Reading Comprehension and Modus Operandi
Posted: Thu Nov 03, 2011 11:59 pm
I recently had a troubling experience. I clearly observed that everybody around me was utterly blind and superlatively stupid about the plain facts of the real world. This led me to a state of vertigo, where the lack of people corroborating what I so clearly saw made me wonder if the real problem wasn’t stupidity on their part, but rather psychosis on my own.
The event in question has to do with basic reading comprehension. Below is a quote from Ed Ashment’s seminal essay Reducing Dissonance: The Book of Abraham as a Case Study. The quote is extensive, so that you may read it in context. The vertigo-inducing misunderstanding centers around to what Ashment was referring by Joseph Smith’s “modus operandi” for translating the first two chapters and 18 verses of the Book of Abraham:
http://www.buchabraham.mormonismus-onli ... onance.htm
To my mind, it is painfully obvious that when Ashment said the A-G documents “indicate the modus operandi for Smith's translation,” he was signaling that the A-G documents point to Joseph Smith's modus operandi, which he was about to explain in the next several paragraphs. It is clear that the modus operandi was that “the A-G documents represent initial efforts at deciphering, among other things, the hieroglyphics,” and that the Book of Abraham manuscripts are in fact the original copies of Joseph Smith’s original dictation of the Book of Abraham: they “are the written results of Smith's dictating his interpretation of hieratic characters from the Breathing Permit and imaginatively reconstructed signs, with each scribe first drawing the designated characters prior to recording accompanying interpretations.” To my troubled mind, anybody with high-school level reading comprehension can clearly discern that that is Smith’s modus operandi.
The A-G documents indicate what the modus operandi was, because they prove that Joseph Smith thought a lot of detail could be crammed into a single Egyptian character. Once you understand that, you can clearly understand what the Book of Abraham manuscripts are.
Apparently, everybody else on the planet thinks that when Ashment said the A-G documents “indicate the modus operandi for Smith's translation”, he meant to imply that the the way Abraham 1:1-2 was translated lexiconically from the A-G was the ‘modus operandi’ for translating the whole thing.
I find it obsurd to think that the whole thing could be lexiconically translated from the A-G documents, but that's beside the point. The point is that clearly, that isn't what Ashment is saying here.
At least that's the way my troubled mind sees it. So please help. Either the people I’ve been talking with should have flunked out of high school because their reading comprehension is so poor, or they are unconscionable liars, or I need psychiatric help.
Should I call my doctor?
The event in question has to do with basic reading comprehension. Below is a quote from Ed Ashment’s seminal essay Reducing Dissonance: The Book of Abraham as a Case Study. The quote is extensive, so that you may read it in context. The vertigo-inducing misunderstanding centers around to what Ashment was referring by Joseph Smith’s “modus operandi” for translating the first two chapters and 18 verses of the Book of Abraham:
As mentioned, the last two signs of Joseph Smith's A-G document (as well as Cowdery's and Phelps's) are the same as the first two signs of Book of Abraham Manuscript 2. The first of these was deciphered as "The land of the Chaldeans." The second seems to have been connected with Abraham's name, interpreted in the Smith-Cowdery A-G to mean: "In the first degree Ah-broam--signifies The father of the faithful, the first right, the elder. Second degree--Same sound--A follower of righteousness--Third degree--Same sound--One who possesses great knowledge--Fourth degree--same sound--A follower of righteousness, a possessor of greater knowledge. Fifth degree--Ah-bra-oam. The father of many nations, a prince of peace, one who keeps the commandments of God, a patriarch, a rightful heir, a high priest."
The relationship between these decipherments and the contents of Abraham 1:1-2 is obvious. It is significant in this regard that it was felt that one and the same sign--and even parts of signs--could be used on several different levels in order to produce expanded meanings, with the result that entire verses could be produced from a single sign. Thus, contrary to Nibley's assertions that the A-G documents "were not used in any translation,"24 they indeed were and indicate the "modus operandi"25 for Smith's "translation" of at least the first two chapters and eighteen verses of the Book of Abraham.
Book of Abraham Manuscripts 1a and 1b appear to have been recorded by Phelps and Parrish simultaneously at the dictation of Smith. For, in addition to various individual misspellings and other errors, both contain corrections where Smith apparently changed the wording of his translation as he dictated it. Moreover, the punctuation in both is sparse, resulting in numerous run-on sentences (also a feature in the dictated original manuscript of the Book of Mormon); and the existing punctuation is not consistent between Phelps's and Parrish's manuscripts, indicating that each was trying as best he could to punctuate as he wrote. This evidence contradicts Nibley's affirmation that Manuscripts 1a and 1b represent "the finished or nearly-finished text of the Book of Abraham … not deriving that text from, of all things, eighteen hieratic marginal symbols."26 In this respect, it seems that Nibley has not taken into account the appearance of the original manuscript of the Book of Mormon, which in the same way resembles a "finished or nearly-finished text."
Further evidence indicates that the "eighteen hieratic marginal symbols" (there are twenty-seven in Manuscript 2) were indeed felt to be closely connected with the text of the Book of Abraham. That each of the various hieratic signs from Papyrus Joseph Smith 11 was written before its corresponding English text in at least Manuscripts 1a and 2 is demonstrated by the fact that in several cases all the English text which was juxtaposed to a set of hieratic signs invades the space alloted for the text accompanying the next set of signs.27.
…the evidence indicates: (1) that Cowdery, Phelps, and Parrish served faithfully as Joseph Smith's scribes--not his rivals--each man being in good standing with Smith during the time that these documents were produced; (2) that the A-G documents represent initial efforts at deciphering, among other things, the hieroglyphics from Papyrus Joseph Smith 1 (the original from which Facsimile 1 was taken), ending with the first two signs of the Breathing Permit of Hor (Papyrus Joseph Smith 11); and (3) that the Book of Abraham Manuscripts are the written results of Smith's dictating his interpretation of hieratic characters from the Breathing Permit and imaginatively reconstructed signs, with each scribe first drawing the designated characters prior to recording accompanying interpretations.38
http://www.buchabraham.mormonismus-onli ... onance.htm
To my mind, it is painfully obvious that when Ashment said the A-G documents “indicate the modus operandi for Smith's translation,” he was signaling that the A-G documents point to Joseph Smith's modus operandi, which he was about to explain in the next several paragraphs. It is clear that the modus operandi was that “the A-G documents represent initial efforts at deciphering, among other things, the hieroglyphics,” and that the Book of Abraham manuscripts are in fact the original copies of Joseph Smith’s original dictation of the Book of Abraham: they “are the written results of Smith's dictating his interpretation of hieratic characters from the Breathing Permit and imaginatively reconstructed signs, with each scribe first drawing the designated characters prior to recording accompanying interpretations.” To my troubled mind, anybody with high-school level reading comprehension can clearly discern that that is Smith’s modus operandi.
The A-G documents indicate what the modus operandi was, because they prove that Joseph Smith thought a lot of detail could be crammed into a single Egyptian character. Once you understand that, you can clearly understand what the Book of Abraham manuscripts are.
Apparently, everybody else on the planet thinks that when Ashment said the A-G documents “indicate the modus operandi for Smith's translation”, he meant to imply that the the way Abraham 1:1-2 was translated lexiconically from the A-G was the ‘modus operandi’ for translating the whole thing.
I find it obsurd to think that the whole thing could be lexiconically translated from the A-G documents, but that's beside the point. The point is that clearly, that isn't what Ashment is saying here.
At least that's the way my troubled mind sees it. So please help. Either the people I’ve been talking with should have flunked out of high school because their reading comprehension is so poor, or they are unconscionable liars, or I need psychiatric help.
Should I call my doctor?