Boa - Catalyst And Missing Papyrus Theories Both Deeply Flawed

[Duncan]

So if a man is killed and the police have two suspects.... the defense, public, police or anyone can not prove those two did not do it without providing the real murderer?    that seems asinine.

 

 

it is asinine because committing a crime isn't the same as figuring out how we got the BOA

[DBMormon]

Scott Lloyd, on 17 Nov 2014 - 3:02 PM, said:

In fact, there is scarcely any qualitative difference between doing that and doing what an avowed, garden-variety detractor would do. Yet DBMormon insists that he "leads with faith," whatever that means.

Yeah, I know he claims that, but just from this thread alone, I say that is a total crock.

 just got another one tonight

 

Hi Bill,

 

My name is #%#%t and I live in %%#$###%$.  I have a NOT so serious question for you: What are the lyrics for the outro song you have have on you podcast? It starts out "All the pain is gone but I remain the same..."  I understand everything now except the chorus: "I'm living a life in... votes? en voz?..." what is that word? It's been driving me crazy  Anyway, I love the song, it's definitely a favorite of mine now.

 

Well, with that frivolous question out of the way, I want to let you know I really enjoy the podcast.  I was turned on to it a few months back and it has been a source of strength and refuge for me.  I have had probably the hardest, most trying year of my life this past year and you have helped me weather the storm.  I'm still struggling but learning to fight through it.  It is not a crisis of faith per se but related to other spiritual and temporal struggles (aka mid-life crisis!).  But I am learning a lot from you and how to better deal with others who are questioning their faith or otherwise struggling in their own lives.and help them in any small way I can.  Thank you for your efforts.

 

Ohh but thats right I am the guy who's claimed motives are a crock!!!!  good luck, how many of those you get a week?

Edited November 19, 2014 by DBMormon

[DBMormon]

it is asinine because committing a crime isn't the same as figuring out how we got the BOA

what categories does my paradigm work in... only crimes.  Better yet what scenarios does your paradigm work in, only religious truth claims?

Edited November 19, 2014 by DBMormon

[DragonLancer]

Very close, but let me make it harder. The text was interpreted "Abrahamically," that is, related to Abraham, but the words were meant to be read as they were written, and were not considered to contain the narrative of the Book of Abraham. If we consider the purpose of the "Book of Breathings" and the role it would have in an apocalypse/ascension text, then that, IMHO, is where your theory falls short.

 

Of course the words were meant to be read as they were written, but you are making up "rules" for dismissing this that are foreign to the evidence at hand, and that is why everyone else that does not accept it has a problem with it too.  Because they won't let the documentation explain the system at hand on its own.  they are bound and determined to say that it can't be so because it isn't the way they expect. The rules that make you dismiss it are something you made up in your mind, that keep you from adequately taking the evidence in, and interpreting it in its own terms, not on yours.

 

This isn't about something as it was meant to be written by the original author at all.  This is what I call secondary intent.  This is the way OTHER people used the symbols after the fact.  These other people had a separate system entirely, using the symbols differently.  The KEP shows how.  By considering each symbol on its own, outside the context of any other symbol, pictographically.  Each section of the KEP that describes a symbol is like the explanation for the facsimiles.  they describe a little picture and give an explanation for it.

 

Each symbol in the Book of Abraham manuscripts from the Sensen text marks a section of text of the book of Abraham.  Each of those symbols are not a text in this system at all.  They are theme markers that mark the sections of text that they share a theme with.  Furthermore, when each symbol is "dissected," it gets even more interesting, because each section of symbol has some theme associated with it as well.  Its just like the wedjat eye.  Each section of the wedjat eye is a character on its own that represents a fraction.  Similarly, these people that invented this system dissected other Egyptian hieroglyphs, following the principles of the dissection of the wedjat eye.  And just like the wedjat sections, each section or stroke of a character takes on a meaning assigned to it in a mapping, when before it had a meaning assignment, it was an abstraction.

 

And they don't willy-nilly assign meanings to these characters either.  There is what I call a signature.  Some kind of an attribute that the concrete meaning assigned to a symbol shares with its abstraction.  The typical example is that Khnum-Ra (facsimile #1, figure #1) is the god of Creation, symbolizing creation processes, and the god presiding over birth and so forth.  It therefore becomes an abstraction for things having to do with creation.  Kolob, being the concrete or literal thing that is assigned to that symbol, shares this attribute.  The theme of creation.  Kolob is the first creation.  So there are real attributes shared between the abstraction and that which is assigned to it.  This happens over and over again in these characters.  This is the system, in a nutshell.  And this is from the evidence at hand, not from what you have come up with in your 

[DragonLancer]

Sorry.  another typo in the last response.  Khnum Ra is Facismile 2, figure 1, not facsimile 1

[Duncan]

what categories does my paradigm work in... only crimes.  Better yet what scenarios does your paradigm work in, only religious truth claims?

 

it's a goofy comparison

 

like Hugh Nibley once said comparing history or in our case criminal activity to religion is like comparing a rose to a submarine-there are different ways of knowing the truth

 

recently in our city a cold case was solved but someone discovered that the guilty party couldn't have done it as there were other unsolved murders that had the same MO as this one crime and he wasn't in those areas so it's looking like he'll be exonerated and someone is is now a suspect.

[volgadon]

This isn't about something as it was meant to be written by the original author at all.  This is what I call secondary intent.  This is the way OTHER people used the symbols after the fact.  These other people had a separate system entirely, using the symbols differently.

 

 

What I'm saying is that the secondary intent followed the original intent, I.E., those other people used the text quite similarly to its original usage. There is quite a lot of evidence for this sort of thing, which is lacking in your mnemonic-ish theory. Basically, if we are to take the BoA seriously as an ancient work, then your theory means that it is inexplicably missing a key element.

[DragonLancer]

What I'm saying is that the secondary intent followed the original intent, I.E., those other people used the text quite similarly to its original usage. There is quite a lot of evidence for this sort of thing, which is lacking in your mnemonic-ish theory. Basically, if we are to take the BoA seriously as an ancient work, then your theory means that it is inexplicably missing a key element.

 

My theory isn't mnemonicish.   The text is not represented by the characters.  Only the themes in the text are.  The text is not in the characters.  You are reading the mnemonic theory into mine, which is not my theory.  If you take Joseph Smith seriously as a translator, you ought to let the evidence he left behind form the guide for your thoughts on the matter rather than imposing your own bias on it to rule it out.  Which is what you have just done.  I have quite a number of reverse engineered examples of what I'm talking about.  I have demonstrations, of exactly what I claim.  

[DragonLancer]

What I'm saying is that the secondary intent followed the original intent, I.E., those other people used the text quite similarly to its original usage. There is quite a lot of evidence for this sort of thing, which is lacking in your mnemonic-ish theory. Basically, if we are to take the BoA seriously as an ancient work, then your theory means that it is inexplicably missing a key element.

 

Let me put this a different way.  If you aren't willing to accept the evidence for the translation process and the picture it paints, you are making up your own requirements for how it should be done.  Your imposition of your own theory on it is contrary to what can be observed in it.  It is virtually the same problem as making up an imaginary papyrus that Joseph Smith never had and then saying that the translation process in the KEP is his scribes playing around.  You are doing the same thing.  You aren't willing to accept what is available to you in the KEP and in the Sensen Papyrus.  You would rather make up your own rules and discount an explanation that actually describes the evidence that is before us.  This is the whole problem with all apologetics.  They don't want to deal with the evidence head on.  ANYTHING BUT the evidence that the critics plainly see.  This is why the critics laugh at us.  Because they know the apologists are wrong, and people who have no stake in the matter, no faith to defend, can see it plainly before them.  And why do the apologists do it?  Because all apologetics before this has been fear based.  Fear of the Sensen papyrus.  Fear to embrace it and test the claims in the KEP.  Fear that it could never turn out to be true that there was anything to it.  And people like Bros Schryver and Gee and Nibley have sought to transform the KEP into something it is not, when embracing it is the answer all along.  Just simply defend its translations as if you are defending the Facsimiles and the translations in the explanations.  What a concept!  Just simply defend it as if it is as true as the rest.

 

You are calling my theory mnemonicish as if my theory is the mnemonic theory.  You are even imposing something on my theory that you think it is, which it is not.  So now you are even committing the same error with my material.  You discount my theory because you think it is something that it is not.

 

 You seem to be of the opinion that because other people have believed that somehow the text can be "extracted" from these characters, that that must be what I am saying.  I'm saying that stories are told in pictures.  You can see a story in Facsimile #3, and the explanation shows how the pictures fit the story.  You can see a story in Facsimile 1, and the explanation shows how the pictures fit the story.  I am not by any stretch suggesting that the text was "extracted" from these pictures.  I'm saying themes are shown in the pictures, and the KEP is the explanation.  This provided cues for a revelation process to get the text.  This is not catalyst because actual translation activity was at the heart of the process, not just some guy staring at some entirely unrelated thing as a talisman.

[volgadon]

You aren't willing to accept what is available to you in the KEP and in the Sensen Papyrus.

 

 

I do accept the evidence of both, I don't accept your conclusions.

[volgadon]

 

 

 

I realize it's late in the thread to be responding directly to the OP, but I have another hypothesis.

 

The ancient Egyptians are well known for covering up history such as the current ruler trying to eliminate all references to the previous ruler etc.

 

The defeat of the Egyptian religion by Abraham's being rescued from sacrifice is embarrassing to the rulers and priests of the day.  Perhaps news of such went far and wide. So they modified the meaning of what's depicted in the facsimiles and wrapped in their extant religion which is why today's Egyptologists translate a different meaning than what we see in the BoA. And then of course older scrolls are going to be translated the same way unless a key of some sort is found; not as big as a Rosetta Stone because I don't think the language would have been changed wholesale, just the story itself.

 

This working hypothesis allows both the theories of missing scroll and catalyst or some combination of the two to still work and is more of a grand unifying type of hypothesis expressing a reasonable explanation founded in a real and actual archeological premise as to why all this difficulty.

 

 

That is not a very reasonable theory for a variety of reasons. When it comes to embarrassing stories, all they had to do was to publish their own (like was done for the Battle of Qadesh), or the Egyptians in the Hellenistic Era who wrote counter histories of the Exodus (Moses was a rebel, the Israelities were lepers, etc.).

[DBMormon]

it's a goofy comparison

 

like Hugh Nibley once said comparing history or in our case criminal activity to religion is like comparing a rose to a submarine-there are different ways of knowing the truth

 

recently in our city a cold case was solved but someone discovered that the guilty party couldn't have done it as there were other unsolved murders that had the same MO as this one crime and he wasn't in those areas so it's looking like he'll be exonerated and someone is is now a suspect.

would you mind answering the question I asked in the last post specifically.  what scenarios does your reasoning apply and which scenarios does mine?

[bcuzbcuz]

Let me put this a different way.  If you aren't willing to accept the evidence for the translation process and the picture it paints, you are making up your own requirements for how it should be done.  Your imposition of your own theory on it is contrary to what can be observed in it.  It is virtually the same problem as making up an imaginary papyrus that Joseph Smith never had and then saying that the translation process in the KEP is his scribes playing around.  You are doing the same thing.  You aren't willing to accept what is available to you in the KEP and in the Sensen Papyrus.  You would rather make up your own rules and discount an explanation that actually describes the evidence that is before us.  This is the whole problem with all apologetics.  They don't want to deal with the evidence head on.  ANYTHING BUT the evidence that the critics plainly see.  This is why the critics laugh at us.  Because they know the apologists are wrong, and people who have no stake in the matter, no faith to defend, can see it plainly before them.  And why do the apologists do it?  Because all apologetics before this has been fear based.  Fear of the Sensen papyrus.  Fear to embrace it and test the claims in the KEP.  Fear that it could never turn out to be true that there was anything to it.  And people like Bros Schryver and Gee and Nibley have sought to transform the KEP into something it is not, when embracing it is the answer all along.  Just simply defend its translations as if you are defending the Facsimiles and the translations in the explanations.  What a concept!  Just simply defend it as if it is as true as the rest.

 

You are calling my theory mnemonicish as if my theory is the mnemonic theory.  You are even imposing something on my theory that you think it is, which it is not.  So now you are even committing the same error with my material.  You discount my theory because you think it is something that it is not.

 

 You seem to be of the opinion that because other people have believed that somehow the text can be "extracted" from these characters, that that must be what I am saying.  I'm saying that stories are told in pictures.  You can see a story in Facsimile #3, and the explanation shows how the pictures fit the story.  You can see a story in Facsimile 1, and the explanation shows how the pictures fit the story.  I am not by any stretch suggesting that the text was "extracted" from these pictures.  I'm saying themes are shown in the pictures, and the KEP is the explanation.  This provided cues for a revelation process to get the text.  This is not catalyst because actual translation activity was at the heart of the process, not just some guy staring at some entirely unrelated thing as a talisman.

You see "stories" in the facsimilies, that find the plot and theme through tha KEP interpretation. Joseph and you understand how the symbols in the text convey these stories.

I would suggest you purchase the relatively inexpensive, "ABC of Egyptian Hieroglyphs" by Jaromir Malek, 1994, published through the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford Univeristy, or a book that deals with hieroglyphs in greater depth, "How to Read Egyptian Hieroglyphs" by Mark Collier and Bill Manley, 1998,, published by the British Museum Press, or if you´re into really thick books that cost a lot and require some real heavy reading, I would suggest, "Egyptian Grammar, Being an Introduction to the Study of Hieroglyphs" by Sir Alan H Gardiner (latest edition 1973), Oxford, that first came out in 1927. It´s about 900 pages long but has a series of 30 exercises to practice on.

There are many more qualified books about hieroglyphs, or you may even like to read about Jean-François Champollion from the early 1820´s who gave out the first book that really translated Egyptian hieroglyphs.

If you´re into more fanciful, even made up interpretations from hierglyphs, that, through wild guesses and great imagination actually managed to get some characters right,, read Athanasius Kircher, a German Jesuit scholar, "Lingua Aegyptiaca Restituta" (1643). There are many correlations between this book and the KEP, if you´re willing to spend the time on it.

Piero Valeriano Bolzani's "Hieroglyphica" (1556), may also strike your fancy.

There a few translations of the early Arabic texts from the 9th and 10th century CE, where Arab historians Dhul-Nun al-Misri and Ibn Wahshiyya offered their interpretation of the hieroglyphs. In his 1806 English translation of Ibn Wahshiyya's work, Joseph Hammer draws links between Kircher and Wahshiyya.

But one thing is clear from even a cursory examination of heiroglyphs, using properly researched and peer reviewed texts. A single hieroglyphic symbol may be a single sound (usually a consonant sound), or the symbol may be a "determiner" that clarifies the defintion of the sound or word in front of it, or a symbol may be a two or three consonant combination..

No single consonant can EVER convey a complete sentence. No single symbol can EVER contain a concept or theme or whole paragraph of interpretation.

At various times through the 3000 year history (that´s a three with THREE zeros after it) of the ancient Egyptians, when hieroglyphs were actually used, the Egyptians employed between 700 to 2000 characters in their written language. (In English, we use 26 symbols). If one character could suddenly convey a whole sentence, why would they need 2000 such characters? Why would they need or write documents that were 40 pages long?

I would suggest that your interpretation of Egyptian characters is way off.

[HappyJackWagon]

 

cinepro, on 18 Nov 2014 - 3:05 PM, said:

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Church that is led by God through his Prophet, and proclaims to the world that The Book of Abraham is "a translation of some ancient records", currently has two theories about where this book came from:

Does it?

This is news to me.

I'm unaware of the Church having any theories. The two theories under discussion are put forward by believing Latter-day Saints, but I have yet to see them promulgated by "the Church."

 

I'm confusd by this. Have you read the BoA LDS.org essay where both theories are promulgated. In case there is need for the definition.

 

verb

verb: promulgate · third person present: promulgates · past tense: promulgated · pa…

1. promote or make widely known (an idea or cause):
   "these objectives have to be promulgated within the organization"
   synonyms: make known · make public

The essay clearly seems to have done this with these 2 theories as well as the theory of "repackaging" a text or image for a new religious purpose which seems to be similar to the 3rd theory some are floating out there on this thread.

[HappyJackWagon]

DB,

 

Some on this board are just going to be haters. Don't let them slow you down. You're doing a great work which I personally find much value in. Your podcasts have been helpful to me too. Keep up the great work.

 

That said, your post back a couple of pages ago stated that even if we had the plates and the BoM texts were proven not to be a translation you would not do mental gymnastics to explain why it can still work. You will accept that there is no good evidence or reasoning but you will still believe. To find truth I think we need to be open to the idea that what we currently choose to accept might be wrong and not dig our heals in to say "I'm going to believe it anyway."

[DragonLancer]

You see "stories" in the facsimilies, that find the plot and theme through tha KEP interpretation. Joseph and you understand how the symbols in the text convey these stories.

I would suggest you purchase the relatively inexpensive, "ABC of Egyptian Hieroglyphs" by Jaromir Malek, 1994, published through the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford Univeristy, or a book that deals with hieroglyphs in greater depth, "How to Read Egyptian Hieroglyphs" by Mark Collier and Bill Manley, 1998,, published by the British Museum Press, or if you´re into really thick books that cost a lot and require some real heavy reading, I would suggest, "Egyptian Grammar, Being an Introduction to the Study of Hieroglyphs" by Sir Alan H Gardiner (latest edition 1973), Oxford, that first came out in 1927. It´s about 900 pages long but has a series of 30 exercises to practice on.

There are many more qualified books about hieroglyphs, or you may even like to read about Jean-François Champollion from the early 1820´s who gave out the first book that really translated Egyptian hieroglyphs.

If you´re into more fanciful, even made up interpretations from hierglyphs, that, through wild guesses and great imagination actually managed to get some characters right,, read Athanasius Kircher, a German Jesuit scholar, "Lingua Aegyptiaca Restituta" (1643). There are many correlations between this book and the KEP, if you´re willing to spend the time on it.

Piero Valeriano Bolzani's "Hieroglyphica" (1556), may also strike your fancy.

There a few translations of the early Arabic texts from the 9th and 10th century CE, where Arab historians Dhul-Nun al-Misri and Ibn Wahshiyya offered their interpretation of the hieroglyphs. In his 1806 English translation of Ibn Wahshiyya's work, Joseph Hammer draws links between Kircher and Wahshiyya.

But one thing is clear from even a cursory examination of heiroglyphs, using properly researched and peer reviewed texts. A single hieroglyphic symbol may be a single sound (usually a consonant sound), or the symbol may be a "determiner" that clarifies the defintion of the sound or word in front of it, or a symbol may be a two or three consonant combination..

No single consonant can EVER convey a complete sentence. No single symbol can EVER contain a concept or theme or whole paragraph of interpretation.

At various times through the 3000 year history (that´s a three with THREE zeros after it) of the ancient Egyptians, when hieroglyphs were actually used, the Egyptians employed between 700 to 2000 characters in their written language. (In English, we use 26 symbols). If one character could suddenly convey a whole sentence, why would they need 2000 such characters? Why would they need or write documents that were 40 pages long?

I would suggest that your interpretation of Egyptian characters is way off.

 

Sorry but I don't need a bibliography of sources from which I can understand hieroglyphs.  I have a whole pile of Egyptian dictionaries sitting on my bookshelf as well as a ton of online sources.

Like the rest of the detractors, once again, you are a person that has decided to use the "peer reviewed"  "Egyptological" sledge hammer to say, hey, here is my rule.  And your interpretation doesn't follow my established rule.

I would suggest that these are not my interpretations at all.  I am reverse Engineering the KEP.  The rules of interpretation are from the KEP.  Go argue with the KEP.  Don't argue with me.  But that is why nobody else gets anywhere.  Because they continually argue with the system in the KEP.  This is why it doesn't do to sit here and argue with me over how you guys believe it out to be.  You are arguing with the evidence.  You are not arguing with me.  You are dismissing the evidence.  You are not dismissing my "theory."  My theory is merely an understanding of what the evidence presents.  So, if you don't like the evidence in the KEP, then go ahead and dismiss it.  But it won't get you any further along, while I will continue to have results.

[Duncan]

would you mind answering the question I asked in the last post specifically.  what scenarios does your reasoning apply and which scenarios does mine?

 

 

mine applies to history, philosophy, religion

 

I can't think of anything yours applies to, just poking holes in stuff without replacing it with something better doesn't sound like a good plan to me

 

here's a question to you, how often did you even read the BOA before all of this?

Edited November 19, 2014 by Duncan

[DragonLancer]

No single consonant can EVER convey a complete sentence. No single symbol can EVER contain a concept or theme or whole paragraph of interpretation.

......

I would suggest that your interpretation of Egyptian characters is way off.

 

Oh, and excuse me if I forgot to mention.  If your understanding of my "interpretation of Egyptian characters" constitutes the idea that "a whole paragraph of interpretation" can be "extracted" from a picture, you are way off on my "understanding."  In the temple, there is a whole detailed explanation of the usage of various symbols that Mormons hold sacred.  In the Facsimiles of the Book of Abraham, there is paragraphs of explanation for each picture in Facsimile #2 especially.  I never said that these symbols represent the TEXT of the Book of Abraham.  I never said that the Book of Abraham TEXT was the result of the translation of characters.  I said that EXPLANATIONS in the KEP are a result of the translations.  The text of the Book of Abraham is a result of a revelation that was received either before or after the KEP explanations.  But the KEP explanations are consistent with the themes in the text.  And as such, they are serviceable as cues to receive said revelation on the text.  So my interpretation is consistent with the KEP, and the explanations in the Facsimiles.

 

So if I were you, I would first familiarize myself with the actual claims of the person you are speaking to and come to an understanding, and not impose what you think it is from past experience with other theorists who have argued for the Mnemonic device theory, the Super Cryptogram Theory, or the Written on the Finger of God book by Sampson, or what have you.  Then once you understand what you are actually dealing with, then you can opine on whether something holds water or not.  Of course, it appears to me that you would still dismiss it, but that's what opinions are for I guess, to agree or to disagree.  I would expect you to actually understand the material of a certain theorist before you make a decision to agree or to disagree.

[HappyJackWagon]

 

here's a question to you, how often did you even read the BOA before all of this?

I think that's a great question for the general membership of the church. How often is the BoA referenced in manuals and conference talks? How often do members read the BoA as a family or in individual study.

 

I would wager that for most, the answer would be "seldom".

[Duncan]

I think that's a great question for the general membership of the church. How often is the BoA referenced in manuals and conference talks? How often do members read the BoA as a family or in individual study.

 

I would wager that for most, the answer would be "seldom".

 

 

exactley! and then all of a sudden people doubt or whatever with something they don't understand about a book of scripture they hardly if ever read

[DragonLancer]

Just for emphasis with what I'm talking about, to further elucidate what I'm saying, versus the classic "supercryptogram" or classic "mnemonic device" theories, I am going to post this too.  It seems that I continually come up against these kinds of things where people continually turn their brains off when they see some guy trying to make sense of the Sensen Papyrus and the KEP, because they are so used to somebody saying that somehow, through some kind of mechanical process, that you can extract text from one little symbol.  There is no way to get the Book of Abraham from the Sensen Papyrus in some mechanical way.  It doesn't work that way.

 

You literally have to get inside the head of people that used symbols.  You can't do that without the Spirit.  I didn't claim to get inside the heads of the people that used the symbols this way, nor do I claim to be some prophet.  But what I can do is to reverse engineer the work of a guy that did, named Joseph Smith, who had the Spirit of the Lord that supplied him with what was in the heads of these people.  I can then compare these translations with research on the underlying meanings and mythologies behind or tied to various hieroglyphs and hieratic characters.  Do the usages of the hieroglyphs in the KEP correspond with things specifically associated with said hieroglyphs, when they are used in an abstract manner?  Yes.

 

Some of you, and a bunch of other people I have encountered over the years said over and over again that it is impossible to extract a paragraph of text from one symbol.  No kidding.  And if that was what you thought I was saying, then that's your problem for not reading my material.  That isn't my problem for not saying what you thought I said.  That's your problem for assuming that you knew what I was saying.  That's your problem for making one glance at what I'm saying, and imposing your understanding on my words, when my words said no such thing.  You didn't take the time to actually read what I was saying on my blog if that is the case, or to read my words on this or other message boards closely enough.  You may think that everybody that has approached this thing has said the same old type of stuff about it, suggesting that there is some magical, mechanical mechanism for extracting the text of the Book of Abraham from the Sensen Papyrus.  There is not.

 

You need Mormon Temple workers to explain to you what certain symbols mean when you first go to the temple.  Just examining said symbols with your eyes, or studying them out, or whatever, doesn't result in understanding.  You actually need an explanation by a person to know what you are dealing with.  If someone lectures to you on a certain subject in Church, they have elucidated something based on a theme.  That is what we are dealing with in the KEP.  Elucidations of themes represented by symbols.  These words given in these explanations are not mechanical extractions from grammatical structures or whatever.  They are literally explanations of themes represented by pictures.  Everybody already knew this about the Facsimile explanations, so there is really nothing new here.  I'm just telling you that we can now recognize that the KEP explanations are the same type of thing.

[HappyJackWagon]

exactley! and then all of a sudden people doubt or whatever with something they don't understand about a book of scripture they hardly if ever read

Yes, but is that really the point?

One could argue that since it is rarely used is holds little value and that the questions raised by the BoA actually outweigh the value of the text and facimilies. In which case, why keep it?

 

We keep it because we are told it is scripture and we are told it was received by some kind of revelatory experience but not even the church knows how to explain the revelatory process. All they know is that it doesn't match what JS said.

 

The problem rests in the claims of an unknown revelatory process and miraculous truth claims that appear to be verifiably false.

 

Getting into the content of the BoA, including passages that could be viewed as foundational for the racist theories for the preisthood ban which have now been disavowed, is a different topic.

[Robert F. Smith]

it is asinine because committing a crime isn't the same as figuring out how we got the BOA

I think he was talking about the reasoning process in excluding suspects based on evidence, without having to decide who the actual guilty party might be.  Such reasoning is sound, and may narrow the suspect list and lead to focus on the actual prime suspect.

[Duncan]

I think he was talking about the reasoning process in excluding suspects based on evidence, without having to decide who the actual guilty party might be.  Such reasoning is sound, and may narrow the suspect list and lead to focus on the actual prime suspect.

 

 

you Americans you think you know everything!!!!!!!   that may be but this is wasn't he was doing with the BOA, is DBMormon et al narrowing it down to anything? I am asking what then is that "anything"

Edited November 19, 2014 by Duncan

[Duncan]

Yes, but is that really the point?

One could argue that since it is rarely used is holds little value and that the questions raised by the BoA actually outweigh the value of the text and facimilies. In which case, why keep it?

 

We keep it because we are told it is scripture and we are told it was received by some kind of revelatory experience but not even the church knows how to explain the revelatory process. All they know is that it doesn't match what JS said.

 

The problem rests in the claims of an unknown revelatory process and miraculous truth claims that appear to be verifiably false.

 

Getting into the content of the BoA, including passages that could be viewed as foundational for the racist theories for the preisthood ban which have now been disavowed, is a different topic.

 

 

If we don't know how we got it then how do we know its wrong?