An evening with Dr. Gee
Posted: Fri Jun 20, 2008 8:08 am
Thanks to Infymus's timely announcement, I was able to attend the John Gee presentation at Olivewood Books in Provo.
He discussed several items that I'd never heard before from either side of the believer/disbeliever fence. Beyond that, here is a rundown of the goings-on along with what I thought were the most pertinent points:
Finally Dr. Gee himself began:
Next came the question-and-answer period. I'm only paraphrasing these, of course, so please don't assume they're word-for-word. Gee's answers in particular were far more detailed than what I'm listing here:
With that, the presentation ended. Fortunately, there was lots of informal discussion afterward, with Gee signing the occasional book and people asking him more questions. I stood around and took more notes:
So there you have it. Unlike Juliann, I'm not going to claim that this is "a transcript--you know, like the one court stenographers make." I hereby serve warning that although I'm reconstructing this from my notes, I may have misheard any number of things, written something down incorrectly, or otherwise gotten the wrong impression, ALTHOUGH I'M HIGHLY CONFIDENT THAT ALL THE ABOVE IS CORRECT (except where otherwise noted, of course).
Now, there were some parts in the informal chit-chat where Professor Gee requested that the urim & thummim guy (who was also taking notes) not write something down or informed him that something was "off the record." At one point he declined to identify the name and author of a certain article. HOWEVER, he put no such caveats on any of the rest, such as the Steven Thompson and Brent Metcalfe stuff, so I think I'm okay in reporting it. IF NOT, then human decency demands that I remove it if he (or someone on his behalf) requests that I do so.
He discussed several items that I'd never heard before from either side of the believer/disbeliever fence. Beyond that, here is a rundown of the goings-on along with what I thought were the most pertinent points:
- The presentation began with an opening prayer, which rather surprised me and served notice of the company I was among.
- The guy who introduced Dr. Gee said that Gee is working with Brian Hauglid on all "the documents." He didn't specify what "the documents" were that I can recall.
- The introducer talked about how this bookstore was an outlet for all of FARMS's material. He also highly praised FARMS's website, saying it's got all their works online in one place. Somebody asked what the website address was, and he replied, "I don't know."
Finally Dr. Gee himself began:
- He gave a pedigree of the papyrii, beginning with Napoleon's scholars (following hot on the heels of his troops) publishing all about Egypt and starting an Egyptology craze in Europe. He then showed all the various and sundry owners.
- He described how after the death of Smith the papyrii were divided into two groups and went with two different owners. One group contained "the long roll" and (in Gee's words), according to the eyewitnesses, was the one that contained the Book of Abraham. This group eventually found its way to Chicago and was burned up in the Great Chicago Fire. The other group found its way to the MET and contains the papyrii we have now. (This was new to me, since I thought that Gee had been claiming that the missing Book of Abraham was part of the scroll containing Facsimile #1, and that part of that scroll was lost, not that there was a completely different scroll separate from Facsimile #1 which contained the text. More on this later.)
- He said that the church has no official opinion on how the Book of Abraham came about or which papyrus fragment contained it. He also showed the survey results that 1/2 of 1% of Mormons believe that the text came from the papyrii we do have, 5% (or whatever) believe it's from papyrii we don't have, another X percent believe it came from inspiration, etc. He also gave the last statistic, that >50% simply don't care where the text came from. TO MY SURPRISE, everyone laughed at this. A woman sitting two or three chairs down from me said, "Like me!" PLEASE NOTE that they weren't laughing at Gee, they seemed to be laughing with him, although he wasn't laughing. It was sort of like a, "well, of course no one cares!" kind of laugh, if that makes any sense.
- I was surprised to learn that "breathing permit" scrolls were produced long after the death of their subject. Gee gave a family tree for the priest Hor (or "Horus" as Gee called him), listing his parents and his maternal grandmother. He also told how Hor had two children, and one of his great-great grandchildren was known. This great-great grandchild was alive in 37 B.C.E., meaning (if I remember correctly) that Hor's father was contemporary with Cleopatra.
- I had thought that Hor was a minor temple functionary. It appears that his standing was substantially higher, since Gee showed a picture of a statue of Hor's father. There is even a "graffito" (his words) written by his father in the temple complex in which he served.
- According to Gee, when we reach the Greco-Roman period, Egyptian scribes and artisans got quite careless with correlating their pictures with their inscriptions. He showed lots of examples of an inscription having nothing to do with its graphical representation. One such example was how Anubis's image was mixed-and-matched alongside the names for three different Gods. He also showed an example of a scribe getting the figure's gender wrong.
- Taking this example further, he talked about how scribes having to do with Hor's family really had a problem matching text and images.
- He then talked about the filling in of the lacunae, or missing parts of Facsimile #1. He touched on how critics assert that there wasn't actually a knife, then he went on to show lots of "tracings" (for lack of a better word) of friezes, frescoes, temple inscriptions, or whatever they were which show jackal-headed figures (presumably gods?) holding knives.
- He showed transliterations of various papyrii which contain the name "Abraham." He talked about how Egyptians didn't have a problem incorporating other nations' gods, and how they sometimes included mention of "Jehovah."
- He showed photos of inscriptions in temple walls which describe the initiation process for, uh, initiates. The inscriptions show that teaching the initiate principles of astronomy was part of the process.
- "By his own hand upon papyrus" was an exact phrase found in one or more papyrii (I don't think he was referring to the Joseph Smith papyrii in specific).
- He went into quite a bit of detail about the method of sacrifice employed by the Egyptians. By the time of Hor they used wax, stone, or wood effigies and not real people, but archaeological evidence proves that actual human sacrifice took place much earlier. He talked a LOT about the method of sacrifice, how it was done to enemies, how binding was a universal precursor followed by stomping on the body followed by burning the body, then spitting on it, etc. [More on this later.] Anyhow, he talked about how the Egyptians back in Abraham's day (I can't remember the date, but it was 1,8xx B.C.E.) controlled territory (and he showed a map) deep into Palestine (but not on the coast), up to what I suppose was northern Assyria but south of the border of modern-day Turkey. Gee talked about how the priest which attempted to sacrifice Abraham was therefore an Egyptian priest, so whether the original of Facsimile #1 depicted Anubis or merely a priest wearing a mask of Anubis doesn't matter. He talked about how Abraham, in order to escape the idolatry, left Ur and crossed the Euphrates East into Haran. Someone said, "I thought Ur was in Babylon!" Gee responded that there are several different "Ur"s, I forget the exact number.
- Continuing with the above, he described how Egypt was conquered shortly after this and was thereafter ruled by foreign dynasties, so when Abraham returned through Caanan there were no Egyptians left--at least none in power is what I think his gist was. That's the reason Abraham was able to receive the promise from God that he'd inherit the land; there was a power vacuum (my words, not Gee's).
- Gee discussed why Abraham would've come into such conflict with the Egyptians. The Code of Hammurabi (as an example) proscribes death as the penalty for switching religions, and the Egyptians would've regarded Abraham as an enemy since, according to the Egyptians, the sun was the highest "governing power," whereas Abraham said that Kolob was an even higher "governing power" than the sun (ergo, it would've been blasphemy--again, my words, not Gee's). He showed a geocentric model of the universe, how (according to the Book of Abraham) the moon is a higher power than the earth "upon which thou standest;" how the sun is an even higher power, etc. He touched on this "greater" bit being according to the reckoning of time, since the revolution of the moon is only a month, the (apparent) revolution of the sun is a year, etc., so an even farther-out or "higher" power would be Kolob--hence the whole "reckoning of time" bit in Facsimile #2. I'm pretty sure I've made an accurate summary of this part of the presentation, but one or two details might be "lost in translation" due to this quick paragraph.
Next came the question-and-answer period. I'm only paraphrasing these, of course, so please don't assume they're word-for-word. Gee's answers in particular were far more detailed than what I'm listing here:
- QUESTION: "Did the rediscovery of the papyrii shed any new light on the scriptures?" ANSWER: "Not really, since historical evidence says the Book of Abraham text we have was on the lost manuscripts."
- QUESTION: "How accurate is Nibley's Abraham in Egypt?" ANSWER: "There is one chapter that I very much disagree with. Nibley did the best he had with the information available to him, and even now that his material is in need of revision, his conclusions are still sound."
- QUESTION: "Who pencilled in the head in the missing area of Facsimile #1?" ANSWER: "We don't know. We do know that it happened before 1967." (At least, I think that's the date Gee gave.) Gee then went on to show a photocopy of a 1948 acquisition announcement by the MET. He said that it proves that no one reads museum acquisition announcements, since it listed the obtaining of the J.S. papyrii (in 1948) but the announcement itself was only "discovered" in 1991. Anyhow, he also said that the reconstruction of the knife is correct since that's what the eyewitnesses saw. (I assume he meant that they saw a knife before that portion of the papyrus flaked away--i.e., on the original--but he didn't specify).
- He mentioned an interesting tidbit that, in Egyptian practice, praying with the hands outward was done when praising, whereas praying with the hands inward was done when supplicating, i.e. asking for a favor. So Abraham's hands facing inward is the correct way. Gee also talked about whether a bird's head or a man's head belongs on the bird; he says that in his mind a man's head works better, but either way works.
- QUESTION: "Why does Facsimile #1 show something other than burning, spitting, etc. if that's how the Egyptians went about it?" ANSWER: "The facsimile only shows one stage of the process. The first stage was binding." (This wasn't merely an ad-hoc, he had already described the steps earlier, how binding came first, etc.)
- QUESTION: "Why do Egyptologists the world over say that Facsimile #1 is something other than what Joseph Smith said it is?" ANSWER: "The first question to ask them is, 'How do you know that it says something other than what Joseph Smith said it is?'" Gee then went on to describe how non-Mormon Egyptologists will accept any explanation other than the church's explanation. He quoted one ex-Mormon Egyptologist who said that he would accept anything about the facsimile other than something the church put out. (I'm sure I'm butchering that last sentence; take it with a grain of salt.)
- The next question, whose wording I can't remember, consisted of a guy asking about how the "sun borrowing its light from Kolob" model (or whatever example from Facsimile #2 he gave) ties into what we know about modern physics. Gee replied that God always taught people in their own language and according to their own understanding. Therefore, since Abraham and the Egyptians had a geocentric view of the universe, God used that model to explain about higher powers, etc.
With that, the presentation ended. Fortunately, there was lots of informal discussion afterward, with Gee signing the occasional book and people asking him more questions. I stood around and took more notes:
- Although I missed the original question--or the first half of the conversation, take your pick--Gee said that, regarding either the papyrii or the Book of Abraham (I missed which one), "Most of what we see online is wrong."
- Some guy kept bugging Dr. Gee about whether the Urim & Thummim was used in the translation. Gee said that "we don't know either way. The eyewitnesses merely said that Joseph worked 'under the inspiration of Heaven.' So we don't know what he used or how he went about it." This guy kept on with, "So we don't know whether the Urim & Thummim were used?" And on and on it went for a while. Sheesh!
- Evidence left by eyewitnesses show that the text of the Book of Abraham came from "the long roll."
- I finally got to ask my own question. I asked, "If the text of the Book of Abraham came from a lost roll, how did Facsimile #1 end up in the Book of Abraham, since it was part of the recovered papyrii instead?" Gee responded that there are 16 different theories about the facsimiles, and he's working on them, but it's slow going and he hasn't had the time to go through and thoroughly analyze and deal with each one in detail (or words to that effect).
- Up to this point he still hadn't mentioned the KEP even once. He finally mentioned them in response to some other quasi-unrelated question, saying that none of the KEP theories out there account for all the evidence. In all fairness, I got the impression that he was including the pro-Mormon theories in that assessment as well.
- Someone brought up Steven Thompson and what Gee thought of him, his writings, or something like that. Gee hesitated and said that Thompson needs to do better at thinking before he writes, but then added that that's something we all need to do anyway.
- Someone asked who did the woodcuts. Gee said it was (Reuben?) Hedlock. This person asked about Hedlock, and Gee said that after Nauvoo Hedlock was a mission president in Europe, then a bishop, then was later excommunicated for absconding with tithing funds.
- Still another person asked what was the purpose of Facsimile #1. Gee frankly responded, "I don't know."
- Gee was asked whether any non-Mormon Egyptologists agree with the Mormons (about the reconstruction of Facsimile #1, I think). He responded that one guy who was paid by anti-Mormons to write on the topic could only find two differences, but beyond that the Mormons were right.
- Returning again to the KEP, Gee said that there's no way to prove anything about them, and that people's conclusions depend only on what they bring to the table to begin with. To his credit, he immediately included himself in that list, and said "I'm biased, but at least I'm open about my biases." He then talked about the myth of objectivity. Specifically, he told someone, "If you care enough about this issue to write about it, can you even say you're unbiased?" Somewhere in here he talked about his book, A Guide to the Joseph Smith Papyrii. He said that rather than giving his theories, it "catalogues the theories."
- Another person, a rather young guy, asked: "When are the KEP going to be published?" Dr. Gee responded that you'll have to ask "the KEP people" (i.e., the people working on it--Brian Hauglid among them, I'm 99.9% sure, although he didn't specify). He said it was a slow process since Joseph left behind 30 volumes worth of KEP material. I MAY EASILY BE MISTAKEN ABOUT HIS POINT; perhaps he merely meant that the final analysis would take up 30 volumes. He said that at the rate of two volumes a year--I'm sure that was only his estimate on what it would take, not some sort of set reliable timetable for the future--it would be slow going. This same guy then mentioned that Brent Metcalfe had posted snippets of it online in various places "Like RFM and Mormon Discussions." Gee responded that it's easy to post snippets; posting a comprehensive analysis is something else entirely. I asked more about Brent posting things online, and Gee said that Brent suppresses things that don't support his theories.
- Dr. Gee said that the term "Book of Breathings" is a phrase only used by anti-Mormon Egyptologists. He then listed some names that would be more accurate, but I can't remember them accurately enough to do them justice.
- Last of all, he got into a conversation with someone about the length of the missing scroll. He mentioned how his 42 foot length was a calculation devised by a non-Mormon Egyptologist, not by him. He talked about how his own calculations revealed a much shorter papyrus--but still way, way longer than you'd expect--but after sitting on it for a while he finally had to go with this other figure since all the math checked out.
So there you have it. Unlike Juliann, I'm not going to claim that this is "a transcript--you know, like the one court stenographers make." I hereby serve warning that although I'm reconstructing this from my notes, I may have misheard any number of things, written something down incorrectly, or otherwise gotten the wrong impression, ALTHOUGH I'M HIGHLY CONFIDENT THAT ALL THE ABOVE IS CORRECT (except where otherwise noted, of course).
Now, there were some parts in the informal chit-chat where Professor Gee requested that the urim & thummim guy (who was also taking notes) not write something down or informed him that something was "off the record." At one point he declined to identify the name and author of a certain article. HOWEVER, he put no such caveats on any of the rest, such as the Steven Thompson and Brent Metcalfe stuff, so I think I'm okay in reporting it. IF NOT, then human decency demands that I remove it if he (or someone on his behalf) requests that I do so.