clarkgoble Posted June 15, 2017 Posted June 15, 2017 (edited) 1 hour ago, cinepro said: Do you believe the name of character in figure 2 is "given in the characters above his head"? If it's Isis then yes. I don't read Egyptian so I'm just going by what people are saying. I'm just saying that if we're looking at what Joseph Smith meant we have to look at the hermetic views of Egypt that were part and parcel of his masonic background. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermeticism I don't think you can really understand Joseph's conception of Egypt independent of that tradition. This is a separate question from how well his finished claims on Abraham and Egypt line up with history. The description in Abraham 3 lines up very much with the gnostic, hermetic and merkabah tradition of heavenly ascents/descents. The two are tied together since, especially in the hermetic tradition, you could only ascend as you understood how the soul descended by understanding its pre-existence as partially divine. This in turn was tied to astrology in the hermetic tradition. Again to re-emphasize the use of the vignette by Joseph Smith claiming to be an illustration for the text is directly about Abraham 3. Thus the meaning Joseph gives to the vignette (again independent of whether it's correct) is best seen in terms of the hermetic and late platonic conceptions of Egypt especially as found in the Hermetic corpus and Iamblichus. (Both of which were widely read at Joseph's time and that Joseph appears to borrow language from) Now of course there are big differences in Abraham 3 from the hermetic corpus. While you have the stars which are tied to divine beings you don't have the particular numbers from that tradition of the decans for instance. You do have the stars as governors (especially in the use by Joseph of the hypocephalus) but not quite the way either Iamblichus or the corpus hermeticum has it. You don't have spirits animating statues. And so forth. Edited June 15, 2017 by clarkgoble
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