Transcript for Tim Barker's FAIR Talk on the Book of Abraham Translation is up at FAIR

[Kevin Christensen 5,617]

This one is notable and very much worth the read. 

https://www.fairmormon.org/conference/2020-fairmormon-conference/the-answer-under-our-heads

For all of the detail, figures, and commentary he provides, at the center of it all is one very clear observation about information provided by Tanner and Heward in an early Dialogue essay claiming that the Book of Abraham is a bogus translation from the Hor Book of Breathings.  Tanner and Heward made the important observation that Joseph Smith directed Rueben Hedlock to fill out gaps in the engraving for Facsimile 3 (the hypocephalus) with some characters from the Hor Book of Breathings and a figure from elsewhere. Unlike the previous 50 years of commentators, Tim Barker notices that while Heward and Tanner match up characters from the Hor Book of Breathings to marginal characters in the Egyptian papers, they did not match up to their influential thesis the fact that Joseph Smith's comments in the annotated portions of the published, reconstructed facsimile plainly show that Joseph Smith openly declares that had expressly NOT translated those characters (taken from the Hor Book of Breathings).  That means that the source of the Book of Abraham must be something else, despite long standing assumptions to that effect by a great many critics.

Jeff Lindsay has a nice post about Tim Barker's talk here.

https://mormanity.blogspot.com/2021/01/a-gift-from-early-anti-mormon-attack-on.html

One thing that I noticed that neither Lindsay or Tim Barker discuss much concerns Joseph's preparation of the incomplete facsimile 2 for publication.  Lindsay includes an illustration where Tanner and Heward noted that the besides characters, image for the solar bark in the upper right panel was taken from other portions of the papyrii that Joseph Smith had in his possion.   Hugh Nibley's collection of other examples of hypocephali in One Eternal Round shows that having that particular figure in that position was particularly apt.  One might even say inspired.

FWIW,

Kevin Christensen

Canonsburg, PA

 

 

 

Edited January 12 by Kevin Christensen