“King Pharaoh, whose name is given in the characters above his head”

[Shulem]

The explanations of the facsimiles are not necessary for my salvation as are teachings and doctrines contained in the Book of Mormon. Besides we don’t even know if Joseph Smith authored them.

The source of the explanations is from that same Spirit and given in the same revelatory manner as always being authored and expressed by Joseph the seer who proudly published them in the Times and Seasons -- he stood by them and presented the translations to the world as revelations from God. They were published and expressed as a scripture-like revelatory restoration to the Church and it was received as such. They were heralded as being just as true as anything written in the Book of Mormon. What Smith considered a truth was part of all truth in one great whole. No truth was less true than another truth! All truth is within the bounds the Lord has set and salvation therefore depends on everything that is true together. Therefore, if it is discovered and proven that one of Smith’s professed truths is found to be untrue then it can be reasoned that there are others that are also untrue -- such as the entire content and fiction of the Book of Mormon which is no truer than the Explanations of the Facsimiles.

[Shulem]

Maybe we shouldn’t be looking at what Egyptians thought Facsimiles meant at all, but rather at how ancient Jews would have interpreted them.

Answers About the Book of Abraham: The Facsimiles and Egyptological Interpretations

Maybe you should stop lying and cease making false narratives for those who are so easily seduced by your craftiness and willingness to deceive at any cost. YOU, Kerry, are a liar. Joseph Smith said nothing about Jews with regard to the Book of Abraham and the translation therein, written and read by Hebrews & Egyptians alike in Abraham’s own time!

Read my lips Kerry:

THERE WERE NO JEWS *WHEN* ABRAHAM PENNED THE PAPYRUS WHICH SMITH DATED AS 3,500 YEARS OLD!

Do you understand that, Mr. Mulhestein? Do you have a brain? Can you count? Listen, not one single Jew existed when Abraham went to Egypt! Smith claimed the papyrus was as old as the Patriarch himself, written by his own hand. Will you circumvent Smith and deny his revelation in dating the papyrus? Repeat after me, Kerry:

JOSEPH SMITH WAS WRONG!

But you have the audacity to say “Maybe we shouldn’t be looking at what Egyptians thought Facsimiles meant at all, but rather at how ancient Jews would have interpreted them”! But according to Joseph Smith and biblical chronology there were no Jews to interpret what Abraham penned by his own hand upon papyrus. Judah had not yet been born! So please, shut up about the Jews! Enough! You’re just trying to fool gullible readers and those who aren’t smart enough to detect your apologetic tricks. But I know your tricks, and I can beat you at your own game, every single time.

Joseph Smith was absolutely adamant about what the Egyptians thought of the Facsimiles in which Abraham was said to produce to commemorate his ministry in Egypt. None of it has anything to do with post-Abrahamic JEWS! The Jews did not exist. The Egyptians and Hebrews in whom Abraham referenced lived in Abraham’s day, a time that predated Isaac and Jacob.

• “Abraham in Egypt”

• “Designed to represent the pillars of heaven, as understood by the Egyptians”

• “in relation to this subject, the Egyptians meant it to signify”

• “which is called by the Egyptians”

• “called by the Egyptians”

• “a numerical figure, in Egyptian”

• “Is called in Egyptian”

• “said by the Egyptians”

• “Signifies Abraham in Egypt”

• “King Pharaoh, whose name is given in the characters above his head”

• “Prince of Pharaoh, King of Egypt, as written above the hand”

[Philo Sofee]

Soooooo, you're saying the prophets and scholars have a chance?

[Shulem]

Soooooo, you're saying the prophets and scholars have a chance?

Actually, mathematically there is 0 chance the Explanations of Facsimile No. 3 are correct translations from Egyptian into English -- ZERO CHANCE! There is absolutely no chance that Joseph Smith got it right. His interpretations and translations of the text and the iconography of this Facsimile are 100% wrong. That does not bode well for his claims to be a prophet and seer and one who has a divine gift to translate ancient languages such as what was illegibly on the gold plates and lest we forget the Kinderhook plates serve as another example of Smith’s translation debacles. No matter how you shake it or slice it, Smith couldn’t translate ancient languages whether they were real or fake.

I testify that Joseph Smith fraudulently claimed to translate conventional Egyptian and he knew he was lying. There is nothing on God’s green earth that can change the reality of the past. Apologists today can imagine whatever they want and create all kinds of silly excuses but in the end the facts speak for themselves and the apologists are left holding an empty bag with absolutely nothing to show for their circus acts.

We win! They lose!

The gig is up. Game over, baby.

[Shulem]

The papyri were created in a day of internationalization in Egypt. They were created in a day when the Egyptians were living among a great number of Greeks and Jews.

Not according to Joseph Smith who dated the papyrus to be 3,500 years old and testified to the world that God had revealed that to him. According to Joseph Smith’s official declaration “three thousand five hundred years” had lapsed since Abraham HIMSELF penned it by his own hand! *THAT* information was given in the spirit of prophecy out of the very mouth of Joseph Smith who bore his personal testimony by the authority of Jesus Christ.

So, Kerry, leave the Greeks and the Jews out of it! They were not even around during Abraham’s time.

[Shulem]

The Egyptians borrowed from both the Jews and the Greeks in their religious and cultic practices and representations, and many Jews were similarly influenced by the Greeks and Egyptians.

Sorry Kerry, but according to Joseph Smith the papyrus written by Abraham’s own hand was “3,500” years old and there were no Jews or Greeks around to influence Abraham or the Egyptians. You are attempting to take the future back into the past in order to rationalize Smith’s false translations.

I know what you’re doing, Kerry. You’re lying.

[Shulem]

Thus we must conclude that the Jews who created or worshipped in these synagogues were using representations from the cultures around them but using and understanding them in their own unique way. Isn’t it possible that this was also done with all three Facsimiles? Couldn’t these all represent a Jewish way of understanding Egyptian style drawings? Shouldn’t we expect that at least some of the large number of Jews in Egypt adopted the Egyptian depictions around them and used them in their own way? Wouldn’t we actually be shocked if this didn’t happen?

Nope.

Joseph Smith said nothing about the Jews or Jewish religion with regard to Abraham’s record “written by his own hand, upon papyrus” and “after a lapse of three thousand five hundred years” Smith translated the very scroll in which Abraham penned.

Kerry, the Jews did not exist in Abraham’s time and Smith never likened the Facsimiles to people who did not yet exist. The Facsimiles according to Smith were a representation of people who lived in Abraham’s own time. You are making stuff up out of thin air and are lying to your readers. You should be ashamed of this kind of apologetic. It’s appalling to say the least.

[Shulem]

“Semitic Adaptation...”

Kevin,

These two facts do exist in which Joseph Smith publicly PROCLAIMED:

• “The writings of Abraham while he was in Egypt, called the Book of Abraham, written by his own hand, upon papyrus.”

• “Besides these tangible facts, so easily proven and demonstrated by simple rules of testimony unimpeached, the art (now lost) of embalming human bodies, and preserving them in the catacombs of Egypt, whereby men, women and children as mummies, after a lapse of near three thousand five hundred years, come forth among the living, and although dead, the papyrus which has lived in their bosoms, unharmed, speaks for them, in language like the sound of an earthquake: Ecce veritas! Ecce cadaveros. Behold the truth! Behold the mummies!”

Let it be plainly understood that according to Joseph Smith the very writings of Abraham, written by his own hand, upon papyrus was on the order of three thousand five hundred years old. Therefore, Barney’s ridiculous apologetic has absolutely no bearing on anything Smith ever taught or claimed with regard to Abraham’s ancient record in which all the early Latter-day Saints (including Smith) believed was a LITERAL 3500 Year Old Abraham Autograph penned by the Patriarch himself.

Game over, Barney. Enough!

[Marcus]

Maybe we shouldn’t be looking at what Egyptians thought Facsimiles meant at all, but rather at how ancient Jews would have interpreted them.

Answers About the Book of Abraham: The Facsimiles and Egyptological Interpretations

this argument is simply bizarre:

...Typically when people have asked what the Egyptians would say these drawings meant, and how this compares with what Joseph Smith said they meant, they actually end up comparing it to what modern Egyptologists say it means. This is, of course, understandable because we do not have access to any ancient Egyptians, and we assume that we modern Egyptologists are reliable replacements.

But we know that we Egyptologists are often wrong regarding what Egyptians would have said on the subject. One study demonstrated that in the few instances where we have found Egyptian labels about various figures in hypocephali (the type of drawing that Facsimile Two is), they most often do not match with what Egyptologists have said they represented.[vi]

Thus it is problematic to look to modern Egyptologists for what ancient Egyptians would have said various drawings represented. As a result, any conclusions reached by making such comparisons must be tentative at best, and should not be the basis for any conclusions regarding larger issues.

Egyptology,,, is the study of ancient Egyptian history, language, literature, religion, architecture and art from the 5th millennium BC until the end of its native religious practices in the 4th century AD. A practitioner of the discipline is an "Egyptologist".

wikipedia

"modern egyptologists" study "ancient Egyptians," but Muhlestein argues it is "problematic to look to modern Egyptologists for what ancient Egyptians would have said..."

unbelievable. How naïve does he think his LDS readership is?

[Res Ipsa]

Rhetorical question, right?