Ritner's response to the Book of Abraham essay

[dberrie2000]

3 hours ago, hope_for_things said:

I really like Hauglid and his approach is refreshing especially for someone employed by the church, he has been much more even handed and respectful than most.  I've listened to a couple podcasts he's been on, they were dated a couple years after this writing that you quote and I think some of his opinions on the subject have changed a little since he wrote that paper but that's just my perspective, you can listen to those podcasts if you're interested, I'm speaking of one on Mormon Matters and one on Mormon Discussion Podcast, let me know if you'd like links.  

I love the LDS people too, I've been on a faith journey in recent years, took a sabbatical from active church attendance and am back to active attendance again, and proactively meeting with leaders in my ward and stake to try and create positive dialogues around helping those in faith crisis, using the new church materials (Gospel Topics essays, JSPP, etc), and loving and supporting those with doubts and questions.  I'd like to think that the church will be better off as it engages with these things at a local level, its apparent to me that the church as an organization is going in this direction, slowly, but deliberately, even if the messages from the 15 aren't often very nuanced or informed about historical controversies.  I have a hope for big tent Mormonism.  

Thanks 

 

Hope--really cool stuff. I know people are appreciative of your efforts--as there are a lot of LDS, and Christians in general--which are passing through a faith crisis. I was amazed to learn from a website that the Southern Baptists have had 8 years of decline--out of the last decade. I live in the South--and thought I would never see that, as they are a strong and a very good people. It kinda discourages me to know that--as most of my family, on my wife's side--are Southern Baptist--and I have an abiding love for Baptists.

So--it's a Christ-like attribute to help people who are struggling. I wish you the best of everything--and pray you will find a joy in your efforts, as I know you will.

As to the clips concerning Hauglid--I would love for you to post me some material--as I am always looking for a good read.

 

 

 

[Robert F. Smith]

23 hours ago, Gray said:

Fascinating stuff. Looks like he was dissecting individual letters and ascribing individual meaning to each fraction of a letter (I think someone already mention that, but I hadn't seen the source material until now). It's like taking the letter B, and saying the vertical line means one phrase, each horizontal line has another meaning, and so forth. I guess that's how you get a paragraphs out of single words. 

Hugh Nibley made the suggestion 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.  Yet Will Schryver has shown that William W. Phelps began some sort of 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 later came to include the Book of Abraham text along with significant portions of already extant revelations (D&C 76 and 88).¹  In other words, this was 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.² Later, when the Kinderhook Plates were brought to Joseph, he used that same key to attempt to decipher them.

 

 

¹  William Schryver, “The Meaning and Purpose of the Kirtland Egyptian Papers,” paper delivered at the 2010 Conference of FAIR, available online at  http://www.fairmormon.org/perspectives/fair-conferences/2010-fair-conference/ 2010-the-meaning-of-the-kirtland-egyptian-papers-part-I (Vimeos at  http://vimeo.com/user439270/ videos/sort:oldest ), citing the May 27, 1835, letter of Phelps to his wife, and the July 17, 1835 History of the Church entry.

²  Cf. 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, online at http://www.academia.edu/2357317/The_Inspired_Fictionalization_of_the_1835_United_ Firm_Revelations  ; 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.

Edited February 17, 2017 by Robert F. Smith

[hope_for_things]

13 hours ago, dberrie2000 said:

Hope--really cool stuff. I know people are appreciative of your efforts--as there are a lot of LDS, and Christians in general--which are passing through a faith crisis. I was amazed to learn from a website that the Southern Baptists have had 8 years of decline--out of the last decade. I live in the South--and thought I would never see that, as they are a strong and a very good people. It kinda discourages me to know that--as most of my family, on my wife's side--are Southern Baptist--and I have an abiding love for Baptists.

So--it's a Christ-like attribute to help people who are struggling. I wish you the best of everything--and pray you will find a joy in your efforts, as I know you will.

As to the clips concerning Hauglid--I would love for you to post me some material--as I am always looking for a good read.

Thanks for your kind words.  Here are those podcasts I was referring to the Mormon Matters one is a panel discussion, and the Mormon Discussion one is a 1 on 1 interview.  

http://www.mormonmatters.org/2014/02/21/213-214-the-book-of-abraham-as-scripture/

http://www.mormondiscussionpodcast.org/2015/01/brian-hauglid-the-book-of-abraham/

[CA Steve]

8 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Hugh Nibley made the suggestion 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.  Yet Will Schryver has shown that William W. Phelps began some sort of 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 later came to include the Book of Abraham text along with significant portions of already extant revelations (D&C 76 and 88).¹  In other words, this was 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.² Later, when the Kinderhook Plates were brought to Joseph, he used that same key to attempt to decipher them.

 

 

 

¹  William Schryver, “The Meaning and Purpose of the Kirtland Egyptian Papers,” paper delivered at the 2010 Conference of FAIR, available online at  http://www.fairmormon.org/perspectives/fair-conferences/2010-fair-conference/ 2010-the-meaning-of-the-kirtland-egyptian-papers-part-I (Vimeos at  http://vimeo.com/user439270/ videos/sort:oldest ), citing the May 27, 1835, letter of Phelps to his wife, and the July 17, 1835 History of the Church entry.

 

²  Cf. 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.

 

Hi Robert,

 

Would you expand some on why you think Christopher Smith misses the point in his article you reference above?

And, do you know, are there anyone versions of that article as well as his The dependence of Abraham 1:1-3 on the Egyptian Alphabet, available online?

 

Thanks

[cdowis]

On 2/16/2017 at 11:49 AM, CA Steve said:

So first let's make sure we are using the word copy in the same sense. All the documents we are looking at are originals. The question, I believe you are asking is whether or not the information on the documents was copied from another source or sources, such as the hypothetical source Dr. Hauglid calls Ab0. By the way, his 2011 book A Textual History of the Book of Abraham: Manuscripts and Editions is a must have for these question. It is one of my favorite Book of Abraham books and really shows the kind of scholarly approach that can be taken by with regard to this subject. It is also a beautiful tome.

 

I believe that Dr. Hauglid is trying to establish the possibility of a preexisting document (Ab0) containing the original translation, a possibility even he calls hypothetical. I believe this an effort to provide a possible alternate explanation as to why the other Book of Abraham manuscripts are showing Egyptian characters in the margins next to the translations which do not have anything to do with the characters. It has been quite a while since I went through the book so for now all I can do is respond in a general sense to what I saw as problems with this theory.

First and foremost is that it is not extant and is completely hypothetical. So it is similar to the missing sections of papyri theory, even if it turned up there is no evidence it would not resemble the texts we currently have. In other words if it suddenly appeared it could very well have the very same characters in the margins to the left of the very same text. One cannot conclude anything about what is on it or how it was written, so in effect it does not add any evidence one way or the other to the problems of the KEP translation manuscripts.

We know exactly where the characters on the extant translation manuscripts can be found on the extant papyri. And they are right where one would expect if one believes that Joseph Smith thought the Hor scroll was the source of the first part of the Book of Abraham. So if there was a preexisting translation that was actually done from some other part of the papyri, why are the scribes trying to reverse engineer a translation from the Hor scroll? It is hard to imagine that sometime during that process Joseph never walked by them and said, "hey guys that isn't the right area, you should be working over here!". When you add to that the fact that all the EAG characters can be found on extant  portions of the papyri, they invested a lot of work into this document, firmly believing they were determining the meaning of these characters. If Joseph actually did translate the Book of Abraham from another missing portion of the papyri, why didn't he at least guide the scribes to those portions where the story of Abraham was written, instead of allowing them to continue on the Hor scroll?

 

Lastly, according to Don Bradley, Joseph himself in 1843 still believed the EAG was useful as a translation device in the Kinderhook plates episode.

So while I understand why Dr. Hauglid is proposing a hypothetical preexisting translation manuscript, I think it raises as many questions as it answers.

This has been proposed already that the Book of Breathings is an extended mneumonic device  from the original record, but, over the cuenturies, it took upon itself a life of its own -- losing the original intent of the document.

You might find the references and discussion of interest.   http://www.mormondialogue.org/topic/62181-tvedtnes-mnemonic-theory-and-book-of-abraham-translation/

The basic paradox of the BOA translation is that the Book of Breathings is NOT the BOA, and is also IS the BOA.  This theory uniquely resolves that paradox.

 

Edited February 17, 2017 by cdowis

[clarkgoble]

3 hours ago, cdowis said:

This has been proposed already that the Book of Breathings is an extended mneumonic device  from the original record, but, over the cuenturies, it took upon itself a life of its own -- losing the original intent of the document.

You might find the references and discussion of interest.   http://www.mormondialogue.org/topic/62181-tvedtnes-mnemonic-theory-and-book-of-abraham-translation/

The basic paradox of the BOA translation is that the Book of Breathings is NOT the BOA, and is also IS the BOA.  This theory uniquely resolves that paradox.

 

It seems to me the big problem with the mneumonic device model is filling in the details. Thus far the theory hasn't really advanced terribly far from when John Tvedtes posed it decades ago. It rather quickly fell out of favor in preference to the missing text model. While I've not really followed the BoA debate much the past 15 years or so, isn't it the case that it's gaining traction again largely over the debate over the scroll size based upon mathematical models of it?

I'll confess that I'm largely going by Kevin's summation of the state of things a few years ago at BCC:

https://bycommonconsent.com/2013/06/27/the-book-of-abraham/

I know things have progressed since then including a publication of the KEP by the Joseph Smith Papers project. I'll confess my relative ignorance as I've just not kept up with things and hadn't even known until recently all this stuff had been published.

As an aside, I've not yet read Hauglid's book. Is it available as an eBook or only the hard cover version? Since I've tried to go eBook only of late to avoid clutter, I confess I find it annoying how many prominent LDS books are available only in hard copy.

Edited February 17, 2017 by clarkgoble

[Robert F. Smith]

6 hours ago, CA Steve said:

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

Would you expand some on why you think Christopher Smith misses the point in his article you reference above?

And, do you know, are there anyone versions of that article as well as his The dependence of Abraham 1:1-3 on the Egyptian Alphabet, available online?

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

See http://www.academia.edu/2357317/The_Inspired_Fictionalization_of_the_1835_United_Firm_Revelations . Chris Smith misses the point in his use of "inspired" fictionalization, when inspiration may not be necessary.  He also misses the point of Phelps' May 26 letter to his wife (which he discusses) in that he does not catch the import of the larger project to encipher and decipher -- before the mummies and papyri arrive in Kirtland, a sequence which Chris ignores and which he glosses over as all one period.  Indeed, in note 31, Chris argues against William V. Smith's notion that Shinehah (BofA 3:13) demonstrates that the BofA already existed in manuscript form -- only because it is absent from KEP.  Yet we have no full manuscript of the BofA.  There must have been one.  How else did it get published?

Similar is his claim that "talent" is anachronistic in an Enoch era revelation (note 35).  Since when is a NT English translation for a measure which goes back to ancient Sumerian times to be considered "anachronistic"?  Sumero-Akkadian gun2, biltum “talent.”

[cdowis]

7 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

It seems to me the big problem with the mneumonic device model is filling in the details. Thus far the theory hasn't really advanced terribly far from when John Tvedtes posed it decades ago. It rather quickly fell out of favor in preference to the missing text model.

Thanks to Gee.
And what happens if that particular model fails?  At the very least, it is rather suspect.  I am still having a problem with Figure 1 being attached to a papyrus unrelated to Abraham, AND it ties up the KEP with a nice bow to tie it all together.

 

While I've not really followed the BoA debate much the past 15 years or so, isn't it the case that it's gaining traction again largely over the debate over the scroll size based upon mathematical models of it?

It is interesting that the mnemonic theory is testable.  Just take a random text of the correct length, and a "test text" with the correct number of words and see what happens when you try to tie the two together, as Tvedtnes was able to do.   Was it just a random coincidence?

 

[dberrie2000]

On 2/17/2017 at 11:27 AM, hope_for_things said:

Thanks for your kind words.  Here are those podcasts I was referring to the Mormon Matters one is a panel discussion, and the Mormon Discussion one is a 1 on 1 interview.  

http://www.mormonmatters.org/2014/02/21/213-214-the-book-of-abraham-as-scripture/

http://www.mormondiscussionpodcast.org/2015/01/brian-hauglid-the-book-of-abraham/

Hey--I missed that. Thanks!

[Meadowchik]

On 08/02/2017 at 7:49 PM, mfbukowski said:

I don't see the problem

It's on the same footing with the Book or Mormon and no Mormon seems to have a problem with that.

If you have a problem with it you should leave the church.   It's that simple.

It's revelation for Pete's sake.  Either you see it as such or not.  No biggie- I cannot even understand the problem.   Yes literalists have gotten it wrong forever.  What else is new?

Could it still be history delivered by revelation?  Of course.  Does knowing the unknowable history matter?  Of course not.

We might as well be arguing about Atlantis and whether or not it is historical.  Who cares?   What can we learn about ourselves by even worrying about whether or not Atlantis was historical?

I am not losing sleep over any of it.  Did Joshua stop the sun?   Did a donkey talk?  Did one man getting crucified save mankind from their sins?

And we are worried about some papyrus?  Give me a break! 

I think it does become a problem when we rely on priesthood revelation and accept it as major directives for our lives, rippling through every aspect and to our fellow man. I think at some point the Church will need to distance itself from a whole bunch of things in order to stand for integrity in a more and more transparent world (at least, to those who are paying attention.)

And it needs to do so especially if it wants to stand up for its values, such as:

1 Valuing human life as divine in origin
2 Our treatment of others as directly linked to our respect of the Divine and ultimately our experience with the Divine
3 Personal choice and personal revelation
4 Forgiveness and repentance bringing us closer to the Truth and the Divine
5 All humanity being connected, the importance of doing right by our ancestors and also our descendents
6 Character being determined based on what one knows, and when we know better, if we're good, we try to do better
7 Family is our first, most important circle of influence, no success can compensate for deliberate neglect of family
8 Learning is essential to personal growth
9 We are stewards of the earth
10 The Divine and portions of Truth can be manifest to some extent in most if not all religions and people.

*Values not necessarily in a particular order.
 

[clarkgoble]

On 2/17/2017 at 9:18 PM, cdowis said:

It is interesting that the mnemonic theory is testable.  Just take a random text of the correct length, and a "test text" with the correct number of words and see what happens when you try to tie the two together, as Tvedtnes was able to do.   Was it just a random coincidence?

Is there such a test? I don't think Tvedtes did it. If you know of one I'd love to look at it. This is why I'm more than a little skeptical of the theory even though there are reasons to think it might have been in Joseph's mind. The Art of Memory was part and parcel of the Masonic worldview that Joseph was exposed to in at least some degree. Further the Alphabet and Grammar appears to use some of Athanasius Kircher's theories along with some aspects of the Art of Memory.

My own working hypothesis (and it's very tentative since I'll fully admit to not being up on all the latest arguments) is that the Alphabet and Grammar represents something started before Joseph began translating the papyri and was more fully developed after the translation was complete. They had a theory about Egyptian being Adam and Eve's language (ala Kircher and certain views in the loose esoteric folk tradition in early America) and were trying to engineer it from what had been revealed.

But again I know lots of stuff has come out the past few years including the scroll size arguments undercutting Gee's views a fair bit. So I don't want to push too much given my relative ignorance.

Edited February 21, 2017 by clarkgoble

[Gray]

46 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

Is there such a test? I don't think Tvedtes did it. If you know of one I'd love to look at it. This is why I'm more than a little skeptical of the theory even though there are reasons to think it might have been in Joseph's mind. The Art of Memory was part and parcel of the Masonic worldview that Joseph was exposed to in at least some degree. Further the Alphabet and Grammar appears to use some of Athanasius Kircher's theories along with some aspects of the Art of Memory.

My own working hypothesis (and it's very tentative since I'll fully admit to not being up on all the latest arguments) is that the Alphabet and Grammar represents something started before Joseph began translating the papyri and was more fully developed after the translation was complete. They had a theory about Egyptian being Adam and Eve's language (ala Kircher and certain views in the loose esoteric folk tradition in early America) and were trying to engineer it from what had been revealed.

But again I know lots of stuff has come out the past few years including the scroll size arguments undercutting Gee's views a fair bit. So I don't want to push too much given my relative ignorance.

Interesting connection:

 

Quote

Between 1650 and 1654, Kircher published four volumes of "translations" of hieroglyphs in the context of his Coptic studies.[13] However, according to Steven Frimmer, "none of them even remotely fitted the original texts".[13]In Oedipus Aegyptiacus, Kircher argued under the impression of the Hieroglyphica that ancient Egyptian was the language spoken by Adam and Eve, that Hermes Trismegistus was Moses, and that hieroglyphs were occultsymbols which "cannot be translated by words, but expressed only by marks, characters and figures." This led him to translate simple hieroglyphic texts now known to read as dd Wsr ("Osiris says") as "The treachery of Typhon ends at the throne of Isis; the moisture of nature is guarded by the vigilance of Anubis"

 

[cdowis]

4 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

Is there such a test?

I proposed this test, but have not done it myself.  I just make a note that, to my knowledge,  it is the only theory that is testable.