Three Book of Abraham questions

[Ed Goble]

On 11/11/2016 at 4:03 PM, hope_for_things said:

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?  

Well, I've spent a long time in the last few days trying to respond to you only now to have this type of criticism from you, as a big slap in the face.  You know, this kind of comment is actually pretty offensive after someone has taken abundant time out of their busy world to answer.  You should have started to read by now the hundreds of blog posts and foundational articles that contain many years of painstaking research to outline all the evidence for this before you started saying absurd things like this that this is "pure speculation" and mere prooftexting.  If you don't want to accept the evidence is one thing.  Not being aware that the evidence exists at all is another, but that is on you, being that it is your problem now, because I put it out for you.  It looks like you didn't even try to look at it.  I'm done replying to you because its now on you to know whether there is evidence.  I have put out the evidence for you to see.  Its on my blog.  Go look at it.  It goes very in depth into these points.  And now it is incumbent on you to refute each and every point all these hundreds of articles and all the accumulated data and prove your accusations.  That is now your burden, or I will consider your comments without foundation.

Edited November 13, 2016 by Ed Goble

[hope_for_things]

On 11/12/2016 at 10:23 PM, Ed Goble said:

Well, I've spent a long time in the last few days trying to respond to you only now to have this type of criticism from you, as a big slap in the face.  You know, this kind of comment is actually pretty offensive after someone has taken abundant time out of their busy world to answer.  You should have started to read by now the hundreds of blog posts and foundational articles that contain many years of painstaking research to outline all the evidence for this before you started saying absurd things like this that this is "pure speculation" and mere prooftexting.  If you don't want to accept the evidence is one thing.  Not being aware that the evidence exists at all is another, but that is on you, being that it is your problem now, because I put it out for you.  It looks like you didn't even try to look at it.  I'm done replying to you because its now on you to know whether there is evidence.  I have put out the evidence for you to see.  Its on my blog.  Go look at it.  It goes very in depth into these points.  And now it is incumbent on you to refute each and every point all these hundreds of articles and all the accumulated data and prove your accusations.  That is now your burden, or I will consider your comments without foundation.

No offense intended at all on my part.  I started looking at your blog and I will dig deeper, and I really appreciate you sharing your work and for answering my earlier questions.  I'm not attempting to refute your theories at a scholarly level, I may or may not find them compelling as I look further, I was merely attempting to understand how you would answer questions that came to my mind as I read through your comments on this message board.  I have no aspirations to be a scholar but I try to be a thoughtful observer that cares about Mormon studies and is interested in what is being written.  

Perhaps you could view my questions in a different light, not as someone attacking your thesis, but as a regular observer, not in either the apologetic or critic camps, I consider myself somewhere in between.  I find that too often both sides get very defensive of their well crafted theories that they aren't able to see things from a different perspective, a perspective that I think is important to consider, to step out of the trench warfare and just talk honestly about what makes sense and what doesn't.  But if that's the end of our back and forth, I understand, and hope there are no hard feelings.  Thanks again! 

Edited November 14, 2016 by hope_for_things