Another Try: Book of Abraham Translation Evidence from Sensen Papyrus and KEP

[cdowis]

On 9/7/2016 at 1:42 PM, Ed Goble said:

So, a while ago, I posted a series of posts where I tried to explain my point of view on the Book of Abraham translation evidence in the Kirtland Egyptian Papers and the Sensen Papyrus.

It tried to show, that from my point of view, the Kirtland Egyptian Papers and the Facsimiles Explanations, in their English form, are a reproduction of an ancient cipher key, which was created to use the Sensen Papyrus pictures to go along with a more ancient text that was originally separate from it.  I'm not saying that the Sensen papyrus contains the text of the Book of Abraham.  Rather, I am saying that a long time after the Book of Abraham was written, individuals decided it would be nice to add illustrations from already existing material to compliment the Book of Abraham, and that in doing so, they created an ancient hybrid composition that essentially became in function what we would modernly call a cipher key or a code table.

You might want to become familiar with Tvetnes' mnemonic theory , which fits your theory very well.  The "keys" are mnemonic images, and he demonstrated a translation using the symbols in the KEP.  Nice piece of work, but universally ignored by the disciples of Gee, et al.   As far as I know, I am the only advocate for this theory, and now it appears that you have stumbled on it as well.

I added the enhancement to the theory by the addition of its use to maintain the Book of Abraham, but was corrupted by the use of the keys as a stand alone document, and the loss of the full original text.  As I said, it has been ignored, so I wish you well in getting this into the mainstream.  The church published an article on theories of the BOA translation, but did not include this theory.

http://www.mormondialogue.org/topic/62181-tvedtnes-mnemonic-theory-and-book-of-abraham-translation/

PS.  It is possible for anyone interested to test its feasibility.

 

Edited September 9, 2016 by cdowis

[Oliver_Cowdery]

29 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

Oh my.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-underdetermination/

There are no facts, only interpretations of "evidence" you personally have qualified as "evidence".   This applies to all theories- I am not in favor or against Goble's theories or any others.

 

Surely there must be some theories you favor or reject.  Do you have no position on germ theory?  Do you have no position on heliocentrism?  Do you have no position on evolution?  Do you have no postion on Spontaneous Generation?  Or phrenology?

For practical purposes, verifiable and repeatable observations and measurements can be made.  There is a real world out there. Not all interpretations of the evidence are equally sound.  Explanations that don't work can be rejected and knowledge can be gain.

Humans have eradicated entire diseases. That is no small feat. That took real work, and resulted in real knowledge. Facts are simply what can be verified by careful observation.  

Yes there is much we don't know. And there are many things that are difficult to directly test.  But with observation and testing we can eliminate many proposed explanations.  

But let's not get too hung up philosophy or definitions here. However, if you'd like to framing things in philosophical terms then I'd have to point you towards Karl Popper. 

 

[Robert F. Smith]

2 hours ago, cdowis said:

You might want to become familiar with Tvetnes' mnemonic theory , which fits your theory very well.  The "keys" are mnemonic images, and he demonstrated a translation using the symbols in the KEP.  Nice piece of work, but universally ignored by the disciples of Gee, et al.   As far as I know, I am the only advocate for this theory, and now it appears that you have stumbled on it as well.

I added the enhancement to the theory by the addition of its use to maintain the Book of Abraham, but was corrupted by the use of the keys as a stand alone document, and the loss of the full original text.  As I said, it has been ignored, so I wish you well in getting this into the mainstream.  The church published an article on theories of the BOA translation, but did not include this theory.

http://www.mormondialogue.org/topic/62181-tvedtnes-mnemonic-theory-and-book-of-abraham-translation/

PS.  It is possible for anyone interested to test its feasibility.

Actually, my friend John Tvedtnes was a close colleague of John Gee at FARMS, and they published items together.  As for the mnemonic concept, here is a brief excerpt from my BofA Commentary:

In a study made by G. H. Bower and M. C. Clark at Stanford University, students asked to memorize a list of words simply by reading it through several times in typical “cramming” fashion managed to retain only about 13% of the words.  Mnemosyne, goddess of memory and mother of the Muses, would hardly approve.  Yet,

Quote

    when students were told to make up a story that included all the words on a list, instead of just studying the list over and over, their retention increased dramatically–from 13% correct to 93% correct!

93% is an empirical fact, but past experience with educators should teach us that this and similar facts will have little impact on the sorry state of modern education.  Johnny still cannot read, and those who do not want to hear of it suddenly become deaf to empirical facts . . . 

    Hugh Nibley has examined a particular Book of Breathings “as a memory-triggering device” used “to call to mind much more complex formulas for the ordinances found in the Book of the Dead.”  Such possibilities must be taken into consideration before any conclusions can be drawn about the possible existence of a cue-word list within Papyrus Joseph Smith X, i, or any other of the Joseph Smith Papyri.  Whether such a cue-word list might stand behind the text of the Book of Abraham remains for investigation.

    Albright & Mann put it very authoritatively in their Anchor Bible edition of Matthew:

Quote

    We now know, thanks to the work of such scholars as Louis Finkelstein, J. Weingreen, Manfred Lehmann, and many others (much of whose work has not yet been published) that oral tradition in pre-Talmudic Jewish sources, are often extraordinarily accurate even as far back as the Exilic period or earlier.  The data contained in our rabbinic sources of the second century A.D. and later are proving to be reliable for earlier times than generally believed.  The sayings of the leading Jewish teachers of the intertestamental and NT periods were preserved with remarkable tenacity for centuries after their original date.  It has been shown again and again that the methods of teaching employed by Jesus are extremely close in their character to those of the early rabbis.  It has also been shown that mnemotechnic devices–for instance, the arrangement of sayings of Jesus according to key words–were well known in rabbinic times and go back to high antiquity.  The structure underlying many of the NT logia can be paralleled most closely in Pirqê Abôth (Sayings of the Fathers).

    In his March 17, 1972, lecture at the Claremont Graduate School’s Institute for Antiquity and Christianity (IAC), James M. Robinson noted the existence of Coptic opening lines (incipits) to Psalms 51 through 93 on the wall of one of the 6th Dynasty Egyptian tomb-caves (T8) of Gebel et-Tarif near Qasr es-Sayad (Xenobóskion).  In his unpublished opinion, Robinson concluded that monks used the listing as a mnemotechnique (cf. Psalm 22:1 ∥Matthew 27:46, etc.).

    The issue of cryptography or secret writing is quite another matter, i.e., applied to “trade secrets” in the ancient Near East, and may provide a solution to the problem.  Indeed, whole books of the Bible are some times encrypted in complex and arcane symbolism, requiring prophetic interpretation or decryption (cf. the book of Daniel and the Revelation of John).  As James Kugel observes:

Quote

    Daniel is required not just to interpret the meaning of the dream but to retell the dream to the dreamer in the first place (Dan. 2).  Later (Dan. 5), Daniel is called upon not only to interpret the message written on the wall of Belshazzer’s palace but, first and foremost, to decipher the undecipherable writing and so be able to speak the mysterious prophecy.  Both features represent the same basic idea: Interpretation begins by the interpreter reproducing the text itself, for the latter, whether dreams or scribbling, is itself a gift from God granted afresh to the interpreter; proper understanding is akin to prophecy itself.  And so to Daniel is revealed the “correct” sense of Jeremiah’s plain speaking about the endurance of exile and domination (Jer. 25:11-12; 29:10): Jeremiah’s “seventy years” means seventy groups of seven years each (Dan. 9:24).  Elsewhere, after interpretation is revealed, Daniel offers thanks to God–but it is a cryptographer’s praising: [quotation of Daniel 2:20-22 then follows]  

Thus, some notes on cryptography seem called for:

Albright presented some interesting notes on the acrophonic principle in the development of writing and the alphabet as well as on the use of the “Egyptian enigmatic or cryptographic system” – a cryptographic system which goes back to at least the 11th Dynasty, and continued intermittently in use through at least the Ptolemaic period.  Recently an excellent example of this system – in which a single “glyph could stand for an entire word, phrase, or concept” – was found in the remains of a Ramesses II temple underneath the Haggag Mosque in Luxor.  It is certainly possible that such methods were used by the Jewish community in late Egyptian times to pass on a document such as the LDS Book of Abraham – particularly in view of the use of some similar principles in later Jewish Qabbala.

Specific sources on request.

Edited September 9, 2016 by Robert F. Smith

[mfbukowski]

4 hours ago, Oliver_Cowdery said:

Surely there must be some theories you favor or reject.  Do you have no position on germ theory?  Do you have no position on heliocentrism?  Do you have no position on evolution?  Do you have no postion on Spontaneous Generation?  Or phrenology?

For practical purposes, verifiable and repeatable observations and measurements can be made.  There is a real world out there. Not all interpretations of the evidence are equally sound.  Explanations that don't work can be rejected and knowledge can be gain.

Humans have eradicated entire diseases. That is no small feat. That took real work, and resulted in real knowledge. Facts are simply what can be verified by careful observation.  

Yes there is much we don't know. And there are many things that are difficult to directly test.  But with observation and testing we can eliminate many proposed explanations.  

But let's not get too hung up philosophy or definitions here. However, if you'd like to framing things in philosophical terms then I'd have to point you towards Karl Popper. 

 

Let's not get hung up on philosophy when the subject is the validity of theories?

Are you serious?  How else does one discuss the validity of theories?

You don't have to "point me" toward Popper-  I know his work well.

Of course there are theories I reject.  Many many theories.  But I think you are the one who needs to look at Popper more closely, in fact he supports my position.  These kind of theories do not admit of being "proven" or "falsified"- of course they are non-falsifiable, like the existence of God or ANY moral position.

Can you falsify the proposition "murder is wrong"?

NO because it is NOT a "scientific position" according to Popper- and neither are Mr. Goble's, or anyone else writing about religion's, positions, scientific.  Religion has nothing to do with science, and of course Popper, Quine, Witgenstein, all the Pragmatists and Phenomenologists know that.

Lest you not believe me, here is an encyclopedia entry on Popper!

Quote

As Popper represents it, the central problem in the philosophy of science is that of demarcation, i.e., of distinguishing between science and what he terms ‘non-science’, under which heading he ranks, amongst others, logic, metaphysics, psychoanalysis, and Adler's individual psychology. Popper is unusual amongst contemporary philosophers in that he accepts the validity of the Humean critique of induction, and indeed, goes beyond it in arguing that induction is never actually used in science. However, he does not concede that this entails the scepticism which is associated with Hume, and argues that the Baconian/Newtonian insistence on the primacy of ‘pure’ observation, as the initial step in the formation of theories, is completely misguided: all observation is selective and theory-laden—there are no pure or theory-free observations. In this way he destabilises the traditional view that science can be distinguished from non-science on the basis of its inductive methodology; in contradistinction to this, Popper holds that there is no unique methodology specific to science. Science, like virtually every other human, and indeed organic, activity, Popper believes, consists largely of problem-solving.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/popper/

These theories about the Book of Abraham are not scientific theories, they are about religion and the nature of revelation.  They are not even about translation for the same reason they are not about science- translation is itself a non-scientific process!  One might even argue that there is no such thing as a "perfect" and un-ambiguous "translation" and clearly the Book of Abraham is NOT even a "translation" in a traditional sense- it is a direct revelation like the Book of Moses.

Your mention of falsifiability misses the point.

Quote

 

For Popper, a theory is scientific only if it is refutable by a conceivable event. Every genuine test of a scientific theory, then, is logically an attempt to refute or to falsify it, and one genuine counter-instance falsifies the whole theory. In a critical sense, Popper's theory of demarcation is based upon his perception of the logical asymmetry which holds between verification and falsification: it is logically impossible to conclusively verify a universal proposition by reference to experience (as Hume saw clearly), but a single counter-instance conclusively falsifies the corresponding universal law. In a word, an exception, far from ‘proving’ a rule, conclusively refutes it.

Every genuine scientific theory then, in Popper's view, is prohibitive, in the sense that it forbids, by implication, particular events or occurrences. As such it can be tested and falsified, but never logically verified. Thus Popper stresses that it should not be inferred from the fact that a theory has withstood the most rigorous testing, for however long a period of time, that it has been verified; rather we should recognise that such a theory has received a high measure of corroboration. and may be provisionally retained as the best available theory until it is finally falsified (if indeed it is ever falsified), and/or is superseded by a better theory.

 

So where is the alleged "universal law" inviting falsification here?

Nowhere!

How would one test any theory about the Book of Abraham?

Nowhere!

Using scientific criteria on spiritual questions just does not make sense.   Have you ever tried to weigh an angel?

And you would find fault with religion because you can't ?

If that is your position you are missing the point.

[cdowis]

2 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

 

How would one test any theory about the Book of Abraham?

Nowhere!

The mnemonic theory actually lends itself to a simple test.  It would be somewhat subjective, but take the characters in the KEP and then match them to a random text in groups of 5-6 words (more or less), and see if the characters are able to match up to the text.  If such a randomized test does match, then the theory is just based on chance.  If not, then if you agree that Tvedtnes' work matches up with the BOA, the theory is viable.

[cdowis]

A few years ago I asked Tvedtnes whether he was still advocating his theory, and he said no.  He felt that Gee was on a sounder pursuit, and he had moved onto other things.

Again, I alone am an advocate for this theory, at least until a better theory is found, or someone has found fatal flaws.  It nicely ties the KEP with the translation, and my addition of the "corrupted text" has made it rather interesting in explaining its transmission.

Edited September 10, 2016 by cdowis

[Oliver_Cowdery]

2 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

How would one test any theory about the Book of Abraham?

We have examples of just that being done. 

Some theories are readily testable.  For a long time it was claimed that Abraham himself wrote a record in his own hand and Joseph Smith translated it character by character into English.  And it was claimed that the characters in the facsimile above the heads of each figure had such-and-such translation in English.  

Now that hypothesis had no good evidence behind it when it was made. People believed it without evidence. It was said to be a faith claim. But that claim also crossed into what could be tested and falsified.  And indeed that hypothesis has been falsified.  

That's not the only possible claim about the Book of Abraham that would could come-up with up with and can also be falsified.  Use your imagination.  There are plenty of claims about the BoA (and its contents) that step into the world of testability.

You are correct; many hypothesizes can not yet (or maybe ever) be falsified. It seems that the current trend in LDS apologetics seems to be to come up with the least falsifiable explanations possible. Religions often makes unfalsifiable claims, however that doesn't mean when a religion then makes a falsifiable claim that it can not or should not be tested.  Faith has its place, but it is not wrong to also ask for evidence.  If someone isn't willing to ask for evidence and test claims they might just end up "believing all things".  When someone believes all things they end up believing a lot of false things too.

 

[mfbukowski]

1 hour ago, cdowis said:

The mnemonic theory actually lends itself to a simple test.  It would be somewhat subjective, but take the characters in the KEP and then match them to a random text in groups of 5-6 words (more or less), and see if the characters are able to match up to the text.  If such a randomized test does match, then the theory is just based on chance.  If not, then if you agree that Tvedtnes' work matches up with the BOA, the theory is viable.

And therefore Joseph is a prophet,  and all the sentences in the Book of Abraham are scientifically proven to be the word of God, right?

I mean that IS the point of the exercise isn't it?  

[Robert F. Smith]

24 minutes ago, Oliver_Cowdery said:

We have examples of just that being done. 

Some theories are readily testable.  For a long time it was claimed that Abraham himself wrote a record in his own hand and Joseph Smith translated it character by character into English.  And it was claimed that the characters in the facsimile above the heads of each figure had such-and-such translation in English.  

Now that hypothesis had no good evidence behind it when it was made. People believed it without evidence. It was said to be a faith claim. But that claim also crossed into what could be tested and falsified.  And indeed that hypothesis has been falsified.  

That's not the only possible claim about the Book of Abraham that would could come-up with up with and can also be falsified.  Use your imagination.  There are plenty of claims about the BoA (and its contents) that step into the world of testability.

You are confusing two separate matters, and getting neither correct: (1) in order for a hypothesis to be useful or meaningful, it must be falsifiable in theory.  Otherwise it is nonsense; (2) the falsification of any claim is based on a point by point demonstration, not on outright declaration.  Assertion is not the same as fact, and there are no facts, but only interpretations of facts.  As I show, the BofA survives close scrutiny very well:  See my “A Brief Assessment of the LDS Book of Abraham,” version 8 online August 18, 2014, at http://www.scribd.com/doc/118810727/A-Brief-Assessment-of-the-LDS-Book-of-Abraham .

24 minutes ago, Oliver_Cowdery said:

You are correct; many hypothesizes can not yet (or maybe ever) be falsified. It seems that the current trend in LDS apologetics seems to be to come up with the least falsifiable explanations possible. Religions often makes unfalsifiable claims, however that doesn't mean when a religion then makes a falsifiable claim that it can not or should not be tested.  Faith has its place, but it is not wrong to also ask for evidence.  If someone isn't willing to ask for evidence and test claims they might just end up "believing all things".  When someone believes all things they end up believing a lot of false things too.

As I said, you are very confused about faith, belief, and falsifiability.  Any secular hypothesis worth testing must be falsifiable.  And it is false to declare that there is some trend in LDS Scholarship "to come up with the least falsifiable explanations possible," although that is a very common problem for normative, supernaturally-based religion.  If there is indeed such an LDS trend, you should be able to provide abundant evidence that that is so.  I know of no such evidence.

[mfbukowski]

45 minutes ago, Oliver_Cowdery said:

We have examples of just that being done. 

Some theories are readily testable.  For a long time it was claimed that Abraham himself wrote a record in his own hand and Joseph Smith translated it character by character into English.  And it was claimed that the characters in the facsimile above the heads of each figure had such-and-such translation in English.  

Now that hypothesis had no good evidence behind it when it was made. People believed it without evidence. It was said to be a faith claim. But that claim also crossed into what could be tested and falsified.  And indeed that hypothesis has been falsified.  

That's not the only possible claim about the Book of Abraham that would could come-up with up with and can also be falsified.  Use your imagination.  There are plenty of claims about the BoA (and its contents) that step into the world of testability.

You are correct; many hypothesizes can not yet (or maybe ever) be falsified. It seems that the current trend in LDS apologetics seems to be to come up with the least falsifiable explanations possible. Religions often makes unfalsifiable claims, however that doesn't mean when a religion then makes a falsifiable claim that it can not or should not be tested.  Faith has its place, but it is not wrong to also ask for evidence.  If someone isn't willing to ask for evidence and test claims they might just end up "believing all things".  When someone believes all things they end up believing a lot of false things too.

 

They do not become testable except in fantasy land- or the results of tests are of such little conceptual importance that they are a waste of time.

The present trend of LDS apologetics is to acknowledge that.  Phenomenology is king, positivism is dead

None can prove or falsify that the Book of Abraham is the word of God or the Bible or any other scripture.  And that IS the point of all this in the final analysis isn't it?

Religious beliefs have nothing to do with evidence or science.  We could have a video of the crucifixion and it would not prove that Jesus' death saved you from the punishment of your sins.

The only possible "evidence" is the subjective testimony of the spirit, as it should be.  The only theory of truth which applies is the pragmatic theory or deflationism.

And in this context yet again science is irrelevant

Edited September 10, 2016 by mfbukowski

[Oliver_Cowdery]

14 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

They do not become testable except in fantasy land- or the results of tests are of such little conceptual importance that they are a waste of time.

Did not older explanations for the Book of Abraham become testable after the Egyptian language was deciphered?  

In Facsimile No.3 Joseph made the claim that the character next to number 2 were "King Pharaoh, whose name is given in the characters above his head."

Is that not a testable claim?  If Joseph had started a bowling league instead of a church would that change the testability of hist claim?

[mfbukowski]

51 minutes ago, Oliver_Cowdery said:

Did not older explanations for the Book of Abraham become testable after the Egyptian language was deciphered?  

In Facsimile No.3 Joseph made the claim that the character next to number 2 were "King Pharaoh, whose name is given in the characters above his head."

Is that not a testable claim?  If Joseph had started a bowling league instead of a church would that change the testability of hist claim?

No- not testable on at least two counts

1- that was Joseph's inspired "understanding" of the MEANING of a symbol and what it meant subjectively to his mind while receiving revelation.  It was no different than seers of the past staring into tea leaves or a burning flame or a crystal ball and seeing a meaning by revelation.  This is called the "catalyst theory"

2- whatever he though it was- the meaning itself would have to be tested by the only means possible- by receiving one's own revelation that it was a revelation which also applies to my life.

Just as a film of the crucfixion would not prove my personal sins are forgiven, the significance of that symbol being understood as "king pharoh" would not be objective or testable in any way

It would be like trying to replicate the dream you had last night in the lab or test its meaning with evidence- it would be a ridiculous misunderstanding of the significance of dreams, and yet dreams can change your life

A Bowling league?   HUH?

Edited September 10, 2016 by mfbukowski

[Oliver_Cowdery]

6 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

No- not testable on at least two counts

1- that was Joseph's inspired "understanding" of the MEANING of a symbol and what it meant subjectively to his mind while receiving revelation.  It was no different than seers of the past staring into tea leaves or a burning flame or a crystal ball and seeing a meaning by revelation.  This is called the "catalyst theory"

 

 

We are in agreement.  What Joseph did is probably no different from others do when they look into crystal balls.

After the hypothesis that involved a literal translation was dis-confirmed, apologists had to move to the unfalsifiable catalyst theory.  A hypothesis was indeed falsified, which was the cause of coming up with a less falsifiable hypothesis.

[cdowis]

del

Edited September 10, 2016 by cdowis

[cdowis]

2 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

And therefore Joseph is a prophet,  and all the sentences in the Book of Abraham are scientifically proven to be the word of God, right?

I mean that IS the point of the exercise isn't it?   

The test is for validating the methodology Tvedtnes used to came to his conclusion.  Using the same KEP, do we get the same results with a random text.

I have some experience in doing research, and it seems like a reasonable test.  What other conclusions you may draw I will leave to your imagination.

Edited September 10, 2016 by cdowis

[Robert F. Smith]

1 hour ago, Oliver_Cowdery said:

Did not older explanations for the Book of Abraham become testable after the Egyptian language was deciphered?  

In Facsimile No.3 Joseph made the claim that the character next to number 2 were "King Pharaoh, whose name is given in the characters above his head."

Is that not a testable claim?  If Joseph had started a bowling league instead of a church would that change the testability of hist claim?

What might be helpful would be to admit first that none of the three facsimiles published with the BofA text were contemporary with Abraham's time.  Dating them is a first step.  Then one might want to carefully examine each of the facsimiles in turn with detailed exposition and translation.  Comparison with similar documents and a close reading of the text would be helpful.  Of course all of that has already been done decades ago by noteworthy scholars.  What conclusions did they reach?

[mfbukowski]

1 hour ago, Oliver_Cowdery said:

 

We are in agreement.  What Joseph did is probably no different from others do when they look into crystal balls.

After the hypothesis that involved a literal translation was dis-confirmed, apologists had to move to the unfalsifiable catalyst theory.  A hypothesis was indeed falsified, which was the cause of coming up with a less falsifiable hypothesis.

Because falsifiability is irrelevant here in  a religious context.  Popper is irrelevant here.

No religious ideas are falsifiable and at last people are learning that it is ridiculous to even ask for "evidence" for religious statements which is what you were obviously doing in your first post.  

At least you have advanced and learned that yes indeed the theories are not falsifiable and "evidence" is irrelevant which seems to be an advance over your first position

On 9/7/2016 at 10:54 AM, Oliver_Cowdery said:

I read your blog post and still don't really understand what you are getting at.  As with anyone who proposes a hypothesis, I ask you a few questions with hope of understanding what problems your hypothesis answers and how does it solve those problems.

What evidence do you have for your hypothesis?

Does your hypothesis explain the evidence better than other hypothesis's? 

Is your hypothesis falsifiable? How?

What sort of things does your model of the translation predict?  Can you test those predictions?

At least you appear to now understand that those questions were irrelevant.

I am glad we are now in agreement

Edited September 10, 2016 by mfbukowski

[Oliver_Cowdery]

4 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

Because falsifiability is irrelevant here.  

No religious ideas are falsifiable and at last people are learning that it is ridiculous to even ask for "evidence" for religious statements which is what you were obviously doing in your first post.  

At least you have advanced and learned that yes indeed the theories are falsifiable and "evidence" is irrelevant which seems to be an advance over your first position

At least you appear to now understand that those questions were irrelevant.

I am glad we are now in agreement

No, we are in agreement on the point that Joseph Smith was not doing anything different that what other scryers have done.  

 

It is not ridiculous to even ask for evidence of a claim even if the claim has something to do with religion.  Religion gets no special passes that allows for special pleading.

[cdowis]

4 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

What might be helpful would be to admit first that none of the three facsimiles published with the BofA text were contemporary with Abraham's time.  Dating them is a first step.

I do not understand.  On the one hand you claim to know something about the dating (not contemporary with Abraham), and on the other you are asking for the dating.  Which is it?

On what basis are we to admit the dating?

 Then one might want to carefully examine each of the facsimiles in turn with detailed exposition and translation.  Comparison with similar documents and a close reading of the text would be helpful.

I would also think that an examination of the text of the BOA would be helpful.  Are there elements in the narrative that were authentic, but perhaps unknown to Joseph Smith.  

 Of course all of that has already been done decades ago by noteworthy scholars.  What conclusions did they reach?

When exactly was this done.  Please be specific -- are you talking about 1912?

 

[sunstoned]

4 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

What might be helpful would be to admit first that none of the three facsimiles published with the BofA text were contemporary with Abraham's time.  Dating them is a first step.  Then one might want to carefully examine each of the facsimiles in turn with detailed exposition and translation.  Comparison with similar documents and a close reading of the text would be helpful.  Of course all of that has already been done decades ago by noteworthy scholars.  What conclusions did they reach?

For any of this to work to the advantage of the apologist, the testimony of JS has to be discounted.  JS gave specific details of what the translation (his word) was and by whose had the original work was penned.  He was bold enough to present original source material along with his detailed translation.  This material, which we call the facsimiles is still part of the publication of the BoM.  This translations as been put to the test, and to the embarrassment of many, has been falsified.  Since then apologist have been busy concocting fantisful theories out of whole cloth in an effort to salvage the BoM.  The evidence is that we have the original text, including the facsimiles.  We have JS's supposed translation, and we have the contemporary accounts from JS and others concerning the translation process, who JS thought mummies were.    The evidence is such that the validity of the BoM is not even considered in the real world of scientific inquiry.   If ever there was a smoking gun this is it.

[cdowis]

2 hours ago, sunstoned said:

For any of this to work to the advantage of the apologist, the testimony of JS has to be discounted.  JS gave specific details of what the translation (his word) was and by whose had the original work was penned. 

CFR 

If you are talking about the KEP, you need to demonstrate that JS was the author and was used in the translation process.  Can we assume you have seen the latest research.

[Robert F. Smith]

5 hours ago, cdowis said:

 

Quote

Robert F. Smith said:

What might be helpful would be to admit first that none of the three facsimiles published with the BofA text were contemporary with Abraham's time.  Dating them is a first step.

I do not understand.  On the one hand you claim to know something about the dating (not contemporary with Abraham), and on the other you are asking for the dating.  Which is it?

On what basis are we to admit the dating?

I am speaking rhetorically of something that has already been done with precision for each of the Joseph Smith Papyri.

Quote

 Then one might want to carefully examine each of the facsimiles in turn with detailed exposition and translation.  Comparison with similar documents and a close reading of the text would be helpful.

I would also think that an examination of the text of the BOA would be helpful.  Are there elements in the narrative that were authentic, but perhaps unknown to Joseph Smith. 

Not sure what you mean here, although the description in Abraham 1:12-13 cannot refer to the SenSen illustration, since it describes a Chaldean bedstead in a north Syrian locus.

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Of course all of that has already been done decades ago by noteworthy scholars.  What conclusions did they reach?

Quote

When exactly was this done.  Please be specific -- are you talking about 1912?

No, 1912 was a polemic charade.  I am referring to the flurry of professional publication made by Egyptologists ca 1967 - 1968, when the Metropolitan Museum of Art released its collection of Joseph Smith Papyri to the LDS Church.  Do you wish me to provide you a bibliography?

Edited September 10, 2016 by Robert F. Smith

[Robert F. Smith]

5 hours ago, sunstoned said:

For any of this to work to the advantage of the apologist, the testimony of JS has to be discounted.

Whether it works to the advantage of pro or con views is irrelevant, and Joseph Smith's comments are very important.  Your statements here are false.

5 hours ago, sunstoned said:

 JS gave specific details of what the translation (his word) was and by whose had the original work was penned.  He was bold enough to present original source material along with his detailed translation.  This material, which we call the facsimiles is still part of the publication of the BoM.  This translations as been put to the test, and to the embarrassment of many, has been falsified.  Since then apologist have been busy concocting fantisful theories out of whole cloth in an effort to salvage the BoM.  The evidence is that we have the original text, including the facsimiles.  We have JS's supposed translation, and we have the contemporary accounts from JS and others concerning the translation process, who JS thought mummies were.    The evidence is such that the validity of the BoM is not even considered in the real world of scientific inquiry.   If ever there was a smoking gun this is it.

Your reckless and uninformed comments here are not only false, but show how difficult it is for you to stay on track when discussing the BofA -- for which you mistakenly substitute BoM.  You need to slow down, marshal your evidence, and discuss it in detail.  Pick a particular aspect of the ongoing debate, and tell us how it has convinced you.  We have been over this subject many times before on this board, as I'm sure you recall.

[cdowis]

2 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

No, 1912 was a polemic charade.  I am referring to the flurry of professional publication made by Egyptologists ca 1967 - 1968, when the Metropolitan Museum of Art released its collection of Joseph Smith Papyri to the LDS Church.  Do you wish me to provide you a bibliography?

I am curious whether Muhelstein's videos?  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLh0_JF2hqI-4hYEqtrTmIZRAM__uSNnbk

For example, regarding the Fac 1   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcqbcvKgDe8&list=PLh0_JF2hqI-4hYEqtrTmIZRAM__uSNnbk&index=3

 

 

Edited September 10, 2016 by cdowis

[mfbukowski]

16 hours ago, Oliver_Cowdery said:

No, we are in agreement on the point that Joseph Smith was not doing anything different that what other scryers have done.  

 

It is not ridiculous to even ask for evidence of a claim even if the claim has something to do with religion.  Religion gets no special passes that allows for special pleading.

"Special pleading"?  Oh my I am impressed!  You took a course on logical fallacies!  Good for you.

You just need a little further education I am afraid, in contemporary philosophy.  Wittgenstein was probably the most important philosopher of the 20th century

Quote

With regard to religion, Wittgenstein is often considered a kind of Anti-Realist (see below for more on this). He opposed interpretations of religion that emphasize doctrine or philosophical arguments intended to prove God's existence, but was greatly drawn to religious rituals and symbols, and considered becoming a priest. He likened the ritual of religion to a great gesture, as when one kisses a photograph. This is not based on the false belief that the person in the photograph will feel the kiss or return it, nor is it based on any other belief. Neither is the kiss just a substitute for a particular phrase, like "I love you." Like the kiss, religious activity does express an attitude, but it is not just the expression of an attitude in the sense that several other forms of expression might do just as well. There might be no substitute that would do. The same might be said of the whole language-game (or games) of religion, but this is a controversial point. If religious utterances, such as "God exists," are treated as gestures of a certain kind then this seems not to be treating them as literal statements. Many religious believers, including Wittgensteinian ones, would object strongly to this. There is room, though, for a good deal of sophisticated disagreement about what it means to take a statement literally. For instance, Charles Taylor's view, roughly, is that the real is whatever will not go away. If we cannot reduce talk about God to anything else, or replace it, or prove it false, then perhaps God is as real as anything else.

http://www.iep.utm.edu/wittgens/#H3

Another of the most important philosophers of the 20th century is Richard Riorty

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Is There a Conflict between Science and Religion?” was the title of a lecture given on April 14 by professor of Comparative Literature and Philosophy Richard Rorty of Stanford University. The lecture, delivered to a large crowd in the Bathish Auditorium, was sponsored by the Center for American Studies and Research (CASAR) and the Department of Philosophy.

Reconciling the findings of science and the stipulations of religion has been a long-standing subject of philosophical argument over the centuries. Richard Rorty, in his talk, discussed the argument among philosophers that “it is intellectually irresponsible both to believe in the existence of God and to accept the results of modern science.” Rorty gave an example of a scientist named Professor Ryan, a Roman Catholic who never attempted to reconcile the dictates of her church on the one hand, and the results of her professional activities on the other, despite the fact that the two are incompatible. Rorty suggested that her act was “intellectually irresponsible.” The common ways to regard her act justifiable is by claiming that “it is always possible to dissolve a contradiction by making a distinction. I can resolve the contradiction by distinguishing between the theological and the common-sense descriptions of what is going on.” Another way to justify how Professor Ryan might be innocent of intellectual irresponsibility is if  she were to establish a need to distinguish between literal and symbolic truth. Therefore, “Reconciling science and religion requires one to abandon the idea that there is One Way the World Really Is.”

Later, Rorty discussed the pragmatist vs. the utilitarian assessments of Professor Ryan’s acts. He subsequently discussed extensively the views of pragmatists concerning the question of reconciling science and religion.

Rorty resolved the problem of Professor Ryan’s casual attitude about what religion orders as opposed to what science finds. He said that she, along with many other people who claim to be Christians but keep their religion apart from their professional and political activities, “represent a reasonable adaptation of the Christian religion to the conditions of life in contemporary democratic societies, an adaptation that should not deprive people of the right to use the ancient name and formulae of their faith.”

 

http://staff.aub.edu.lb/~webbultn/v5n6/29.html

Since you are not likely to listen to my word for it, I must resort to an argument from authority here- that indeed contemporary philosophers DO find compatibility of science and religion.

Rorty sees the worship of science -  in evidence in this thread- insofar as it is believed to be seeing the invisible "reality as it truly is"- as no more than an Enlightenment version of the "god of power".  SCIENCE becomes the all knowing all seeing god of power, straight out of the old testament.

Thou shalt not doubt the temple of TRUTH enshrined in the gospel of science, and have no gods before it.

Wittgenstein and Rorty and many others find a place for science and a place for religion as two separate disciplines which do not conflict because they are not even discussing the same subject matter.   It is like mixing up basketball with Impressionist painting.

Religion is about your ATTITUDE toward life, and its meaning and purpose.  Science is about how the world works and about making things work.