong" because "In the statement in question there was no mention of the manuscript character," and that to see otherwise is to not "fully or correctly grasp Gee's argument."

Wade then thinks he can pound home his point be reposting the citation with emphasized words:

According to the bolded portion above, there are two documents discussed in this paragraph: the papyrus in Smith's possession and the papyrus from the Louve. There is no mention of the manuscript. This obviously means that mention of the third character could not be in reference to the manuscript, but rather what was missing from the Smith papyri at the time, though showing on the Louve papyri. So, even if inexplicably there may have been a slide showing the third character on the manuscript, it wouldn't change what was actually said and meant. I am sorry, but Kevin is clearly wrong.

Wade doesn't seem to understand the context of Gee's argument is that the characters on the Book of Abraham manuscripts were taken randomly from the existing papyri. Yes, of course he was comparing one character to another papyrus document from the Louve, but he was doing this just so he could say that it was taken at random. And we know he is wrong n his comparison because 1) the two characters look nothing alike and 2) we already know that this character was developed from characters in the Alphabet. That Gee doesn't understand this is remarkable.

But what is even more remarkable is that wade hasn't even thought this through half way. For instance, if Gee wasn't comparing this Louve character to the third character found in the Book of Abraham manuscripts (as I initially said), then what the heck was he comparing it to?????

Obviously he was comparing it to SOMETHING, right? Wade doesn't say. He just keeps saying I'm wrong.

If this doesn't suffice in setting things straight, then perhaps we can appeal to the translation of column three of JSP I to see if the two characters Kevin pointed to mean "third person plural pronoun and the verb ‘sta’ ‘to induct’." If it doesn't, then that should end this once and for all.

No, this should settle this once and for all.

Here is a screen shot of the FAIR presentation:

Wade says I am wrong to think Gee was saying the one on the left was claimed to be a copy of the one on the right! Oh really? Then why in the beejeezus is Gee presenting it this way in a series of other juxtaposed characters he clearly claimed were directly copied onto the Book of Abraham manuscripts? And what character is he comparing it to if not this one? Even if you're limited to a text version of the presentation you have to know he is comparing it to something.

The character to the left is the one wade insists has nothing whatsoever to do with his Gee's remark:

"The third character or rather a group of two characters is not preserved on the papyrus, nor is it found elsewhere on the papyrus. So I show it from the hand copy of the parallel text found in the Louvre. This was the third person plural pronoun and the verb ‘sta’ ‘to induct’."

Despite the fact that the second it appears on the screen is the precise moment he makes this remark. Of course he wouldn't know this unless he had viewed the presentation. My "remarkable penchant for misinterpretation," indeed!

Edited December 22, 2011 by Xander

[Anijen]

FWIW, this is a fascinating topic. Wade I have been enjoying your posts.

Edited December 22, 2011 by Anijen

[Xander]

Few are going to understand this at the participants' level but even fewer are going to be convinced by mean spirited tirades, cruel jibes, and junior high school bullying. If that is going on, it is always better to let the other guy be the one to attempt to win with these methods. That is what they will be known for instead of their knowledge.

I couldn't agree more. That's why I let the evidence drive my arguments.

When you surround your arguments with insults the insults tend to take over the wheel.

Edited December 22, 2011 by Minos

[Chris Smith]

I guess the question is how much of the lacuna existed in Joseph Smith's day.

Apologists and critics both agree that the first two characters were visible on the papyrus when Joseph Smith had it, but have since flaked away. But Gee's implication that there's a genuine parallel between the manuscript characters and the Louvre characters for the rest of line 1 is not, so far as I'm aware, in agreement with any other Egyptologist who has looked at these documents. Perhaps Kevin could post screenshots of Gee's slides for characters 4-7 so we could judge the similarity for ourselves.

Edited December 22, 2011 by Chris Smith

[Xander]

Apologists and critics both agree that the first two characters were visible on the papyrus when Joseph Smith had it, but have since flaked away. But Gee's implication that there's a genuine parallel between the manuscript characters and the Louvre characters for the rest of line 1 is not, so far as I'm aware, in agreement with any other Egyptologist who has looked at these documents. Perhaps Kevin could post screenshots of Gee's slides for characters 4-7 so we could judge the similarity for ourselves.

I'll post them later when I have more time. But Gee says characters 1-5 were extant when Joseph Smith had the papyrus, stating that only the 6th character cannot be found anywhere else.

The third character was the one I already mentioned, which wade insisted Gee wasn't referring to. The fourth character he compared to some parallel papyrus using a symbol that looks similar only if it were flipped as if looking at it through a mirror. This is as absurd as saying a number three was copied from a capital E. The fifth character looks absolutely nothing like the character Gee says it was copied from and I have no earthly idea what connections he sees.

I'll post them in a second...

Edited December 22, 2011 by Xander