The Real Scoop On The Book Of Abraham

[wenglund]

This kinda funny?

This kinda funny? Or this kinda funny?

...or, all of the above? LOL I will let each reader decide that for themselves.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[ALarson]

How Joseph got it is totally irrelevant to me because of that. I'm not sure why we have to spend so much time defending it except the argument is interesting.

I think it's due to the fact that Joseph Smith called it "translating" and he also used the same word to describe how we got the Book of Mormon. In the minds of many members who discover this, it then casts doubt on his ability to translate correctly. If the Book of Abraham isn't a literal translation, then how about the Book of Mormon?

Edited February 22, 2013 by ALarson

[Deborah]

In the minds of many members who discover this, it then casts doubt on his ability to translate correctly.

Only if you accept the fragments we have are what he used to translate and that the critics are correct in their interpretations.

As to the BOM, there are reports he wasn't even looking at the plates the whole time he was "translating." He looked at the seer stone instead.

[wenglund]

If John (Ed?) or anyone else is interested, the beginning of next week we can begin working our way through some of the evidence I am aware of (portions of which I discovered on my own) suggesting that Phelps began work on an alphabet, likely independently and prior to the Egyptian papyrus arriving in Kirtland in July of 1835, which later was transitioned into and titled as "Egyptian" , and because of Phelps' preliminary work and interest, he may have been the primary contributor and lead in producing the Egyptian Counting document, the Egyptian Alphabets, and the Grammar an Alphabet of the Egyptian Language. Some of the evidence may show that at least certain portions of those documents weren't dictations, which means that the writer(s) in those instances were not acting as scribes (amanuensis) and thus Joseph need not have been in charge or even at times involved in those portions of the KEP project.

Interested?

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[ALarson]

Only if you accept the fragments we have are what he used to translate and that the critics are correct in their interpretations.

As to the BOM, there are reports he wasn't even looking at the plates the whole time he was "translating." He looked at the seer stone instead.

Oh, I agree. The plates were buried in the woods for part of the translation process. I was just giving my opinion as to why people are troubled over the whole Book of Abraham / papyri info. I love reading the Book of Abraham and am not too troubled over how we got it.

[DBMormon]

Is "faith crisis" an academic discipline or a profession?

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

Can someone be a expert quilter without having gone to college to learn how to make quilts?

Can someone be an expert on baseball card collecting without a degree or working it as a profession?

[DBMormon]

I like the admission that it's a faith based issue, because that's what it really is, especially for the believers side. But I would argue that on the critics side, i wouldn't think they are choosing disbelief because of "faith." I think they choose disbelief because of probability. When they look at the evidence, even the evidence you provide, they don't see it as a 50/50 choice and you choose based on faith. They see the evidence stack up in the favor of disbelief. And while there is space for belief, the space is of a low enough probability to not grant it as truth. I wouldn't think faith comes into the equation for them, but simply probability assessment.

The questions come down to... do you see the Fascimiles as being slight variations on the funeral documents, or do you see the Fascimiles as being too different to classify them in the same category as funeral document?

You say it's a faith-based issue. Looking at the evidence on a purely intellectual level, do you see the evidence staking up in favor of belief? About 50/50? Or staking up in favor of disbelief? Obvious you have chosen belief on faith, but in trying to be objective about it can you not see why people choose not to believe based on the evidence? And how that can be a valid and honest choice?

Doesn't God himself say that sometimes the odds will be stacked against him with only a sliver of reasonable evidence to believe?

"Trust in the Lord with all thine heart, and lean not unto thine own understanding, in all thy ways acknowledge him and He shall direct thy paths" -Proverbs 3: 5-6"

Edited February 22, 2013 by DBMormon

[wenglund]

Can someone be a expert quilter without having gone to college to learn how to make quilts?

Is quilting an academic discipline?

Can someone be an expert on baseball card collecting without a degree or working it as a profession?

Is baseball collecting an academic discipline?

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[MormonMason]

Are you saying that the thin strip under the figure on the couch in fascimile 1 is "both legs raised" as in neither leg is touching the table, indicating a struggle? That's a very small gap between the leg and the table.

And in looking back a google I saw this image.

In that image both legs are up off the table. Does this not go against your statement "all of them" don't have it this way "except" Fascimile 1?

Sorry I'm re-reading your post, will have more thoughts in a second I'm sure. Just wanted clarity on this point.

OK, I figured out what was causing my Enter key to stop working on this site and no other. I had to set document settings in the browser to "IE9 standards." That is the workaround I will use until the site is fully compatible with IE 10.

In the linked image you posted above, both feet are considered as being on the couch. As you note later, the vignette in the Horos scroll shows the priest standing between the couch and the person on the couch. Therefore, both feet are off the couch in the vignette that became facsimile 1. All other representations like the one you show shows feet and figure on the couch rather than partly on and partly off. Now, imagine an image of a person being forced onto a lion couch. The person will be placed on the back with the legs off the couch.

It is a certainty, however, that the person lying on the couch is neither dead nor being buried, nor being resuscitated. None of the standard poses indicating such are evident when one looks carefully at the vignette. A further clincher is the remaining word in the broken column in the original vignette. It is a two-character abbreviation of a word that indicates a meaning relating to sacrifice and offering. The first character of the word is not entirely clear but could be either an 'r' or an 'm' there. In either case the meaning is the same or similar. Ritner reads 'm' there. I am inclined to agree with him but not with his translation of reconstructed text there. The broken character above the 'm' is almost certainly a 't' character, which could be anything. It could be a marker of the negative, a feminine gender marker (not likely, in my view), or the mark of an infinitive in the previous word, most of which now is missing.

In any case, that shows that the last extant word almost certainly a word of two characters. I we accept Ritner's m3^c (which I am inclined to accept here) there is a word that refers to offerings or of being fit to be offered. Faulkner's Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian contains a word that, abbreviated in the standard way, would be that seen in the vignette. Ritner renders it as "justification (?)" but Egyptian has a phrase that roughly carries that meaning, which is m m3^c ḫrw. His reconstruction would require at least three columns, for which there is not really the room in the vignette. It is likely that there was a maximum of two columns here. Two columns rules out the phallus and the second bird, by the way. Whether one column or two columns, RItner's reconstruction of "justification (?)" is rendered impossible by the 't' in the preceding word in the extant portion of the extant column.

The dimensions of the vignette also rules out the phallus. This is why Lanny D. Bell, a non-Mormon Egyptologist who looked at the evidence of one-hand versus two-hands, rendered the reconstructed vignette this way:

His is the most recent reconstruction of the evidence that also takes into consideration the actual dimensions of the vignette. The other reconstructions don't really take the dimensions of the vignette into consideration.

Edited February 22, 2013 by MormonMason

[Brian 2.0]

Doesn't God himself say that sometimes the odds will be stacked against him with only a sliver of reasonable evidence to believe?

"Trust in the Lord with all thine heart, and lean not unto thine own understanding, in all thy ways acknowledge him and He shall direct thy paths" -Proverbs 3: 5-6"

I agree with you. But there are a lot of people that just don't live life like that. They don't find reason to believe in something that only has a sliver of reasonable evidence to support it. And I don't think any believer should think the non-believer are "being blind" or anything like that in those situations. And it is always refreshing when a believer acknowledges that there may only be a sliver of evidence, but they choose to believe in that sliver because of other experience such as spiritual witnesses. What rubs me the wrong way is when someone talks about the sliver of evidence and tries to make it seem so obvious that that sliver is true. There is nothing wrong with saying, "from an objective intellectual only standpoint this truth claim has a lower probability than other claims, but I believe it still based on my experiences."

[Brian 2.0]

The dimensions of the vignette also rules out the phallus. This is why Lanny D. Bell, a non-Mormon Egyptologist who looked at the evidence of one-hand versus two-hands, rendered the reconstructed vignette this way:

His is the most recent reconstruction of the evidence that also takes into consideration the actual dimensions of the vignette. The other reconstructions don't really take the dimensions of the vignette into consideration.

Thanks for that photo. Has this Lanny Bell published any work on this? Where did you find this reconstruction?

[DBMormon]

Is quilting an academic discipline?

Is baseball collecting an academic discipline?

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

No, but they can they not still be experts with out the formal certified education or it being their profession?

[MormonMason]

Glad to see you back again.

Thank you. Don't know how long it will last, though.

[Calm]

Thanks for that photo. Has this Lanny Bell published any work on this? Where did you find this reconstruction?

Lanny D. Bell, "The Ancient Egyptian 'Books of Breathing,' the Mormon 'Book of Abraham,' and the Development of Egyptology in America," in Stephen E. Thompson and Peter Der Manuelian, eds., Egypt and Beyond: Essays Presented to Leonard H. Lesko upon his Retirement from the Wilbour Chair of Egyptology at Brown University June 2005 (Providence: Brown University, 2008), p. 30.

[Brian 2.0]

http://www.mormondia...entry1209187412

Thanks for the reference.

[wenglund]

No, but they can they not still be experts with out the formal certified education or it being their profession?

Yes. However, isn't determining expertise in such cases subjective because of the lack of formal certifications and professional training, whereas with the formal training and professional experience it is not, or at least it is far less subjective?

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[Brian 2.0]

Yes. However, isn't determining expertise in such cases subjective because of the lack of formal certifications and professional training, whereas with the formal training and professional experience it is not, or at least it is far less subjective?

In my reading of books that deal with a lot of church issues I've read a lot from degree-holding experts and a lot from non-degree holding writers who do it almost as a hobby (i.e. it's not their profession to deal in those matters). My general rule of thumb is that when I read the "hobby writers" books I like to look at the evidences brought forth, the sources, etc, but I don't put much stock in the conclusions the "hobby writer" has come to. I will read them, but I'm more interested in just the evidences. With a professional degree-holding writer, I will put a little more stock in their conclusions, simply because I feel they are more "expert" at determining those conclusions based on their academic experience in them. I still like to look at the evidences alone and come to my own conclusions, but I definitely give more weight to the degree holding expert's conclusions than I do the hobby expert's conclusions.

[MormonMason]

...

I've always had a difficult time with the both hands up because the original papyri is damaged in that location. So reconstructing it with both hands up is by no means a forgone conclusion as the right way to construct it. In fact, to your point that Fascimile 1 is the only one that has both hands up makes me even more skeptical that both hands up is the correct way to reconstruct it. All reconstructions, including both hands up, are simply conjecture and I would tend to support a reconstruction that fits with other similar drawings, but then still be skeptical with it.

When I first considered this issue decades ago, I myself thought toward the one-hand reconstruction--until I actually looked at a high resolution photo with a microscope and compared that with other papyri. The strokes are finger strokes and the bottom stroke on the upper hand is a thumb stroke. A close look at the traces around the area where the phallus is supposed to have been by those so reconstructing it have zero trace of a diagonal line that would have been there on the edge of the section where the second arm was postulated by Richardson and those who follow his outdated reconstruction. There was nothing there, indicating that there was no arm there. Since there is no arm at the side the second hand had to be elsewhere. The only other place is above the face, which is consistent with the finger strokes and thumb stroke. I also looked at dimensions and found that the reconstruction is skewed from the original dimensions. If there was a phallus there, the 'Anubis' figure would have been touching it. That is contrary to everything I know about the legends of Ancient Egypt. I found it interesting that a non-Mormon Egyptologist would agree with my assessment on the matter of hands. You really ought to read his entire article on the subject. He makes good case for why John Gee and others were correct on the hands issue and that Joseph Smith correctly restored a second hand rather than a bird.

...

The papryi is so damaged at this portion that I feel there is more than enough room to reconstruct a version holding a phallus. But again, I don't give a ton of thought to reconstructions as they are simply that.

Not if you take into account all of the evidence for this scrap of papyrus. It is damaged but there is enough to rule out a hand grasping a phallus. Well, there is that and the dimensions of the papyrus vignette itself. There would have been traces of an arm line there if there were one there. Enough trace remains to evidence that. The context of the entire vignette also supports that view, which is why Bell has come to the conclusion that there were two hands up. Bell's interpretation of this led him to suggest that it had to be that the figure on the couch was reaching out to embrace what he regarded as the ba spirit hovering above him.

I think you overstate how a large or small scroll is so essential to the critics arguments. I think the arguments still stand whether or not there was a lot of scroll missing or a little amount of scroll missing. Even if there was just a couple feet of scroll missing you could argue that the Abraham text was on it. The arguments on the text and facsimiles that we do have are what is in consideration. And I don't see how a large scroll dismisses those arguments of the critics.

The larger the remaining missing scroll, the more text will fit. If, there was additional scroll of sufficient length to accommodate the Book of Abraham at the end of the roll, anything that the remaining roll contained may well have contain interpretive material that explained what was on the vignettes and how it was adapted for the use of the scribe of the scroll. If there was only two feet, even what we have of the Book of Abraham would not have fit. This is why some critics are working so hard to show that there would not have been enough scroll at the end to accommodate the Book of Abraham.

I agree with you to a point about Facsimiles 2 and 3, however. Many would think that evidence is particularly damning. I began to think so until I realized that Ptolemaic and Roman Papyri had a tendency to mislabel gods and mortals, mix up genders, and a number of other anomalies sush as labeling mortals as gods and goddesses, and gods as mortals, as well as confusing genders from time to time. I have actually seen some of this in various papyri as well as read material that discusses this sort of thing in-depth. Here is an example:

This photo is of a section of the complex vignette in the Kerasher Papyrus, BM EA 9995.3. You will see two priests performing the purification ritual that was part and parcel of the funerary rites. You can see the priest pouring water over the mummy as the other priest in Anubis mask props up the mummy before the deceased's mourning wife. The thing is, this Anubis masked person was a mortal priest. Yet, the scribe responsible for the vignette mistakenly labeled him "Anubis." As I said above, this sort of thing occurs fairly frequently in Ptolemaic and Roman Age papyri.

I have also seen various mortal entities dressed like Osiris and labeled as gods and goddesses in various Egyptian artwork. I have even seen an inscription that refers to a Pharoah as Isis. That one actually shocked me a bit when I saw it. It may have been a mistake of the artisan but right next to and above and in front of the hand of Isis in the inscription is a label mentioning the individual.

Moral of the story: Not everything or everyone labeled a god or goddess actually is in many of these papyri from the period. One could say that Facsimile 3 may be one of such papyri that mislabel mortals as gods and goddesses. Can we prove it? Not without the rest of the papyrus roll we can't.

You might find it of interest, however, to note that people have to reconstruct the text above the figure Egyptologists identify as Isis. Look carefully at it. It does not actually say "Isis." It has been reconstructed to say that by those who translate it so. And so it goes...

Facsimile 2, plain and simple, is an anomaly. Why did no one realize that it was not part of the Horos scroll? I can find no comments that the hypocephalus was not part of the scroll from any contemporary evidence. That seems odd to me. Everyone seems to have accepted that it came from the same record. The interesting thing here is that Joseph Smith does not actually translate anything in Facsimile 2 even though the wording implies translation. It is more a collection of explanations of the meaning and what the figures are "made to represent." As I have looked over these the underlying meanings are not all that far off. Some may disagree, of course, but over time I have been impressed by this as I have learned more of the underlying meanings of various components of Facsimile 2. Joseph Smith seems to prefer the underlying meanings rather than identifying the various characters. Much of the broken portions of the Facsimile are left untranslated/unexplained. But underlying elements seem to match up even if obliquely with the underlying meanings in one way or another.

I like the admission that it's a faith based issue, because that's what it really is, especially for the believers side. But I would argue that on the critics side, I wouldn't think they are choosing disbelief because of "faith." I think they choose disbelief because of probability. When they look at the evidence, even the evidence you provide, they don't see it as a 50/50 choice and you choose based on faith. They see the evidence stack up in the favor of disbelief. And while there is space for belief, the space is of a low enough probability to not grant it as truth. I wouldn't think faith comes into the equation for them, but simply probability assessment.

It is a faith-based issue--on both sides of the fence. Non-believers want to deny that such is the case but it is true. They have to have a certain level of faith in the reconstructions and interpretations of the evidence of the critics to come to the conclusions that they do. If you think it through enough, I think you will come to that conclusion or at least acknowledge that it can be taken that way.

A lot of what they do is string pieces together, interpret all as negative, and then present that as though it were inescapable and irrefutable. The only way that they could make an absolutely irrefutable case against would be if the entire papyrus roll were extant. It is not. So, neither side can make an irrefutable case. Hence, both sides require a degree of faith in their own position and the strength of their evidence.

The questions come down to... do you see the Fascimiles as being slight variations on the funeral documents, or do you see the Fascimiles as being too different to classify them in the same category as funeral document?

For Facsimile 1, I see too many differences. In addition, the text surrounding the vignette in the original has nothing to do with the vignette itself and it is separated from the Book of Breathing text by a warning/set of instructions that is supposed to be at or near the end of copies of the Book of Breathing. It is neither an adoration, nor a burial, nor an embalmment, nor a resuscitation scene. So, what is it, if not funerary? That is the question of the day. Most Books of Breathing with vignettes have an adoration scene as the first vignette. Alternatively, there is a presentation scene. Not so with the Horos Book of Breathing.

For Facsimile 2, I would be hard pressed to say that it is not funerary. Facsimile 3 is a presentation scene and not a judgment scene like most critics claim. If I were to go by text alone I would have to go with funerary. But, and this is a point to be considered, if there was more scroll and this scroll had text from the Book of Abraham altering the meanings of the figures in that vignette to adapt it to its purposes in the Book of Abraham, it could either way. Unfortunately, we do not have even the remainder of the Horos Book of Breathing. Some evidence also suggests another vignette.

You say it's a faith-based issue. Looking at the evidence on a purely intellectual level, do you see the evidence staking up in favor of belief? About 50/50? Or staking up in favor of disbelief? Obvious you have chosen belief on faith, but in trying to be objective about it can you not see why people choose not to believe based on the evidence? And how that can be a valid and honest choice?

50/50? I don't know. I only know that a lot of assumptions have been made and that assumptions are not really evidence. We also have a problem that I have yet to see them actually address adequately. You see, the Book of Abraham makes it abundantly clear that it maintains that people of the region near where Abraham lived actually worshipped their gods in the guise of the gods and goddesses of Egypt. They dressed their gods up to look like Egyptian ones, if the Book of Abraham is to be taken at face value.

So far as I have been able to learn, no one could have known in Joseph Smith's day that such actually was the case in ancient history. It turns out that peoples of northern Mesopotamia actually dressed their goddesses and so forth as Egyptian gods and goddesses. And, they actually did so during the time of Abraham. And, that was also the practice at various times in Egypt as well. For example, I have seen an inscription from Egypt naming a figure dressed like Osiris as ^cAnath. A Middle Eastern goddess is dressed like Hathor in ancient Byblos, and worshiped as Hathor by visiting Egyptians and others. It was the same with Isis in that region, and this was also during the time of Abraham and before.

Joseph Smith was right on the money here. That is why recent publications have tried to redirect our attention from a northern Mesopotamian setting for the Book of Abraham in favor of a southern Mesopotamian setting. The reason for that is because there is no real evidence of Egyptian influence in southern Mesopotamia. But, the Bible itself states that the region of northern Mesopotamia is the land of Abraham's nativity. The Biblical narrative of Abraham's journey makes more sense from such a perspective as well. That, in my opinion, is pretty compelling evidence for the Book of Abraham.

I can see why people won't believe based upon what they see or think they see. But, I have found over the decades I have been studying this issue that even the critics make a great many assumptions and have to reconstruct and fill in facts to make their cases. Given that there are elements of the issue that lend weight to the evidence for the Book of Abraham, leaves it open for debate. The only way to end the debate on the missing scroll business is if we had the entire scroll. We don't. Hence, we have to have faith that the entire scroll is funerary and nothing but, if we were to take that position. There is evidence that does not grant that. Hence, it necessitates also faith in that position as well. But, missing scroll answers a great many of the claims of the critics regarding the Kirtland Egyptian Papers. It does so because it explains why characters from a Book of Breathing would show up in the Kirtland Egyptian Papers. If the scroll containing the Book of Abraham as the second text in a longer, composite scroll were one scroll, it would account for that and makes the aborted attempts to line up Egyptian text with English paragraphs a moot argument.

Edited February 22, 2013 by MormonMason

[rodheadlee]

I agree with you. But there are a lot of people that just don't live life like that. They don't find reason to believe in something that only has a sliver of reasonable evidence to support it. And I don't think any believer should think the non-believer are "being blind" or anything like that in those situations. And it is always refreshing when a believer acknowledges that there may only be a sliver of evidence, but they choose to believe in that sliver because of other experience such as spiritual witnesses. What rubs me the wrong way is when someone talks about the sliver of evidence and tries to make it seem so obvious that that sliver is true. There is nothing wrong with saying, "from an objective intellectual only standpoint this truth claim has a lower probability than other claims, but I believe it still based on my experiences."

Nobody is calling you blind. What they're saying is not all of the evidence is in. Some of the evidence is over my head, I have to go by faith.

[MormonMason]

Thanks for that photo. Has this Lanny Bell published any work on this? Where did you find this reconstruction?

Looks like I was beaten to providing the reference. I suggest reading Lanny Bell's reasons for reconstructing as he did. He also states his reasons for rejecting the phallus and only one hand to the face as well as for there not being an Isis kestrel above the figure on the couch. It makes for interesting reading even though it is not a ringing declaration of the truthfulness of the Book of Abraham. Of course, that was not the intent of the article.

[wenglund]

In my reading of books that deal with a lot of church issues I've read a lot from degree-holding experts and a lot from non-degree holding writers who do it almost as a hobby (i.e. it's not their profession to deal in those matters). My general rule of thumb is that when I read the "hobby writers" books I like to look at the evidences brought forth, the sources, etc, but I don't put much stock in the conclusions the "hobby writer" has come to. I will read them, but I'm more interested in just the evidences. With a professional degree-holding writer, I will put a little more stock in their conclusions, simply because I feel they are more "expert" at determining those conclusions based on their academic experience in them. I still like to look at the evidences alone and come to my own conclusions, but I definitely give more weight to the degree holding expert's conclusions than I do the hobby expert's conclusions.

In academic fields (or even quasi-academic fields), that seems reasonable, and I follow that practice as a general rule. It is just that I have also found there are times when things coming out of the mouth of babes surmount in profundity the words of leading experts, and so I am not entirely closed to the former over-ruling the latter.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[William Schryver]

There has been much indication, in many posts, by many different people, in several recent threads discussing the origins of the Book of Abraham, that substantial confusion persists concerning the initial findings of my text-critical analysis of the Egyptian Alphabet and the Grammar and Alphabet of the Egyptian Language ("EA/GAEL") manuscripts contained in the larger collection of documents known as the Kirtland Egyptian Papers ("KEP"). I therefore restate my primary thesis below.

In addition, I have prepared an excerpt (about 14 minutes in length) from my presentation that encompasses both the statement of and the evidence supporting the primary thesis of my analysis of the relationship between the EA/GAEL and the text of the Prophet Joseph Smith's revealed translation of the Book of Abraham.

Dependency of the Alphabet and Grammar on a Pre-existing Text of the Book of Abraham (Video Extract – 14 min.)

Dependency of the Alphabet and Grammar on a Pre-existing Text of the Book of Abraham (Text Only – 9 pages)

Here is my primary thesis as articulated in my 2010 presentation:

The explanations contained in the Alphabet documents are dependent on a pre-existing text of the first three chapters of the Book of Abraham.

The greatly expanded character explanations contained in the Grammar documents are manifestly dependent not only on the first three chapters of the Book of Abraham, but also on the remainder of the revealed Book of Abraham, as well as the explanations to Facsimile #2.

This thesis expresses what I would like to term the “essential elements of understanding” in respect to the Kirtland Egyptian Papers.

The final paragraph and summation of my findings:

Recognizing the dependent relationship of the Alphabet and Grammar materials to the previously received text of the Book of Abraham is the primary key to understanding the meaning and purpose of the Kirtland Egyptian Papers.

And, for those who may have missed the links provided previously, my 2010 FAIR Conference presentation can be viewed in its entirety here:

The Kirtland Egyptian Papers – Part 1

The Kirtland Egyptian Papers – Part 2

Edited February 23, 2013 by William Schryver

[MormonMason]

I am in agreement with you regarding the English translation coming first. At least two differing approaches to matching up characters with translated text were made at first. That the project was abandoned early on is shown by the fact that none of these manuscripts with Egyptian characters are complete. Two of them omit the first four verses. All of the extant manuscripts appear to be copies of another manuscript or manuscripts no longer extant.

On Facsimile 2, there is a matter that I forgot to mention above, dealing with the four sons of Horus. They are said to represent the four corners of the earth, which turns out is correct. Of course, many critics now claim that it is self explanatory and that it lends itself well to such a biblical idea and that it was easy for Joseph Smith to guess. The curiosity, however, was in a legend I once read in an old Egyptian text. I no longer recall the title of the work because it was some years ago. But, in that legend, Re^c became ill and was growing cold in his old age. Hathor in the form of a cow jumped up into the sky with a spark to give life anew to Re^c.

The idea that the sun can receive power from something or someone else is a very Egyptian idea. It is interesting that Joseph Smith would see such an idea in the Hathor cow. To me it does not seem so obvious. Another document I once read attempts to take actual Egyptian roots, put them together, and fit them into forms that look an awful lot like the words that appear in conjunction with figure 5 of Facsimile 2. And, this was done with legitimate Egyptian words and phrases. I wish I could recall the title of that document. I am away from my books for the foreseeable future so cannot hunt that down. Perhaps someone else will recall reading something like that. I find it interesting that one could even do something like that with what some would refer to as made-up-gobbledygook.

[mormonskeptic]

Dear Mr. Schryver,

I have decided to try to send an olive branch to you and to the rest of you by way of this message, as well as to try to explain myself better than in the past. Let's see if somehow we can get some common ground. What you want to emphasize is that the book of Abraham was a revelation ahead of time, regardless of what the KEP is, and that it stands on its own, and is not dependent on the KEP. I get that. Secondarily, however, you say that someone assigned meanings to the KEP symbols as part of a larger cipher system. I don't see how you think that I have misunderstood you. I do not believe I have, and your charges over and over again over the last few years that somehow I have misunderstood you, and your referring me to your presentations over and over again is not going to prove that I have misunderstood you.

Now, here is why your theory, even if some of it is true, is not at the core of the problem. As I have told you before, it doesn't matter if the Book of Abraham was a separate revelation ahead of time and that the KEP is dependent on it. The proposal that an Abrahamic mnemonic exists in the Sensen Papyrus text by way of Semitic adaptation is a separate issue altogether from the idea of dependence of the Book of Abraham on that mnemonic. The argument of dependence of the Book of Abraham on something in the KEP is irrelevant to my proposal. I don't care if it is dependent or not. The KEP is a translation of a mnemonic that had some things in it to do with Abraham's story. It is not the text of Book of Abraham, and is not dependent on the Book of Abraham text either, as far as I'm concerned either. Whether it was used as a jumping off point for a revelation on the Book of Abraham is up in the air. It is an Abrahamic explanation of a Semitic atapted mnemonic of a papyrus that was not used originally, just the same as the facsimile explanation is an explanation of a semitic Adaptation of Egyptian material in a facsimile from a funerary papyrus originally not used that way. This is how I see it. And so, your theory of dependence is fine. I don't care. I don't care when the revelation of the book of Abraham appeared or whether it is dependent or not. My proposal identifies what the EGYPTIAN parts of the KEP are and what they have to do with Abraham. Whatever else the KEP is that has to do with Indo-Arabic numerals and masonic ciphers is separate from the Egyptian part of the KEP that was based on Sensen characters.

I do not see any reason to have a person from the modern era assigning arbitrary meanings and sounds to characters when those characters can be shown to translate the way the KEP says they do. I have not misunderstood your point, Mr. Schryver. Once again, you have a proposed that a person from the modern era assigned arbitrary meanings and sounds to characters. I was present when you presented in 2010.. I had a camcorder there with me. I am not mistaken on this, and have not misunderstood you. Sorry, but referring me to your presentation again to try to silence me and trying to say that I have misunderstood you again will not make it so.

Ed Goble

[DBMormon]

Yes. However, isn't determining expertise in such cases subjective because of the lack of formal certifications and professional training, whereas with the formal training and professional experience it is not, or at least it is far less subjective?

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

agreed, but those that are certified do not have a monopoly on it.