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

[Tacenda]

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?

It appears to me that the church is more on board with it being a revelatory process than the apologists. They need to know when they're wrong, they're wrong and move on.

[ERayR]

How about Joseph Smith?  Is he on your list?

 

As I said before I am not selective.  I walk by the inspiration I receive for my own life.  Don't read more into this than I am saying. I am not saying I don't consider what I read.  It simply means it I don't get personal confirmation then it isn't part of me.  To tell the truth it has been a few years since I read any Joseph Smith.

[ERayR]

Great question.  How well did JS know Egyptian?

 

Not very well, apparently.

 

Good question, too bad we will never have anything other than someones biased opinion as an answer.

 

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.

 

I am OK with that as long as critics and anti's (Ritner et al) cease trying to tie it to the extant fragments.

 

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?

 

See Above.

[MAsh]

Ritner is a top-notch, world-renowned and respected Egyptologist. His thoughts on the issue should be taken with serious examination. He is not, however, the last word on the topic and he is far from unbiased on Mormon matters. It is also important to recognize that his bias against Mormonism unavoidably colors his arguments and interpretations.

[ERayR]

Ritner is a top-notch, world-renowned and respected Egyptologist. His thoughts on the issue should be taken with serious examination. He is not, however, the last word on the topic and he is far from unbiased on Mormon matters. It is also important to recognize that his bias against Mormonism unavoidably colors his arguments and interpretations.

 

And hence the question I posed above.

[Vookman]

Kerry Muhlstein's presentation at the FairMormon Conference really did a good job of forcing one to examine the underlying assumptions they bring to the table before trying to reach definitive statements about any aspect of the BoA.  My friend Stephen Smoot showed me a photo he personally took of a similar papyrus while on a trip to Vienna which the museum had shown using tags calling out vignettes and their associated texts being in other locations on the scrolls, and not adjacent.

 

Ritner ASSUMES the explanation and text of the BoA is adjacent to the facsimiles.  He knows that is not necessarily the case, as someone earlier pointed out, by his careful wording in his critical statement.  So we should all walk carefully when we can see significant omissions in scholarly explanations by either side.

 

The one thing I would point out is LDS scholars, since the 1960's discovery of some of the scrolls possessed by Joseph Smith,  have consistently taken a "provisional" attitude in trying to present explanations around the text.  Hugh Nibley famously stated he could not be held to any of his statements or scholarship over 5-years old.

 

By contrast, even previous statements by Ritner have been revised as new information is discovered about BoA issues, and seemingly dogmatic, end-all be-all statements against the BoA by Ritner or other critics are restated.  Critics try to force the BoA to be on the documents we have or into some mechanical translation process because they think they have an advantage there.  But they assert things about our faith which we don't.  I don't know exactly how we got the BoA, I just accept it is scripture.  But I also KNOW the critics don't know how we got the BoA, and their statements alleging it is a fraud, fake or flawed document is not scholarship but opinion.  And as such, it is like a nose:  Everyone has one.  Some are just more inflated than others.  But everyone likes their own.

[strappinglad]

Anyone ever attempted to analyze a painting or a poem? Is there one and only one correct interpretation? Symbols and pictures and vignettes and facsimiles have the advantage of being used for several often contrary purposes. Take the symbol of the swastika. Over the millennia its meaning has changed. The word ' meat ' hasn't always meant flesh. For a particular time and place there may be one or several uses for a drawing.

Edited August 9, 2014 by strappinglad

[sethpayne]

Ritner is a top-notch, world-renowned and respected Egyptologist. His thoughts on the issue should be taken with serious examination. He is not, however, the last word on the topic and he is far from unbiased on Mormon matters. It is also important to recognize that his bias against Mormonism unavoidably colors his arguments and interpretations.

 

My understanding is that he has a bias against John Gee, not Mormonism generally.  I've been told by several Mormon scholars (other than Gee) that Ritner has always been responsive and helpful.

 

Have there been other incidents that show Ritner to be hostile to Mormonism?

[MAsh]

My understanding is that he has a bias against John Gee, not Mormonism generally.  I've been told by several Mormon scholars (other than Gee) that Ritner has always been responsive and helpful.

 

Have there been other incidents that show Ritner to be hostile to Mormonism?

 

Ritner appeared (was commissioned to appear as far as I'm aware) in a blatant anti-Mormon video produced by a blatant anti-Mormon organization. It's hard for me to believe that he didn't know that their entire agenda was to discredit Mormonism.

[bcuzbcuz]

Anyone ever attempted to analyze a painting or a poem? Is there one and only one correct interpretation? Symbols and pictures and vignettes and facsimiles have the advantage of being used for several often contrary purposes. Take the symbol of the swastika. Over the millennia its meaning has changed. The word ' meat ' hasn't always meant flesh. For a particular time and place there may be one or several uses for a drawing.

I´m quite sure the words in the Book of Abraham can be interpreted like a painting or a poem..

The symbols used on the facsimiles, however, are not pictures free for interpretation or guessing. Careful study has shown they have specific meanings; 1) an alphabetic symbol representing a single sound, although vowels were mostly taken as granted, meaning the true pronunciation is not known 2) a symbol used as 2 or 3 letter, (only consonants), 3) as a determiner, clarifying the meaning of the word in the previous phrase,i.e. a picture of a man clarifies that the person in the previous phrase was a man, 4) a word sign, where the symbol actually represents the thing represented (it then has a straight line beside it to signify its intent)

All this means that a student of the language can read a sentence, a story, and get the same meaning as another student. That´s not a painting or poem. Just a difficult language.

In many ways the language is similar to English. We use words like bear and wear, but also hear and near. We have silent letters like Chevrolet or climb or debt. We have words that are spelled the same but have entirely different meanings, like, "The button was so minute it took me a minute to find it". And we sometimes use pictures instead of words.

But that doesn´t make it a picture or poetry.

Joseph Smith took symbols from the papyrus and made them into whole sentences, sometimes he even took the same symbols and attached entirely different pronunciations....that cannot be confirmed in the slightest with any modern translation of Demotic spelling.

Was his interpretation guided by the brown seer stone he used, or was it his imagination?

[cdowis]

Sigh.

 

With respect, Ritner is an expert on how Egyptologists interpret Egyptian.

 

 As Nibley points out, they have no clue on what it meant to an egyptian.

Edited August 9, 2014 by cdowis

[bcuzbcuz]

Sigh.

 

With respect, Ritner is an expert on how Egyptologists interpret Egyptian.

 

 As Nibley points out, they have no clue on what it meant to an egyptian.

What an excellent putdown! And Nibley based his opinion on what, exactly? Because he was the only person who really knew? I wonder if he would have dared say that to their (renowned Egyptologist) faces? If you know of any time he said that to any Egyptologist, please share.

[cdowis]

You need to experience Nibley for yourself in his writings.  I will admit that his comment related to the earlier work in egyptology, and I took gread license to adopt his cimments to modern egyptology as it relates to the meaning of the Book of the Dead.  We need to understand there is a difference in reading (translating) a text, and knowing what it really means to the intended audience.

 

Anyway, I could not do him justice especially as it relates to our bended knee acceptance of experts and scholars.

Edited August 10, 2014 by cdowis

[bcuzbcuz]

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.

You say there are people who witness that they saw the priest holding a knife in the original papyrus roll. Just who, exactly, are these witnesses?

I personally have spent many hours looking at a multitude of papyrus "Books of the Dead" or actually "rw nw prt m hrw" which means "Book of Coming Forth by Day". I spent two days going over, photographing and studying some of the enormous trove of such scrolls in the Berlin Neues Museum. I did the same of all the displayed scrolls in the British Museum in London. None of them have anyone holding a knife.

The few times I have seen a knife depicted have been on some wooden carved funerary statues of bulls being butchered in the Uppsala University Museum in Sweden and on the third and second outer shrines surrounding the sarcophagus of King Tutankhamun in the Cairo Museum where swords are held up to defend the king.

No knives are ever held in a threatening position or portrayed in the funerary process. That is why Ritner opposes both the depiction of the knife and the threat as related in the Book of Abraham.

But you hop entirely over the human head as depicted in the facsimies on the figure of Anubis. Can you find a single depiction anywhere, other than the one penciled in for the facsimile, that has Anubis with a human head?

[bcuzbcuz]

You need to experience Nibley for yourself in his writings.  I will admit that his comment related to the earlier work in egyptology, and I took gread license to adopt his cimments to modern egyptology.  

 

Anyway, I could not do him justice especially as it relates to our bended knee acceptance of experts and scholars.

You tempt me to show the first facsimile to my Egyptology Professor at Uppsala University. He is an extremely busy man, as any head of a department is, but maybe I can prick his curiosity. He reads Demotic and Coptic texts as quickly as you or I read a few pages of a Stephen King novel.

Term starts in a month, I´ll re-visit this topic then.

[cdowis]

Well, you will find alot of discussion on the facsimilies, both LDS and nonLDS.  In my apologetics, I have not really focused on the BOA except in a general way.  My main focus is on other subjects, so I frankly don't think I can contribute very much technically to this discussion.

Edited August 10, 2014 by cdowis

[helix]

You say there are people who witness that they saw the priest holding a knife in the original papyrus roll. Just who, exactly, are these witnesses?

But you hop entirely over the human head as depicted in the facsimies on the figure of Anubis. Can you find a single depiction anywhere, other than the one penciled in for the facsimile, that has Anubis with a human head?

 

See here: http://publications.maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/fullscreen/?pub=1092&index=8

 

I personally have spent many hours looking at a multitude of papyrus "Books of the Dead" or actually "rw nw prt m hrw" which means "Book of Coming Forth by Day". I spent two days going over, photographing and studying some of the enormous trove of such scrolls in the Berlin Neues Museum. I did the same of all the displayed scrolls in the British Museum in London. None of them have anyone holding a knife.

 

Facsimile #1 has other unique features.  See here:  http://en.fairmormon.org/Book_of_Abraham/Joseph_Smith_Papyri/Facsimiles/Facsimile_1

 

But you hop entirely over the human head as depicted in the facsimies on the figure of Anubis. Can you find a single depiction anywhere, other than the one penciled in for the facsimile, that has Anubis with a human head?

 

This doesn't matter.  Either way it doesn't change the outcome. 

[Wiki Wonka]

 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.

 

The high resolution images show that the ink flaked off in the area of the second hand, which forms the "dots" that are seen.

 

[helix]

This is another situation where Ritner is likely wrong. 

 

Correction on myself.  This was Charles Larsen's reconstruction, not Ritner's.

 

Edit: And Wiki Wonka got here to say it before I did. 

Edited August 10, 2014 by helix

[tonie]

Ritner is a top-notch, world-renowned and respected Egyptologist. His thoughts on the issue should be taken with serious examination. He is not, however, the last word on the topic and he is far from unbiased on Mormon matters. It is also important to recognize that his bias against Mormonism unavoidably colors his arguments and interpretations.

Should we note the bias of apologists, in favor of Mormonism, that unavoidably colors their arguments and interpretations?

[bcuzbcuz]

See here: http://publications.maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/fullscreen/?pub=1092&index=8

 

 

Facsimile #1 has other unique features.  See here:  http://en.fairmormon.org/Book_of_Abraham/Joseph_Smith_Papyri/Facsimiles/Facsimile_1

 

 

This doesn't matter.  Either way it doesn't change the outcome.

Doesn´t matter? Isn´t that like stuffing your fingers into your ears and screaming, "I can´t hear you."?

Egyptian art and its usage to portray people and events is not like looking at modern art or photographs. Egyptians were far more concerned with the message in the image than trying to represent reality.

One of the earliest discoveries of a representation of a king, shows him smashing the heads of his enemies. See the Narmer Palette, roughly 3000 BC (that´s 5000 years ago). Its message was "this is what kings do". Then for the next 3000 years, whenever a king was represented on the walls of temples and shrines, what was the king doing? Smashing in the heads of his enemies.....even when that particular king never went to war. The picture didn´t show what the king had actually done, it was only saying, "this is what kings do".

When preparing a body for mumification, many ceremonies were portrayed that were not meant to portray reality, only to show the concept involved. The "opening of the mouth", the feast and weighing of the heart were all portrayed and always with set characters.

The picture in facsimile 1 would have followed all of these conventions. Anubis would be the god preparing the body for its continued voyage. But facsimile 1 is a poorly done copy of the ceremonies, a cheap rip off, by a poorly skilled artist (much like buying "genuine" papyrus reed picture in local tourist traps in modern day Egypt). Facsimile 1 was following a tradition of funeral rolls, that by the time of its creation, was a tradition more than 1000 years old.

In fact, the picture in facsimile 1 has only one exception to standard, well done, funeral scrolls. (excluding the additions drawn in by Joseph Smith) That exception is that the person being prepared has his legs apart. A skilled papyrus artist would have known that the legs should be shown together. Legs apart show motion, not usual in the preparation of a body.

[Helen47]

Flakerman in his youtube video on the BOA shows other scenes with the legs apart

[Pahoran]

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.

Thank you for my share of the favour, but perhaps you should save your sympathy for those who rely upon secular scholars to tell them what they are allowed to believe about revealed truths.

Or alternatively, perhaps you should save your sympathy for when you can express it without smug taunts.

Just a thought.

Regards,

Pahoran

[Pahoran]

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.

So Dr Ritner is an expert in Egyptology.

That's not news. We knew that already.

However, it is news to me that he is any kind of expert on the revelatory processes entailed in making an inspired translation. Which of his impressive array of titles actually has any relevance to that question?

What interests me is the way he pounces as soon as any LDS-originated statement or publication comes out that doesn't merely surrender to his (unbelieving) opinion on all things related to the Book of Abraham. (And let's face it: being an expert on the JSP -- which is unquestionably an egyptological matter -- does not make him an expert on the BofA, which is not.) It reminds me of nothing so much as the anti-Mormons who used to camp out on LDS-related Wikipedia articles to make sure that any LDS-favourable edits were immediately expunged or countered.

Regards,

Pahoran

[ERayR]

Thank you for my share of the favour, but perhaps you should save your sympathy for those who rely upon secular scholars to tell them what they are allowed to believe about revealed truths.

Or alternatively, perhaps you should save your sympathy for when you can express it without smug taunts.

Just a thought.

Regards,

Pahoran

 

Thanks Pahoran and may I reiterate my post # 4.

 

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.