Ritner's Response To Lds Statement On The Book Of Abraham

[Helen47]

http://signaturebooks.com/2014/08/a-response-to-translation-and-historicity-of-the-book-of-abraham-by-dr-robert-ritner/

 

Interesting response to the various arguments in defence of the Book of Abraham.

[Kenngo1969]

http://signaturebooks.com/2014/08/a-response-to-translation-and-historicity-of-the-book-of-abraham-by-dr-robert-ritner/

 

Interesting response to the various arguments in defence of the Book of Abraham.

To some, perhaps.

 

[Helen47]

Ignore or ridicule, the issue is not going away and as long as scholars research and publish on this matter I can only feel sympathy for those playing on the LDS team.

[ERayR]

Ignore or ridicule, the issue is not going away and as long as scholars research and publish on this matter I can only feel sympathy for those playing on the LDS team.

 

And who is Robert Ritner that I should turn over my spiritual well being to him?  It is obvious that he has not experienced the same spiritual experience that I have.  I am LDS but don't feel sorry for me, feel sorry for Mr. Ritner.

[sethpayne]

And who is Robert Ritner that I should turn over my spiritual well being to him?  It is obvious that he has not experienced the same spiritual experience that I have.  I am LDS but don't feel sorry for me, feel sorry for Mr. Ritner.

 

Must be nice to selectively dismiss scholars if they happen to disagree with your view.

 

And who is Hugh Nibley that I should turn over my spiritual well being to him?  It is obvious that he has not experienced the same spiritual experience that I have.  I am LDS with a correct understanding but don't feel sorry for me, feel sorry for Mr. Nibley.

 

See how that works?

[sethpayne]

Some fun facts about Ritner:

 

http://nelc.uchicago.edu/faculty/ritner

 

Robert K. Ritner  is Professor of Egyptology at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago and was from 1991-1996 the first Marilyn M. Simpson Assistant Professor of Egyptology at Yale University.  Dr. Ritner is the author of the books The Libyan Anarchy: Inscriptions from Egypt's Third Intermediate Period, The Mechanics of Ancient Egyptian Magical Practice, The Joseph Smith Egyptian Papyri:  A Complete Edition, and over 100 publications on Egyptian religion, magic, medicine, language and literature, as well as social and political history. He has lectured extensively on each of these topics throughout the United States, Europe and Egypt.  He has served as Visiting Professor in Paris in 2009 and in Philadelphia in 2003. In association with The Field Museum of Chicago, Dr. Ritner was the academic advisor for its current Egypt installation and for two British Museum exhibits “Cleopatra of Egypt:  From History to Myth,” and “Eternal Egypt.” In addition, he served as consultant and lecturer for the traveling Cairo Museum exhibit “Quest for Immortality:  Treasures of Ancient Egypt.”  Ritner has led Oriental Institute tours of Egypt for 30 years.

 

I know some here have tried to discredit Ritner for his complete dismissal of John Gee, but it's pretty foolish to dismiss a man with these credentials.  Just like I often ask Mark Wright about Mesoamerica and trust him because he's an expert in the field, so also do I look to Ritner on questions of Egyptology -- especially as it relates to the Book of Abraham -- given the fact he has studied the JS Papyri pretty closely.

[cinepro]

Ritner just doesn't get it.  He misses the point that the Church makes in the essay, and he totally misses the point of the BoA too.  I'm not surprised he reaches the conclusion that he does when he fails to properly approach the evidence.

 

 

 

 

Now, to be fair, I haven't actually read Ritner's response, but all I need to know is that he's responding negatively to the Church essay and that he doesn't believe in the BoA.

[bcuzbcuz]

http://signaturebooks.com/2014/08/a-response-to-translation-and-historicity-of-the-book-of-abraham-by-dr-robert-ritner/

 

Interesting response to the various arguments in defence of the Book of Abraham.

I´m just starting in my studies of Middle Egyptian and I´ve hardly progressed beyond hieroglyphs, but some demotic text and expressions show clearly that Joseph Smith was making it up as he went along. He neither knew Egyptian, nor could he translate it.

[gtaggart]

I´m just starting in my studies of Middle Egyptian and I´ve hardly progressed beyond hieroglyphs, but some demotic text and expressions show clearly that Joseph Smith was making it up as he went along. He neither knew Egyptian, nor could he translate it.

 

Well, that settles it. Where do I turn in my temple recommend?

Edited August 8, 2014 by gtaggart

[SmileyMcGee]

Ritner just doesn't get it. He misses the point that the Church makes in the essay, and he totally misses the point of the BoA too. I'm not surprised he reaches the conclusion that he does when he fails to properly approach the evidence.

Now, to be fair, I haven't actually read Ritner's response, but all I need to know is that he's responding negatively to the Church essay and that he doesn't believe in the BoA.

Hahahaha...excellent delivery.

[ERayR]

Must be nice to selectively dismiss scholars if they happen to disagree with your view.

 

And who is Hugh Nibley that I should turn over my spiritual well being to him?  It is obvious that he has not experienced the same spiritual experience that I have.  I am LDS with a correct understanding but don't feel sorry for me, feel sorry for Mr. Nibley.

 

See how that works?

 

I am not selective.  I walk by the inspiration I receive for my own life.  The only one I worship is Jesus Christ.  Not Robert Ritner, not Hugh Nibley and not sethpayne.  So trying to turn my words back does not work because I never said I turned my spiritual well being to Hugh Nibley or anyone else. 

Edited August 8, 2014 by ERayR

[SmileyMcGee]

And who is Robert Ritner that I should turn over my spiritual well being to him? It is obvious that he has not experienced the same spiritual experience that I have. I am LDS but don't feel sorry for me, feel sorry for Mr. Ritner.

No one asked you to turn over your spiritual well-being to him.

[ERayR]

No one asked you to turn over your spiritual well-being to him.

 

Good then you won't be disappointed when I don't.  My post was in response to post # 3.

[BookofMormonLuvr]

Good then you won't be disappointed when I don't.  My post was in response to post # 3.

 

See how that works?

[SmileyMcGee]

Good then you won't be disappointed when I don't. My post was in response to post # 3.

There you go again with the defensiveness. I know what you were responding to and it was a poor response.

[ERayR]

There you go again with the defensiveness. I know what you were responding to and it was a poor response.

 

Probably was I tend to miss on a few.

[helix]

Some parts of that essay were weak.  Other parts relied on asserted doctrinal/religious arguments which LDS members do not share.  I don't bother to discuss all parts of it, and I'll leave the Egyptology parts for the Egyptologists.  He feels his old arguments debunk the LDS church essay, so he restates his old arguments. He really doesn't bring anything new to the table.

 

However, neither Facsimile 1 nor 2 is a true copy, and both contain added forgeries, including the human-head and knife of the supposed

 

The knife was likely there.  Witnesses reported seeing it.  If you look at the extant vignette, you sometimes see a gap between where the vignette ended and the penciled in drawings began.  It indicates that someone started drawing where the vignette ended, and since that time, parts of the vingette flaked away. 

 

The "knife" is in that gap.  The knife wasn't penciled in.  Given the witness statements saying they saw it, and that it wasn't penciled in, it likely means the knife was there.  This makes Ritner's suggestion problematic.

 

The problems are by no means limited to the Facsimiles, since the text itself includes anachronistic and impossible expressions

 

Ritner, like before, wants to insist that LDS members must believe Abraham himself wrote the text, and what we have is a perfect copy of what Abraham wrote, and since there are elements in the text after Abraham, therefore this book is false.  Ritner knows apologists disagree wildly with this, but he continues to insist it anyway.

 

In addition, Facsimile 1 is specifically referenced in the text of the Book of Abraham (1:12): “that you may have a knowledge of this altar, I will refer you to the representation at the commencement of this record.” ... From these clear internal references, the LDS church is wrong to question whether the vignette/ facsimile “and its adjacent text must be associated in meaning.” It is simply unacceptable to argue, as the new LDS posting does, that Facsimile 1 may not be relevant since “it was not uncommon for ancient Egyptian vignettes to be placed some distance from their associated commentary.” The Abraham text states clearly that the representation was not at some distance, but “at the commencement of this record.”  There is only one such representation included by Smith “at the commencement” of the Book of Abraham. If he actually knew what he was doing, surely he would have copied the correct illustration (which is keyed perfectly — and repeatedly— to the text).

 

This contained several problems.  It should get numerous paragraphs, and it's conflated in one.  His argument is that since Joseph Smith used facsimile 1, and the text contains the phrase "at the commencement of this record", therefore, the papyrus we have now must be the source text for the Book of Abraham.

 

Ritner either seems unaware or unwilling to note that Abraham 1:12's statement strongly appears to be a later addition to the text.  If you look at the Kirtland Egyptian Papers (KEPA #2), there was a small bit of space when one sentence ended and Abraham 1:13 began.  Right in that small space, someone in smaller writing crammed in the text found in Abraham 1:12.  Another manuscript added the phrase "that is lying before you" into Abraham 1:12, then struck it out.  All this indicates the phrase Ritner rests so much of his argument on was not part of the revealed/translated process. 

 

Ritner quotes the LDS church essay "it was not uncommon for ancient Egyptian vignettes to be placed some distance from their associated commentary.", and does not dispute this.  

 

Why couldn't Joseph Smith have translated from a different roll?  Or text further down the roll after the now lost facsimile 3?  What if Joseph Smith translated the book of Abraham similar to the Book of Mormon or the parts of the Bible (such as the Book of Moses), without directly referring to the source text?  What if Joseph Smith himself didn't know where the text was?  There are many good reasons why Ritner is oversimplifying by insisting Joseph Smith translated by directly looking at the text immediately adjacent to fascimile 1.

 

Further, Ritner suggests the LDS essay claims facsimile 1 may not longer be "relevant".  The essay makes no such claims. 

 

Smith’s “divine inspiration” was not, however, divorced from a direct attempt to translate the characters of the Egyptian papyrus, as is clear from surviving manuscript pages of the evolving text of the Book of Abraham. These pages, unmentioned in the new LDS church posting, were published in 1966 in microfilm reproductions and in transcription by Jerald Tanner as Joseph Smith’s Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar, Salt Lake City, Utah Lighthouse Ministry. These microfilm pages are the “smoking gun” evidence that resolves the history of the Book of Abraham translation process.

 

Ritner spends most of the rest of his essay on this claim.  William Schryver's recent presentation regarding the Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar completely changes the game on this, and I don't know if Ritner is even aware of it.  The Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar is a secular/hobby work done after the translation process was completed, and contained bits of Egyptian, Masonic, and other unknown characters and tried to match them up with the Book of Abraham and D&C sections.  It indicates there was great desire trying to create/uncover purer language (not necessarily Egyptian language as the name suggests) by attempting to match it to modern day scripture. 

 

Ritner discusses the symbols to the left of some Book of Abraham manuscripts, and insists these must be the translation documents, and that symbols came first, and the text second.  The problem is, as William Schryver pointed out, these characters don't flow in order.  You find them scattered about the papyrus fragments.  If Ritner is going to claim Joseph Smith used a single character to create a paragraph, he also needs to explain why they were picked out of the text in a seemingly random way.  And he would need to explain why the process he asserts for the Book of Abraham (random character first and the paragraph of text second), is unrelated to the process used to create the Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar (long copies of pre-existing text first, matched to a random character second.)  Ritner doesn't do any of this.

 

To be clear, since the Book of Abraham is now proved to be based on the surviving Hôr papyrus

 

His argument rests on this, and unfortunately, he is making a handful of incorrect assumptions to arrive at it.  

Edited August 9, 2014 by helix

[Helen47]

 Instead of the head of Anubis which would have been lost when the scroll was separated from the mummy the head is the same as the man on the couch. Was Abraham bald? The top "hand" when you look at it more closely looks like the wing of a bird. Look carefully and see the dots similiar to the "angel of the Lord" bird above.  I have seen illustrations where one hand is up and the other hand holding his penis.

[Helen47]

"Why couldn't Joseph Smith have translated from a different roll? " See the paper by Andrew Cooke and Chris Smith on Gee's "missing scroll" thesis.

 

https://dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/The-Original-Length-of-the-Scroll-of-Hor.pdf

Edited August 8, 2014 by Helen47

[helix]

 The top "hand" when you look at it more closely looks like the wing of a bird. Look carefully and see the dots similiar to the "angel of the Lord" bird above.  I have seen illustrations where one hand is up and the other hand holding his penis.

 

This is another situation where Ritner is likely wrong. 

 

Ritner was relying on photos of the facsimile 1 vignette that had less quality.  Like our facsimile 1, he penciled in his own guess.  He made one tip a hand and another tip a wing from a second bird.

 

The problem is that when higher quality photos came out, the vignette showed those "tips" were open lines.  Both together.  They look the same.  While the bird above had wings drawn with closed lines.  Further, where the thumbs would be, the thumbs are shorter, and both have a hook shape, which is how thumbs were commonly drawn   http://josephsmithpapers.org/paperSummary/egyptian-papyri

 

For Ritner to be right, it would be weird if bird #1 had wingtips that were closed off (common) and bird #2 had wingtips that were open lines with a thumb like shape in it, and bird #2's wingtip looked just like the tip of a hand immediately below.

 

The other scenario is that what looks like closed wingtips are closed wingtips, and what looks like open fingers and thumbs are fingers and thumbs. 

 

 

 

"Why couldn't Joseph Smith have translated from a different roll? " See the paper by Andrew Cooke and Chris Smith on Gee's "missing scroll" thesis.

This is the one issue that despite my best efforts to get into it, the issue is too complicated, with both sides approaching the issue scholarly and arriving at different conclusions, and I feel hopeless trying to figure out who is right.

Edited August 9, 2014 by helix

[The Nehor]

Must be nice to selectively dismiss scholars if they happen to disagree with your view.

 

When it comes to the Book of Abraham I non-selectively dismiss all scholars. I am not convinced by those attacking it or those defending it. Might seem to be crazy but at least I am fair and balanced.

[california boy]

Some parts of that essay were weak.  Other parts relied on asserted doctrinal/religious arguments which LDS members do not share.  I don't bother to discuss all parts of it, and I'll leave the Egyptology parts for the Egyptologists.  He feels his old arguments debunk the LDS church essay, so he restates his old arguments. He really doesn't bring anything new to the table.

 

 

The knife was likely there.  Witnesses reported seeing it.  If you look at the extant vignette, you sometimes see a gap between where the vignette ended and the penciled in drawings began.  It indicates that someone started drawing where the vignette ended, and since that time, parts of the vingette flaked away. 

 

The "knife" is in that gap.  The knife wasn't penciled in.  Given the witness statements saying they saw it, and that it wasn't penciled in, it likely means the knife was there.  This makes Ritner's suggestion problematic.

 

 

Ritner, like before, wants to insist that LDS members must believe Abraham himself wrote the text, and what we have is a perfect copy of what Abraham wrote, and since there are elements in the text after Abraham, therefore this book is false.  Ritner knows apologists disagree wildly with this, but he continues to insist it anyway.

 

 

This contained several problems.  It should get numerous paragraphs, and it's conflated in one.  His argument is that since Joseph Smith used facsimile 1, and the text contains the phrase "at the commencement of this record", therefore, the papyrus we have now must be the source text for the Book of Abraham.

 

Ritner either seems unaware or unwilling to note that Abraham 1:12's statement strongly appears to be a later addition to the text.  If you look at the Kirtland Egyptian Papers (KEPA #2), there was a small bit of space when one sentence ended and Abraham 1:13 began.  Right in that small space, someone in smaller writing crammed in the text found in Abraham 1:12.  Another manuscript added the phrase "that is lying before you" into Abraham 1:12, then struck it out.  All this indicates the phrase Ritner rests so much of his argument on was not part of the revealed/translated process. 

 

Ritner quotes the LDS church essay "it was not uncommon for ancient Egyptian vignettes to be placed some distance from their associated commentary.", and does not dispute this.  

 

Why couldn't Joseph Smith have translated from a different roll?  Or text further down the roll after the now lost facsimile 3?  What if Joseph Smith translated the book of Abraham similar to the Book of Mormon or the parts of the Bible (such as the Book of Moses), without directly referring to the source text?  What if Joseph Smith himself didn't know where the text was?  There are many good reasons why Ritner is oversimplifying by insisting Joseph Smith translated by directly looking at the text immediately adjacent to fascimile 1.

 

Further, Ritner suggests the LDS essay claims facsimile 1 may not longer be "relevant".  The essay makes no such claims. 

 

 

Ritner spends most of the rest of his essay on this claim.  William Schryver's recent presentation regarding the Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar completely changes the game on this, and I don't know if Ritner is even aware of it.  The Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar is a secular/hobby work done after the translation process was completed, and contained bits of Egyptian, Masonic, and other unknown characters and tried to match them up with the Book of Abraham and D&C sections.  It indicates there was great desire trying to create/uncover purer language (not necessarily Egyptian language as the name suggests) by attempting to match it to modern day scripture. 

 

Ritner discusses the symbols to the left of some Book of Abraham manuscripts, and insists these must be the translation documents, and that symbols came first, and the text second.  The problem is, as William Schryver pointed out, these characters don't flow in order.  You find them scattered about the papyrus fragments.  If Ritner is going to claim Joseph Smith used a single character to create a paragraph, he also needs to explain why they were picked out of the text in a seemingly random way.  And he would need to explain why the process he asserts for the Book of Abraham (random character first and the paragraph of text second), is unrelated to the process used to create the Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar (long copies of pre-existing text first, matched to a random character second.)  Ritner doesn't do any of this.

 

 

His argument rests on this, and unfortunately, he is making a handful of incorrect assumptions to arrive at it.  

I have to admit, I have not studied this issue in any depth at all.  It appears you have done considerable research on this subject.  I am a bit confused about the claims of the church in regards to the facsimiles.  Perhaps you can answer my simple questions.

 

Does the church believe that the facsimiles have anything to do with the text of the Book of Abraham?

Does the church think that Joseph Smith translated these facsimiles correctly?

If they don't relate to the Book of Abraham, why does the church think Joseph Smith include them as part of the Book of Abraham?

Does the church still teach that Abraham literally wrote the scrolls found in the mummies?

 

 

Hope you can answer my questions.  Thanks.

[sunstoned]

I am not selective.  I walk by the inspiration I receive for my own life.  The only one I worship is Jesus Christ.  Not Robert Ritner, not Hugh Nibley and not sethpayne.  So trying to turn my words back does not work because I never said I turned my spiritual well being to Hugh Nibley or anyone else. 

How about Joseph Smith?  Is he on your list?

[sethpayne]

How about Joseph Smith?  Is he on your list?

 

Great question.  How well did JS know Egyptian?

 

Not very well, apparently.

 

Can we please just stop the insanity and admit that the BOA is a revelation and not a translation.  Trying to strain and somehow try and salvage JS as some sort of Egyptologist is just plain silly.

 

The writings on the Papyri have absolutely no relation to the BOA text.  Period.  End of story.  The text of the BOA was *revealed* to Joseph Smith.  I don't care what he thought he was doing, he was absolutely not translating an ancient record.  Why can't we just admit that?

[sethpayne]

I am not selective.  I walk by the inspiration I receive for my own life.  The only one I worship is Jesus Christ.  Not Robert Ritner, not Hugh Nibley and not sethpayne.  So trying to turn my words back does not work because I never said I turned my spiritual well being to Hugh Nibley or anyone else. 

 

Who said anything about worship.

 

I'll bet you 10 bucks that you believe Dan Peterson when he talk about NHM, right?  You take his argument seriously because Dan is, after all, an expert with extensive training in the field.

 

And yet, you dismiss Ritner out of hand and why?  Because he doesn't agree with you.  Can you at least admit to being inconsistent?  Scholars who agree with me = good.  Scholars who disagree with me = bad.

 

Oh, and by the way, good call on not worshiping me.  Doing so is quick way to get struck with lighting.