Three Book of Abraham questions

[Freedom]

16 hours ago, Kevin Christensen said:

It is possible that Freedom has somehow confused BYU Anthropologist and Mesoamericanist John Sorenson with Chicago Lawyer and LDS scholar Kevin Barney with regards to this article.

"The Facsimiles and Semitic Adaptation of Existing Sources" Kevin L. Barney

in Astronomy, Papyrus, and Covenant

http://publications.mi.byu.edu/fullscreen/?pub=1098&index=10

FWIW

Kevin Christensen

Bethel Park, PA

Sorenson, in one of his responses to critics, made the comment, but this is missing the point. I am looking for an answer to what I that were two very simple questions. 

1)  Are there peer reviewed articles on the B of A? My understanding is that there is not much to research since we cannot confidently say we have the original manuscripts and there is not enough academic interest in the doctrinal aspects of the book. I have seen a lot of people point to sunstone, but I do not think this qualifies as a peer reviewed journal.

2) What non-lds research gives credence to the argument presented by John Sorensen (or you can remove his name since this has been used to distract the issue) and others that the facsimiles could have had a different interpretation prior to the Egyptians use? My understanding is, due to general illiteracy and the difficulty in producing written documents, documents such as the facsimiles would be used by different peoples to mean different things in an effort to create a pseudo written record without having to create your own. This has been established as a regular occurrence in Mesoamerica for example. So, is this a valid argument to use with the fascimilies. 

[Robert F. Smith]

12 hours ago, Nevo said:

..........................................................................

As Marc Coenen has noted, "concluding that a record of Abraham or any other text foreign to Ptolemaic Egyptian funerary and/or liturgical practice was once attached to the Smith papyri is an assertion not based upon widely accepted Egyptological analysis" (Marc Coenen, "The Ownership and Dating of Certain Joseph Smith Papyri," in Robert K. Ritner, The Joseph Smith Egyptian Papyri: A Complete Edition [Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2013], Kindle locations 1965–1966).

I generally expect this sort of thing from anti-Mormons who know nothing of Egyptology.  However, as often happens with polemic anti-Mormon pieces, scholars sometimes think that they can make false statements with impunity, and such is the case here with Marc Coenen -- who surely knows that standard Egyptology accepts the fact that late Egyptian papyri often contain more than one text, but that was already an age-old practice.  Several examples:

1.  A. Szczudlowska’s study makes clear that, during New Kingdom and even Roman times, texts of the Old Kingdom were recopied and attached to copies of the Book of the Dead spells, e.g., BD 112, 128, 178, etc. -- Szczudlowksa, “Pyramid Texts Preserved on Sękowski Papyrus,” ZÄS, 99 (1972), 25-29. 

2.  Miriam Lichtheim provides another example in noting that the hieroglyphic Book of the Dead Papyrus of Tentruty (Papyrus Berlin 3008 of the Ptolemaic period) contained a hieratic appendix of “The Lamentations of Isis and Nephthys,” which was “adapted to the use of an individual person.” -- Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, III:7-8, 116-121.

3.  Papyri (such as the Westcar Papyrus [Papyrus Berlin 3033]) were applied to a variety of contexts, and were simply reused when necessary! -- H. Goe****e, Chronique d’Égypte, 45:244-245; the Westcar Papyrus was thus a palimpsest.

4.  Found in 1896 in the Middle Kingdom Theban tomb of a lector-priest, were three magical papyri “which were written on the back of old military dispatches.” -- Ian Shaw in David Silverman, ed., Ancient Egypt (London: Duncan Baird Publ., 1997), 78.

5.  Pyramid Texts were even copied on coffin lids in the Saitic period and later. -- J. Baines & J. Málek, Atlas of Ancient Egypt (1980), 118; cf. H. Milde, “Enige dodenboekspreuken uit de 21e dynastie” ["Some spells  of the Book of the Dead from the 21st dynasty"], in Mehen. Essays over het oude Egypte 2015 (Gravenhage: Mehen: Studiecentrum voor het oude Egypte, 2015), 

6.  “John Gee estimates that about 40% of known Sensen texts have other texts attached to them.” -- From http://en.fairmormon.org/Criticism_of_Mormonism/Video/Search_for_the_Truth_DVD/Book_of_Abraham . . 

[Robert F. Smith]

On 11/4/2016 at 5:09 PM, Nevo said:

I think "Olishem" is a decent hit, but in any case here is the critical argument against it: 

Quote

Quote

An Old Babylonian copy of an inscription of the Sargonic ruler Naram-Sin (c. 2190–2154 BC) mentions a place named Ulishem (U2-li-śi-imki [Ur Excavation Texts 1, 275 ii 13; see Frayne 1993, 133]), which must have been roughly in the area of Ebla, west of the Euphrates and far west of Haran (see Edzard et al. 1977, 164). Certainly, Ulishim could be superficially linked on phonetic grounds to the Olishem mentioned in the Book of Abraham in connection with the location of “Ur of Chaldea,” where Abraham’s kin are said to have turned to the worship of Egyptian gods and Egyptian sacrificial rites. But a convincing identification would have to be based on much more substantial evidence.

As stressed above, everything we know about the region during the period in question—not to mention the likely location of Biblical Ur in southern Mesopotamia—speaks strongly against it. That the phonetic similarity is accidental (and here it should be pointed out that cuneiform sources attest thousands of place names) is again suggested by its coupling to the place “Potiphar’s Hill,” which likewise is said to be in the land of Ur. Potiphar, of course, is the Egyptian official to whom Joseph is sold in Genesis (37:36; 39:1)— the name Potiphar is Egyptian in derivation (“He-whom-[the sun god]-Re-has-given”) and has no place linguistically or culturally in the toponymy of southern or northern Mesopotamia.

Finally, it must be observed that the identification of Ulishim with an Olishem alleged to be in the area of Ur makes little geographic sense within the context of Abraham’s travels from Ur to Haran and subsequently to Canaan as described in Genesis and the Book of Abraham itself— for Ulishim no doubt lay west of Haran and so the latter could in no conceivable way be considered to be en route from Ulishim to Canaan, Haran being diametrically in the wrong direction.
 

— Christopher Woods, "The Practice of Egyptian Religion at 'Ur of the Chaldees'?" in Robert K. Ritner, The Joseph Smith Egyptian Papyri: A Complete Edition (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2013), Kindle locations 2170–2183.

This is an excerpt from one of the hit pieces contained in Ritner's book, cited above, and it revels in deliberate anti-Mormon nonsense -- as does the remainder of the book.  This misinfomation on Olishem and Potiphar are prime examples.

Like Stephen E. Thompson before him, Woods deliberately avoids dealing with fact that many non-Mormon scholars understand Ur of the Chaldees to be in Northwest Mesopotamia, in the vicinity of Haran, in the area known as Aram Naharaim or Padan Aram, where Abram was born and raised.  For polemic purposes, they instead argue that Ur could only have been in southern Mesopotamia, a highly anachronistic claim, which enables them to correctly claim that there was no direct Egyptian influence in southern Mesopotamia.  Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.

Certainly, the text makes no mention of Ur in this context.  However, if an Ur must be found in Syria, Stephen Thompson himself cites some of the prominent non-Mormon scholars who maintain that that is the very locus to which the Bible has reference (whatever the long term consensus has been).  In any case, the late Frank Moore Cross maintained that, far from being a biblical anachronism, "Ur of the Chaldees" is either a "late editorial updating," or "an explicating glosse."  Cross, From Epic to Canon (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ., 1998), 30n.

Moreover, Woods also falsifies the nature of the pagan gods (and priests) confronting Abram and his kin.  That is, some are Egyptian, some are local Semitic gods.  Yokels might not know the difference, but Woods surely knows the truth -- which is that placing the Plain of Olishem and Potiphar's Hill in north Syria at the time of Abram is not problematic at all.  There is no reason to doubt Egyptian cultural imperialism in parts of northwestern Syria in the Patriarchal age, or that the events are described as occurring near a plain called Ulisum/Olishem in Chaldea.  So too with the name Potiphar, which appears in Semitic transliteration.  It originates as Egyptian PЗ-di-pЗ-Rʿ “He-whom-Reʿ-has-given” (Wb I:492; Černý Legacy 201) > Hebrew Potifar, Potiferaʿ (Gen 39:1, 41:45, the priest of On/Heliopolis), which is comparable to the hybrid Hebrew-Egyptian name Puti’el “He-whom-‘El-has-given” (Ex 6:25; Muchiki Egyptian Proper Names and Loanwords 220) = Greek Πετεπρης, Πετεφρης, Πετεφρη, Φουτιηλ.

Edited November 10, 2016 by Robert F. Smith

[Ed Goble]

9 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

This is an excerpt from one of the hit pieces contained in Ritner's book, cited above, and it revels in deliberate anti-Mormon nonsense -- as does the remainder of the book.  This misinfomation on Olishem and Potiphar are prime examples.

Like Stephen E. Thompson before him, Woods deliberately avoids dealing with fact that many non-Mormon scholars understand Ur of the Chaldees to be in Northwest Mesopotamia, in the vicinity of Haran, in the area known as Aram Naharaim or Padan Aram, where Abram was born and raised.  For polemic purposes, they instead argue that Ur could only have been in southern Mesopotamia, a highly anachronistic claim, which enables them to correctly claim that there was no direct Egyptian influence in southern Mesopotamia.  Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.

Certainly, the text makes no mention of Ur in this context.  However, if an Ur must be found in Syria, Stephen Thompson himself cites some of the prominent non-Mormon scholars who maintain that that is the very locus to which the Bible has reference (whatever the long term consensus has been).  In any case, the late Frank Moore Cross maintained that, far from being a biblical anachronism, "Ur of the Chaldees" is either a "late editorial updating," or "an explicating glosse."  Cross, From Epic to Canon (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ., 1998), 30n.

Moreover, Woods also falsifies the nature of the pagan gods (and priests) confronting Abram and his kin.  That is, some are Egyptian, some are local Semitic gods.  Yokels might not know the difference, but Woods surely knows the truth -- which is that placing the Plain of Olishem and Potiphar's Hill in north Syria at the time of Abram is not problematic at all.  There is no reason to doubt Egyptian cultural imperialism in parts of northwestern Syria in the Patriarchal age, or that the events are described as occurring near a plain called Ulisum/Olishem in Chaldea.  So too with the name Potiphar, which appears in Semitic transliteration.  It originates as Egyptian PЗ-di-pЗ-Rʿ “He-whom-Reʿ-has-given” (Wb I:492; Černý Legacy 201) > Hebrew Potifar, Potiferaʿ (Gen 39:1, 41:45, the priest of On/Heliopolis), which is comparable to the hybrid Hebrew-Egyptian name Puti’el “He-whom-‘El-has-given” (Ex 6:25; Muchiki Egyptian Proper Names and Loanwords 220) = Greek Πετεπρης, Πετεφρης, Πετεφρη, Φουτιηλ.

Robert, I can understand why you would want to make this argument for the northern Ur.  However, most Book of Abraham scholars that do not take the Kirtland Egyptian Papers seriously suffer from this ideological syndrome.  The Kirtland Egyptian Papers do in fact locate Abraham's Land of the Chaldees in Southern Mesopotamia, calling it Chalsidohiash/Zakionhiash, a form of the Kassite name Karduniash, an ancient name for the area.  John Tvednes takes the usage of this name in the Kirtland Egyptian Papers seriously, identifying it as this ancient name.  The symbol of the Reed in the Sensen Papyrus is used in the KEP as the symbol for this, and in fact the ancient Sumerian name for the area, is land of reeds, Kiengi or Kengi.  Kiengi is the land of reeds is the marshland of southern Iraq.

The usage of the name Karduniash in the Kirtland Egyptian Papers is not an anachronism because it was likely priests of the Greco-Roman era that imposed a system of symbolic adaptation/iconotropy on pre-existing characters in the Sensen Papyrus and in the associated vignettes, including the hypocephalus, in order to add illustrations for use with the Book of Abraham text, and it would have been them that used this name rather than Abraham himself.  This system of iconotropy/adaptation was not limited to the big pictures in the vignettes, but this system of adaptation was also imposed on the "alphabetic" or textual Egyptian characters from the Sensen papyrus, using them as illustrations and symbols as well, independent of their original intent as a text, much like how a system of acrostics is imposed on the Hebrew Alphabet in the Psalms.  This explains the use of the Reed character (Egyptian letter I) for use with the place names Kiengi (land of reeds) and the word Karduniash.  The Egyptian word for reed is in fact Iaru, showing one possibility why they would choose the reed character to symbolize the word.

This explanation emerges naturally from the taking of the information seriously in the Kirtland Egyptian Papers, and giving Joseph Smith the benefit of the doubt that the information transmitted in the Kirtland Egyptian Papers is ancient.  But it also highlights the fact that LDS scholars who ignore that evidence also come to improper conclusions.  This is the same type of problem that emerges from ignoring the internal evidence of the Book of Mormon text when it comes to Book of Mormon Geography, which is the problem with the Heartland Theory.

Edited November 10, 2016 by Ed Goble

[Robert F. Smith]

45 minutes ago, Ed Goble said:

Robert, I can understand why you would want to make this argument for the northern Ur.  However, most Book of Abraham scholars that do not take the Kirtland Egyptian Papers seriously suffer from this ideological syndrome.  The Kirtland Egyptian Papers do in fact locate Abraham's Land of the Chaldees in Southern Mesopotamia, calling it Chalsidohiash/Zakionhiash, a form of the Kassite name Karduniash, an ancient name for the area.  John Tvednes takes the usage of this name in the Kirtland Egyptian Papers seriously, identifying it as this ancient name.  The symbol of the Reed in the Sensen Papyrus is used in the KEP as the symbol for this, and in fact the ancient Sumerian name for the area, is land of reeds, Kiengi or Kengi.  Kiengi is the land of reeds is the marshland of southern Iraq.

The usage of the name Karduniash in the Kirtland Egyptian Papers is not an anachronism because it was likely priests of the Greco-Roman era that imposed a system of symbolic adaptation/iconotropy on pre-existing characters in the Sensen Papyrus and in the associated vignettes, including the hypocephalus, in order to add illustrations for use with the Book of Abraham text, and it would have been them that used this name rather than Abraham himself.  This system of iconotropy/adaptation was not limited to the big pictures in the vignettes, but this system of adaptation was also imposed on the "alphabetic" or textual Egyptian characters from the Sensen papyrus, using them as illustrations and symbols as well, independent of their original intent as a text, much like how a system of acrostics is imposed on the Hebrew Alphabet in the Psalms.  This explains the use of the Reed character (Egyptian letter I) for use with the place names Kiengi (land of reeds) and the word Karduniash.  The Egyptian word for reed is in fact Iaru, showing one possibility why they would choose the reed character to symbolize the word.

This explanation emerges naturally from the taking of the information seriously in the Kirtland Egyptian Papers, and giving Joseph Smith the benefit of the doubt that the information transmitted in the Kirtland Egyptian Papers is ancient.  But it also highlights the fact that LDS scholars who ignore that evidence also come to improper conclusions.  This is the same type of problem that emerges from ignoring the internal evidence of the Book of Mormon text when it comes to Book of Mormon Geography, which is the problem with the Heartland Theory.

I would have to agree with you here, Ed, that a significant part of the problem (in this common interpretive misunderstanding) is that, over time, Aramaic-speaking peoples move from northwest Mesopotamia to southern Mesopotamia, i.e., the Chaldeans of Abram are in the north, whereas the Chaldeans of much later times are the Neo-Babylonians in southern Mesopotamia.  The confusion certainly does influence the viewpoint of the scribes in Egypt during theGreco-Roman period -- as you suggest.  However, instead of understanding this in historical terms, and instead of accounting for such lines in a text as a glosse (as Frank Moore Cross and others do), the anti-Mormons deliberately leave out the full historical context and impose an unjustified anachronism on the text.

[Ed Goble]

10 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

I generally expect this sort of thing from anti-Mormons who know nothing of Egyptology.  However, as often happens with polemic anti-Mormon pieces, scholars sometimes think that they can make false statements with impunity, and such is the case here with Marc Coenen -- who surely knows that standard Egyptology accepts the fact that late Egyptian papyri often contain more than one text, but that was already an age-old practice.  

Fair enough, but the evidence in the KEP calls for symbolic interpretations (iconotropy) imposed on pre-existing symbols that were not originally intended to go along with the Book of Abraham, but were used in a different symbological system after the fact.  There is no evidence in the Kirtland Egyptian Papers for a missing papyrus in the day of Joseph Smith.  There is only evidence that Joseph Smith reproduced the type and content of iconotropy used by the ancient priests with these symbols.

Therefore, I think a more parsimonious explanation, to go along with available facts, is that Joseph Smith recieved the content of the Book of Abraham text by revelation, but reproduced by revelation also (separately) the ancient symbolic usage of the Egyptian symbols that the Greco-Roman priests used.  Therefore, the only real "translation" here is not the Book of Abraham text itself, but rather, the transmission of the ancient symbological system used by these priests found in the KEP.  It is the KEP that contains the revelation on this ancient system and its ideosyncratic rules and numerological nuances.  I believe that this is more in line with the evidence, than trying to suggest that Joseph Smith ever had an ancient papyrus in his hands that contained the actual Book of Abraham text.

Yes it is true that in ancient times Abraham actually penned a book, but the contents of that book was delivered to Joseph Smith not by a papyrus containing it, but just by plain old revelation.

So while its possible that there was a missing papyrus in the hands of Joseph Smith, I view this as the less likely scenario.  The actual original missing papyrus has probably been missing since antiquity and was never in the hands of Joseph Smith.

[Ed Goble]

11 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

This is an excerpt from one of the hit pieces contained in Ritner's book, cited above, and it revels in deliberate anti-Mormon nonsense -- as does the remainder of the book.  This misinfomation on Olishem and Potiphar are prime examples.

Like Stephen E. Thompson before him, Woods deliberately avoids dealing with fact that many non-Mormon scholars understand Ur of the Chaldees to be in Northwest Mesopotamia, in the vicinity of Haran, in the area known as Aram Naharaim or Padan Aram, where Abram was born and raised.  For polemic purposes, they instead argue that Ur could only have been in southern Mesopotamia, a highly anachronistic claim, which enables them to correctly claim that there was no direct Egyptian influence in southern Mesopotamia.  Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.

Certainly, the text makes no mention of Ur in this context.  However, if an Ur must be found in Syria, Stephen Thompson himself cites some of the prominent non-Mormon scholars who maintain that that is the very locus to which the Bible has reference (whatever the long term consensus has been).  In any case, the late Frank Moore Cross maintained that, far from being a biblical anachronism, "Ur of the Chaldees" is either a "late editorial updating," or "an explicating glosse."  Cross, From Epic to Canon (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ., 1998), 30n.

Moreover, Woods also falsifies the nature of the pagan gods (and priests) confronting Abram and his kin.  That is, some are Egyptian, some are local Semitic gods.  Yokels might not know the difference, but Woods surely knows the truth -- which is that placing the Plain of Olishem and Potiphar's Hill in north Syria at the time of Abram is not problematic at all.  There is no reason to doubt Egyptian cultural imperialism in parts of northwestern Syria in the Patriarchal age, or that the events are described as occurring near a plain called Ulisum/Olishem in Chaldea.  So too with the name Potiphar, which appears in Semitic transliteration.  It originates as Egyptian PЗ-di-pЗ-Rʿ “He-whom-Reʿ-has-given” (Wb I:492; Černý Legacy 201) > Hebrew Potifar, Potiferaʿ (Gen 39:1, 41:45, the priest of On/Heliopolis), which is comparable to the hybrid Hebrew-Egyptian name Puti’el “He-whom-‘El-has-given” (Ex 6:25; Muchiki Egyptian Proper Names and Loanwords 220) = Greek Πετεπρης, Πετεφρης, Πετεφρη, Φουτιηλ.

While it is true that some of the ideological stances contained in Ritner's book are blatantly Anti-Mormon, Brian Haugid for one is taking most of the information and the argumentation in Ritner's book very seriously.  And Brian Hauglid is taking the charges against Kerry Muhlstien's and John Gee's type of apologetics on the Book of Abraham very seriously.

While its true that Brian Hauglid is not necessarily siding with me on the idea that I put forth that the KEP is the reproduction and transmission of ancient information, he is at least of the opinion (which is the same opinion of the critics and of myself) that there was no missing papyrus in modern times, and that Joseph Smith was absolutely responsible for the great majority of information in the Kirtland Egyptian Papers.

Therefore, it won't do to pass off all of the contents of Ritner's work as just hit pieces, but that along with the rest of the information coming from Ed Ashment and Brent Metcalfe, and Stephen Thompson, and even *Charles Larson* needs to be taken very extremely seriously.

And so, rather than viewing Ritner, Metcalfe and company as mere hacks and hitmen, rather we should be viewing them as our colleagues that are interested in coming to the truth of the matter.  We won't agree with their ultimate conclusions on Joseph Smith's translations, but we ought to come to a consensus with them on the forensic facts of this matter.

Therefore our apologetics ought to be retooled and rooted in that eventual consensus on those facts.  And it is evident already where that consensus will eventually stand.

I don't presume that you, Robert, will agree with my work, and I know that you have issues with the way I do things, and that my work suffers from many imperfections.

But I think that you can see the motivations of my work, in that I am trying to ground myself in the common ground that the positions that Brian Hauglid and the critics share.  And from there, I am trying to make a case for ancient information being transmitted and ancient systems of symbolism being transmitted.  I think that you can probably appreciate that if people don't choose to take my work seriously, that the eventual fact is, they will need to take an approach similar if not identical to mine seriously, even if it is not me, but someone else better qualified than me that makes a case similar to mine.

Edited November 10, 2016 by Ed Goble

[Nevo]

10 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

I generally expect this sort of thing from anti-Mormons who know nothing of Egyptology.  However, as often happens with polemic anti-Mormon pieces, scholars sometimes think that they can make false statements with impunity, and such is the case here with Marc Coenen -- who surely knows that standard Egyptology accepts the fact that late Egyptian papyri often contain more than one text, but that was already an age-old practice.

I assume you have access to Coenen's article, but for the benefit of those who don't, here is the full context of his statement:

Quote

Some writers have suggested that the actual text of the “Book of Abraham” was not inscribed on the fragments rediscovered in 1966, but on a portion of the papyrus scroll still missing. Unquestionably, PJS I, X, and XI were originally longer. A comparison with Papyrus Louvre N 3158, which contains the most complete version extant of the Document of Breathing Made by Isis, indicates that as many as three to four columns of hieratic text may be missing between the end of PJS X and the segment Smith identified as “Book of Abraham” Facsimile 3. The Louvre parallel shows that the content of the missing columns concerns only the afterlife of the deceased and not the narrative found in Smith’s “Book of Abraham.” Finally, some writers have rightly pointed out that papyri from Greco-Roman Egypt are sometimes inscribed with more than one text. No one denies that other funerary and/or ritual compositions were sometimes appended to a Book of the Dead or other funerary compositions. However, concluding that a record of Abraham or any other text foreign to Ptolemaic Egyptian funerary and/or liturgical practice was once attached to the Smith papyri is an assertion not based upon widely accepted Egyptological analysis.

Coenen is not denying that late Egyptian funerary papyri could have other texts appended. But he does say that these were typically "other funeral and/or ritual compositions." I don't see anything in your examples that contradicts this assertion.

 

9 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Like Stephen E. Thompson before him, Woods deliberately avoids dealing with fact that many non-Mormon scholars understand Ur of the Chaldees to be in Northwest Mesopotamia, in the vicinity of Haran, in the area known as Aram Naharaim or Padan Aram, where Abram was born and raised.  For polemic purposes, they instead argue that Ur could only have been in southern Mesopotamia, a highly anachronistic claim, which enables them to correctly claim that there was no direct Egyptian influence in southern Mesopotamia.  Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.

I don't see that Woods has practiced any deception here. He acknowledges that the location of the biblical Ur "remains open for debate" but adds that "the current scholarly communis opinio identifies it with the major southern Babylonian city of Ur (Tell el-Muqayyar)." As far as I can tell, he is correct. You claim that it is "highly anachronistic" to posit the southern Mesopotamia location for Abraham's Ur, but a decent case can nevertheless be made for it (see, e.g., Alan R. Millard, "Where Was Abraham’s Ur? The Case for the Babylonian City," Biblical Archaeology Review 27, no. 3 [May/Jun 2001]: 52-53, 57).

[hope_for_things]

1 hour ago, Ed Goble said:

While it is true that some of the ideological stances contained in Ritner's book are blatantly Anti-Mormon, Brian Haugid for one is taking most of the information and the argumentation in Ritner's book very seriously.  And Brian Hauglid is taking the charges against Kerry Muhlstien's and John Gee's type of apologetics on the Book of Abraham very seriously.

While its true that Brian Hauglid is not necessarily siding with me on the idea that I put forth that the KEP is the reproduction and transmission of ancient information, he is at least of the opinion (which is the same opinion of the critics and of myself) that there was no missing papyrus in modern times, and that Joseph Smith was absolutely responsible for the great majority of information in the Kirtland Egyptian Papers.

Therefore, it won't do to pass off all of the contents of Ritner's work as just hit pieces, but that along with the rest of the information coming from Ed Ashment and Brent Metcalfe, and Stephen Thompson, and even *Charles Larson* needs to be taken very extremely seriously.

And so, rather than viewing Ritner, Metcalfe and company as mere hacks and hitmen, rather we should be viewing them as our colleagues that are interested in coming to the truth of the matter.  We won't agree with their ultimate conclusions on Joseph Smith's translations, but we ought to come to a consensus with them on the forensic facts of this matter.

Therefore our apologetics ought to be retooled and rooted in that eventual consensus on those facts.  And it is evident already where that consensus will eventually stand.

I don't presume that you, Robert, will agree with my work, and I know that you have issues with the way I do things, and that my work suffers from many imperfections.

But I think that you can see the motivations of my work, in that I am trying to ground myself in the common ground that the positions that Brian Hauglid and the critics share.  And from there, I am trying to make a case for ancient information being transmitted and ancient systems of symbolism being transmitted.  I think that you can probably appreciate that if people don't choose to take my work seriously, that the eventual fact is, they will need to take an approach similar if not identical to mine seriously, even if it is not me, but someone else better qualified than me that makes a case similar to mine.

I just wanted to give you some extra Kudos for this approach.  This kind of new apologetics is what I can see working well moving forward for the church.  Really appreciate what you and Brian and others are doing as it comes across much more intellectually honest and doesn't pit the honest critics as anti Mormon, but chooses to engage with them instead.  Love it! 

[Ed Goble]

1 hour ago, hope_for_things said:

I just wanted to give you some extra Kudos for this approach.  This kind of new apologetics is what I can see working well moving forward for the church.  Really appreciate what you and Brian and others are doing as it comes across much more intellectually honest and doesn't pit the honest critics as anti Mormon, but chooses to engage with them instead.  Love it! 

Thanks.  My blog containing the articles and posts that build on this type of approach is found here:

http://egyptianalphabetandgrammar.blogspot.com/

[Robert F. Smith]

3 hours ago, Ed Goble said:

Fair enough, but the evidence in the KEP calls for symbolic interpretations (iconotropy) imposed on pre-existing symbols that were not originally intended to go along with the Book of Abraham, but were used in a different symbological system after the fact.  There is no evidence in the Kirtland Egyptian Papers for a missing papyrus in the day of Joseph Smith.  There is only evidence that Joseph Smith reproduced the type and content of iconotropy used by the ancient priests with these symbols.

Therefore, I think a more parsimonious explanation, to go along with available facts, is that Joseph Smith recieved the content of the Book of Abraham text by revelation, but reproduced by revelation also (separately) the ancient symbolic usage of the Egyptian symbols that the Greco-Roman priests used.  Therefore, the only real "translation" here is not the Book of Abraham text itself, but rather, the transmission of the ancient symbological system used by these priests found in the KEP.  It is the KEP that contains the revelation on this ancient system and its ideosyncratic rules and numerological nuances.  I believe that this is more in line with the evidence, than trying to suggest that Joseph Smith ever had an ancient papyrus in his hands that contained the actual Book of Abraham text.

Yes it is true that in ancient times Abraham actually penned a book, but the contents of that book was delivered to Joseph Smith not by a papyrus containing it, but just by plain old revelation.

So while its possible that there was a missing papyrus in the hands of Joseph Smith, I view this as the less likely scenario.  The actual original missing papyrus has probably been missing since antiquity and was never in the hands of Joseph Smith.

Yes, I am aware of that theory, but think that it assumes a great deal which cannot be proven.  One major problem with that theory is that the available documents were all part of an attempt to create a “cipher-key” for encipherment-by-substitution of portions of Joseph Smith’s revelations then being prepared for publication as the 1835 D&C.  So David J. Whittaker, “Substituted Names in the Published Revelations of Joseph Smith,” BYU Studies 23/1 (Winter 1983):103-112; Christopher C. Smith misses the point in his “The Inspired Fictionalization of the 1835 United Firm Revelations,” Claremont Journal of Mormon Studies, 1/1 (Apr 2011):15-31; Samuel Brown, “Joseph (Smith) in Egypt: Babel, Hieroglyphs, and the Pure Language of Eden,” Church History, 78/1 (Mar 2009):26-65; Howard J. Wing, “Cryptograms from the Fractal Chiasmus of Messianic Speech in the Doctrine and Covenants,” School of Medicine, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, undated; copy in BYU Special Collections, MSS 3776, Box 6, Folder 107.  William W. Phelps began this cipher-key work before the arrival of the Egyptian papyri and mummies in Kirtland, and he was the “dominant force” in continuing that effort – which utilized an already extant, complete Book of Abraham text along with significant portions of already extant revelations (D&C 76 and 88).  The conclusion of Will Schryver is that Joseph Smith received the Book of Abraham via revelation – the same way he received the Book of Mormon and the book of Moses -- which indirectly agrees with part of your theory.

Hugh Nibley, of course, claimed that the “Alphabet & Grammar” was an attempt to “reverse engineer” Champollion-style the meaning of Egyptian characters via comparison with an already extant Book of Abraham text, which is part of what you are also saying, although Nibley is not claiming it to have been revelatory.  In any case, such was valuable to Joseph in trying to read the Kinderhook Plates.

I prefer to take the road more often traveled of documents passed down through time, being recopied and edited, and often translated into a new idiom or language, with new or updated illustrations.  We know that the Egyptians did that all the time, and so did the Jews who were living in Egypt (they remained in Egypt for thousands of years, and even had their temples there).

.

[Robert F. Smith]

4 hours ago, Ed Goble said:

While it is true that some of the ideological stances contained in Ritner's book are blatantly Anti-Mormon, Brian Haugid for one is taking most of the information and the argumentation in Ritner's book very seriously.  And Brian Hauglid is taking the charges against Kerry Muhlstien's and John Gee's type of apologetics on the Book of Abraham very seriously.

I haven't spoken with Hauglid on this subject, but will be interested in reading his comprehensive statement when it appears.  The problem with Ritner is that he has said nothing new, has been deliberately hostile, and what he has said needs to be taken in context with all previous work on the BofA by Hugh Nibley, Mike Rhodes, Val Sederholm, John Thompson (not Stephen), and John Gee, among others..

4 hours ago, Ed Goble said:

While its true that Brian Hauglid is not necessarily siding with me on the idea that I put forth that the KEP is the reproduction and transmission of ancient information, he is at least of the opinion (which is the same opinion of the critics and of myself) that there was no missing papyrus in modern times, and that Joseph Smith was absolutely responsible for the great majority of information in the Kirtland Egyptian Papers.

Therefore, it won't do to pass off all of the contents of Ritner's work as just hit pieces, but that along with the rest of the information coming from Ed Ashment and Brent Metcalfe, and Stephen Thompson, and even *Charles Larson* needs to be taken very extremely seriously.

I knew Chuck Larson at the time when he was putting his book together.  Larson was a stalking horse for the Tanners, and was assisted in great measure by Mike Marquardt, none of these people knowing anything about the ancient Near East or biblical archeology.  Taking a close look at anti-Mormon materials is probably helpful, but not because it throws any light on the ancient world.  Just the opposite.

4 hours ago, Ed Goble said:

And so, rather than viewing Ritner, Metcalfe and company as mere hacks and hitmen, rather we should be viewing them as our colleagues that are interested in coming to the truth of the matter.  We won't agree with their ultimate conclusions on Joseph Smith's translations, but we ought to come to a consensus with them on the forensic facts of this matter.

Therefore our apologetics ought to be retooled and rooted in that eventual consensus on those facts.  And it is evident already where that consensus will eventually stand.

I don't presume that you, Robert, will agree with my work, and I know that you have issues with the way I do things, and that my work suffers from many imperfections.

But I think that you can see the motivations of my work, in that I am trying to ground myself in the common ground that the positions that Brian Hauglid and the critics share.  And from there, I am trying to make a case for ancient information being transmitted and ancient systems of symbolism being transmitted.  I think that you can probably appreciate that if people don't choose to take my work seriously, that the eventual fact is, they will need to take an approach similar if not identical to mine seriously, even if it is not me, but someone else better qualified than me that makes a case similar to mine.

Finding a sound forensic-scientific basis for all this is a worthy objective, but I am not so sure that any sort of consensus can be reached -- unless we hew to standard Egyptology and standard ancient Near Eastern studies.

[Ed Goble]

1 hour ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Yes, I am aware of that theory, but think that it assumes a great deal which cannot be proven.  One major problem with that theory is that the available documents were all part of an attempt to create a “cipher-key” for encipherment-by-substitution of portions of Joseph Smith’s revelations then being prepared for publication as the 1835 D&C.  So David J. Whittaker, “Substituted Names in the Published Revelations of Joseph Smith,” BYU Studies 23/1 (Winter 1983):103-112; Christopher C. Smith misses the point in his “The Inspired Fictionalization of the 1835 United Firm Revelations,” Claremont Journal of Mormon Studies, 1/1 (Apr 2011):15-31; Samuel Brown, “Joseph (Smith) in Egypt: Babel, Hieroglyphs, and the Pure Language of Eden,” Church History, 78/1 (Mar 2009):26-65; Howard J. Wing, “Cryptograms from the Fractal Chiasmus of Messianic Speech in the Doctrine and Covenants,” School of Medicine, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, undated; copy in BYU Special Collections, MSS 3776, Box 6, Folder 107.  William W. Phelps began this cipher-key work before the arrival of the Egyptian papyri and mummies in Kirtland, and he was the “dominant force” in continuing that effort – which utilized an already extant, complete Book of Abraham text along with significant portions of already extant revelations (D&C 76 and 88).  The conclusion of Will Schryver is that Joseph Smith received the Book of Abraham via revelation – the same way he received the Book of Mormon and the book of Moses -- which indirectly agrees with part of your theory.

Hugh Nibley, of course, claimed that the “Alphabet & Grammar” was an attempt to “reverse engineer” Champollion-style the meaning of Egyptian characters via comparison with an already extant Book of Abraham text, which is part of what you are also saying, although Nibley is not claiming it to have been revelatory.  In any case, such was valuable to Joseph in trying to read the Kinderhook Plates.

I prefer to take the road more often traveled of documents passed down through time, being recopied and edited, and often translated into a new idiom or language, with new or updated illustrations.  We know that the Egyptians did that all the time, and so did the Jews who were living in Egypt (they remained in Egypt for thousands of years, and even had their temples there).

.

I see that you have come up with some other sources that have made the same types of assumptions that William Schryver has made about the KEP, that it is a modern cipher that takes modern material and uses ancient symbols as a way to have a substitution cipher for this.  Does this mean that William Schryver is not the inventor of this concept?  It would seem so, and that he ultimately derived his ideas from these other people that were using the symbolic names and so forth in the Doctrine and Covenants as a substitution cipher of this sort.

I am well aware that certain minute portions of the KEP derive from Phelph's "Pure Language" key.  Nevertheless, the pure language key is the same thing, where Phelps was trying to identify Adamic symbols.  But you see, there is no evidence that Phelphs invented this concept, but that he ultimately got his Adamic symbols and their interpretations from Joseph Smith as well.  And there is no evidence that Phelps himself was the one making the meaning assignments, but that his meaning assignments were also ancient.  There is no reason that what is going on with this pure language key should be conflated with the idea of the substituted names.  Just because names were substituted as sort of a modern substitution cipher doesn't mean that what is going on in the KEP or in the pure language key ought to be conflated with it.

Actually, no, Joseph Smith in all cases was the dominant force, regardless of what Phelps was trying to do.

Notwithstanding the fact that minute portions of the KEP originated with the symbols from the pure language key, the fact remains that there is no reason to assume that any of the meaning assignments are modern attempts at a modern cipher key, either in the KEP, or in the pure language key.

You have sort of misunderstood my work like so many people have.  I don't know how I can put it any differently.  You say that I am trying to "reverse-engineer" Champollion style the meaning of Egyptian characters.  Not at all.  This type of thing keeps coming up over and over in these threads.  Please understand.  The general meaning of these Egyptian characters are already known, and therefore, there is no need to reverse-engineer them in this way at all.  Read my words carefully and try to understand.

I have stated that I have tried to reverse-engineer what is going on in the Kirtland Egyptian Papers.  This is not in the rediscovery of missing meanings.  This is in the demonstration of logical pairings between Egyptian Symbols and meanings present in the KEP.

In other words, what I'm trying to do is to show how the meanings in the English part of the KEP tie in with the already-known meanings of the Egyptian characters, and how those linkages are appropriate.  I am trying to demonstrate the how the linkages in the pairings between symbols and the meanings are ancient.  In other words, the Egyptological meaning of characters is well-known.  What is not so obvious is how the KEP meaning assignments relate and are linked to the Egyptological meanings of the characters.  I am reverse-engineering this in the sense that I am making plain and explaining how these meanings in the KEP relate to or are linked to the regular well-known Egyptian meanings of the symbols.  I am making plain why the symbols were chosen to decorate the ancient concepts that they are made to be linked to in the English text explanations for the characters.  This is much different from what Nibley believed, or what Champollion was trying to do.  In other words, using an Egyptian character as a decoration for a concept is different than trying to say that the character actually means that concept literally.

I am not trying to show that these characters actually mean what the KEP says they mean.  Rather, I am trying to show why a character was assigned as a decoration to a certain concept.  Not that the character itself inherently has the meaning of the concept.

Multiple times I have tried to explain this in various ways, using for example, acrostics for the most simple type of example.

Acrostics have a letters of the alphabet employed in a clever fashion, and applies each one as a decoration to a certain portion of text.  That doesn't mean that the text accompanying the character is a literal meaning of the character.  There is merely a clever linkage between those two things that made the decoration appropriate.  Just because that character decorates that text that accompanies it doesn't mean that the letter actually literally means what the text says that accompanies it.  Rather, it means that there is something clever that links the character to the text, and by this clever linkage, the symbol becomes an appropriate decoration for the text.  This is similar to how a clever linkage in an acrostic is that the first letter that the text starts with makes the letter an appropriate decoration for the text, because that text starts with that letter.  

Therefore, the KEP in most cases provides pairings of English text with Egyptian symbols, but the arrangement for these pairings has not much to do with an original, literal Egyptian meaning.  Everyone thinks that this implies that the symbol takes on the literal definition of the text that accompanies it.  No.  This is essentially the same as Iconotropy, where the original meaning of the character is mostly irrelevant to the pairing, but that a new, clever, customized type of arrangement is made between the character and the text or idea it is assigned to.  The pairing was made because of some other type of clever linkage, not a literal meaning.  In most cases, there is a thematic pairing in the KEP between the text and the symbol that was used to decorate that text.  It doesn't mean that the Egyptian character literally has the meaning of the text it is paired with.  It only means that there was a clever linkage between the two that was artistic.  And therefore, these are decorations.

And I am saying that ancient people did these types of pairings, and I have evidence for it.  It doesn't mean that I am reverse-engineering some ancient generalized meaning for these characters.  This is an extremely isolated system to these documents.

Edited November 10, 2016 by Ed Goble

[Robert F. Smith]

4 hours ago, Nevo said:

..............................................................

Coenen is not denying that late Egyptian funerary papyri could have other texts appended. But he does say that these were typically "other funeral and/or ritual compositions." I don't see anything in your examples that contradicts this assertion.

If you ignore the standard fact that all sorts of various types of texts were being placed on available papyri, then of course he might have a point.  I don't see how old military dispatches are compatible with magic spells (one of my examples), but that sort of thing was all too common.  Coenen would be far more generous in his scholarship if he were not doing an attack on the Mormons.  The main point to be derived from all this is that there is no legitimate reason to deny that a Jewish scribe could have recopied the latest version of the BofA text on a Sensen papyrus.  Especially since 40% of Sensen papyri have other texts thereon.  Does that make sense?

4 hours ago, Nevo said:

I don't see that Woods has practiced any deception here. He acknowledges that the location of the biblical Ur "remains open for debate" but adds that "the current scholarly communis opinio identifies it with the major southern Babylonian city of Ur (Tell el-Muqayyar)." As far as I can tell, he is correct. You claim that it is "highly anachronistic" to posit the southern Mesopotamia location for Abraham's Ur, but a decent case can nevertheless be made for it (see, e.g., Alan R. Millard, "Where Was Abraham’s Ur? The Case for the Babylonian City," Biblical Archaeology Review 27, no. 3 [May/Jun 2001]: 52-53, 57).

Millard is a great scholar and his POV ought to be given its due, especially in a context in which Jews in the Babylonian captivity (1500 years after Abram) are adding glosses of that sort to the Hebrew biblical text.  Jews of that time no doubt also misunderstood the meaning of the text and assumed that it referred to southern Mesopotamia.  Real history is a far different matter, and it makes no rational sense to posit Abram coming from southern Mesopotamia at any time for any reason.  Millard admits that there is no "certainty" to opting for a southern Ur.  In such a case, it might be well to examine the biblical text itself for clues:

Deuteronomy 26:5 “my father was a wandering Aramaean” (Judith 5:6-7).  The Patriarchs consistently refer to and return to their Aramaic homeland – Aram Naharaim “Aram of the Two Rivers” = Paddan Aram “Road/Garden of Aram” (Gen 24:10), i.e., the region in and around the two rivers, the Euphrates and Habur Rivers in north Syria, where both Harran, and probably Ur, were located.  Indeed, this area of Naharaim is referred to extra-biblically only in the 14th century BC Amarna Letters, and not at all in the 1st millennium BC.  The late Ephraim Speiser addressed the implicit anachronism of having Abraham born in Ur of southern Mesopotamia – and at a time when Chaldeans were not there:        

Quote

The one fact beyond serious dispute is that the home of the patriarchs was in the district of Haran, and not at Ur.  According to [Gen 12:1, 5], Haran was Abraham’s birthplace.  The toponymic models for the names of Abraham’s close relatives have been found in Central Mesopotamia (see above).  And the cultural background of many of the later patriarchal narratives is intimately tied up with the Hurrians of Haran and the regions nearby rather than with the Sumerians and Babylonians in the south.  Thus Ur proves to be intrusive in this context, however old that intrusion may have been.  -- Speiser, Genesis, Anchor Bible 1 (Doubleday, 1964), 80.

KJV Chaldeans is a translation of Hebrew Kaśdim = LXX Greek Χαλδαίοι (= Akkadian kaldu), and the eponym Keśed has the same consonants as the Hebrew ethnicon.  This is important since (in Gen 22:22) Abraham’s brother Nahor is depicted as the father of both Aram and Chesed – transparent eponyms for the West Semitic tribes which eventually moved into south Mesopotamia at least a thousand years later.  -- Speiser, Genesis, 167n. 

Moreover, many of Abraham's eponymous kin are to be found in Aram of the Euphrates-Habur River area:
1.  Nahor (Nahur, Til-Nahiri),
2.  Serug (Sarugi, Sürüç),
3.  Terah (Til-Turahi/Til-ša-Turahi),
4.  and even Abram himself (Abrum),
5.  while his son & grandson maintain intimate connections with their presumably Amorite (∼"Aramaean") kin in that very region.  For example, Abraham sent his servant back to his homeland  (Ur) to find a wife for Isaac, i.e., to Laban in Paddan-Aram (Gen 24:4,10, 28:2-7).  His grandson Jacob also went to Laban for a wife, and later crossed the Euphrates to get back to Canaan (Gen 31:21) – something unnecessary, if he were coming from southern Ur in Iraq a thousand miles away –  already on the west bank of the river.  The Bible and archeology leave no room for a southern Ur.

[Robert F. Smith]

1 hour ago, Ed Goble said:

..................................

..........................................  You say that I am trying to "reverse-engineer" Champollion style the meaning of Egyptian characters.  Not at all.  This type of thing keeps coming up over and over in these threads.  Please understand.  The general meaning of these Egyptian characters are already known, and therefore, there is no need to reverse-engineer them in this way at all.  Read my words carefully and try to understand.

I have stated that I have tried to reverse-engineer what is going on in the Kirtland Egyptian Papers.  This is not in the rediscovery of missing meanings.  This is in the demonstration of logical pairings between Egyptian Symbols and meanings present in the KEP.

What I actually said was:  "Hugh Nibley, of course, claimed that the 'Alphabet & Grammar' was an attempt to 'reverse engineer' Champollion-style the meaning of Egyptian characters via comparison with an already extant Book of Abraham text, which is part of what you are also saying, although Nibley is not claiming it to have been revelatory.  In any case, such was valuable to Joseph in trying to read the Kinderhook Plates."  You might try to "Read my words carefully," Ed.

1 hour ago, Ed Goble said:

...........................................................................................

And I am saying that ancient people did these types of pairings, and I have evidence for it.  It doesn't mean that I am reverse-engineering some ancient generalized meaning for these characters.  This is an extremely isolated system to these documents.

I have no problem with you laying out your theory, nor with you attempting to provide specific examples of how your theory works in practice, and I think that providing illustrations is a good idea.  By all means do so.

[Ed Goble]

1 hour ago, Robert F. Smith said:

What I actually said was:  "Hugh Nibley, of course, claimed that the 'Alphabet & Grammar' was an attempt to 'reverse engineer' Champollion-style the meaning of Egyptian characters via comparison with an already extant Book of Abraham text, which is part of what you are also saying, although Nibley is not claiming it to have been revelatory.  In any case, such was valuable to Joseph in trying to read the Kinderhook Plates."  You might try to "Read my words carefully," Ed.

I have no problem with you laying out your theory, nor with you attempting to provide specific examples of how your theory works in practice, and I think that providing illustrations is a good idea.  By all means do so.

What part of what you said did I not understand then?  You say that I should also read your words carefully as well.  Yes, we ought to precisely understand each other.

You are saying that it is part of what I am also saying.  What then does that mean to you precisely?  Because to me you are saying yet again like Cinepro in all the rest of these recent threads on the BOA/KEP, that I believe that paragraphs of text are jammed into a character, and that the meaning of Egyptian characters are not what Egyptologists say they are.  This is not what I believe at all.

I'll repeat myself again.  Previously in this same thread, I gave the simple example of how the reed character (egyptian letter I) was used in the KEP.  To an Egyptologist, it means simply a reed as a pictograph.  As a letter, in Egyptian, it is basically a uniliteral vowel, when you are spelling something out, with the I sound.

I explained before that in the Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar in the KEP, it is assigned the meaning of "Land of the Chaldees."  This is gobbldy-gook to an Egyptologist who may be looking at this entirely from his point of view.  As southern Babylonia had a place name of "Land of Reeds," then immediately the connection between the pictographic usage of this becomes clear.  Is there anything in the reed character itself that inherently suggests that in every case in every Egyptian book that exists that the character ought to be interpreted "Land of the Chaldees"?  Of course not.  Because it should not be.  Generally, it is ONLY either a reed, or it is the letter I.  Yet, here, there is an exception to this, because a very specific usage for this is applied here.  There is a very specific assignment for this character here, in only this one context, to decorate or accompany the idea of "Land of the Chaldees" by virtue of a thematic connection, where the underlying place name meaning "Land of Reeds" shares the specific idea of "reed" with this abstract pictograph.

This is what I mean by "clever linkage."  Nobody was suggesting that in every instance the reed pictograph means "Land of the Chaldees."  But the reason for using it to accompany the concept of "Land of Reeds" is abundantly clear.   Because it is appropriate, because it shares that theme.  This is the type of system I am talking about.  It is dependent on a very precise dependency here.  Outside of the KEP, it is just the regular old reed pictograph.  Inside the KEP, it decorates something that has to do with reeds.  There is no indication that the KEP was trying to say that it ought to always be understood to be "Land of the Chaldees."  But the fact that the people that created this association knew that the "Land of the Chaldees" was the land of reeds, being southern Babylonia, shows that they not only knew this ancient place-name, but they also knew the Egyptian meaning of the reed pictograph.  Yet Joseph Smith knew neither of these facts.

I repeat myself yet again that if I have a character that in its usage becomes abstract like a variable, it is practically an empty template until someone assigns it to some sort of usage to decorate something so that is a nice picture to go along with this thing.  In this case, it is merely lined up with text that it shares a theme with.  And therefore, it is a decoration to it rather than a classic definition.  This is Iconotropy, yet it is still linked to the actual, classic Egyptological meaning of the character.  This is evidence that an ancient person created this association between this character and the concept that it is lined up with, and that Joseph Smith merely transmitted this information.  This is the fundamental system, yet it is different from people's classic assumption of how this works.

And it happens to be the same exact system of how the Iconotropy in the symbols work in the facsimiles too.  The symbol for Khnum-ra in Facsimile 2 has a theme of creation, because he is the God of Creation.  This character becomes an appropriate decoration for the concept of creation in general, which it shares with Kolob, which is the first creation.  Therefore, this decoration is a nice picture to use for Kolob.  Outside of the Facsimiles and their explanations, nobody would suggest that we ought to interpret Khnum-ra as Kolob in every Egyptian document where the symbol for him is found.  But it is appropriate in this system, because there was the clever linkage.  And so, there is no literal translation going on here in either of these cases.  But this is the way each and every symbol in the KEP and in the Facsimiles is employed, in every single case.  It doesn't matter if it is a big picture of something like Facsimile 2 Figure 1, or a little character that is also a picture of something like a reed, but that is normally thought of as an alphabetic/text uniliteral character.  In this case, somebody in ancient times decided to employ it different from the way it is used in a text.  And therefore, this is appropriate for this particular usage in these particular cases.  In any other case, outside of this context, not so much.  This is the fundamental system.  And this is why, these things are decorations with thematic linkages with the things that they decorate.  They are not suggesting that they ought to be translated literally in this case, but that they just have this clever connection, that is a type of very specific iconotropy.  There is no suggestion that it is a generalized phenomenon in all Egyptian literature.

Edited November 11, 2016 by Ed Goble

[Robert F. Smith]

4 hours ago, Ed Goble said:

................................................................................................................

And it happens to be the same exact system of how the Iconotropy in the symbols work in the facsimiles too.  The symbol for Khnum-ra in Facsimile 2 has a theme of creation, because he is the God of Creation.  This character becomes an appropriate decoration for the concept of creation in general, which it shares with Kolob, which is the first creation.  Therefore, this decoration is a nice picture to use for Kolob.  Outside of the Facsimiles and their explanations, nobody would suggest that we ought to interpret Khnum-ra as Kolob in every Egyptian document where the symbol for him is found.  But it is appropriate in this system, because there was the clever linkage.  And so, there is no literal translation going on here in either of these cases.  But this is the way each and every symbol in the KEP and in the Facsimiles is employed, in every single case.  It doesn't matter if it is a big picture of something like Facsimile 2 Figure 1, or a little character that is also a picture of something like a reed, but that is normally thought of as an alphabetic/text uniliteral character.  In this case, somebody in ancient times decided to employ it different from the way it is used in a text.  And therefore, this is appropriate for this particular usage in these particular cases.  In any other case, outside of this context, not so much.  This is the fundamental system.  And this is why, these things are decorations with thematic linkages with the things that they decorate.  They are not suggesting that they ought to be translated literally in this case, but that they just have this clever connection, that is a type of very specific iconotropy.  There is no suggestion that it is a generalized phenomenon in all Egyptian literature.

I prefer a completely rational analysis based on standard Egyptology and standard ancient Near Eastern scholarship:

Register 1 of the Shishak Hypocephalus (Book of Abraham facsimile 2) is identified by Joseph Smith’s explanation in part as, 

    a.  Kolob,
    b.  signifying the first creation,
    c.  nearest to the celestial,
    d.  or the residence of God.
    e.  First in government,

In Book of Abraham 3:3, “the name of the great one is Kolob, because it is near unto me”; 3:9, “Kolob is set nigh unto the throne of God”; 3:16, “Kolob is the greatest of all the Kokaubeam . . , because it is nearest unto me.”  These repeated and specific references to the meaning of Kolob (even referring to it as one of the Hebrew Kokaubeem "stars") amplify the explanatory phrases in Fac. 2:1, “nearest to the celestial,” and Fac. 2:2, “near to the celestial,” and provide excellent justification for J. M. Sjodahl’s comparison with an Arabic word derived from the same root as Kolob, though we may appeal here more directly to the theophoric Hebrew epithet, Qarob “The-Near-One” (Psalm 119:151 ∥152 Qedem “The-Primeval-One”; cf. Pss 69:19, 74:12, 145:18; Arabic Qarib is cognate), which appears in the common qutl-form at Qumran (qwrb “midst”; 11QMelch 1:10 = Psalm 82:1; for Aramaic qrb see 1QapGen 22:18).  The word also appears in Akkadian and Ugaritic, but it is in Arabic that we find the root split into two variants, QLB/QRB, with closely related connotations.  Moreover, the -R- and -L- are regular dialectical variants in ancient Egyptian and Coptic – serving to tell us from which part of Egypt a word was most likely to have come.  The usage of these terms was certainly compatible with the usage of Kolob throughout the Book of Abraham.  Moreover, S. A. B. Mercer correctly identified this figure as the seated ram-god, Khnum-ʼAmun-Reʻ. Theodule Devéria, though unable to name this ram-god, was able to note the quadrapartite intent of the original (following Champollion), who may have been thinking of Janus quadrifons of ancient Rome.  He was also Reʿ of Memphis, the Sun-god (Speleers terming it “the soul of Re and his three forms”), and this Khnemu, the ram-headed Creator-Sun-god who sits with knees raised, as on the place of prominence on the Metternich Stele, can have either two or four heads – two heads being, artistically, as good as four.  Khnum, a member of the Enneads of Abydos and Philae, Lord of Antinoë (Hr-wr), the Ram (bЗ) of Mendes (Mntw), and living soul (bЗ) of Reʿ, was “the builder of men, maker of gods, and the father from the beginning.”  Khnum was the “maker of that which is, creator of what shall be, the beginning of beings, father of fathers, and mother of mothers,” shown as if a human with one or more rams’ heads, wearing a crown with horns, plumes, uraei, and disks (the triple diadem of the gods), and holding the  ʿnh, wЗś, and dd scepters (supporting heaven on four such pillars of scepters).

Kolob as “nearest to the celestial, or the residence of God,” is a fully Semitic as well as Egyptian term, though I ought to mention here that the notion of gods living in the sky was familiar to Egyptians from early times (cf. Pyramid Texts 251,357,531,882,929,935, 1364,1707,1295, etc.), as in Mesopotamia.  In Ugaritic, one finds qrb, “midst,” used to refer directly to the abode of ʼEl, i.e., the “cosmic mountain” known as Zaphon or HUR.SAG (= Huršan), as being in the “midst of the source of the Two Deeps.”  Of course, the Egyptian temple as the residence of the god was symbolic in the very sense described, as Klaus Baer made clear, but it was a regular function of temples throughout the ancient Near East to bridge the gap between the celestial and earthly spheres.

According to Jaroslav Černý, the Egyptians saw the stars as divine beings.  The Stars were divided into two main groups: ihmw-sk, “Indestructible-stars, Circumpolar-stars” ∥ʿЗw, “Great-ones, Circumpolar-stars” (Pyramid Texts 405a, 733, 782, 1123, 2051; Coffin Text I, 271), both being identical with Hebrew kokabe-'El, “Stars of God, Circumpolar-stars” (Isaiah 14:13 ∥II Nephi 24:13), symbolizing “eternity,” and identical with “the Mount of Council” or “Mt. Zaphon,” and referring to the Supreme Council of God and to his throne (Psalms 48:3, 148:3; cf. the “great one” in Enuma Elish V:1, and in Abraham 3:3).  

[hope_for_things]

17 hours ago, Ed Goble said:

Therefore, the KEP in most cases provides pairings of English text with Egyptian symbols, but the arrangement for these pairings has not much to do with an original, literal Egyptian meaning.  Everyone thinks that this implies that the symbol takes on the literal definition of the text that accompanies it.  No.  This is essentially the same as Iconotropy, where the original meaning of the character is mostly irrelevant to the pairing, but that a new, clever, customized type of arrangement is made between the character and the text or idea it is assigned to.  The pairing was made because of some other type of clever linkage, not a literal meaning.  In most cases, there is a thematic pairing in the KEP between the text and the symbol that was used to decorate that text.  It doesn't mean that the Egyptian character literally has the meaning of the text it is paired with.  It only means that there was a clever linkage between the two that was artistic.  And therefore, these are decorations.

And I am saying that ancient people did these types of pairings, and I have evidence for it.  It doesn't mean that I am reverse-engineering some ancient generalized meaning for these characters.  This is an extremely isolated system to these documents.

I have a non-scholarly question for you, about this approach.  I think I understand your explanation for what you are doing.  It sounds creative, and I'm wondering what the underlying theological implications of your theory are?  Are you saying that because you have evidence that other ancient cultures did these decorative creative parings, and if you find evidence of this happening with the BoA and the KEP, that this loose parallelism is evidence that the there is a connection between the papyrus and an actual person named Abraham that lived 2000 years before the papyrus was produced?

[Ed Goble]

51 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

I have a non-scholarly question for you, about this approach.  I think I understand your explanation for what you are doing.  It sounds creative, and I'm wondering what the underlying theological implications of your theory are?  Are you saying that because you have evidence that other ancient cultures did these decorative creative parings, and if you find evidence of this happening with the BoA and the KEP, that this loose parallelism is evidence that the there is a connection between the papyrus and an actual person named Abraham that lived 2000 years before the papyrus was produced?

No.  There is just evidence that Egyptian Priests or Jewish Egyptians or some sort of Egyptian Gnostics or Syncretists of some sort adapted these things to the story of Abraham.

[Ed Goble]

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Edited November 11, 2016 by Ed Goble

[hope_for_things]

12 minutes ago, Ed Goble said:

No.  There is just evidence that Egyptian Priests or Jewish Egyptians or some sort of Egyptian Gnostics or Syncretists of some sort adapted these things to the story of Abraham.

Ok, but you're saying the Papyrus contains an adapted story of Abraham, that is somehow loosely connected to myths about Abraham that were passed down over the years.  Do you see this as conflicting with the catalyst theory, or bolstering that theory?

Are you trying to say that Joseph non only received the BoA text through direct revelation, but that there was some ancient story of Abraham preserved in the papyrus and that looking at the decorative themes a person could objectively find the parallels to Abraham?  Is this unique to these funerary scrolls, or could a person do this same kind of comparison with other funerary texts from the same time period and find similar loose decorative parallels to the story of Abraham?  I'm not trying to be dismissive, I just wonder how your theory would hold up to scrutiny.  

[Ed Goble]

15 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

Ok, but you're saying the Papyrus contains an adapted story of Abraham, that is somehow loosely connected to myths about Abraham that were passed down over the years.  Do you see this as conflicting with the catalyst theory, or bolstering that theory?

Are you trying to say that Joseph non only received the BoA text through direct revelation, but that there was some ancient story of Abraham preserved in the papyrus and that looking at the decorative themes a person could objectively find the parallels to Abraham?  Is this unique to these funerary scrolls, or could a person do this same kind of comparison with other funerary texts from the same time period and find similar loose decorative parallels to the story of Abraham?  I'm not trying to be dismissive, I just wonder how your theory would hold up to scrutiny.  

I didn't say that the Papyrus contains an adapted story of Abraham.  The Papyrus doens't contain anything like that.

The papyrus in this approach is an empty template that is dependent on outside information to give it meaning, because the meaning applied to it is not what it originally or inherently contained.

I'm saying that people applied these stories it.  It doesn't contain them itself.  There is a distinction there.

This isn't the catalyst theory but it could be thought of as compatible with it.

Try to understand this concept.  This has to do with not what the papyrus contains or what the papyrus originally was used for.  Rather, it is how later people used it (i.e. adapted it for use to), and what they used it for that matters here.  They didn't encode the Book of Abraham in it or put his story in it somehow.  They used these pictures in a different way than they were intended before.  Its like using a picture of Superman to represent Jesus Christ.  Superman isn't Jesus Christ and there is nothing in a picture of Superman that encodes the meaning of Jesus Christ in it.  But they are Savior figures, and to use Superman symbolically for Jesus Christ even though the inventors of Superman didn't intend it that way, is entirely acceptable because its my own thing if I do that..  The fact that Superman can be used as a symbol for Jesus is because the two have attributes in common.

Edited November 11, 2016 by Ed Goble

[hope_for_things]

3 hours ago, Ed Goble said:

I didn't say that the Papyrus contains an adapted story of Abraham.  The Papyrus doens't contain anything like that.

The papyrus in this approach is an empty template that is dependent on outside information to give it meaning, because the meaning applied to it is not what it originally or inherently contained.

I'm saying that people applied these stories it.  It doesn't contain them itself.  There is a distinction there.

This isn't the catalyst theory but it could be thought of as compatible with it.

Try to understand this concept.  This has to do with not what the papyrus contains or what the papyrus originally was used for.  Rather, it is how later people used it (i.e. adapted it for use to), and what they used it for that matters here.  They didn't encode the Book of Abraham in it or put his story in it somehow.  They used these pictures in a different way than they were intended before.  Its like using a picture of Superman to represent Jesus Christ.  Superman isn't Jesus Christ and there is nothing in a picture of Superman that encodes the meaning of Jesus Christ in it.  But they are Savior figures, and to use Superman symbolically for Jesus Christ even though the inventors of Superman didn't intend it that way, is entirely acceptable because its my own thing if I do that..  The fact that Superman can be used as a symbol for Jesus is because the two have attributes in common.

Thanks for the clarifications Ed, this helps.  We know Joseph and the early Mormon's applied these stories, but are you suggesting that some other people more anciently would have applied these stories to the papyrus, (ruling out the authors of the papyrus itself).  

Lastly, can you expand on the theological implications of this approach.  You said its compatible with the catalyst theory, and I'm wondering what you believe this adds to the overall perspectives about the BoA.  If you've addressed this on your web site, just let me know which link.  Thanks much!

[Ed Goble]

50 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

Thanks for the clarifications Ed, this helps.  We know Joseph and the early Mormon's applied these stories, but are you suggesting that some other people more anciently would have applied these stories to the papyrus, (ruling out the authors of the papyrus itself).  

Lastly, can you expand on the theological implications of this approach.  You said its compatible with the catalyst theory, and I'm wondering what you believe this adds to the overall perspectives about the BoA.  If you've addressed this on your web site, just let me know which link.  Thanks much!

Yes, precisely.  People separate from the creators of the document, after the fact, applied the stories anciently, which is the knowledge transferred by Joseph Smith into our day.

It is compatible with the catalyst theory, because it makes sense why Joseph Smith sensed something "Abrahamic" about these symbols without that being literal.  Because for these people, at one time, they used them this way.  Therefore, from this standpoint, he understood their ancient usage, and didn't make that up, and that could have been why they may have been functional as a "catalyst" in receiving revelation on the Book of Abraham text.

This isn't really anything new theologically, because there are many things like this in the Scriptures with the way prophecy and symbolism work in the regular Jewish scripures.  For example, if we look at the scriptural use of "Babylon," there is a literal Babylon, and then there are many symbological uses for Babylon that all seem to share the theme of a kingdom or state of evil of some sort.  Babylon can mean ancient Rome when it was Anti-Christian.  It can mean the "Great and Abominable Church" in general.  It can mean the early apostate Christian entities that removed contents from the scriptures that the Book of Mormon talks about.  It can mean the people that led the Jewish nation at the time that killed Jesus.  It can mean Anti-Mormons.  It can mean Hell.  It can mean the Kingdom of the Devil in any gang or mafia, or evil governments in the world.  Babylon becomes an "abstract" symbol in this way that is dependent on something outside of the original meaning for it, when given a specific usage, yet it is still a literal place in the ancient world.

The same thing for Zion or the "Kingdom of God."  This can be the Church.  This can be a state of mind.  This was the Salt Lake Valley for the early pioneers.  This was Jerusalem for the Jews.  This will be the New Jerusalem in the Millennium.  There is nothing new here theologically.

Therefore, for ancient people to use the Egyptian figure of Osiris for a symbol for Abraham, is like us using Superman for Jesus, as I mentioned before.  You can swap in and out these meaning assignments.  Its all contextual.  It requires an assignment of meaning on a symbol that is otherwise an empty thing with a very general meaning that takes on more specific meanings given to it by contextual usage.

This is important because people have been so critical of the use of the symbols in the Sensen Papyrus as they are used in the Kirtland Egyptian Papers, because some of these symbols are just Egyptian letters (which incidentally are also little pictures of things), but they were used in this same specialized way as the big pictures in the Book of Abraham facsimiles.  And therefore, this sort of de-couples us from the expectation that the Sensen Papyrus had to be a text only, and could have no other usage the way Anti-Mormons are insisting.  This means that there is nothing wrong with this secondary way that these symbols were employed where the Kirtland Egyptian Papers show these characters with strange, irregular meanings being attached to them.  When we realize that there is a non-conventional usage of these symbols, and it is the same way that Babylon or Zion is used in the scriptures, suddenly it all makes sense, and there is no more mystery to it.  The accusations of Anti-Mormons melt away, because we can then realize that Joseph Smith never made the claim that this system of using these symbols this way was the same way of translation where the document translates as a "text."
 

Edited November 11, 2016 by Ed Goble

[hope_for_things]

1 hour ago, Ed Goble said:

Yes, precisely.  People separate from the creators of the document, after the fact, applied the stories anciently, which is the knowledge transferred by Joseph Smith into our day.

It is compatible with the catalyst theory, because it makes sense why Joseph Smith sensed something "Abrahamic" about these symbols without that being literal.  Because for these people, at one time, they used them this way.  Therefore, from this standpoint, he understood their ancient usage, and didn't make that up, and that could have been why they may have been functional as a "catalyst" in receiving revelation on the Book of Abraham text.

This isn't really anything new theologically, because there are many things like this in the Scriptures with the way prophecy and symbolism work in the regular Jewish scripures.  For example, if we look at the scriptural use of "Babylon," there is a literal Babylon, and then there are many symbological uses for Babylon that all seem to share the theme of a kingdom or state of evil of some sort.  Babylon can mean ancient Rome when it was Anti-Christian.  It can mean the "Great and Abominable Church" in general.  It can mean the early apostate Christian entities that removed contents from the scriptures that the Book of Mormon talks about.  It can mean the people that led the Jewish nation at the time that killed Jesus.  It can mean Anti-Mormons.  It can mean Hell.  It can mean the Kingdom of the Devil in any gang or mafia, or evil governments in the world.  Babylon becomes an "abstract" symbol in this way that is dependent on something outside of the original meaning for it, when given a specific usage, yet it is still a literal place in the ancient world.

The same thing for Zion or the "Kingdom of God."  This can be the Church.  This can be a state of mind.  This was the Salt Lake Valley for the early pioneers.  This was Jerusalem for the Jews.  This will be the New Jerusalem in the Millennium.  There is nothing new here theologically.

Therefore, for ancient people to use the Egyptian figure of Osiris for a symbol for Abraham, is like us using Superman for Jesus, as I mentioned before.  You can swap in and out these meaning assignments.  Its all contextual.  It requires an assignment of meaning on a symbol that is otherwise an empty thing with a very general meaning that takes on more specific meanings given to it by contextual usage.

This is important because people have been so critical of the use of the symbols in the Sensen Papyrus as they are used in the Kirtland Egyptian Papers, because some of these symbols are just Egyptian letters (which incidentally are also little pictures of things), but they were used in this same specialized way as the big pictures in the Book of Abraham facsimiles.  And therefore, this sort of de-couples us from the expectation that the Sensen Papyrus had to be a text only, and could have no other usage the way Anti-Mormons are insisting.  This means that there is nothing wrong with this secondary way that these symbols were employed where the Kirtland Egyptian Papers show these characters with strange, irregular meanings being attached to them.  When we realize that there is a non-conventional usage of these symbols, and it is the same way that Babylon or Zion is used in the scriptures, suddenly it all makes sense, and there is no more mystery to it.  The accusations of Anti-Mormons melt away, because we can then realize that Joseph Smith never made the claim that this system of using these symbols this way was the same way of translation where the document translates as a "text."
 

I find what you're doing interesting and creative, yet I'm not sure I understand how you're attempting to connect the dots between these ancient people applying Abrahamic stories to their funerary texts, and how that translates Joseph's interpretations of the text.  What evidence connects the Joseph Smith interpretations to an specific ancient interpretation, other than pure speculation.  To apply your example of ancient people looking at Osiris as a symbol for Abraham, what evidence is there that any ancient person looked at Osiris in this way?  

I can't comment on whether you are onto something with respect to the small symbols taking on a larger meaning as not just text only, but as symbols with greater meaning.  It would be interesting to know if Egyptologists would accept this kind of expansion from just textual translations.  

Lastly, this may be an oversimplification, but I'm thinking that the way your describing what Joseph and the early Mormons were doing in the KEP as a sort of modern prooftexting.  Just ignoring the original historical context and meanings of the papyrus and finding an alternate symbolism that doesn't necessarily tie in any way to the original author's intent.  They essentially could take any ancient writing and do the same thing, the source material wouldn't matter as there would be no limits on the creative interpretations as they have no connection with the original writing.  Is this right?