DaftJ wrote:You read his unpublished papers, too? It sure is lucky that you were able to attend that Sunstone Symposium in 1980
while you were on your mission.
That is actually not available in printed format, although I have considered making a transcription of it. However, being forced to listen to Ed's squeaky little mouse voice for that long again is probably too much for even an extraordinarily patient person like myself. Besides, he doesn't make any novel arguments in any of it; no text-critical analysis of anything. Just a handful of unsubstantiated assertions.
You see, I asked Graham for a list of Ashment's publications concerning the KEP. Graham, in his typically obtuse way, produces Ashment's entire CV--an oeuvre that contains precious little on the topic of the KEP--all of which I have read (or listened to) multiple times. To this day, I remain
stunned that people have so uncritically accepted Ashment's unsupported assertions. But that is simply a measure of how indiscriminating exmormons can be so long as you're telling them things they want to hear.
As for the question of the bird wing/hand in facsimile 1, Non-Mormon Egyptologist Lanny Bell has already published a paper refuting Ashment's "findings" (read: unsupported assertions) in the matter. My recent examinations of the papyri confirm that what Ashment termed (If I recall correctly) "dapples" on the feathers of a wing are actually disconnected fragments of a single line of the finger of a hand. Metcalfe also picked up on Ashment's argument and has tried to defend it as well. In fact, if you take away the ideas Metcalfe picked up from Skousen and Ashment, he's left with pretty much nothing of his own.
Anyway, back to Ashment's CV: there is almost nothing in his publication history that treats upon the questions surrounding the Kirtland Egyptian Papers, and the little there is has, can, and will be shown to be incorrect. Ashment obviously never did any serious examination of the KEP. He was always focused on the papyri, and even in what ought to have been his strong suit, he makes silly, agenda-driven mistakes, like the bird wing/hand issue which I have already mentioned.
Finally, I can see that Ashment has been away from the fray for so long that he's not only unfamiliar with the current status of things, but he also manifests little interest in getting himself up to speed. I seriously doubt we'll see much more of him in the future, although I do know that someone at the highest levels of the MI should be contacting him this week.
