Advancing The Study Of The Kirtland Egyptian Papers (Kep)

[wenglund]

You are saying that:

1. I, Wade Englund, cannot think of a reason why three people would write the same thing at the same time.

2. Therefore, it follows that the three people were not writing based on dictation.

Nope.

I think your conclusion is simply the result of lack of imagination. Here's another possibility: Smith, Cowdery, and Phelps were trying to learn and decode the "Egyptian Alphabet." As part of the process of learning "Egyptian," they believed it was important that each of them physically write and copy down the characters, sounds, and their meanings as revealed to Joseph Smith. That's a very plausible way to learn a new language. Whether dictation was involved, I don't know if anybody can say for sure one way or the other. But the fact that there are three manuscripts does not cut in favor of your "Phelps as prophet" theory.

Wrong. I am not suggesting a "Phelps as prophet" theory. What you mistakenly attribute to me doesn't come within light-years of what I have actually hypothesized. You simply don't understand what I am saying and you appear to be miles from correctly grasping. Please try and catch up. It would help if you read what I have actually said rather than what you conjure up in your overly imaginative mind.

At least you are open to the plausibility that portions of the EA's weren't dictated, which was essentially the gist behind point #2.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[wenglund]

By the way, I don't know if you noticed that the Phelps version of the EA is up on the Joseph Smith Papers website now too, as is the Cowdery version.

I wasn't aware of that. I appreciate the heads-up.

I think your conclusions are really speculative and are completely unwarranted from from the text. The fact that Phelps' version contains an additional column from the other manuscripts does not imply that Phelps' version was done earlier than the others.

It isn't just the addition column, or even that the column has letters in it, or just that the column is titled as "letter", it is also the fact that beside the three letters in Part One and the 13 letters in Part Two of EA WWP, there are no other letters through the remaining parts of EA WWP. This suggests to me that at some point along the production process, it was decided that inclusion of the letters would be discontinued. And, since it is Phelps' document where this decision seems to have been most clearly made (for all intents and purposes letters were not a part of the other sets of EA's), it is reasonable to conclude that Phelps was the one who made the decision.

And, the fact that EA OC had a column similar to the letter column in EA WWP, but with no letters or title or anything at all in it--the "a" and "pp" being the exception that prove the rule, suggests to me that while the column may have innitiall been intended for something, it was never used as intended, similar to what one may find on the second and subsequent pages of EA WWP, In other words, what we find on the first page of EA OC, appears to be a continuation of the decision that was made on page 1 of EA WWP, which logically suggests that portions of EA WWP were produced prior to EA OC, and by extension before EA JS.

In fact, you are incorrect that Cowdery's version does not contain a "letter" column. It does.

Incorrect. It does have a column (I mentioned that EA OC contained four columns, of which that is one), but no letters or title to speak of, and so no letter column.

However, Cowdery's "letter" column and Phelps' "letter" column do not quite match. Cowdery was apparently using his letter column to list a transliterated Latin character or group of characters similar to the "sound" of the character. For the "Ah" character, his letter was "a." For the "Pha-e" character, he first wrote "pp," then he crossed that out and wrote "ph," then he crossed that out and never tried to do "letters" for the rest of his alphabet.

This rings somewhat familiar. Perhaps we have discussed this before. Whatever the case, I can see the "a" and the "pp", but I don't see a "ph", and neither of those letters look crossed out to me, though an attempt may have been made to erase the pp. Whatever the case, there is nothing close to the 16 letters found in the letter column of EA WWP, and so my reasoning stands.

If you have a better explanation that accounts for all the data, I would be pleased to hear it.

Phelps started out using his letter column in much the same way. For the first character, he initially wrote "a" like Cowdery did. But he crossed out the "a" and wrote something that looks like an "x," and there is no way of knowing what he meant by that.

Again, this rings familiar, and it is an interesting observation. It draws a minor connection between the Phelps and Cowdery documents, though differentiated from the Joseph Smith document.

And, while it does give me some initial pause to rethink my hypothesis, there is still all the additional letters in the EA WWP to explain. As the discussion continues, I will show how my hypothesis explains the data, and may even account for the "a" in common.

Then further down the page, his "letter" is just a copy of the character itself.

Right. But, that doesn't explain why they are there and not on the other documents.

Maybe both Phelps and Cowdery initially thought this Alphabet was going to be something like the Hebrew alphabet, where you could have transliteral Latin characters for each Hebrew character to represent the same sound. Maybe Phelps and Cowdery tried to do this, but soon figured out the effort was futile, because Joseph Smith's revealed understanding of the language was different from what they had thought. This is of course just speculation, but I think it is a far more plausible speculation than the "Phelps as prophet/Smith as student" theory you are putting forward.

Again, I am not purporting a "Phelps as prophet/Smith as student" theory or anything close to it. All I am suggesting is that portions of the Phelps document may have been produce prior to EA JS and EA OC, and that at that point Phelps may have been alone in the project and in charge of the project. Your speculation above doesn't counter my hypothesis, and may even unwittingly help it along. I will explain how in a subsequent post. Stay tuned.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[wenglund]

No, all it means is that Phelps was involved in a project in trying to create an Adamic Alphabet. The letter only conveys the "Adamic" letters, sounds, and their meanings. It does not say that Phelps was the prophet who divined this information.

Again, I don't know where you are getting from me that "Phelps was the prophet who divined this information." I have suggested nothing of the sort. Please, if you wish to respond to my posts, then address what I actually have said, on not what you wildly imagine and put into my mouth.

And, while the specimen may have been a part of an "Adamic Alphabet" as you suppose, it doesn't conflict with what I actually suggested. The so-called "Adamic Alphabet" may still have been a prototype for the so-called EA that Phelps seems to have initiated, which in turn may have been the prototype for the other EA's.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[wenglund]

Up to now I have been covering old ground with the intent of setting things up to traverse new territory going forward.

In that regard, as I have contemplated the expressed anomalies of the Phelps EA, what I found remarkably odd besides the presence of the 16 letters (which were relatively non-existent in the other EA's), was the pattern of those letters (see the image in my post #20 and/or the first page of EA WWP HERE). There are three letters (more like chicken scratches) in conjunction with the first three characters of Part One, and then no letters for the next 20 characters, but then there are 13 neatly drawn letters from the beginning of Part Two to the bottom of the page. This caused me to ask myself, "What's up with that?" And, the best explanation I could come up with is as follows:

5. The more I stared at the page and contemplated other anomalies, the more it occurred to me that the two parts may have been developed somewhat out of sequence. In other words, after Phelps had drawn in the 46 non-Egyptian characters (23 in Part One and 23 in Part Two), he may have begun next to fill in the letters, and possibly also some of the sounds and explanations, for Part Two rather than Part One.

The more I tested this impression, the more it seemed to make sense. For example, since Phelps had already done some preliminary Alphabet-like work with the "specimen of pure language" (see my posts #'s 21, 27, and 28), it seems reasonable that he would have taken some of the work he had already done there and apply it to the same characters in Part Two (even though it was out of sequence) before moving to other characters where he would be starting from scratch.

Additionally, the neatness of the letters in Part Two, as contrasted with the seemingly haphazard letters in Part One, as well as the relatively even flow of text for the sounds and explanation in Part Two as contrasted with those in Part One, suggest to me that Part Two, or portions thereof, may have already been well thought out and perhaps even copied to the EA, whereas Part One appears more as an ongoing formulation in progress.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

Edited March 6, 2013 by wenglund

[wenglund]

If what I just posited above is correct, then the implications may support my hypothesis that Phelps independently began work on the alphabet prior to Smith and Cowdery getting involved, and possibly even before the papyri arrived in Kirtland. This mean that the project was likely the brainchild of Phelps, and he was the main force behind it, at least through the production of the first portion of Part Two of the alphabet, and perhaps even beyond.

6. In support of the proposition that Phelps may have produce portions of Part Two of the alphabet prior to July of 1835 (when the papyri arrived in Kirtland), and in addition to what I already pointed out in regards to the non-Egyptian characters (see post #11), as I examined the content of the first portion of Part Two, I couldn't find the least hint of anything Egyptian. The characters weren't Egyptian. The Letters weren't Egyptian. The sounds weren't Egyptian. And the subject matter for the explanations were more reminiscent of the sample and specimen of the pure language than anything Egyptian or even the first section of the Book of Abraham.

Even more interesting still, is that the first mention of anything Egyptian in the explanations is in relation to the fourth character in Part One, or in other words, the character immediately following the last character in Part One that Phelps had assigned a letter. Coincidence? I don't think so.

What it looks like to me is that prior to the papyri coming on the scene and causing such a stir, Phelps had already begun work on his alphabet, starting with Part Two (which to some extent had been previously developed). And, he had gotten as far as the end of page one when he determined that there was little point in reproducing the characters as letters, and so as his work continued on in Part Two, absent the letters, though he kept up the "a, e, i, o, u" (or "ka, ke, ki, ko, ku") pattern with the sounds, and the "first, second, third, fourth, fifth" pattern with the explanation, and this possibly up to character 43 (Beth Ku), and before moving on to other parts of the alphabet.

Now, one may rightly ask how I explain the fact that the title of document is "Egyptian Alphabet" if the alphabet was initiated prior to the papyri coming to town, and in light of the fact that the first 46 characters and sound aren't Egyptian, and the explanations for Part Two and the first three explanations of Part One, have nothing to do with Egyptian?

Well, as I look at the placement of the title in Phelps' alphabet (see HERE), it is off in the upper left-hand corner, rather than in the middle where the word "Explanation" sits, and seems to me to be more of an after-thought rather than something planned from the beginning. This means that the Phelps' document may have started out, prior to July of 1835, as an alphabet for some new language (untitled), but once characters from the papyri were later introduced (in July or shortly thereafter), it was given the current title.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

Edited March 7, 2013 by wenglund

[wenglund]

Tomorrow, I intend to advance propositions #5 and #6 one step further. It should be interesting if only to me. LOL

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

Edited March 7, 2013 by wenglund

[Jude2]

So, here we have evidence that Phelps may have initiated the EA project, was working on it alone prior to Joseph and Oliver becoming involved (it seems impractical to assume that characters and "letters" would have been dictated, and so Phelps was likely operating solo at that time), and he was the decision-maker for the project up to this point. It also suggests some dependency on the Phelps set by the other two sets.

Again, there will be additional evidence provided in support of these conclusions as the thread continues.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

I don’t know why this is so hard for some of you??

Through inspiration and by using his seer stone Joseph translated the writings of Abraham. Out of shear curiosity he and others tried to translate the other writings by comparing the symbols back and forth.

But, they all gave up with a stupor of thought.

[Cobalt-70]

Wrong. I am not suggesting a "Phelps as prophet" theory. What you mistakenly attribute to me doesn't come within light-years of what I have actually hypothesized. You simply don't understand what I am saying and you appear to be miles from correctly grasping. Please try and catch up. It would help if you read what I have actually said rather than what you conjure up in your overly imaginative mind.

If your theory is that Phelps did not get these sounds and meanings of the characters from divination or prophecy, then you have to say where you think he got them. Certainly not Egyptology. Why go through all this trouble to contrive some academic conceit by Phelps, when we have a perfectly good prophet named Joseph Smith who fancied himself a translator of ancient Egyptian language, and even said he translated an entire book from a "reformed" version of that language?

You're not saying you believe Schryver's theory that the Egyptian Alphabet was an artificial cipher made up to encode secret Mormon spy messages (all, evidently, relating to Egyptian pharaohs and astrology), are you?

Edited March 7, 2013 by Cobalt-70

[Cobalt-70]

This rings somewhat familiar. Perhaps we have discussed this before. Whatever the case, I can see the "a" and the "pp", but I don't see a "ph", and neither of those letters look crossed out to me, though an attempt may have been made to erase the pp. Whatever the case, there is nothing close to the 16 letters found in the letter column of EA WWP, and so my reasoning stands.

The Joseph Smith Papers editors see the "ph," and so do I. That there are any letters in Cowdery's letter column totally nullifies the implication that Phelps did his own thinking on his draft. Because Cowdery did his own thinking, too. Evidently, only Joseph Smith was smart enough to know that "Egyptian" (at least the "Egyptian" that existed in Joseph Smith's mind) was not an alphabetic language that could be transliterated into Latin letters. But Cowdery and Phelps caught on pretty quickly, which is evidently why they stopped trying to assign Latin characters.

Edited March 7, 2013 by Cobalt-70

[wenglund]

If your theory is that Phelps did not get these sounds and meanings of the characters from divination or prophecy, then you have to say where you think he got them. Certainly not Egyptology.

No. I can reasonably leave the question open until there is sufficient data to say. You may not realize it, but that is the reasonable approach to take.

Why go through all this trouble to contrive some academic conceit by Phelps...

I find nothing in the data to suggest "conceit" on Phelps' part, nor have I suggested anything of the sort (contrived or otherwise). Here, again, you are falsely attributing thing to me that I did not say nor do I believe to be the case. Please stop this.

The reason why I have posited what I have is because, as indicated earlier in the thread, that is where the evidence has lead me. You should try the same.

...when we have a perfectly good prophet named Joseph Smith who fancied himself a translator of ancient Egyptian language, and even said he translated an entire book from a "reformed" version of that language?

You are clearly not paying attention. As indicated, evidence suggests that the project began prior to the Egyptian papyri arriving in Kirtland, and likely didn't start out as an Egyptian alphabet.

You are also fallaciously assuming that the EA and GAEL were the product of a translation.

And, you are fallaciously assuming that this was a spiritual rather than an academic project.

Now, you are welcome to those assumptions, but your personal assumptions are not bidding on me, particularly since the evidence has lead me to assume otherwise.

You're not saying you believe Schryver's theory that the Egyptian Alphabet was an artificial cipher made up to encode secret Mormon spy messages (all, evidently, relating to Egyptian pharaohs and astrology), are you?

I have yet to mention Schryver's theory, nor would I describe his theory in the mistaken way you have.

Please, let me plead with you again. If you are going to respond to my posts, then address what I have actually said, and not the wild imaginings you falsely project onto me.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

Edited March 7, 2013 by wenglund

[wenglund]

The Joseph Smith Papers editors see the "ph," and so do I.

I saw what could be mistaken for an "h", but it looks to me that the "h" is really the remains of part (lower half) of the second "p" that seems to have been erased. However, either way is fine with me.

That there are any letters in Cowdery's letter column totally nullifies the implication that Phelps did his own thinking on his draft. Because Cowdery did his own thinking too.

You are fallaciously assuming it couldn't be both. From what I can tell from the evidence, it could be, and likely was.

Evidently, only Joseph Smith was smart enough to know that "Egyptian" (at least the "Egyptian" that existed in Joseph Smith's mind) was not an alphabetic language that could be transliterated into Latin letters.But Cowdery and Phelps caught on pretty quickly, which is evidently why they stopped trying to assign Latin characters.

You are assuming that the project started out as "Egyptian." I have presented evidence to suggest that it didn't.

You are also assuming that the EA's were produced from top to bottom, from Part One to Part Two, whereas I have presented evidence to suggest otherwise.

Now, again, if you wish to assume those things, then that is fine for you. It is just that your assumptions are not binding on me. Your assumptions, and your flippant retorts based on your assumptions, aren't a valid counter to the arguments I have presented. Sorry.

Anyway, you seem to be repeating a lot of the same insipid comments you have made to me in past exchanges on this subject. They weren't productive then, and they aren't now. They didn't engage the old material that I presented before, and they don't engage the new material I am in the process of presenting. Here's a thought: try something new for a change and rationally engaging what I have actually said. For once, try something productive here and stop wasting both of our time.

Now, I realize that I have suggested this to you before, though I hope this time I am not wasting my breath.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

Edited March 7, 2013 by wenglund

[wenglund]

7. Perhaps you, like me, have wondered if the reverse production sequence seemingly evident in the Phelps EA (where portions of Part Two were produced prior to Part One), also occurred with the Phelps GAEL?

Well, as I indicate in post #7, the spacing of pages between each of the degrees in the GAEL gives some indication that just as with the EA, portions of Part Two of the GAEL may have been produced prior to Part One.

And, there is evidence to also suggest the plausibility that the portion of Part Two produced before Part One of the GAEL, may have also been produced prior to Part One of the EA. Interesting, right?

In addition to the page spacing, the strongest evidence I have found in support of this proposition, is the marked difference in sequence of characters between the two parts. In Part One of the GAEL (see HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE), most all of the characters for Part One were addressed sequentially in EACH of the five degrees, whereas the first portion of Part Two (see HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE), each of the characters were addressed in ONLY ONE OF the five degrees. In other words, the 1st and 2nd and 3rd...characters in Part One had entries in each of the five degrees, whereas in Part Two the 1st character was addressed into the 1st degree, the 2nd character was addressed into the 2nd degree, the third character was addressed into the 3rd degree, and so on and so forth, that is up until the character with the "Jah Ni Ha" sound. Thereafter, each character was addressed in EACH of the five degrees of Part Two.

This suggests to me that Phelps began producing the GAEL starting with Part Two, and had initially determined to address each character in just one of the five degrees, but later in the process he decided, for whatever reason, to start addressing each character in each of the degrees, and this decision was later continued when Phelps started work on Part One of the GAEL.

In short, the evolution in addressing the characters in EACH degrees gives strong indication that portions of Part Two of the Phelps' GAEL were produce out of sequence and before Part One, just as may likely have been the case with Phelps EA.

More evidence for this will be presented as I have time.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

Edited March 7, 2013 by wenglund

[wenglund]

Not that this may matter to anyone else here, but I just did a comparative analysis of the explanations in the three EA's, and here are my findings:

Of the first 46 explanations, 27 showed significant variations (one or more word differences) between the three EA's, 20 of which showed variations in all three EA's and 7 in one of the EA's.

The variations in the explanations on the first pages seem to have occurred randomly. However, all 9 of the explanations on the second pages showed variations in all three EA's.

In other words, for 59% of the explanations there was at least one word difference in one of the EA's, and for 43% of the explanations there was at least one word difference in all the three EA's.

This suggests to me that for the most part, the EA's were NOT dictated (contrary to what some people may suppose), and portions of which may have been produced at different times.

This comports with evidence presented earlier suggesting that the EA's weren't dictated, but produced at different time, likely with portions being produced initially by Phelps, and later copied/modified by Cowdery and Smith.

Next, I will run a comparison between the EA's and the GAEL to see if the GAEL tends to favor or not the variations in one of the EA's, and if so, which?

I realize, from what has been posted on this and other boards in the past, that Will Schryver has already performed this comparison and has determined that in most every case, the explanations in the GAEL first degree better match those in the Phelps EA, which suggests not only a strong dependency of the GAEL on the Phelps EA, but it also suggests that Phelps may have played a dominant role in the production of the EA's and GAEL. I am conduction my own research as a way of independently confirming Will's results.

If my examination confirms Will's findings, it may further substantiate my hypothesis that Phelps may have independently developed portions of Part Two of his EA and portions of Part Two of his GAEL prior to beginning work on Part One of his EA and GAEL, and perhaps even prior to the arrival of the papyri in Kirtland. We'll see.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[William Schryver]

You're not saying you believe Schryver's theory that the Egyptian Alphabet was an artificial cipher made up to encode secret Mormon spy messages (all, evidently, relating to Egyptian pharaohs and astrology), are you?

This is not an accurate description of my thesis. But, of course, your intention wasn't to accurately represent what I have argued, was it? It's always much easier to erect and knock down a straw man than to actually engage real arguments.

BTW, Wade: It is not true that none of the first 46 EA characters are Egyptian, and that none of them come from the papyri. I initially believed that, too. But it's not true. Some of them do come from JSP-I.

There is a thread on this board, from about a year ago, where this topic was discussed. See if you can find it. Maybe search for "characters", "EA", "Egyptian", and "papyri", looking for posts I made. Chris Smith participated in the thread, too, iirc.

Edited March 11, 2013 by William Schryver

[wenglund]

BTW, Wade: It is not true that none of the first 46 EA characters are Egyptian, and that none of them come from the papyri. I initially believed that, too. But it's not true. Some of them do come from JSP-I.

I appreciate the correction. I found the thread HERE.

And, while this certainly doesn't negate your thesis about the EA and GAEL being dependent upon a preexisting translation of portions of the BoA, I am not sure it necessarily negates my proposed hypothesis either.

As best I could tell from what was argued on that thread, of the first 46 character in the EA's, there was alleged that the 23 characters in Part One may, for the most part, have been bits and pieces (graphemes as Chris calls them) of Egyptian characters picked randomly from the various portions of various papyri.

For a number of reasons, this seems more than a bit of a stretch to me. However, there is no way to prove or disprove it one way or another. Since the characters are so simplistic, they could just as easily been invented or derived from elsewhere, and later associated with parts of various Egyptian characters. Who knows?

Either way, the alleged pieces of Egyptian characters in Part One don't necessarily rule out my hypothesis that portions of EA and GAEL Part Two may have been developed prior to Part One for both, though if one assumes they are pieces of Egyptian characters, it works somewhat, though not entirely, against my hypothesis that portions of Part Two (EA and GAEL) may have been produced prior to the papyri arriving in Kirtland.

Indeed, examination of the characters in Part Two may even further confirm what I have been suggesting. Of the first 23 characters in Part Two, only 3 of them have been identified as allegedly Egyptian. They are characters 30 (Alkobeth), 32 (Baeth), and 44 (BethkuAinTrieth). The problem with assuming that these first 2 of the 3 characters were derived from the papyri, is that, as you have pointed out in the past, they were know to exist and have been written down by Phelps a month or so prior to the papyri coming to Kirtland. So, even if those characters can be matched to characters on the papyri, the were clearly not derived from the papyri. So, it is reasonable to conclude that at the very least, the first 20 of the 23 characters of EA Part Two were derived elsewhere than the papyri, and may have been developed in the EA and GAEL prior to the papyri coming to Kirtland.

Again, I should emphasis (not for your sake, but others who have participated in or looked in on these discussions), that whether or not my hypothesis stands or falls on the evidence, it has no bearing on the verity of your thesis.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

Edited March 11, 2013 by wenglund

[William Schryver]

As best I could tell from what was argued on that thread, of the first 46 character in the EA's, there was alleged that the 23 characters in Part One may, for the most part, have been bits and pieces (graphemes as Chris calls them) of Egyptian characters picked randomly from the various portions of various papyri.

For a number of reasons, this seems more than a bit of a stretch to me.

Yep. A HUGE stretch. Just like Don Bradley's Kinderhook Plates arguments -- but that's another topic for another day. Don is a good guy, and I honestly believe he means well, but it is very important for people to understand how grossly mistaken his KP thesis truly is. I actually had hoped that someone else would recognize the many flaws in his argument and take it upon themselves to write a paper explaining the reasons why. <sigh> But apparently people are so naively enamored with the argument that they simply haven't examined it critically. So I guess I'll have to do it -- hopefully before the end of the year. (The problem is that there are other, higher priorities at the moment.)

Anyway, back to the topic at hand: keep in mind that we know perfectly well that the six characters Phelps included in his earlier "pure language" table don't come from any Egyptian papyri!

That one simple fact right there proves that whatever these guys were doing with this Egyptian Alphabet project, they weren't attempting to translate Egyptian papyri!

Anyway, I don't have time to say anything else today. I'm getting together with Royal tomorrow afternoon and I have to finish something I'm delivering to him then.

Good luck with these guys, Wade. You have more patience than I do.

Edited March 11, 2013 by William Schryver

[William Schryver]

I don’t know why this is so hard for some of you??

What is so hard?

Through inspiration and by using his seer stone Joseph translated the writings of Abraham.

Probably true, although we don't have conclusive evidence that he used the seer stone.

Out of shear (sic) curiosity he and others tried to translate the other writings by comparing the symbols back and forth.

The evidence won't support this conclusion.

[Mola Ram Suda Ram]

Anyway, back to the topic at hand: keep in mind that we know perfectly well that the six characters Phelps included in his earlier "pure language" table don't come from any Egyptian papyri!

That one simple fact right there proves that whatever these guys were doing with this Egyptian Alphabet project, they weren't attempting to translate Egyptian papyri!

I think this is one of the biggest pieces of evidence that they were not even trying to translate the papyri let alone Egyptian.

No one, that I am aware of, has even tried to tackle this bit of evidence or tried to counter it. It has largley been ignored.

Edited March 11, 2013 by Mola Ram Suda Ram

[Mola Ram Suda Ram]

The evidence won't support this conclusion.

I concour.

[wenglund]

I'm getting together with Royal tomorrow afternoon and I have to finish something I'm delivering to him then.

I hope you are delivering what I think you are. If so, get busy! The world needs some serious scholarship and insights on this subject, and none too soon. Some of us have been waiting far too long, and others have evidently lost patience with my hackish musings.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[wenglund]

I have just finished my comparative analysis of the "explanations" in the EA's and GAEL.

However, before proffering my findings, I need to correct another of my misstatements. Previously I had commented: "Will Schryver has already performed this comparison and has determined that in most every case, the explanations in the GAEL first degree better match those in the Phelps EA, which suggests not only a strong dependency of the GAEL on the Phelps EA, but it also suggests that Phelps may have played a dominant role in the production of the EA's and GAEL."

If I recall more correctly now, Will's findings had to do with variations in spellings of words and sounds, and not the explanations as a whole.

With that correction out of the way, and to underscore my intent to let the evidence direct me and inform my conclusions, rather than the other way around, Here is what I have learned:

Of the 27 sets of EA explanations where there were significant variations (differences in one word or more) between the EA's, all but 6 of those sets had no perfect or strong match in the GAEL explanations (1st degree), though 5 of the 6 sets where there was a close match, the GAEL explanation most closely matched the Phelps EA (two of which also matched the Cowdery EA), and one that best matched the Smith EA.

This suggests to me that, given that most of the GAEL explanations didn't perfectly match any of the EA explanations, and given the nature of the mis-matches (many of the GAEL explanation seem to either be derived from picking bits and pieces from several of the EA's and/or an expansion or contraction of the all of the EA's), then it seems unlikely that portions of the GAEL Part Two were produced prior to EA-JS and EA-OC having been started, as I had hypothesized earlier.

However, even given all the mis-matches between the EA explanations and the GAEL explanations, since the majority of the matching explanations were from Phelp's EA, this suggests that Phelps may have been the dominate or principle person and decision-maker behind the production of the EA's and GAEL, and that the GAEL may not have been dictated, thus adding further support to what I have already presented in this thread and others substantiating the same.

In short, evidence continues to mount in favor of the hypothesis that Phelps may have initiated and played a dominant role in the production of certain key KEP documents, though there is now evidence to counter my hypothesis that Part Two of the GAEL may have been produced prior to Part One of the EA's.

Evidence that Part Two of Phelps' EA may have been produced prior to Part One, and evidence that the EA's were not dictated (as likely also the case with the GAEL), and that portions of Phelp's EA may have been produced prior to work beginning on EA-JS and EA-OC, stands as is.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

Edited March 13, 2013 by wenglund

[DonBradley]

Yep. A HUGE stretch. Just like Don Bradley's Kinderhook Plates arguments -- but that's another topic for another day. Don is a good guy, and I honestly believe he means well, but it is very important for people to understand how grossly mistaken his KP thesis truly is.

Hello Will Schryver!

Thank you for your kind words about me.

I won't mind seeing your respond to my KP paper. It's healthy for varied ideas to be out there. May the best theory win!

Best Wishes Always,

Don