William Schryver wrote:Please do cite the relevant portion of the article where Professor Nibley states that there were non-Egyptian characters used in the A&G.
I’m pressed for time right now, but will quickly note this, that immediately stood out to me in skimming Nibley’s paper (I will read it more carefully later this week when I have time).
Nibley
It was not the habit of Joseph Smith to suppress his revelations. He made every effort to see to it that each excerpt from the book of Abraham was published to the world the moment it was presentable. "One cannot read the pages of the early periodicals of the Church," writes James R. Clark, " . . . without being impressed with the fact that to Joseph Smith, availability of the new revelations of God where people could read them and immediately profit by their instruction was more important than the technicality of having acomplete text of these ancient records at the start . . . " Hence, Clark notes, it was his custom to publish them in the form of extracts as he went along.30
Indeed. Why would Smith decide to suppress this revelation – the portion of the Book of Abraham on the KEP - by putting it in a secret code, in contradiction with his other past behavior?
Now to Will's question:
My question wasn’t limited to the A&G, but rather the entire KEP. Clearly he knew there were nonEgyptian characters in the KEP. But this statement seems to indicate he knew there were nonEgyptian characters in the A&G, specifically:
Stranger still, the signs that are explained are not found in the real Egyptian documents, where no system is in evidence of the placing of one, two, or three strokes above a sign, for example, and where there is nothing whatever to indicate the remarkably Ogam-like arrangement of symbols in the A. & G.
Once again, I haven’t had time to read the article yet, and am only skimming it, so it’s possible I misunderstood what he meant. Of course, my question was not specific to the A&G in the first place.