Coggins on the Book of Abraham

[_dartagnan]

This is in response to some statements Coggins made regarding me in another thread. I'm trying to keep my Book of Abraham related comments on the Book of Abraham forum: http://www.kevingraham.org/forum/viewto ... =3474#3474

[_Brackite]

Good Going, Kevin!

[_Dr. Shades]

Nice work, Kevin, as usual.

My favorite part was the following:

Ben McGuire wrote an excellent article about parallelomania. This was an apologetic piece written to dissuade people from buying into a critic’s claim that the Book of Mormon was borrowed from other 19th century works available to Smith. Yet, the same apologetic cannot be applied to the Book of Abraham because parrallelomania is at the heart of Book of Abraham apologetics. You guys rely on parallels. You need them.

So when it comes to defending the Book of Mormon, parallels mean nothing. When it comes to defending the Book of Abraham, parallels mean everything. It is a double-standard at FAIR which screams “We don’t know what we’re doing!”

[_Coggins7]

Graham has nothing, absolutlely and utterly nothing. Nothing has changed regarding critics claims and LDS defense in many years. Critics have plausible circumstantial evidence against the BofA-as long as certain prior assumptions are made. As soon as alternative assumptions are made, those arguments become little more than one set of possibilities among others, equally as plausible.

Graham's claims that the ideas contained in the Book of Abraham can all be accounted for by reference to sources Joseph had in 19th Century upstate New York is pure petulant bluster. No one who understands what the Book of Abraham is saying and has any working knowledge of First Temple based religious literature, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and various early Christian writings which have come to light only since Joseph's day, could possibly, whether or not he regarded the Book of Abraham as scripture, miss the numerous areas of close parallel between Joseph's ideas and concepts neither he nor anyone could have known at that time.

Graham makes a mock of finding parallelisms in ancient noncanonical Christian texts and Intertestemental literature because he's well aware it exists and that existence butchers his entire argument before its even left the gate.

The BorfA restores some salient concepts well known to ancient Judaism before the Second Temple and Babylonian exile period, and the correspondences are close and well attested across a number of texts of different provenance. Early Christian texts that the rapidly apostatizing Christian Church repressed between the second and third centuries also confirm and clarify ideas held in various forms, in texts of much earlier date.

What a dyed in the wool intellectual ghetto the anti-Mormon world can be.

[_CaliforniaKid]

Graham's claims that the ideas contained in the Book of Abraham can all be accounted for by reference to sources Joseph had in 19th Century upstate New York is pure petulant bluster. No one who understands what the Book of Abraham is saying and has any working knowledge of First Temple based religious literature, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and various early Christian writings which have come to light only since Joseph's day, could possibly, whether or not he regarded the Book of Abraham as scripture, miss the numerous areas of close parallel between Joseph's ideas and concepts neither he nor anyone could have known at that time.

Please list these parallels and provide documentation for your claims.

Graham makes a mock of finding parallelisms in ancient noncanonical Christian texts and Intertestemental literature because he's well aware it exists and that existence butchers his entire argument before its even left the gate.

Have you read Ben McGuire's article? It is extremely informative. Jeff Lindsay, too, has made a mockery of the argument-from-parallel: he "proved" that the Book of Mormon is plagiarized from Leaves of Grass, finding some very impressive parallels between the two works. Argument from parallels must be subject to strict methodological controls in order to ensure that parallels are strong and that a connection between the two works in question is really plausible. Nibley does not employ said controls.

-CK

[_dartagnan]

Coggins over at Mad you posted as “Droopy”:

I'd like to start an in depth, serious discussion regarding Kevin Graham's recent claims of some definitive breakthroughs regarding the alleged fraudulent nature of the Book of Abraham and assertions that such have now been sufficiently demonstrated to obviate all past Book of Abraham defense.

What say the best and the brightest among the defenders of the Gospel here? Has Graham really pulled something new and compelling out of his hat, or has he just reworked the same old well worn past Book of Abraham criticisms into a new form and tried to pass them off as as definitive evidence?

At Mormondiscussions.com, he is dismissing the documentary evidence of substantial lost portions of Book of Abraham material as now irrelevant, and one particularly interesting claim he made just over the past few days, is that he knows of no credible arguments that have ever been made demonstrating the coincidence of doctrines and ideas within the Book of Abraham and those found in numerous Jewish intertestemantal religious and early New Testament apocryphal texts unavailable to Joseph in his day. He appears to be claiming that all of the religious concepts found in the Book of Abraham can be accounted for by sources available to Joseph in early 19th century New York State.

As a number of Old Testament Pseudopigraphal texts we now have were not known (including some salient Abraham material), or was extant, but not available in English (essentially unknown), and Egyptology was in its infancy (the insistent correspondences between ancient Egyptian funerary rites, related doctrines, and the LDS Endowment and the recent discovery of inscriptions in Egypt mentioning the name "Abraham", etc., were not known), how can such correspondences possibly be explained away in a plausible manner by recourse to what Smith had available to him in upstate New York in that era?

Kevin also, in a response to me, dismisses the concept of "plausibility" regarding answers to naturalistic criticisms of scriptural origins as a "game" apologists are playing with critics to mask the fact that they can have no claims of "probability" in their defenses of the Book of Abraham.

I'd like to pick the brains of the group here for some salient criticisms of Graham's approach, methodology, and conclusions, if there are any here familiar with his work. I have my own ideas, but I'd like some feedback here, as this is a large and complex subject and I'm no expert in all of its nuance and detail.

Are defenses of the Book of Abraham of, say, the last ten years or so, now obsolete? What has Kevin or other church critics discovered, given very real dearth of historical evidence, that previous critics missed? Or is this just a lot of sturm und drang.

This is blatant misrepresentation. I never claimed to have pulled anything out of my hat nor did I say I was the source of any innovative study on the Book of Abraham. This post gave birth to another thread where the likes of Pacman and Kerry just start flapping at the lip with baseless attacks on me. Debating whether or not I know any Egyptian! Please. These guys aren't men enough to come deal with me. But that doesn't stop them from mouthing off all sorts of nonsense that they cannot even begin to establish.

Is this the kind of intellectual responses you were looking for? Apparently so, since this is how you responded here:

== Graham has nothing, absolutlely and utterly nothing.

Wow. This is supposed to be some kind of response?

== Nothing has changed regarding critics claims and LDS defense in many years.

I never said it has; only that they have been buttressed by watching apologetic claims fall one after the other like dominos.

== Critics have plausible circumstantial evidence against the BofA-as long as certain prior assumptions are made.

They have probability on their side, which weighs much heavier than your precious plausibility. And much of what you clam is plausible simply isn’t. Plausibility means having the appearance of truth. What Book of Abraham apologetics likes to call plausibilities is really nothing more than possibilities.

== Graham's claims that the ideas contained in the Book of Abraham can all be accounted for by reference to sources Joseph had in 19th Century upstate New York is pure petulant bluster.

I never made that claim. You should try comprehending better so that you won’t fall into the trap of offering “bluster.” The fact is Book of Abraham apologetics has made many so-called “parallels” with works unavailable to Smith, but further investigation proves that many of these really were available to him. In fact, the historical record shows that explicit references are made to Josephus in the Times and Seasons, precisely the same time he was translating the Book of Abraham.

== No one who understands what the Book of Abraham is saying and has any working knowledge of First Temple based religious literature, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and various early Christian writings which have come to light only since Joseph's day, could possibly, whether or not he regarded the Book of Abraham as scripture, miss the numerous areas of close parallel between Joseph's ideas and concepts neither he nor anyone could have known at that time.

Like what? We keep asking for references. Now quickly, go run to that twenty pound Nibley novel and start cranking out some examples.

== Graham makes a mock of finding parallelisms in ancient noncanonical Christian texts and Intertestemental literature because he's well aware it exists

Actually I mock the method of taking parallels and using it as the sole basis of evidence for anything. McGuire and Lyndsay both have ridiculed this method when critics use it against the Book of Mormon, but apparently it is OK when applied to the Book of Abraham? That is a double-standard, period.


== and that existence butchers his entire argument before its even left the gate.

If you think your rhetoric is going to win minds here you’re wrong.

== The BorfA restores some salient concepts well known to ancient Judaism before the Second Temple and Babylonian exile period, and the correspondences are close and well attested across a number of texts of different provenance.

That’s the third time you’ve asserted this, with no examples.

The fact that you need to run to MAD to seek help in responding to me, tells me you’re not even worth my time. If they know more than you do then you’re seriously in need of help.

by the way, I also noticed you were very selective in which portions of my post you provided them. You mock my mockery of the use of parallels, but you fail to mention my REASON. You made no mention of McGuire's work. Is that because McGuire is gradually being marginalized as a freaky liberal?