Missing Papyrus Theory

[CA Steve]

On 5/9/2020 at 10:10 AM, OGHoosier said:

Facsimile 1 was glazed, but Facsimiles 2 and 3 were not, even though we know that Facsimile 2 had a large lacuna and was not in the best of shape. That's confusing. The rationale for glazing some papyri did not seem to be that of preservation nor doctrinal significance, but it might shed light on how Joseph and his intimate associates viewed different parts of the papyri.

How do we know that Fac#2 & #3 were not glazed?

[nuclearfuels]

On 4/28/2020 at 5:54 PM, Rivers said:

On 4/28/2020 at 5:17 PM, Fair Dinkum said:

For me the BoA doesn't need to be divine to be considered scripture.

Something can be scripture and not divine? Interesting.

I think theories about Jesus in India prior to his ministry and the splinters of truth we see in other religions, non-Christian and Christian, are divine or at least are trailing clouds of divinity/inspiration. Hortizontal Revelation is a phrase I recently learned abotu in a zoom EQ meeting which might better describe what I'm referencing. Having been outside of EQ for abotu 10 years due to other callings, it's nice to see it's changed from purgatory-lite to a more engaging dialogue

[Rivers]

On 5/10/2020 at 8:50 PM, CA Steve said:

How do we know that Fac#2 & #3 were not glazed?

All this talk about glaze is making me crave Krispy Kreme’s.

[InCognitus]

27 minutes ago, Rivers said:

All this talk about glaze is making me crave Krispy Kreme’s.

I kept thinking the same thing, except for me it was glazed Krispy Kremes for my mummy on mummies day.

[OGHoosier]

On 5/10/2020 at 10:50 PM, CA Steve said:

How do we know that Fac#2 & #3 were not glazed?

They don't appear among our current collection of papyri. The papyri fragments that we have are separated from the scrolls and several parts of the papyri that we have match descriptions of glazed slides. I'm looking through the sources but for now it doesn't appear that Facsimiles 2 and 3 were among them. 

[CA Steve]

42 minutes ago, OGHoosier said:

They don't appear among our current collection of papyri. The papyri fragments that we have are separated from the scrolls and several parts of the papyri that we have match descriptions of glazed slides. I'm looking through the sources but for now it doesn't appear that Facsimiles 2 and 3 were among them. 

So we do not know whether or not they were glazed, correct? 

 

[OGHoosier]

1 hour ago, CA Steve said:

So we do not know whether or not they were glazed, correct? 

 

Not decisively, but they aren't anywhere indicated as being part of the glazed slides. 

[CA Steve]

1 hour ago, OGHoosier said:

Not decisively, but they aren't anywhere indicated as being part of the glazed slides. 

We don't know decisively or otherwise. Inferences drawn from a lack of evidence are pure speculation.

We do not have any contemporary observations that give any indication what was on the missing sections of the papyri other than ordinary funerary papyri. So while all parties agree that we don't have the all the Egyptian artifacts, nothing more can be inferred from that other than we are missing a portion of those artifacts. At best we can look at the hand copied 8 sheets of material in the KEP labeled "Valuable Discoveries" and consider what they thought was important  that we are now missing. All of that material is just hand drawn copies of ordinary funerary documents too. See Valuable Discovery. What appears to be the most important to them back then based on contemporary descriptions, items they copied and translation attempts in the KEP is found within the extant pieces.

Edited May 14, 2020 by CA Steve

[OGHoosier]

1 hour ago, CA Steve said:

We don't know decisively or otherwise. Inferences drawn from a lack of evidence are pure speculation.

We do not have any contemporary observations that give any indication what was on the missing sections of the papyri other than ordinary funerary papyri. So while all parties agree that we don't have the all the Egyptian artifacts, nothing more can be inferred from that other than we are missing a portion of those artifacts. At best we can look at the hand copied 8 sheets of material in the KEP labeled "Valuable Discoveries" and consider what they thought was important  that we are now missing. All of that material is just hand drawn copies of ordinary funerary documents too. See Valuable Discovery. What appears to be the most important to them back then based on contemporary descriptions, items they copied and translation attempts in the KEP is found within the extant pieces.

With respect to the July 1835 "Valuable Discovery" notebook, there's only 3 pages with writing on them. Most of the notebook is entirely blank. There's only two hieroglyphs associated with Egyptian text in there, providing the information about Katumin, daughter of Onitas. This can perhaps be connected to Abraham 1:11 - Onitas and Onitah are similar. That's the entirety of the information contained in this little book, aside from some copied characters with notes on their location. The name "Valuable Discovery" itself likely does not refer to the contents of the notebook, since it comes from the title "Valuable Discovery of hiden reccords that have been obtained from the ancient buring place of the Egyptians" on the notebook cover. It's referring to the records in total, not the specific entries therein. If the notebook was intended to contain the most important discoveries, that plan was changed, because from what I can gather Katumin was not the most important product of the papyri in the eyes of the Kirtland brain trust. I think that the parts which Joseph considered most important were the things he published - the Facsimiles, which he purposefully associated with the Abrahamic text in full view of the world. If Joseph were singling out papyri for display based on sacredness or the importance of preservation, naturally I'd expect those to be on the top of the list. The fact that they are missing causes me to wonder why. 

[Rivers]

After reading through the comments on this thread and looking more into the arguments from both sides, I remain partial to the catalyst theory.  
 

I view the Book of Abraham as a continued expansion of the Bible that began with the JST.  It is clear to me from facsimile #2 that JS was no translator of Egyptian.  This had been acknowledged out over a hundred years ago as Terryl Givens points out.  
 

So from a believing perspective it all comes down to the product rather than the production.  Is the text we now have inspired scripture or not?   
 

 

[Latter Day Data]

11 hours ago, OGHoosier said:

With respect to the July 1835 "Valuable Discovery" notebook, there's only 3 pages with writing on them. Most of the notebook is entirely blank. There's only two hieroglyphs associated with Egyptian text in there, providing the information about Katumin, daughter of Onitas. This can perhaps be connected to Abraham 1:11 - Onitas and Onitah are similar. That's the entirety of the information contained in this little book, aside from some copied characters with notes on their location. The name "Valuable Discovery" itself likely does not refer to the contents of the notebook, since it comes from the title "Valuable Discovery of hiden reccords that have been obtained from the ancient buring place of the Egyptians" on the notebook cover. It's referring to the records in total, not the specific entries therein. If the notebook was intended to contain the most important discoveries, that plan was changed, because from what I can gather Katumin was not the most important product of the papyri in the eyes of the Kirtland brain trust. I think that the parts which Joseph considered most important were the things he published - the Facsimiles, which he purposefully associated with the Abrahamic text in full view of the world. If Joseph were singling out papyri for display based on sacredness or the importance of preservation, naturally I'd expect those to be on the top of the list. The fact that they are missing causes me to wonder why. 

Joseph Smith III actually described what happened to the papyrus which was said to contain the writings of Abraham. He started from when Joseph first obtained the papyri and mummies, and continued until it was sold which he says was by William Smith when he was hard up. According to JSIII (see Fourth Meditation), when Joseph found it with the mummies, it was wrapped in a roll with some other papyrus (it makes sense it would be anciently bundled together with the Hor  Breathing Permit, since that was where the scribe made a restored version of the Facsimile 1 illustration, intended to accompany it). He describes chronologically what happened to it. 

[smac97]

8 hours ago, Rivers said:

After reading through the comments on this thread and looking more into the arguments from both sides, I remain partial to the catalyst theory.  

I view the Book of Abraham as a continued expansion of the Bible that began with the JST.  It is clear to me from facsimile #2 that JS was no translator of Egyptian.  This had been acknowledged out over a hundred years ago as Terryl Givens points out.  

So from a believing perspective it all comes down to the product rather than the production.  Is the text we now have inspired scripture or not?   

I'm open to that possibility.  D&C 7 really opens up the possibilities, doesn't it?

Thanks,

-Smac

[OGHoosier]

9 hours ago, Rivers said:

After reading through the comments on this thread and looking more into the arguments from both sides, I remain partial to the catalyst theory.  
 

I view the Book of Abraham as a continued expansion of the Bible that began with the JST.  It is clear to me from facsimile #2 that JS was no translator of Egyptian.  This had been acknowledged out over a hundred years ago as Terryl Givens points out.  
 

So from a believing perspective it all comes down to the product rather than the production.  Is the text we now have inspired scripture or not?   
 

 

I too am open to that possibility, but I do retain a fondness for the Semitic redactor model. Robert Smith's work has moved me in that regard. It''s entirely possible that, per D&C 7, Joseph saw a vision of those same facsimiles in their redacted form. However, I can't deny the possibility of missing documentation. 

That said, there are some curious oddities regarding this particular papyrus. This Book of the Dead does not seem like it's up to code, especially since we know this particular priest was buried with two of them. It wouldn't surprise me if a syncretic Hor wanted to take a copy of the Abrahamic texts with him into the afterlife, just in case, and altered this copy of the Book of the Dead with references to a separate Abraham text. D. Charles Pyle has some interesting thoughts on the matter here. 

Edit: I'm not sure where he gets his scroll length calculations, as I haven't been able to get in touch with him in order to ask. But I find the Facsimile 1 analysis quite interesting. 

Edited May 14, 2020 by OGHoosier
Added note on scroll length, changed plurality of papyrus