Royal Skousen and the facsimiles in the Book of Abraham.

[rjohnson7]

Posted 20 minutes ago (edited)

  3 hours ago, rjohnson7 said:

Do you  believe in the long scroll theory or just the small amount we have recovered as the Book of Abraham?  

 

LDS Church states.... “The book of Abraham…was canonized as part of the Pearl of Great Price in 1880. The book originated with Egyptian papyri that Joseph Smith translated beginning in 1835. Many people saw the papyri, but no eyewitness account of the translation survives, making it impossible to reconstruct the process. Only small fragments of the long papyrus scrolls once in Joseph Smith’s possession exist today. The relationship between those fragments and the text we have today is largely a matter of conjecture.“

Expand  

Do you have bad eyesight?  If not, can you avoid the larger font, please? My eyesight isn’t great, so I understand needing to make adjustments, but if it is just your preference, change would be appreciated.  It’s quite annoying and makes it harder to read the regular stuff as it keeps drawing attention.  

 

So sorry, I do it for my own benefit... why do they even have these tools to enlarge if they irritate some?  I'm not here to start a argument and I hope you feel the same way... 

[mfbukowski]

1 hour ago, rjohnson7 said:

  3 hours ago, rjohnson7 said:

LDS Church states....

The LDS Church also states that:

  Quote

According to this view, Joseph’s translation was not a literal rendering of the papyri as a conventional translation would be. Rather, the physical artifacts provided an occasion for meditation, reflection, and revelation. They catalyzed a process whereby God gave to Joseph Smith a revelation about the life of Abraham, even if that revelation did not directly correlate to the characters on the papyri.

In other words, the English text of the Book of Abraham doesn't (according to the Church) have to have anything to do with the papyri. The long scroll theory, or whatever other theory you might have about the relationship between the English text and the Egyptian materials is, in that sense, irrelevant.

 

I'm just interested, do you believe that their was a long scroll that  got burned in the Chicago fire...?

 

Yes the super bold is uncalled for, but it seems obvious to me that Joseph was not translating the Egyptian.

So what else is new.?

We must get free from Fundamentalism, and concentrate on the CONTENT and what we can learn from the symbols provided 

[Benjamin McGuire]

2 hours ago, rjohnson7 said:

I'm just interested, do you believe that their was a long scroll that  got burned in the Chicago fire...?

There was almost certainly some material (perhaps quite a bit of material) that was destroyed in the Chicago fire. I have no expectations on how much material is missing. Whether or not there was a longer part from which the fragments we have were cut is speculative. The evidence is interesting. In particular, I think that Gee's arguments about Seyfarth's translation of that text is fascinating. Back in 2011, the measurements taken of the existing papyri indicated a much longer roll than Andrew Cook and Chris Smith argued. But, ultimately, I think that it isn't particularly relevant to the question of the Book of Abraham (others will disagree with me, I am sure). So, what this means for for the English Book of Abraham is ... well nothing at all. I am aware of all of the arguments that have been published (and some that haven't) about the possible length of the scroll. I just don't find it very useful in the context of discussions about the English text of the Book of Abraham.

Most of my conclusions come from the English text itself and the manuscript copies in the KEP. Manuscript evidence suggests that chapters 1-3 was completed some time before chapters 4-5. Chapters 4 and 5, of the Book of Abraham, are texts that are a reworking of Genesis 1-2. We can put an earliest date for the translation of 4:2, for example, on the way that it renders the Hebrew tohu wabohu. BoA 4:2 reads:

And the earth, after it was formed, was empty and desolate, because they had not formed anything but the earth; and darkness reigned upon the face of the deep, and the Spirit of the Gods was brooding upon the face of the waters.

The King James version reads (Gen. 1:2):

And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

Now why the differences? The 1834 edition of Joshua Seixas's Hebrew Grammar on page 78 provides a vocabulary of the first few verses of Genesis 1. And what do we find?

tohu: empty

wabohu: desolate

Joseph translate the Hebrew from Genesis 1:2 here in the same way that Joshua Seixas (his Hebrew instructor in Kirtland) did. But there are other similarities. One of the more interesting things to read in Abraham 4 is verse 4 -

"and they divided the light, or caused it to be divided, from the darkness."

This is such an odd statement, really from any standpoint. It offers two readings of the text. One of those readings is a causative statement. This would occur with the hiphil form of the word (in the Hebrew). The hiphil form of the word doesn't occur in Genesis 1:2, but it does occur in 1:14. And you can see how Joseph engages that understanding of the hiphil form in 1:14. The Genesis text gives us: "And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night;" while the Book of Abraham has for this text: "And the Gods organized the lights in the expanse of the heaven, and caused them to divide the day from the night." This understanding is put back on to Abraham 4:2, not as a replacement reading, but as a supplemental reading: "divided the light, or caused it to be divided." This is a conjectural emendation of the Hebrew text of Genesis 1:2. The Seixas grammar discusses the hiphil form and its application on page 15. The point of this is that this is produced some time after Joshua Seixas teaches Joseph Smith and his associates to read Hebrew in early 1835 in Kirtland. I think that the KEP suggests that Joseph and his associates were using Hebrew to evaluate the English text. And these points lead me away from the conclusion that the text was a translation of some Egyptian papyri.

So, no matter how long the missing papyri was that the fragments we have came from, I do not expect to find on it a source for the English Book of Abraham.

[rjohnson7]

Thx you so much, I have been a member for 65 plus years, joining when I was 11 yrs old.   I'm the Elders Quorum President as we speak and also very much a traditionalist who is not much in favor for our recent progressive historians starting with  Lenard Arrington,  Richard Bushman and others, of course I'm not much of a fan of Vogel either.    My issue mostly is about the seer stone in a hat  versus the translation by means of the Urim and Thummim.   To many members are leaving for reasons that include money digging, seer stone, etc.   What is your opinion of progressives versus traditionalist.... you seem to maybe think JS use the seer stone in a hat!  Love to hear back from you..

Richard.. 

[rjohnson7]

  Quote

According to this view, Joseph’s translation was not a literal rendering of the papyri as a conventional translation would be. Rather, the physical artifacts provided an occasion for meditation, reflection, and revelation. They catalyzed a process whereby God gave to Joseph Smith a revelation about the life of Abraham, even if that revelation did not directly correlate to the characters on the papyri.

In other words, the English text of the Book of Abraham doesn't (according to the Church) have to have anything to do with the papyri. The long scroll theory, or whatever other theory you might have about the relationship between the English text and the Egyptian materials is, in that sense, irrelevant.

 

I'm just interested, do you believe that their was a long scroll that  got burned in the Chicago fire...?

 

Yes the super bold is uncalled for, but it seems obvious to me that Joseph was not translating the Egyptian.

Sorry again, but this is my modus operandi 

 

So what else is new.?

We must get free from Fundamentalism, and concentrate on the CONTENT and what we can learn from the symbols provided 

[rjohnson7]

According to this view, Joseph’s translation was not a literal rendering of the papyri as a conventional translation would be. Rather, the physical artifacts provided an occasion for meditation, reflection, and revelation. They catalyzed a process whereby God gave to Joseph Smith a revelation about the life of Abraham, even if that revelation did not directly correlate to the characters on the papyri.

In other words, the English text of the Book of Abraham doesn't (according to the Church) have to have anything to do with the papyri. The long scroll theory, or whatever other theory you might have about the relationship between the English text and the Egyptian materials is, in that sense, irrelevant.

Thx you, but it does not seem to me that the catalyst theory hold up!   We all know the phrase, by the power and gift of God he translated..... I believe in the long scrolls, but not sure of the means.  We have to suppose that  the Urim and Thummim were not with JS anymore, but he did have a white stone which is not the seer stone or the brown seer stone in a hat which I never believed he used in translating the BOM.   We also know that he had to work it our in his mind, with prayer, revelation, etc. 

 

[Benjamin McGuire]

6 minutes ago, rjohnson7 said:

Thx you so much, I have been a member for 65 plus years, joining when I was 11 yrs old.   I'm the Elders Quorum President as we speak and also very much a traditionalist who is not much in favor for our recent progressive historians starting with  Lenard Arrington,  Richard Bushman and others, of course I'm not much of a fan of Vogel either.    My issue mostly is about the seer stone in a hat  versus the translation by means of the Urim and Thummim.   To many members are leaving for reasons that include money digging, seer stone, etc.   What is your opinion of progressives versus traditionalist.... you seem to maybe think JS use the seer stone in a hat!  Love to hear back from you..

Richard..

I think that there is a lot of room in the Church for a wide range of beliefs. I suspect that most members would consider me to be progressive. I don't think that being a conservative or a progressive member is a bad thing (labels aren't always helpful since sometimes we could be labeled differently for different aspects of our belief). We encounter the gospel through our own experiences. One of the important things for me is to avoid passing judgment on those who don't quite believe the same things that I do. I haven't been a member for as long as you have. My father joined the Church about 10 months before I was born. I am over 50 now. Certainly my views on some things are quite different from my parents and from my children (my grandchildren are very small still).

I believe that Joseph Smith used a stone in a hat as part of his translation process. If I were to discuss the issue in a comparison (especially given the statement that quoted elsewhere from Joseph Fielding Smith), it would start with this question - which is harder to believe? That an angel appears to Joseph Smith, leads him to the gold plates, which Joseph then translates using a pair of crystals set into a set of spectacles, or that Joseph Smith is visited by an angel who leads him to the gold plates, which Joseph then translates using a seer stone in a hat. I think that the hard part of this isn't the manner of translation but is the angel. If we believe that an angel appears, then the rest is just details. And if you don't think that I am presenting you with an accurate view of what happened - I think that this is okay - my goal is not to shake your belief, but to help you understand mine. My deep appreciation of the Book of Mormon is because of what the text tells me and not because of how I understand its origins. I have been discussing Mormonism online since I was a teenager (and the internet was America On Line). I have kept some of my really old material. Reading it makes me cringe today. If you want a sampling of my more recent efforts, you can look here for some of my published papers:

Part of what makes these historical narratives hard for us to believe is that there is a gap between these descriptions and our own experiences. Brigham Young said something really interesting about the translation of the Book of Mormon in a sermon in 1862 -

Quote

When God speaks to the people, he does it in a manner to suit their circumstances and capacities. … Should the Lord Almighty send an angel to rewrite the Bible, it would in many places be very different from what it now is. And I will even venture to say that if the Book of Mormon were now to be rewritten, in many instances it would materially differ from the present translation.

That was only 30 years later. Now, almost 200 years later, I might suggest that if it had happened today, it probably would have occurred in a completely different manner - because both the delivery of the revelation and its content would be given to us in a way that would suit our circumstances and our capacities. Don't get me wrong, the same sorts of things that make you uneasy also made many of the early Latter-day Saints uneasy. The reason why the term Urim and Thummim became so popular so quickly after William Phelps suggests it in 1833 was because it restructured those early narratives in biblical terms - made it more palatable to those who didn't have the same circumstances and capacities as Joseph Smith and his family.

One of the challenges of our traditional views is that they are themselves a sort of mythology that developed over time. One of the best things that happened to the Church (for its histories and historians) was the Joseph Smith Papers published by the Church, where hundreds of thousands of pages of original documents were given to us in a publicly accessible form, and trained historians can now review all of that documentation to come to a better understanding of the Church. One of the things that is clear is that the Church and its teachings have changed over time. We could hardly call the LDS Church a living church if it didn't change or grow.

[Benjamin McGuire]

21 minutes ago, rjohnson7 said:

Thx you, but it does not seem to me that the catalyst theory hold up!   We all know the phrase, by the power and gift of God he translated..... I believe in the long scrolls, but not sure of the means.  We have to suppose that  the Urim and Thummim were not with JS anymore, but he did have a white stone which is not the seer stone or the brown seer stone in a hat which I never believed he used in translating the BOM.   We also know that he had to work it our in his mind, with prayer, revelation, etc. 

Just one comment on this. The first time that Joseph Smith uses that phrase - "by the gift and power of God," he does so after he has completed the translation. And while we have put the text of the Book of Mormon in chronological order in terms of its content, the last part of the Book of Mormon that was translated was 1 and 2 Nephi through Words of Mormon. In The Book of Omni, which was just at the very end of that translation, Joseph Smith reads this (1:20):

Quote

And it came to pass in the days of Mosiah, there was a large stone brought unto him with engravings on it; and he did interpret the engravings by the gift and power of God.

This is the source of Joseph's statement about translating by the Gift and Power of God. He wasn't making a description of what he did so much as trying to place what he did into a context. And part of this was necessary for his own development. At first, the only thing that Joseph saw himself doing was finishing this translation. By the time it is done, he has a small group that is working with him - and they form a Church. And Joseph goes from simply being a translator of the text to being the leader of a religious movement. His using this phrase is part of the way in which he is re-understanding his role.

The thing about the long scroll is this - it is a way of trying to understand how the Egyptian papyri that we have could both be the literal source of the Book of Abraham as well as being something that clearly isn't the Book of Abraham. The arguments about this idea are often technical, and they involve some understanding of Egyptian funerary texts. I am not an Egyptologist. So I need to rely on the expertise of others. What I am able to do, though, is to read the text of the Book of Abraham, and try to understand it - and if the text reveals something to me, that makes it valuable whether or not the text is an actual translation of an Egyptian text, or whether it is a revealed history that contains a great deal of theological discussion. It wouldn't bother me to discover that there was more to the Egyptian papyri than we have now. But, it also wouldn't bother me if there wasn't - because my understanding isn't built on top of the issue of how it came to be. Instead I work the other way - I start with the text and engage the text through close reading.

The LDS Church has put forward both discussions - not because it necessarily favors one over the other, but because the Church has accepted the text as scripture. The LDS Church is a church of converts (you are example, so are my parents) - and the thing about tradition is that converts don't come with tradition. This approach allows more members to find an understanding they can accept so that they can get to the important stuff - which is the text itself.

[rjohnson7]

 

19 hours ago, rjohnson7 said:

Actually that is not correct:  Here it is in full context:  

Joseph also showed the white stone to the Twelve Apostles when they met together, followed by a speech that described the white stone as his own personal stone. Brigham Young recorded, “I met with the Twelve at brother Joseph’s. He conversed with us in a familiar manner on a variety of subjects, and explained to us the Urim and Thummim, which he found with the plates, called in the Book of Mormon the Interpreters.”

Young also declared that Joseph “showed us his stone.” Joseph then explained “that every man who lived on the earth was entitled to a seer stone, and should have one, but they are kept from them in consequence of their wickedness, and most of those who do find one make an evil use of it.”

It was much easier to live and believe in LDS Doctrine in my days. Chuckle, mostly you just followed the Prophet and did not question the History of the Church, now days you have to deal with the CES letter and LDS Professors and Authors who definitely want to teach and push "The New Mormonism".  Do you know what "The New Mormonism" is?  Its dangerous and many who follow it are having faith crisis and leaving the Church... and yes, as a Ward Leader I have bothersome questions as to why they are doing this...  You seem rock solid in your testimony and have put scripture before doubt... good for you and I commend you for that.   In the Last Days there will be many false prophets and many will be led away...

 

Richard. 

 

[Tweed1944]

Do you think Joseph Smith was aware that the hypocephalus was not unique and multiple copies existed.

 

[rjohnson7]

2 minutes ago, Tweed1944 said:

Do you think Joseph Smith was aware that the hypocephalus was not unique and multiple copies existed.

 

Personally, I don't know, Joseph Smith was being taught by angels and other resurrected beings. 

[Tweed1944]

One Egyptologist on KerryM  sacrifice

'

And yes, as for human sacrifice, many of us have never stopped believing that human sacrifice happened, myself included —during the 1st Dynasty especially as sacrificial burials of fellow courtiers, and just recently proved for the 17th Dynasty of foreign (?) enemies. But most smiting motifs suggest the practice continued ritually, and we just haven’t found the evidence. Such human sacrifice would have looked nothing like the sacrifice on a funerary bier as presented in the Book of Abraham because that funerary bier comes from the mummification from a book of breathing. 

 

[Calm]

18 minutes ago, Tweed1944 said:

One Egyptologist on KerryM  sacrifice

'

And yes, as for human sacrifice, many of us have never stopped believing that human sacrifice happened, myself included —during the 1st Dynasty especially as sacrificial burials of fellow courtiers, and just recently proved for the 17th Dynasty of foreign (?) enemies. But most smiting motifs suggest the practice continued ritually, and we just haven’t found the evidence. Such human sacrifice would have looked nothing like the sacrifice on a funerary bier as presented in the Book of Abraham because that funerary bier comes from the mummification from a book of breathing. 

 

You need to include references, names of the expert and not just post a comment. 

[Tweed1944]

Gee did a review of Tamas Mekis book on the hypocephalus.

My source said "They shouldn’t even allow Gee to write reviews given his religious assumptions and biases. BiOr should know better, but Europeans don’t understand the LDS entanglement with Egyptology. Please tell Tamas Mekis to just disregard the review."

[InCognitus]

3 hours ago, Tweed1944 said:

Gee did a review of Tamas Mekis book on the hypocephalus.

My source said "They shouldn’t even allow Gee to write reviews given his religious assumptions and biases. BiOr should know better, but Europeans don’t understand the LDS entanglement with Egyptology. Please tell Tamas Mekis to just disregard the review."

Funny, my source said your source doesn't know what they're talking about (I can play this game too ).  

[Tweed1944]

I could ask for permission to mention their name. They said they don't like to gaslight Muhlestein and Gee. 

[Benjamin McGuire]

So, @Tweed1944, I'll ask again. If the Church has embraced (at least the possibility of) the catalyst theory, then why does anything that you post here really matter? And for that matter, how does any of it have anything to do with Royal Skousen's opinion (that you brought up in the OP)? It feels to me as if, not getting the response you wanted in the OP, you simply derailed your own thread into pointless discussion.

[InCognitus]

2 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

you simply derailed your own thread into pointless discussion.

The word "discussion" should be changed to monologue (in my opinion).  I have noticed very little engagement. 

[Tweed1944]

deleted

Edited September 4, 2023 by Tweed1944
finish

[Calm]

40 minutes ago, Tweed1944 said:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YnxOSS15dzVdFbhiCmfFeGGbBDHthzHK4YWFILNdM14/edit

Gee's review

Who posted this in Google docs?

[Tweed1944]

Someone emailed me a copy and I created a google doc to share it. I shared with our Egyptologist contact and that was her response. It was in a journal that I imagine few people would have access to. If that is a problem I can delete it. I use google docs to share emails, letters etc 

[Calm]

4 hours ago, Tweed1944 said:

Someone emailed me a copy and I created a google doc to share it. I shared with our Egyptologist contact and that was her response. It was in a journal that I imagine few people would have access to. If that is a problem I can delete it. I use google docs to share emails, letters etc 

Seems like a violation of copyright, which this site generally abides by, see the guidelines.

I am not sure how far Fair Use allows sharing articles for reviews, but the entire document seems unlikely.

Edited September 4, 2023 by Calm