DiscussMormonism.com

OK, no one is 100% objective in anything, granted. But that doesn't give one a license to be recklessly subjective all the while pretending to have credibility as an interpreter. Here is a response to a post of his I saw back in July.

William Schryver said, in reference to the KEP and the Egyptian characters lined up with the English text:

The characters are not always associated with a discrete paragraph. It is especially evident with Williams' Ms. #2.

Were they always associated with paragraphs? No, not always.

The final two characters at the bottom of the first page are not clearly associated with the text. They appear to have been placed entirely at random in relationship to the text. They are not aligned with a paragraph break, nor the beginning of a sentence, nor even a specific line.

This is patently false.

Here is a scan of the microfilm of manuscript 1a in the handwriting of Williams. It is horrible to be sure, but it serves the purpose of refuting Will’s claim.



Will says the last two characters are clearly placed "at random" ??

How does he explain the fact that manuscript 1b is nearly identical in placing the same Egyptian characters at the exact same corresponding points? What is so "random" about this? Who says a character has to represent the beginning of a new paragraph or sentence anyway?

He then told Don Bradley to go study the photos like he has or else he is just blowing smoke!

In several cases in Williams' Ms. #2, the characters appear to be placed with much uncertainty -- as though the scribe didn't have any idea what their specific relationship was to the English text in the body of the document.

How in the hell does Will come up with that conclusion?

More notes and observations about Will’s claim.

If you take a look at the third circled character from the top (image above), you will notice that this character doesn’t come before a new paragraph, nor does it come before a new sentence, verse or line. In fact, this would be the only example that could possibly be used to support Will’s claim that characters were thrown about “at random” with no apparent correlation to the English text. The verse this character covers is Abraham 1:5, but Abraham 1:5 is as follows:

“My fathers, having turned from their righteousness, and from the holy commandments which the Lord their God had given unto them, unto the worshiping of the gods of the heathen, utterly refused to hearken to my voice;”

According to this manuscript a new character is placed in mid-sentence. If you look at the style of the writer, the sentences generally continue to the end of the page if they are long enough to do so, but in this manuscript this sentence stops short at the word “heathen,” leaving the rest of the sentence (“utterly refused to hearken to my voice”) for another line. What does this mean? Well, once we consider the Parrish manuscript (Ms1b/folder 3) the verdict becomes all the more clearer:



Did you see that?

It seems perfectly clear to me that these two examples are best explained as a transcription process whereby Joseph Smith stopped dictating at “heathen,” so his scribes could insert the next character. So they stopped at heathen wherever they happened to be on that particular line, and then continued on to finish the verse on the next line adjacent with the corresponding character.

Not only does this anecdote refute Will’s claim, but it also adds more evidence to the already mounting pile of evidences in favor of the dictated transcription scenario. After all, who could imagine someone breaking a sentence in half like that while copying from a source document?

'Nuff said. ;-)

For some reason, I'm beginning to suspect that this whole argument regarding the Book of Abraham isn't really a scholarly argument at all for people like Graham, Metcalf etc., even though those are the terms in which it is presented, at least part of the time. The sheer obsessiveness and animosity to the most intellectually reasonable dissent is bespeaking something else festering beneath the surface.

I wonder just what that might eventually turn out to be?

Coggins7 wrote:For some reason, I'm beginning to suspect that this whole argument regarding the Book of Abraham isn't really a scholarly argument at all for people like Graham, Metcalf etc., even though those are the terms in which it is presented, at least part of the time. The sheer obsessiveness and animosity to the most intellectually reasonable dissent is bespeaking something else festering beneath the surface.

I wonder just what that might eventually turn out to be?

Give it a rest.

Maybe if it didn't read like a tabloid...

;)

My point here is that there are real reasons why I cannot trust the apologetic position. You are not going to be able to water the situation down as a matter of biased critic who is just too closedminded to see the light. What yoo sense as closedmindedness is actually skepticism, and the faulty logic and disingenuous apologetic explanations forwarded by these guys not only justify my skepticism, they demand it.

Will, Brian, Gee, Nibley, they all provide clear-cut examples of contorting evidence or flat out inventing things that are not there.

Can any of you provide any single example where any of the critics (Brent, Ashment, CK or myself) have ever made errors like those shown above? Then do so. I dare you. I double dare you. Let's see who can be trusted here.

The worst part about these kinds of errors is that they are extremely difficult to explain as honest mistakes. There is nothing in the document above that could even come close to resembling what Will described, and how does he defend his mistake... by not acknolwedging it.

What is wrong with pointing this out? The authors at FARMS do this on a daily basis with anti-Mormon books.

You guys have not even come close to explaining how Will could mess up so badly on this "analysis."

All he does in defense is point out how the scholars at FARMS agree with him. Big deal. As if this is supposed to be some kind of revelation to us? The scholars at FARMS, particularly Nibley and Gee, also have a documented history of twisting evidence in a way that makes it difficult to call it an honest mistake, so lumping your methodology in with this crew is not doing much for your credibility.

You guys have not even come close to explaining how Will could mess up so badly on this "analysis."

Shoot, they haven't even tried to explain how Will could mess up so badly on this analysis. They leaped immediately to personal attacks - which, of course, speaks loudly.

by the way, who is that pix that will thought was sufficient reply? Satan from the temple movie?

General Zod, from Superman II - in reference to the title of the thread.

All in good fun.

William Schryver wrote:

'Nuff said. ;-)

Now that's a scholarly reply!

I take it Will knelt before Zod.

I just spent the last two hours browsing some of the original debates between Schryver and myself. I thought you might get a kick out of reading his initial statements on this matter, beginning with his initial ignorance as to what the KEP actually were, while pretending to actually know. I'm posting this because I think it pertains to this subject; the validity of taking Will's apologetic "examinations" seriously. My comments in parentheses:

“I've examined the contents of the KEP at length -- and doing so hasn't persuaded me one iota that the Book of Abraham is anything except what it claims to be.” May 9 2006

(He "examined the contents of the KEP at length," huh? Obviously he didn’t even know that the KEP were unpublished and unavailable for “examination” at that point - and they still aren't. He spent the next week changing his tone to a more humble key, after I presented some of Brent’s photos for the forum, while asking me and Brent all sorts of questions about them, clearly proving this statement above was just a bluff.)

“I'm sure I've read just about every indictment of the Book of Abraham that is out there. And, despite the emergence of some (if not all) of what appear to be the scrolls once in Joseph Smith's possession, the fact is, not much has changed since the "Dream Team" of "Egyptologists" that was put together 100 years ago” -May 4 2006

(He says he has read everything by the critics, yet he thought nothing had changed over the past 100 years!)

“It was my understand from detailed descriptions of the manuscripts that each is of similar content. Perhaps that is my misunderstanding and you could clear that up.” May 11 2006

(Quite an interesting question coming from someone who claims to have had “examined the contents of the KEP at length”)

“At this period of time (when the KEP were being produced) is there any contemporary evidence that any of the individuals in question had been recently or were currently serviing Joseph Smith in the capacity of "scribe"? To my knowledge, neither Cowdery, Phelphs, nor Parrish had served as scribes to Joseph for a considerable time preceeding this period.” May 11 2006

(So much for Will’s “knowledge.”)

“It was not a secret in the 1830s that Egyptian had been shown to be a phonetic language, with many similarities to Hebrew. These men certainly knew this, so how did they convince themselves that one flimsy character could "translate" into dozens of words? This is an demanding question, and one that I don't think has been adequately answered by anyone.”== May 11 2006

(After I refuted this he backtracked with, “I only suggested that it is not unreasonable to suppose that they at least understood that it was primarily a phonetic language.” No, he said they “certainly” knew it.)

“I have observed Metcalfe's approach to the "truth" for almost twenty years now, and I know that he is a committed enemy of the restored gospel and the man who restored it. He will manipulate quotes and data, and heap non sequitur upon non sequitur in his attempts to discredit Joseph Smith. He seeks to destroy people's faith, and his lies have been instrumental in the alienation of many people from the church, and I don't see his reformation on the horizon.” --- May 12 2006

“Now that I've had occasion to closely examine the portions of Ms#2 that we've seen…the sheer brevity of the text in question would seem to preclude the necessity for three separate scribes…” May 13 2006

(But there obviously were three scribes hired to do a job. So what makes more sense here: 1) that three scribes were hired to transcribe a dictation (common practice) or 2) three scribes were hired to copy a text of “sheer brevity” (unheard of)? This is what I have been asking him ever since, with no response in sight)

“I find it very interesting indeed that Metcalfe is so careful to post only selected excerpts from the photos he has. If he has the entire manuscript photographed, why doesn't he allow the rest of us to see it? I suspect that he his hiding something, too. Something that he feels could be turned into a strong apologetic if he were to put it at our disposal…I really wish we had a full set of high quality photos of the manuscripts. I have now become convinced that there is a strong apologetic just waiting on the release of such photos.…” May 13 2006

(Speaks for itself. If we even hint that Gee could be slightly misleading the entire moderator team comes crashing down on us, and Brent was actually involved in this discussion)

“The news of Champollion's deciphering work had made its way "over the pond" at least to the extent that it was known that Egyptian was a phonetic language. That simple piece of knowledge alone would certainly have been known. Not only that, but Joshua Seixas had long since come and gone from Kirtland and is most likely the origin of Joseph's knowledge that Egyptian was read right to left” - May 13 2006

(Actually, Joshua Seixas arrived in 1836, after translation in the KEP had ceased. Yet, Will asserts with confidence that Seixas “had long since come and gone from Kirtland” before Smith started the Egyptian translations.)

"Some of my speculations in my previous post must be rejected by the fact that Joseph Smith did believe he could translate Egyptian in the case of the Facsimiles. Therefore, it is clear he was either: a-pretending to understand Egyptian when he, in reality, did not; or b-had a system for so doing which is unrelated to the conventional translation of Egyptian." May 13 2006

(Contrast this with Will's recent insinuation that Joseph Smith never claimed to be able to translate Egyptian characters. If he changed his opinion 18 months ago, it looks like he changed it back again)

"As to the so-called controversy surrounding the circumstances of its production, I would venture to say that I've looked into the details at least as fully and carefully as anyone ever has." Will Schryver, Nov 6, 2007

Nuff said.