cdowis Posted November 11, 2013 Posted November 11, 2013 I have suggested that this theory offers an interesting possibility for the translation of the Book of Abraham, with a tie with the EAG to the translation. Several have asked for details of this theory, and I have finally located his original articles. http://www.shields-research.org/General/SEHA/SEHA_Newsletter_109-2.PDF It was later updated: http://www.shields-research.org/General/SEHA/SEHA_Newsletter_120-2.PDF Full disclosure: Tvedtnes is no longer an active supporter this theory. He prefers to defer to Gee. 1
Robert F. Smith Posted November 11, 2013 Posted November 11, 2013 I once did a basic survey of mnemonic devices as applied to the possible literary, form, redaction, and Kompositionsgeschichte of the Book of Abraham text, i.e., its origin and transmittal.1 For, not only Tvedtnes, but also Hugh Nibley examined a particular Book of Breathings “as a memory-triggering device” used “to call to mind much more complex formulas for the ordinances found in the Book of the Dead.”2 Such possibilities should be taken into consideration before any conclusions can be drawn about the possible existence of a cue-word list within Papyrus Joseph Smith X, i, or any other of the Joseph Smith Papyri. Albright & Mann put it very authoritatively in their Anchor Bible edition of Matthew: We now know, thanks to the work of such scholars as Louis Finkelstein, J. Weingreen, Manfred Lehmann, and many others (much of whose work has not yet been published) that oral tradition in pre-Talmudic Jewish sources, are often extraordinarily accurate even as far back as the Exilic period or earlier. The data contained in our rabbinic sources of the second century A.D. and later are proving to be reliable for earlier times than generally believed. The sayings of the leading Jewish teachers of the intertestamental and NT periods were preserved with remarkable tenacity for centuries after their original date. It has been shown again and again that the methods of teaching employed by Jesus are extremely close in their character to those of the early rabbis. It has also been shown that mnemotechnic devices–for instance, the arrangement of sayings of Jesus according to key words–were well known in rabbinic times and go back to high antiquity. The structure underlying many of the NT logia can be paralleled most closely in Pirqê Abôth (Sayings of the Fathers).3 In his March 17, 1972, lecture at the Claremont Graduate School’s Institute for Antiquity and Christianity (IAC), James M. Robinson noted the existence of Coptic opening lines (incipits) to Psalms 51 through 93 on the wall of one of the 6th Dynasty Egyptian tomb-caves (T8) of Gebel et-Tarif near Qar es-Sayad (Xenobóskion). In his unpublished opinion, Robinson concluded that monks used the listing as a mnemotechnique4 (cf. Psalm 22:1 ∥Matthew 27:46, etc.). I was present at that lecture, and it seemed to me then worthwhile to consider the possibility of such a cue-word list standing behind the text of the Book of Abraham.----------------------------------------------- 1 See especially Jan Assmann, “Hieroglyphen als mnemotechnisches System Roses de vents et roses depersonnages al’époque Romane,” Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 20 (1938), 265-276; cf. John A. Tvedtnes’ survey of mnemonics in his October 18, 1969, presentation at the 19th Annual Symposium on the Archaeology of the Scriptures at BYU, “The Use of Mnemonic Devices in Oral Tradition, As Exemplified by the Book of Abraham and the Hor Sensen Papyrus”; cf. SEHA Newsletters, 109.0, and 114.1.2 Nibley in Monday Magazine, Dec 3, 1973, p. 6; BYU Studies, 11:163; cf. “Rats in Maze Prove Rewards Reinforce ‘Operant Behavior’,” BYU Today, 28 (Aug 1974), 9, demonstrating the great value of reversal of direction in memorization, i.e., chiasmus thus has tremendous value as a mnemonic device; cf. also BYU Studies, 11:181.3 W. F. Albright & C. S. Mann, Matthew, AB 26 (Doubleday, 1971), CLXVI – they cite Solomon Gandz, The Dawn of Literature, Osiris, IV (Bruges, 1939), and Albright, From the Stone Age to Christianity, 2nd ed., 64ff. They specifically reject (in n. 4) H. M. Teeple, “The Oral Tradition that Never Existed,” Journal of Biblical Literature, 89 (1970), 56-68, as an example of failure to mention the powerful rabbinic oral tradition.4 Cf. Robinson, New Testament Studies, 12:366, citing Doresse, Secret Books, 132, and Kemi, 4:157-160.
Robert F. Smith Posted November 11, 2013 Posted November 11, 2013 I have suggested that this theory offers an interesting possibility for the translation of the Book of Abraham, with a tie with the EAG to the translation. Several have asked for details of this theory, and I have finally located his original articles. http://www.shields-research.org/General/SEHA/SEHA_Newsletter_109-2.PDF It was later updated: http://www.shields-research.org/General/SEHA/SEHA_Newsletter_120-2.PDF Full disclosure: Tvedtnes is no longer an active supporter this theory. He prefers to defer to Gee.Thanks for that useful info, cdowis.
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