The Book Of Abraham

[Xander]

What is equally (or more) important is that believers don't believe JUST because of the Spirit

While there are some who claim their belief is based on something more, something like worldly evidences, the simple fact of the matter is that the Church teaches that all is needed is a spiritual witness. Worldly evidence - or worldly anything for that matter - is consistently referred to in the negative in LDS literature. It is always viewed as something with the potential to cause more harm than good. It is what we were taught at the MTC and it is what hundreds of thousands of missionaries have taught to millions of prospective converts.

The missionary method is very simplistic and sanctioned by the Church. Pray with us really quickly about what we just read from the Book of Mormon, and then tell us how you "feel." If they tell you they have positive feelings, then you are to lead them along by asking them specifics likes, "do you feel calm, patience, long suffering, etc?" If they say yes, then quickly cite Galatians 5:22 and James 1:5 and then tell them that their feeling is God's way of verifying the truthfulness of whatever it is they were reading or praying about. Then, when you're finished with the second discussion, try to commit them to baptism.

So at what point did all this extra worldly evidence come into play before someone is asked to commit to baptism? The answer is simple; it doesn't.

Missionaries can walk into your house and leave within an hour with perfect confidence that you have all the "evidence" you need to make such a life-changing decision/commitment. Evidence based on nothing more than the feelings derived from a tear-jerking Church video, observing two teenagers bear their testimony and finally, a prayer. This, long before they have had a chance to even learn about the Restoration, Tithing, Law of Chastity, Word of Wisdom, etc. And attempts by investigators to do real "investigation," like checking outside sources, are usually met with discouragement.

[Xander]

I am paying attention and I think it is not good at all. It is manifestly an incoherent pile of tenuous connections and suggestions put forth in an intellectual style similar to what we see done by numerologists and ancient astronaut enthusiasts.

Let us look at just one part:

This is horrible. Never mind the fact that the some variation of idea of a thousand years being like a day to the gods who live forever or for long times is so obvious and irresistible that there is nothing surprising about finding such ideas in every culture in every generation. Something like this must occur to a fair number of people while they are still teenagers. I bet I could find a similar idea of comparing time for god with time for mortals in every religion. The reason isn't fascinating or deep. It is inevitable just given that god live on while whole generations of humans die. It is like the association of righteousness with cleanliness or the association of black with evil.

But the importation of relativity into the discussion really shows misunderstanding. The time dilation effect is one of measurement of time (rather than some rate of flow of time whatever that might mean). It is a symmetric relationship which means that if two observers are employing inertial coordinates connected to their own motion then each with see clocks moving with the other frame as going slower. If this were the source of the thousand day for God thing then what would it mean? The use of inertial spacetime coordinates isn't even mandatory.

Well if from our perspective a God's day were like a thousand years then equally from God's perspective a human day would be like a thousand years to him.

So clearly this notion could not be coordinated with time dilation in special relativity. General relativity isn't going to help either by the way. The appeal to physics in the quote is misguided and clearly meant only to impress the uniformed. The mishmash one get by throwing in Zeus Ouranios and quasars is just embarrassing.

It is a good guess that other topics and references we see in this snow job are just as poorly treated as the part that attempts to recruit physics.

Great post Tarski.

[Xander]

It's a long way short of "beyond all reasonable doubt."

Then perhaps you could provide some "reasonable" doubt to refute my claim?

And the spiteful ideologue who wrote the quote found in my sig is the last person on earth I would rely upon to judge how "reasonable" something is.

I can assure you that I have no intention of convincing you of anything, as that would be an exercise in futility. But thanks again for demonstrating your true purpose on this forum, which is to do nothing more than poison the well. Your frustration comes from the fact that more people and a wider variety of people are convinced by my arguments. It isn't a boast, it is just a simple matter of fact that you need to come to grips with if you ever hope to understand what "reasonable" means. On that blue-moon occasion that you forward a real argument, there is no indication that you have convinced anyone aside from the choir singing behind you. Though on the whole, you're the rhetoric specialist.

Wow. You're so big and tough that you can beat up on old people and sister missionaries. Then you swagger in here bragging about it.

Right Pahoran. As if I have never taken on your best apologists and scholars before in my life, right? The fact is it doesn't matter who tries to debate on this stuff because none of you have the truth on your side. You spend all of your time trying to rationalize and justify your constant dodging of the evidence that we have, while focusing on whatever the apologetic theory of the month happens to be. That, and the constant well poisoning.

And those poor defenseless sister missionaries are official representatives of the Church who came into my home with the intent of showing my wife how I just an ignorant anti-Mormon. The old couple claimed to have read hundreds of anti-Mormons books and thought they knew everything that any critic could throw at them. They knew virtually nothing about this topic and just kept telling me I had to read Nibley, despite the fact that they couldn't tell me about a single apologetic argument Nibley had presented. They just heard he was great, and that he was really smart, so that meant I had to read him. When I started citing some of Nibley's pathetic BoA arguments, they finally admitted they hadn't read his arguments at all.

They clearly didn't know half as much as they thought. Maybe you should complain to your Church for sending out these poor damsels in distress, and ignorant members, to engage in intellectual debate, instead of attacking me for demonstrating their ignorance. Again, all you are good for is rhetoric and recreating arguments. I never once said I "beat up" anyone who comes into my home. I present the evidence at their request and they respond to the evidence like a bunch of deers looking into a spotlight. They clearly thought they were going to show me a thing or two about how ignorant I was, but ultimately they ended up embarrassing themselves. Personally I hate these encounters. I welcome them into my home all the time, but I really hate getting into these kinds of discussions. I want missionaries to complete their missions happy and I want 80 year old Mormons going to their graves with the same conviction they had before they met me.

[Robert F. Smith]

18. Elkenah (var. Elkkener; 1:6-7, 13, 17, 20, Facs. 1:3-5) god of, priest of, and altar of Elkenah. This is clearly the same as Hebrew ’Elqana (1 Sam 1:1), which is the short form of the archaic Hebrew formula ’El ‘Elyon qone šamayim wa’areṣ (Gen 14:19,22, Ex 20:11, 2 Chron 2:11-12, Isa 42:5, Judith 13:18(23-24) "Most High God...The Lord God Creator of Heaven & Earth"; 1QapGen 22:16 "The Most High God, Lord of Heaven and Earth", 3 Maccabees 2:3, 2 Enoch 24 - 30, Mosiah 4:2, 13:19, 15:4, Alma 18:28, 3 Ne 9:15 (∥Ex 20:11, Acts 4:24, Jn 1:3), Acts 14:15, 17:24, Col 1:16, Rev 4:11, 10:6, 1Q22 I (Words of Moses), and which goes back to Canaanite El-kunirša, ’El-qone-’erṣi on Hittite tablet (El-ku-ni-ir-ša pronounced ’Elqonrs "El-Creator-of-the-Earth"¹¹⁸; late Hittite Elkoners = Canaanite qone ’arṣ "[El] Creator of the Earth."¹¹⁹ Applying his "Abraham-David" covenant typology, F. M. Cross, who sees the J-source "as a propaganda work of the [Davidic & Solomonic] empire," reworked from more archaic material,¹²⁰ notes the use of this Late Bronze Age epithet of 'El to legitimize "the national cult of David and Solomon." For it is Canaanite Melchizedek, King of Salem / Jerusalem, who blesses Abram in the name of "El Creator of the Earth."¹²¹ Timely for Lehi and the Book of Mormon is the ca. 700 B.C. ostracon found in Jerusalem with ['l] qn 'rṣ "[El] Creator of the Earth."¹²²

¹¹⁸ W.F. Albright, Yahweh and the Gods of Canaan (London, 1968), 46,107; R.J. Clifford, CBQ, 33:222.

¹¹⁹ A. Goetze in Pritchard, ed., ANET, 3rd ed., 519.

¹²⁰ Cross, From Epic to Canon, 40.

¹²¹ Cross, 41.

¹²² Cross, From Epic to Canon, 87 n. 8, citing N. Avigad, IEJ, 22 (1972), 195 pl. 42B; Patrick Miller, “El, The Creator of the Earth,” BASOR, 239 (Summer 1980), 43-46, noting the archaic, set form of the expression in Gen 14:19; cf. Aramaic and Neo-Punic ʾl qnʾrṣ.

[Robert F. Smith]

19. Pharaoh (BofA 1:6, 8, 13, 17, 20, fac 1:4, 7, 3:4), variously 1:6,8 "Pharaoh, the king of Egypt"; 1:13,17 "Pharaoh, king of Egypt"; 1:20, "Pharaoh¹²⁴ signifies king by royal blood"; fac 3:4 "Pharaoh, King of Egypt." Stephen E. Thompson finds such usage "anachronistic," both because it is used as a proper name, and because it "is not attested as a title for the ruler of Egypt until 1504 B.C.," even though it "was probably used as such earlier in the Eighteenth Dynasty."¹²³ The late Alan Gardiner ought thus to have been more careful when giving title to his “anachronistic” Egypt of the Pharaohs!! In the real world, the BofA is right on point, as we see in the following examples: the Aramaic letter from King ʼAdon of ʻEqron (found at Saqqarah, Egypt), ca. 604 B.C., "to the Lord of Kings, the Pharaoh" (the address on the outside is in Demotic Egyptian); it appears in Assyrian cuneiform accounts as Pir’u, the king of Muṣru/Muṣri "Pharaoh, the King of Egypt" (Sargon II of Assyria, in the reign of King Hezekiah of Judah; cf. Isaiah 19:23)¹²⁵; and in Josephus, Antiquities, VIII,6,2; Origen (245 A.D), "King Pharaoh." As noted by the late Jaroslav Černý, the term “Pharaoh” appears without the name of the king in early biblical usage, and only later (in historical accounts from 950 B.C.) does it appear combined with the actual name of individual kings of Egypt, such as Shishak I.¹²⁶ The BofA follows the same early biblical pattern without the name of an actual king of Egypt, as we should expect if it were authentic.

The term is actually derived from Egyptian Pr-‘З "Pharaoh; Great-House, Dynasty" (cf. Hebrew pera‘ "leader, commander"; Arabic fari‘un "prince, head of family").

¹²³Dialogue, 28/1:154-155.

¹²⁴ B. Porten in Biblical Archeologist, 44 (Winter 1981), 36-52.

¹²⁵ Pritchard, ANET, 286a; Kitchen, JANES, 5:227; AOOT, 82-84.

¹²⁶ Černý, “Language and Writing,” in J. R. Harris, ed., The Legacy of Egypt, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1971), 200, citing the names of Pharaohs Shishak, Hophra, and Necho.

Edited January 28, 2012 by Robert F. Smith

[Robert F. Smith]

20. Were lion couch scenes such as we find in BofA fac 1 used by Semites for their own purposes? Yes, of course, and we have an example of a lion couch scene carved on a funerary stela from the first half of the 5th century B.C., but with an Aramaic dedication just above the two offering registers and just below the lion Couch: “Ankhohapi son of Takhabes, excellent (one) of Osiris the god.”¹²⁷

Were scenes such as we find in fac 3 used with explicitly Semitic content and even with a female sitting on the throne of Osiris in male regalia? Yes, as we have demonstrated before on this board: A restored 19th Dynasty relief (stela) in which the nude goddess Qudshu-Asherah-Isis stands on a lion en face between Ptah-Min-El and Reshef-Nergal-Melcarth, just above a register (reminiscent of LDS BofA fac 3) in which her sister ‘Anath-Nephthys sits on a throne with the crown of Osiris receiving her worshipers and wielding weapons of war.¹²⁸

¹²⁷ B. Porten & A. Yardeni, Textbook of Aramaic Documents from Ancient Egypt, IV: Ostraca & Assorted Inscriptions (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1999), 257 – the word for “god” here being ʼelohaʼ.

¹²⁸ British Museum Relief 646, in E. Budge, Gods of the Egyptians, II:276; J. Pritchard, ed., Ancient Near East in Pictures, 473; J. Gray, The Canaanites, plate 20; discussed by W. F. Albright, Yahweh and the Gods of Canaan, 121-122,145-146; D. B. Redford in D. Silverman, ed., Ancient Egypt (London: Duncan Baird, 1997), 52.

Edited January 28, 2012 by Robert F. Smith

[Robert F. Smith]

So the BoM allowed Joseph to set himself up as a Prophet, Seer, and Revelator by producing a work of scripture, however even though it wasn't a literal translation, it served as the vehicle for Joseph Smith to build out a worldview he had pieced together from other thoughts and works current at the time, and including theological controversies and resolutions that seemed important to him at the time, etc. He was producing "truth" for his followers, as he speculated it to be, and delivered it via a prophetic work product which established his own bona fides and promoted him as someone others should look to. Again, like the BoA, a win-win for Joseph.

21. Scholars have long believed that Genesis 2:11-14 (which does not appear here in the BofA text at 5:10) is a late insertion into the original Garden of Eden narrative (Gen 2:4b - 3:24). Supporting this claim is the analysis by Walsh of the multistructural chiastic biblical Garden of Eden story in seven scenes, centering on the fourth act (Gen 3:6-8 ), as ABCDCBA, which likewise finds Genesis 2:11-14 to be intrusive and not part of the chiasm.¹²⁹ Since Joseph Smith’s Book of Abraham also excludes these verses, that is in itself indicative of the archaic and authentic nature of the BofA text. Naturally later texts will be edited and redacted in such a way as to introduce glosses and other changes, and we see this in the later Book of Moses, as well as in the Massoretic Hebrew and Greek Septuagint texts. An example from the Book of Mormon is the lack of use of the anachronistic biblical term “Tower of Babel.” Instead, one finds merely a reference to the “Great Tower” incident (Ether 1:3; cf. Omni 22, Mosiah 28:17).

This also helps to clarify why it is silly to accuse Joseph Smith of a seeming obsessive-compulsive need to create new scripture (Sethbag, post #13, excerpted imediately above). Even if that were true, why would each new translation/treatment of Creation and the Garden be so different from the previous one? Wouldn’t that risk the clear danger of discontinuity and even of intertextual chaos and the suggestion of fraud which that might carry? However, within the ancient Near East nothing could be more natural than for traditions to be expressed in a variety of ways and texts over time. It would be entirely unnatural for them to agree in hidebound fashion. Especially since these are figurative and symbolic accounts of fundamental, essential truths in a ritualistic setting.¹³⁰

¹²⁹ Walsh, JBL, 96:169-177.

¹³⁰ John Kselman JBL 97:164 n.15; Shea Origins 5:9-38; B. Porten HUCA 38:95; N. Habel Literary Crit., 69-70; S. McEvenue Narrative 49-50,81,114; K. Westerman Genesis Accounts 14ff.; Kempf JTTL 7/4:33-53; D. Freedman, Unity of the Hebrew Bible (Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press, 1991), 93.

Edited January 28, 2012 by Robert F. Smith

[Robert F. Smith]

22. Samuel A. B. Mercer made two mutually contradictory claims about Joseph Smith’s translation of the BofA:

(1) On the one hand, he said that “it is not permissible to say that Joseph may have made mistakes like any other translator.”¹³¹ Yet, why should we not fully expect the same proviso to apply here to the BofA as to the Book of Mormon translation, i.e., the mistakes of men are not to be attributed to God (Title Page of the Book of Mormon, and 3 Nephi 8:2)?! As long as the receptor of theoretically infallible revelation be fallible, the resultant message can hardly be infallible and inerrant. Indeed, there must always be distortions or “mistakes” in human transmission of whatever textus receptus.

(2) On the other hand, as Mercer more cogently put it in nearly the same breath: “We must judge Joseph Smith on the basis of his claims and of his translations and interpretations in the form in which he left them to the world,”¹³² but no riders demanding infallibility can be attached – that is the fallacy known as “the call to perfection.”¹³³ Joseph’s “score” on his overall ability to translate or interpret Egyptian is thus a straightforward statistical matter and must be carefully computed. Mercer’s simple-minded bluntness on this score is admirable:

If these interpretations of figures and translations of texts be shown to be correct, then we can conclude that the Prophet’s translation of the Book of Abraham and the Book of Mormon is reliable. While, on the other hand, if we can show that the Prophet misinterpreted and mistranslated the figures and texts of the inscriptions of which he has given us fac-similes, then we cannot with any reason be expected to trust his translations of the original Egyptian texts of the Book of Abraham and of the Book of Mormon.

134

Limitations in our own knowledge ought, in any case, make us very cautious in too readily finding fault with anyone’s translations, or vice-versa, finding too easy a justification – as religious polemicists and apologists so often do. Mere opinion cannot carry the weight it is frequently assigned. As the late John A. Wilson observed, Egyptologists “can only scrape the surface meaning.”¹³⁵

The mechanics of translation ought to be better and more widely understood by those claiming to do it,¹³⁶ and, as the late Klaus Baer pointed out, ancient Egyptian art (sculpture and drawing) consists of conceptualized symbols and patterns to be closely associated with writing and to be read rather than simply looked at,¹³⁷ i.e., the written label is merely one aspect.¹³⁸ In other words, translation, explanation, and interpretation cannot truly be differentiated. Nor can one pretend to decide whether God or Joseph Smith set limits upon the extent of “translation,” nor for what purpose. One can only justifiably describe the correctness or falsity of given explanations (hopefully with citations).

Xander (post #47) has said that “we know what these Egyptian symbols meant to the Egyptians,” and that “the critical model explains everything perfectly well. All the evidence fits nicely. There is no need to entertain wild hypothetical ‘possibilities’ just because they are technically possible. That isn't how scholarship works. That's strictly apologetics.”

His (Kevin Graham’s), Sethbag’s and Kevin Christensen’s call for good scholarship is entirely appropriate. Would that we saw more of it.

¹³¹ Mercer in Utah Survey, I/1:6.

¹³² Mercer in Utah Survey, I/1:6.

¹³³ Note the comments (attributed to Joseph) of Oct 29, 1842, in HC, V:181.

¹³⁴ Mercer in Utah Survey, I/1:7.

¹³⁵ Wilson, Thousands of Years, 177; on the question of translation in general, see E. A. Nida & C. R. Taber, The Theory and Practice of Translation (Leiden: Brill, 1969).

¹³⁶ Cf. Nibley, Since Cumorah, 1st ed., 163-166.

¹³⁷ Baer, BYU Education Week Lecture, 22 Aug 1974.

¹³⁸ Pace Gee, “A Method for Studying the Facsimiles,” FARMS Review, 19/1 (2007), 347-353.

Edited January 28, 2012 by Robert F. Smith

[Robert F. Smith]

This is an interesting discussion and one I have enjoyed reading, though most of the time it seems like two sides that will never see things the same way, and that's fine...

My question for believers of the BoA...

Is there any conceivable evidence that if produced would prompt you to change your belief that the BoA is a historical document? Most honest believers in the BoA that have looked at the evidence try not to discount it, but provide a alternate way of still believing that doesn't simply throw out the evidence. That "way" of thinking may seemed outlandish to some, but that's not really the point. My question to those believers, is what piece of evidence, if any, would make you cease trying to find a way to reconcile it and drop your belief in the authenticity of the BofA.

I suppose that, in the unlikely event that it could be shown that most of Joseph's correct identifications could be traced to contemporary scholarship -- and it could be reasonably explained how he got hold of it -- that would shake the foundations of any LDS scholar's intellectual belief in the BofA.

I have often heard that all such correlations which show that Joseph got things right are derived from his contemporary environment, but I have never seen a demonstration of that. Of course, one could "explain" it all away as derived from some Jungian archetype in the collective unconscious of the human race -- and that Joseph was simply "tuned in" to that.

Personally, I was a believer in the BoA but as I researched more and more, it just became too much for me and I couldn't seem to find a way to reconcile it all in a reasonable way, but that's just me. BUT... I'm also willing to admit that if something like one of the other pieces of the missing papayri came forth and it was translated by Egyptologists and did indeed contain the story of the BoA as we have it, or even close to, then I would have to reconsider my opinion yet again.

The issue is so very complex, that it is no surprise that many people are confused and even disoriented by the debate. Most people simply ignore the debate, and rightly so, since they don't have time to spend in college classes mastering the skills necessary to tackle the issue in some serious way. Most people have children to raise, a working life, etc., which make it impossible to address the real issues.

I think at lot of the stalemate between "critics" and "apologists" end with "there's nothing I can say or give evidence for that could change his mind." My question is is that true? What can change your mind?

I like debate and discussion and all that, but what is pointless is doing it with someone who does literally say "there is nothing that could ever get me to change my mind." Because then debate and discussion is just a waste of time.

Yes, and it reminds me very much of the debate over climate change. I have dear friends and family members who take a completely opposite position to that of mine, and yet none of us are meteorolgists or climatologists, and can only reflect (perhaps rather badly) what we have been reading in the press or online. In some ways it has become a "political" matter. The times when it has come up on this board, the emotion is palpable and name-calling almost instantaneous. Surely there is a better way to resolve such matters, or to simply leave them to the experts. Debate and discussion can indeed become "a waste of time."

[Robert F. Smith]

Really? Give us some examples of "countless people" in "countless religions" who are using the "methodology" of personal revelation to determine the truth of things, and coming up with "different results" than what personal revelation from God gives to Latter-day Saints.

I could be wrong, or I could have a lack of knowledge concerning "other religions", but I'm not aware of other religions that believe in and recommend the methodology of personal revelation to get a knowledge of truth from God. In fact, the only time I ever hear things said like this is from people who have left Mormonism.

One might consider Pentacostalism (the Holiness Movement) to be an example of the belief that the Holy Spirit can directly testify through you and me, even though mainstream Christianity is very suspicious and mistrustful of such charismatic activity and does everything it can to discourage it.

[Robert F. Smith]

If those things were enough alone then there would be a good number of non-LDS Egyptologists and/or historians that believe in it's authenticity -- which I haven't found to be the case.

It is highly unlikely that non-LDS Egyptologists would even address the issues involved. For them and most of their colleagues, it is an a priori matter and not subject to real inquiry. This has been true for the Book of Mormon as well as for the BofA, although there have been some remarkable exceptions.

The same applies generally to adoption of and belief in the truth claims of Buddhism or Hinduism by Western-oriented rationalists. Study of either requires a major commitment of time and energy, without any assurance that one will find it satisfactory after about 30 years of necessary study and praxis. Yet because these religions have been around for thousands of years and have many adherents, they do get more respect than Mormonism. Even so, I know of a number or intellectuals who have adopted Mormonism, after being introduced to it by Mormon intellectuals.

[Robert F. Smith]

Well, its certainly a guess.

Personally, I think the BOA is describing ancient views of geocentric cosmos, not cosmic reality as conceived by modern astrophysics.

Or one might take a look at http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/publications/books/?bookid=40&chapid=162 , for a still more ancient approach -- beginning before Claudius Ptolemy's 2nd century A.D. flat-earth geocentric theory -- with the view of Aristarchus of Samos (270 B.C.), who assumed that the round earth moved around the sun, and in 240 B.C., Eratosthenes accurately measured the circumference of that round earth.¹

¹ Benjamin W. Bova, Science--Who Nees It? (Phila.: Westminster, 1975), 36-37.

[Robert F. Smith]

In order to compare the clocks they have to be syncronized at the begining and then brought back together and this means that at least one of the clocks has to accelerate (non-straight path in spacetime). One clock has to turn around and come back which involves decelerating down and then speeding up. With God and man, who is doing which?

Really, it is all about comparing the spacetime interval between two events but along different paths in spacetime. What are the two events in the God/man analogy? Also, which one is the longer path (bigger proper time)? God or man? In other words, do we leave God and then meet him again? Who has aged him or us?

If the two paths in spacetime do not start at the same event (nearly) and meet up later then what marks the begining and ending of the paths in question? You see, proper time is analogous to the arclength of a curve in space but applies to histories or worldlines in spacetime. Proper time is a property of a curve segment in spacetime.

God has a worldline and so does a single given man. A finite part of either path has a proper time. For a comparison, what portion of God's worldline should we take and what portion of some man's worldline should we take?

If we just look at the physics of the two clocks then they will be identical in behavior unless the accelerations breaks one or the other of them or otherwise messes one of them up in function.

Note that it is the curvier path that has less proper time! This is due to the reverse triangle inequality for Minkowski geometry.

For both man and God, the proper time between two events in our careers depends on how we got from the first event to the second. If next time we just have God take the path that the man took the last time then the roles are reversed. Anyway, what two events are we talking about?

Is it just that God accelerates (curves around in spacetime) more than men do?

The more he does it, the less ticking his atomic clocks will do and also the less he does himself while we do all sorts of things. That sounds wrong. To get the reverse effect, it would be us that would have to be wildly accelerating all the time.

Either way, it seems bad.

Where is this godly 1000 to 1 thing in all this?

I tried very hard to provide plenty of ammo for those who prefer the metaphorical interpretation, and I even used the word "metaphor." Just trying to be helpful . . .

In his book Science, Religion, and Mormon Cosmology (Univ. of Illinois, 1992), 103, Erich Robert Paul says of Abraham fac 2:1, etc., that "this reference conceivably refers to the axial, orbital, and differential revolutions of stellar objects." [see his pp. 102-103 and nn. 3-7, where he cites the views of several Mormon astronomers] Still and all, it looks very speculative. However, it is not speculative to say that time dilates or moves more slowly for something or somebody moving faster, and experiments with atomic & quantum clocks have proven this to be so. The same applies to such precision clocks placed in a stronger gravitational field -- time moves there more slowly. These are objective facts and do not require deceleration to prove the point. The upshot is that, in an environment of high speed or high gravitation, only one day need go by for God (in the BofA conception), while a thousand years go by for us on Earth.

I do not know whether the BofA is speaking figuratively or scientifically, but both options certainly apply. Do the math and you can figure out for yourself what sort of environment of speed or gravitation would be required for God.

[wenglund]

I think the apologists make the agrument from a secular point because the critics attacked it from a secular point. If no such attacks were made, I don't think apologists would find need to dig up the secular evidences. The harsh critic points out the secular evidence and concludes that it is foolish to belive. The apologist tries to play the secular evidence game, which will probably not provide enough solid conclusions to conclude that it's right, but enough evidence that may leave the door open and that such belief isn't "foolish." Playing the secular evidence game in the BoA has yet to provide enough evidence to get someone to believe in it's authenticty without also having a spiritual witness. But it may provide enough evidence to leave the door open just enough that if someone really wants to and chooses to believe, that they can muster up some evidence to provide as ammo to show from a secular point of view that there is some level of possibility that it could be true. To show that they aren't "foolish."

I agree to a point. The secular attacks, while irrelevant to and miss the point of the scriptures, have in certain cases confused believers and errantly caused them to lose faith. This gives apologists reason, though not the only reason, to engage the secular attacks.

Another reason, besides maybe avoiding looking foolish, is that when thoughtfully and studeously addressing the secular attacks, we believers may often gain greater and edifying insights into the scriptures. This has certainly been the case with me.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[wenglund]

While there are some who claim their belief is based on something more, something like worldly evidences, the simple fact of the matter is that the Church teaches that all is needed is a spiritual witness.

You are conflating what is needed to enter the path of faith with what is needed to continue on the path of faith. Were you to have grapsed this as a member, then perhaps you wouldn't have flunked the test of faith. Sinced you evidently didn't grasp this, and are currently flunking the test, then you are really in no position to lecture about faith to those who continue to pass the test--not that you would care.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[wenglund]

20. Were lion couch scenes such as we find in BofA fac 1 used by Semites for their own purposes? Yes, of course, and we have an example of a lion couch scene carved on a funerary stela from the first half of the 5th century B.C., but with an Aramaic dedication just above the two offering registers and just below the lion Couch: “Ankhohapi son of Takhabes, excellent (one) of Osiris the god.”¹²⁷

Were an Egyptian scribe, living during the time when the Joseph Smith papyri were written, to have wanted to depict, hieroglyphically, the attempted sacrifice of Abraham, do Egyptologists have a good sense for what that may have looked like?

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[why me]

I don't know whether Joseph actually had a real prop for the plates, or just used sleight of hand and misdirection to make people think what Joseph wanted them to think. I really don't know. I do find it likely, however, that Joseph Smith, like many others in his day, believed that the Indians must have been related to the House of Israel in some way, and the Book of Mormon allowed him a vehicle for fleshing out this belief, while also giving himself a work product to claim as his own.

In other words, the Book of Mormon is a fraud in that it isn't literally what it claims to be, ie: a translation in the usual sense of an authentic ancient document, written about people who actually existed. But it also was written to include an imagining of how Joseph thought things might really have gone down. People will say the BoM wasn't "based on" the book View of the Hebrews by Ethan Smith because there are elements in the books that don't match up, but I think that's looking for a bit too much. I think it's entirely possible that Joseph Smith's worldview, where it concerned the Indians, was indeed influenced strongly by books like View of the Hebrews in the sense that it showed some possibilities that in Joseph's mind solved some problems that needed to be solved, and let him extrapolate beyond them to how things might really have happened.

When did Joseph write the book of mormon and how did he do it in secret? Also, if no one saw a manuscript, how did he do it? And why commit such a fraud? What was in it for him? I see no gain. Also, to write such a book and claim it was from god, would have him create such a lie against god, that any simple soul would be trembling in their boots. And I see no mocking of god in JS's life especially at an early age. We also need to remember that he was a very young man when all this was happened and not a seasoned mature individual.

Edited January 30, 2012 by why me

[why me]

My testimony of the BOA isn't based on historical evidence and never has been. It's based on what is in the text. No one is going to be able to prove one way or the other exactly how we got it and everything is speculation based on the very limited physical evidence available. Even if we can't say it's a "historical document", whatever that means, the fact is it has some deep doctrine that is hard to dismiss.

We also need to put it with the entire package: the book of mormon, the JST, and the pearl of great price. When we consider all three and the christology of JS, we see a remarkable achievement that if produced by JS, would make him quite a scholar. And a master fraudster. Plus, when we put into the mix the 11 witnesses plus the whitmer's mother who also saw the plates, and all never denied their experience with the plates, we see a man who was a master magician too. All in all, if not all from god, we are dealing with a super human being who could have made much of his life but chose not to, if he were a fraudster and chose that way of life. Plus, he would be a sociopath since he allowed much suffering of very innocent people who joined his church.

[Robert F. Smith]

Were an Egyptian scribe, living during the time when the Joseph Smith papyri were written, to have wanted to depict, hieroglyphically, the attempted sacrifice of Abraham, do Egyptologists have a good sense for what that may have looked like?

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

Since Abr 1:12-13 describes an altar in the form of a Chaldean bedstead (somewhere in NW Syria), I'm not sure that fac 1:2 provides anything like the sort of altar actually used. That being said, I imagine that an Egyptian scribe might use Egyptian nmt “place of execution, slaughtering block,”¹nmmyt “bed, couch, bier,”² as his template, and it is startling to realize that Leiden Papyrus I 383 & I 384 (3rd cent. A.D. demotic magical papyrus) actually shows a lion-couch scene and mentions Abraham by name. As for the lion-couch as a bed, see the bed of Queen Ḥetep-heres in G. E. Reisner & W. S. Smith, A History of the Giza Necropolis, II (Harvard, 1955), plate 26; or the painting on the right interior of the cedar coffin (A2214) of nomarch Dḥuty-nḫt of Hare Nome (11th Dyn.) in Edward L. B. Terrace, Egyptian Paintings of the Middle Kingdom: The Tomb of Djehuty-Nekht (N.Y., 1968), colorplate XV. H. Nibley examined the scenes in Coffin Text 312 (T1C/ IV, 68-86 ∥Book of the Dead spell 78),³ at the Temple of ‘Opet, Seti I, Philae, etc. (Nibley, Improvement Era, 72 [Aug 1969], 76), and then presented the evidence for such a couch as an altar for human sacrifice (Nibley, Era, 72 [July 1969], 98-99,101-102), and all of that is now available in the Collected Works of Hugh Nibley XIV & XVIII. See also A. E. P. Weigall’s 1907 description of an altar for human sacrifice in Annales du service des antiquités de l’Egypte, VIII:45 (at Edfu).

¹ T. G. Allen, Book of the Dead, SAOC 37 (Oriental Institute, 1974), BD Spell 130 b S 2.

² E. Budge, Hieroglyphic Dictionary, 375.

³ R. Faulkner, Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts, I, states that bЗ there means “form, shape” (A. de Buck, JEA, 35:87ff.), rather than the later “soul” (cf. Gardiner, Egyptian Grammar, 3rd ed., 173); Mercer foolishly thought Fac. 1:1 to be a kЗ, perhaps thinking of Pyramid Text 1609b, “Horus has saved thee (Osiris-king), and thou comest into being from his kЗ” (J. G. Griffiths, Origins of Osiris, 155 n. 15; cf. Erman & Grapow, Wb, III:261, 14).

That human sacrifice was being practiced at that time and area is not in question:

Yoyotte, J., “Héra d’Héliopolis et le sacrifice humain,” Annuaire, Ecole Pratique des Hautes Études, V, section 89 (1980-1981), 29-102.

Green, Alberto R. W., The Role of Human Sacrifice in the Ancient Near East, ASOR Dissertation 1 (Missoula: Scholars Press, 1975).

Smith, W. Robertson, Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia, 2nd ed. (London, 1903), 300-305, citing ZDMG, 39:45, on virgin sacrifice in Arabia and Syria (cf. Nibley, Improvement Era, Feb 1969, 64-67).

de Vaux, Roland, Les Sacrifices de l’Ancien Testament, Le Cahiers de la Revue Biblique 1 (Paris, 1964), 49-81, on human sacrifice in Israel and neighboring areas (Arabia, Phoenicia, and Mesopotamia) = Studies in Old Testament Sacrifice (Cardiff: Univ of Wales Press, 1964).

Albright, W. F., Yahweh and the Gods of Canaan, 132, “human sacrifice lasted much longer among the Canaanites and their cogeners than in either Egypt or Mesopotamia.” cf. Moabite King Meshaʿ, as described on his own stela (830 B.C.), sacrificed thousands of captives (and his own son) to his god Chemosh / Chemish (C. H. Gordon, Orientalia, 37 [1968], 427 §9).

Bremmer, J., ed., The Strange World of Human Sacrifice, Studies in the History and Anthropology of Religion 1 (Peeters, 2007).

[wenglund]

Hi Robert,

That is facinating about the couch and the human sacrifice. However, I am still wondering how Abraham would be depicted. What heirogliphic symbols would the Egyptian scribe likely use to represent Abraham and the priest of Pharoah and Elkenah as well as the angel of the Lords presence, if not also the gods before who the bedstead stood? In other words, I am wondering if the Egyptian scribes back then would have had a specific heiroglyph that would be understood by other scribes and priests to mean Abraham or the angel of the Lords presence, and if not, might that scribe use the glyphs in facsimile #1 to represent those entities? What I am trying to get at is an explanation of why glyphs that were understood to represent other entities (like Hor, or the deceased, or the "ba" of the deceased, or Anubis) were used to represent other entities?

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

Edited January 30, 2012 by wenglund

[Robert F. Smith]

Hi Robert,

That is facinating about the couch and the human sacrifice. However, I am still wondering how Abraham would be depicted. What heirogliphic symbols would the Egyptian scribe likely use to represent Abraham and the priest of Pharoah and Elkenah as well as the angel of the Lords presence, if not also the gods before who the bedstead stood? In other words, I am wondering if the Egyptian scribes back then would have had a specific heiroglyph that would be understood by other scribes and priests to mean Abraham or the angel of the Lords presence, and if not, might that scribe use the glyphs in facsimile #1 to represent those entities? What I am trying to get at is an explanation of why glyphs that were understood to represent other entities (like Hor, or the deceased, or the "ba" of the deceased, or Anubis) were used to represent other entities?

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

Egyptian scribes, who were trained in cuneiform Akkadian, and some of whom actually worked in Mesopotamian royal courts, normally spelled Egyptian and foreign names and titles in standard cuneiform syllabic form, and could also use a systematic Egyptian syllabic orthography. Long lists of such spellings are available and help us realize how Egyptian words were most likely pronounced (like Hebrew, they are written without vowels in regular hieroglyphic, hieratic, and demotic scripts). Whether and to what extent Egyptian scribes had an interest in writing about Abraham, the text we have was written by Abe and his descendants. So the real question is, how much of Egyptian iconography was adopted by them? How did the transmission of that text within the Jewish community in Egypt take place? Moreover, why were the Bronze Plates of Laban etched in Egyptian?

At post #115 on this thread, I pointed out the following:

If all this talk of pagan gods seems somehow out of place, keep in mind that people in the ancient Near East regularly considered the gods of other nations to be different forms of their own gods.²⁸ Throughout the ancient Near East, for example, the winged sun-disk was the standard icon representing the head of pantheon, including El / YHWH, who is depicted in both Bible and Book of Mormon as “the Sun of Righteousness” who “arises with healing in his wings” (Malachi 4:2, 2 Nephi 25:13, 3 Nephi 25:2 – in the latter “Sun” is misspelled in printed editions).²⁹ Such winged disks or scarabs were also the royal symbol of the kingdom of Judah under King Hezekiah.³⁰

²⁸ C. H. Gordon in Encyclopaedia Britannica, 15th ed., Macropaedia, 12:917-920.

²⁹ Y. Yadin in J. A. Sanders, ed., Near Eastern Archaeology in the Twentieth Century (Doubleday, 1970), 202-203.

30 W. F. Albright, Excavation of Tell Beit Mirsim, III: The Iron Age, 31-32, 73-75, plate 29:8, 10.