The Sensen Papyrus Is The Egyptian Original: An Open, Abstract System Of An Ancient Egyptian

[drums12]

To be fair to you he is talking a load of nonsense.

Really?  No need to be so unkind.  I know Brother Goble has spent countless hours on this. Whether or not you agree with his conclusions, I can vouch for his sincerity. 

[The Nehor]

Really? No need to be so unkind. I know Brother Goble has spent countless hours on this. Whether or not you agree with his conclusions, I can vouch for his sincerity.

I do not question his sincerity or the time put into this.

A conspiracy theorist sincerely spins his web of Jewish banking plots, reptilian alien shapeshifter plots, and illuminati plot with (usually) sincerity and spends a lot of time developing them. I view this theory in the same way.

Edited December 18, 2014 by The Nehor

[DragonLancer]

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Edited December 18, 2014 by DragonLancer

[The Nehor]

Isaiah 53:2-3

 

He hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him.  He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

You are seriously going to compare your pet theory to the Savior of the World now? You may want to click your humility up a few notches.

[DragonLancer]

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Edited December 19, 2014 by DragonLancer

[bcuzbcuz]

I am going to try this again.

Since my participation in the dialogue in the last thread I was involved in did not go well.

I will try to be more respectful and cordial here, in my own new thread. And I will try yet again to communicate this. Please help me understand what you don't understand about this if you don't get it. Please read my latest blog posts very carefully, and please re-read them if necessary.

http://egyptianalphabetandgrammar.blogspot.com/2014/12/my-theory-of-ancient-and-open-system.html

http://egyptianalphabetandgrammar.blogspot.com/2014/12/pictographic-representationalism-in.html

Ed Goble

Sorry, forgot to take my meds Edited December 18, 2014 by bcuzbcuz

[DragonLancer]

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Edited December 19, 2014 by DragonLancer

[The Nehor]

Geez.  I am comparing the fact that whatever you do to your neighbor, you have done it to the Savior.  I've said nothing about me.  I'm saying that what you and others have done to me over the years will be remembered, and will be rewarded.  I'm saying that online bullying is no different than any other kind of bullying.

Well, then you should have used an aporopriate scripture like something from King Benjamin for example. The "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these...." one would have worked much better since it actually says what you claim your scripture says when it clearly doesn't.

Truly you are a martyr and me saying that your inane theory is inane is the equivalent of me punching you in the face and stealing your lunch money and then sacrificing your pets to Cthulhu in front of you. I would avoid confusing your self-worth and dignity with that of things you create if you want to share them with the world. It will only lead to pain.

[DragonLancer]

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Edited December 18, 2014 by DragonLancer

[mfbukowski]

Somewhat close.  I'm saying that someone, anciently, used the Sensen Papyrus and created the legend for it so that someone could "read" themes from the Book of Abraham in the Sensen papyrus when using the characters as abstractions.  The Sensen Papyrus does not contain the "text" of the Book of Abraham, and the text cannot be extracted in this manner.  The themes in the Book of Abraham can be translated from the symbols in this manner with the legend/key, in the same manner that the pictures in the Facsimiles are given meaning through the explanations for them.  The KEP is Joseph Smith's translation/"modern reproduction" in the English language of part of that ancient key/legend, just as the explanations for the Facsimiles are likely to be a translation of ancient material, or at least, ancient intent.  This is, I believe, what he meant when he said he was translating an alphabet "To" the Book of Abraham.  Even if such a key/legend in ancient times never existed, the KEP is a reproduction on paper of the intent of the people that used the Sensen Papyrus this way, and has this function.

OK thanks now we have it in "25 words or less" and devoid of jargon.

 

The idea can stand or fall on its own merits.  My opinion is that this is a complex world, and anything is possible, but I find it too complex for my taste.  I am fine with the simple idea that Joseph received revelation of a book originally written by Abraham, and leave it at that.  He used the word "translated" in its most liberal sense- the same way he "translated" new chapters of the Bible.

 

Easy as that.  But it is an interesting view, and the detail you have put together makes it intriguing overall.

Edited December 18, 2014 by mfbukowski

[The Nehor]

The anxiety disorder that I have as a result of people like you does give me a lot of pain and has caused me a lot of suffering.  You have no idea.  I don't have a lot of self worth as a result of people like you.  I have very few friends because of people like you.  I already feel the pain, but choose to fight people like you instead of allowing you to shape my destiny.

If you get anxious when people disagree with you I would stick to less controversial stands. Maybe "smoking is bad for you"? You are not likely to have your theory placed under such scrutiny, imagine that you are under personal attack, go on a power trip, and then blame someone you just met today as representative of all your problems in life.

Seriously:

Get therapy. You need some help.

[DragonLancer]

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Edited December 18, 2014 by DragonLancer

[mfbukowski]

If you get anxious when people disagree with you I would stick to less controversial stands. Maybe "smoking is bad for you"? You are not likely to have your theory placed under such scrutiny, imagine that you are under personal attack, go on a power trip, and then blame someone you just met today as representative of all your problems in life.

Seriously:

Get therapy. You need some help.

Ease off, no need for that.

Well, then you should have used an aporopriate scripture like something from King Benjamin for example. The "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these...." one would have worked much better ....

[The Nehor]

You are a problem. You are a problem on my thread. You represent everything everyone that ever did to me has done to me. I do blame you, because you are exactly the same kind.

Release your anger! Only your hatred can destroy me!

Edit: And congrats on the edited in black belt and vague threat it implies.

Edited December 18, 2014 by The Nehor

[DragonLancer]

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Edited December 18, 2014 by DragonLancer

[Calm]

Maybe you two should just ignore each other at this point.

[DragonLancer]

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Edited December 19, 2014 by DragonLancer

[DragonLancer]

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Edited December 19, 2014 by DragonLancer

[The Nehor]

Go ahead.  Kick the kid with crutches.  Go ahead.  Kick him.  Let him bleed.  Laugh.

Kick the stupid red headed kid with glasses.  Break his glasses.  Give it to him.

That is not what I am doing. I am the Loki, the trickster god of this forum. I may be a cut-rate bad impression of him but I am doing the best I can.

I am trying to show you how silly you are being. I know I am being ridiculous. I am trying to show you how ridiculous you are being. Seriously, read this whole exchange again and pretend you are not one of the participants. Try and look at it from the outside. See how quickly you resort to victim hood and surrender in the hopes that I will stop.

Oh, and I like red heads. I almost married one once. I also do not felt guilt on demand. Sorry.

 

Loki, you are out of the thread.

[DragonLancer]

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Edited December 18, 2014 by DragonLancer

[DragonLancer]

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Edited December 19, 2014 by DragonLancer

[Brian 2.0]

Somewhat close.  I'm saying that someone, anciently, used the Sensen Papyrus and created the legend for it so that someone could "read" themes from the Book of Abraham in the Sensen papyrus when using the characters as abstractions.  The Sensen Papyrus does not contain the "text" of the Book of Abraham, and the text cannot be extracted in this manner.  The themes in the Book of Abraham can be translated from the symbols in this manner with the legend/key, in the same manner that the pictures in the Facsimiles are given meaning through the explanations for them.  The KEP is Joseph Smith's translation/"modern reproduction" in the English language of part of that ancient key/legend, just as the explanations for the Facsimiles are likely to be a translation of ancient material, or at least, ancient intent.  This is, I believe, what he meant when he said he was translating an alphabet "To" the Book of Abraham.  Even if such a key/legend in ancient times never existed, the KEP is a reproduction on paper of the intent of the people that used the Sensen Papyrus this way, and has this function.

 

So what was the point, anciently, in using the Sensen Papyrus this way... as opposed to simply writing down the themes of the BoA someplace else?  Is there any reason the Breathing Permit served as a good piece of material to do this for?

 

Do you feel there where numerous people anciently that could look at this Breathing Permit, or other Breathing Permits, and pull the themes from the BoA from it?

 

And you mention "even if such a key/legend in ancient times never existed".  How could one read the themes without a key?  Are you saying that the characters themselves on the papyri could have been understood to represent the themes of the BoA even without such a key?

[DragonLancer]

 

So what was the point, anciently, in using the Sensen Papyrus this way... as opposed to simply writing down the themes of the BoA someplace else?  Is there any reason the Breathing Permit served as a good piece of material to do this for?

 

Any time the Egyptians were doing out of the ordinary things, it was because it was a work of art that they were attempting to make.

The Sensen Papyrus was viewed as a holy thing.  And each hieroglyph in it was viewed by them as a magical thing on its own, that could be purposed magically on its own.

Sensen papyri were common funerary literature that many people in that culture were familiar with.  The ordering of the characters in this papyrus was also a convenient ordering for phonetic/alphabetic characters (i.e. uniliteral, biliteral, triliteral, determinative), much like any other alphabetical ordering.  In other alphabets, we have the North Semitic ordering like Hebrew, and the South Semitic.  Our alphabet ordering for our characters in the Latin alphabet descends from the North Semitic, by way of Phoenician and Greek.  So, when Joseph Smith called it the Egyptian Alphabet, it is because he recognized that the hieroglyphic and hieratic characters in the text part of the papyrus were indeed usually phonetic characters making up parts of an alphabet, and that this ordering in this papyrus is yet another ordering for alphabetic characters.  However, as I said in other posts, he recognized that the usage in the context of something Abrahamic was pictographic.

 

The coincidence of the way the characters appear one right after another in the core pictographic meanings of the characters lines up nicely with the themes of sections in the text of the Book of Abraham, which is why early Mormon scribes juxtaposed them as section markers in the Book of Abraham English manuscripts.  Much like the acrostics in the Psalms, where an alphabetic character would mark a section of text, these characters also are "alphabetic" and and mark sections of text.  They are somewhat of an alphabetical acrostic in this way.  The difference between the acrostics in the Psalms and the Sensen acrostic though, is that every character in the Hebrew alphabet in the Psalms acrostics match the first letter of the section of text that the text starts with.  In the Sensen acrostic, the match is thematic instead.

 

Are you saying that the characters themselves on the papyri could have been understood to represent the themes of the BoA even without such a key?

 

 

No.  That's the difference between an abstraction as a piece of art and something that is mechanically reproducible, like the regular usage of an Egyptian document.  Regular Egyptian usage of documents is reproducible with a consistent translation.  Something abstract cannot be reproducible without knowledge of its usage.  So, one possible scenario would be, If someone was "trained" in how someone originally purposed the usage of the various hieroglyphs/hieratics as Book of Abraham themes, then yes, they could do it.  I have no idea how many people were trained in this, or how many people had a key.  But more likely than training, like I said, if someone had something like the KEP anciently, then they don't have to be "trained" to do this.  They can just refer to the key/legend.  So while I am open to this option of people being "trained," I think it is more likely that there was an ancient key.  I acknowledge both possibilities, but it is just more likely that there was a key.

Edited December 19, 2014 by DragonLancer

[mfbukowski]

How is all this anything other than special pleading? We can do better.

So give it a shot

[DragonLancer]

How is all this anything other than special pleading? We can do better.

 

So give it a shot

 

Ok.  So, let me lay out the parameters/scope for anyone that wants to "give it a shot", and you cannot vary from these parameters, because evidence demands these parameters.  You are confined within these parameters, and lets see what you come up with that is "better than this":

(1) Joseph Smith is a prophet.

(2) Joseph Smith actually did translate from the papyrus that the forensic evidence said he did.

(3) Egyptology says that conventional Egyptian does not yield that translation.

(4) The Holy Ghost says the Book of Abraham is a true translation.

(5) But Joseph Smith actually did translate from this papyrus according to forensic evidence.  These two sides of the issue are not in conflict, though they appear to be.  We must search for the marriage between the two.

(6) Objectivity demands that the forensic evidence be primary.  Mormon bias to ignore the forensic evidence is not honest.  So to be perfectly objective as far as evidence goes, we embrace it.  Our conclusions don't have to be the same as critics.  We just ought to actually agree with the critics on this one thing, that we should at least be constrained by forensic evidence.

(7) The revelation or catalyst theories don't cut it because you actually have to have something that shows that Joseph Smith did actually translate something ancient, meaning that there was actually a translation process too, not JUST a revelation process.  You could try to get around this, but then you wouldn't have an actual translation, but you would have yet another apologetic thing that doesn't accept evidence.

( 8)This means that there is something else that we aren't seeing.

( 9)You see that Joseph Smith left notes of his translation process.  It is logical to consult those, and actually attribute them to the prophet rather than his scribes?  If we take the translations seriously in them, that means they are testable and can be reverse engineered.

(10) We ask the question, what are we not seeing within the realm of possibilities within these confines?

 

What are other known facts:

 

(11) The Supercryptogram theory already fails, because this is a regular old funerary papyrus, and the original author did not intend a double meaning in his papyrus.  The central tenet of the supercryptogram theory means exactly this, that the original author of the Sensen papyrus "hid" a double meaning in his papyrus.  If there is something hidden here, then the process for its being hidden is something else.

(12) LDS theorists have demonstrated the principles of Adaptation/Iconotropy, etc.

(13) Ancient Egyptian sects are known to have repurposed documents and symbolism in them.

 

So, conclusion:

If constrained to these parameters, it is logical that someone, other than the original author, in ancient times, repurposed the Symbolism of the Sensen papyrus to represent Abrahamic information.

To figure out how he repurposed it, perhaps we should consult the notes Joseph Smith left of the translation process, called the KEP, and not pass the responsibility for the KEP on to the scribes.

Perhaps if we actually follow through long enough in our research, we will start to be able to reverse engineer what was going on there.  If we can, then we can actually see that things start to line up with things we already know to be ancient.

 

Chances are, even if various details for a theory you choose do not precisely match mine, if constrained to the same parameters/criteria, you will come up with something like mine.

Because, if you want a forensic-evidence-based theory rather than another apologetic thing that doesn't accept that evidence, your assumptions would end up having to be pretty much like mine.

This is why I am unafraid of whether details of my theory are wrong, because something like my theory will in the end be right, if constrained to these parameters.

If someone follows these parameters, they will start to see what I have seen, and will start to conclude similar conclusions, if not exactly the same.

That is why, my hope is that someone else will constrain themselves to the same parameters and see for themselves that I am not kidding about what I see.

My invitation is for someone to come up with something better if they can then, following these parameters.

If I have to modify some of the details of my theory, I will do that.  That is why I am trying to talk to people.

That's why I'm trying to get other people to brainstorm.

Therefore what is it that you propose that is "better"?  I predict that it would be details that you would modify, not the primary type of theory.

If your definition is to modify the parameters above, then you are transforming the forensic evidence from what it is into something that it is not.

We ought to once and for all attribute to Joseph Smith that he is responsible for the whole KEP project and for the translations of the Sensen Papyrus in it, like the critics have been showing for decades.  The forensic evidence shows this to be so.  There is no getting around that part.  So we ought to embrace that and make it one of the primary pillars of our thinking.

​Transforming the parameters above yields things like the missing papyrus theory, the scribes did it theory, the revelation theory, the catalyst theory, and so forth, all theories that for one reason or another, might feel good, but do not actually explain things.  So do we want a theory that fits the evidence, or do we want a theory that just feels good?

I would say that special pleading is actually not letting forensic evidence speak.  I would say that my theory is not guilty of that, but that other apologetic approaches are in fact the ones that are full of special pleading.

Edited December 19, 2014 by DragonLancer