Bazooka: The Significance of Don Bradley's work

[_Kevin Graham]

Sorry I missed this from the other thread.

Kevin, I don't understand its significance.
Please can you go into more detail about how this changes anyone's thinking on the subject?

This is a great question, and I guess some further explication is in order.

The significance is that it refuted two well propagated apologetic talking point about the Kinderhook Plates and Joseph Smith's Egyptian Alphabet & Grammar project.

Most people focus on the first point, which is that it proves Joseph Smith did in fact produce a translation of at least one character. Now why is this significant? Because it is beyond dispute that the plates were a hoax. So it proves Joseph Smith can produce "revealed translations" from a bogus source. Which is precisely what the critics have been saying all along, while the apologists have been using the "revealed text" in Mormon scriptures as evidence that he is a prophet, suggesting these story lines couldn't have come about any other way!

As to the second point, Bradley's argument comes while the Book of Abraham/KEP/EAG debate had reached a climax and just began to subside. The timing was perfect. Apologists had started to argue that the evidence found in Joseph Smith's Egyptian Grammar didn't constitute translations ("deciphering") at all. Will Schryver had just argued in a much ballyhooed event, that the EAG project was just an attempt to encipher and already translated text. But Bradley shows that Joseph Smith, in an attempt to translate the Kinderhook plates, consulted the EAG in order to derive some meaning from the first KEP character that resembled a character found in the EAG. Now why the hell would he want to do that if, as the apologists had maintained, 1. Joseph Smith knew the Kinderhook plates were a hoax and 2. the EAG was just an abandoned project that involved nothing more than a failed attempt to "encipher" an already translated scripture? This was a double-face-palm for the apologetic community, and I can only wonder how many in the audience realized it at the time.

Incidentally, from my conversations with Don prior to his presentation, my sense was that he didn't fully grasp the significance of his finding. He was just so excited about the correlation between the two documents that no one else had ever noticed before. FAIR didn't grasp the significance either, or else they probably wouldn't have allowed him to present it.

Oh, and it should go without saying that the tiny minority who disagree with Don Bradley's discovery, is led by none other than William Schryver, who, thanks to Don, saw his relevance and credibility go from celestial to telestial within the fifteen minute time-frame it took him to present his findings.

[_Fence Sitter]

Sorry I missed this from the other thread.

Kevin, I don't understand its significance.
Please can you go into more detail about how this changes anyone's thinking on the subject?

consulted the EAG in order to derive some meaning from the first KEP character that resembled a character found in the EAG. Now why the hell would he want to do that if, as the apologists had maintained, 1. Joseph Smith knew the Kinderhook plates were a hoax and 2. the EAG was just an abandoned project that involved nothing more than a failed attempt to "encipher" an already translated scripture? This was a double-face-palm for the apologetic community, and I can only wonder how many in the audience realized it at the time.

#2 is the big problem.

It is possible to explain #1 as just a secular attempt using the GAEL (though how one ever knows when Joseph Smith thought he was doing secular work versus inspired work is any one's guess). In the end Don's presentation shows that the GAEL was valued as a translation device. Besides being problematic to Will's theories it also attacks the missing scroll theory since the GAEL shows us exactly where Joseph Smith thought the beginning portions of the Book of Abraham were located on the extant portion of the scroll of Hor.

[_sock puppet]

Sorry I missed this from the other thread.

Kevin, I don't understand its significance.
Please can you go into more detail about how this changes anyone's thinking on the subject?

This is a great question, and I guess some further explication is in order.

The significance is that it refuted two well propagated apologetic talking point about the Kinderhook Plates and Joseph Smith's Egyptian Alphabet & Grammar project.

Most people focus on the first point, which is that it proves Joseph Smith did in fact produce a translation of at least one character. Now why is this significant? Because it is beyond dispute that the plates were a hoax. So it proves Joseph Smith can produce "revealed translations" from a bogus source. Which is precisely what the critics have been saying all along, while the apologists have been using the "revealed text" in Mormon scriptures as evidence that he is a prophet, suggesting these story lines couldn't have come about any other way!

As to the second point, Bradley's argument comes while the Book of Abraham/KEP/EAG debate had reached a climax and just began to subside. The timing was perfect. Apologists had started to argue that the evidence found in Joseph Smith's Egyptian Grammar didn't constitute translations ("deciphering") at all. Will Schryver had just argued in a much ballyhooed event, that the EAG project was just an attempt to encipher and already translated text. But Bradley shows that Joseph Smith, in an attempt to translate the Kinderhook plates, consulted the EAG in order to derive some meaning from the first KEP character that resembled a character found in the EAG. Now why the hell would he want to do that if, as the apologists had maintained, 1. Joseph Smith knew the Kinderhook plates were a hoax and 2. the EAG was just an abandoned project that involved nothing more than a failed attempt to "encipher" an already translated scripture? This was a double-face-palm for the apologetic community, and I can only wonder how many in the audience realized it at the time.

Incidentally, from my conversations with Don prior to his presentation, my sense was that he didn't fully grasp the significance of his finding. He was just so excited about the correlation between the two documents that no one else had ever noticed before. FAIR didn't grasp the significance either, or else they probably wouldn't have allowed him to present it.

Oh, and it should go without saying that the tiny minority who disagree with Don Bradley's discovery, is led by none other than William Schryver, who, thanks to Don, saw his relevance and credibility go from celestial to telestial within the fifteen minute time-frame it took him to present his findings.

Hey, Kevin, I seem to recall that Don did understand these implications. His integrity as a historian however led him to continue with revealing what he had found, despite his then recent re-conversion.

[_sock puppet]

To me, the GAEL appears to be a work that was abandoned in progress, before it was finished. Perhaps JSJr realized he'd boxed himself into some logical corners from which he could not continue much further without his scribes realizing it was not what JSJr was claiming the GAEL to be. Perhaps it was simply too laborious. After all, he had a following of people to lead and all. No time for that. Indeed, the Book of Abraham "translation" went into hiatus for about 7 years (1835-1842).

I think it is telling that after "translating" one of the bogus characters on the Kinderhook Plates with his GAEL in spring 1843, JSJr did not continue the effort. Perhaps as late as 1843, JSJr yet held out hope that the GAEL was real, but in applying it to one character of the Kinderhook Plates, and then looking at the next, he realized how useless his GAEL was.

[_Kevin Graham]

To me, the GAEL appears to be a work that was abandoned in progress, before it was finished. Perhaps JSJr realized he'd boxed himself into some logical corners from which he could not continue much further without his scribes realizing it was not what JSJr was claiming the GAEL to be. Perhaps it was simply too laborious. After all, he had a following of people to lead and all. No time for that. Indeed, the Book of Abraham "translation" went into hiatus for about 7 years (1835-1842).

I think it is telling that after "translating" one of the bogus characters on the Kinderhook Plates with his GAEL in spring 1843, JSJr did not continue the effort. Perhaps as late as 1843, JSJr yet held out hope that the GAEL was real, but in applying it to one character of the Kinderhook Plates, and then looking at the next, he realized how useless his GAEL was.

No, this is something the apologists assert as well, but it doesn't add up. Consider the following from Joseph Smith's journal Nov 15, 1843:

"P.M. At the office. Suggested the idea of preparing a grammar of the Egyptian Language."

So as we can see, more than seven years had passed and he still planned to return to the project.

[_Kevin Graham]

#2 is the big problem.

It is possible to explain #1 as just a secular attempt using the GAEL (though how one ever knows when Joseph Smith thought he was doing secular work versus inspired work is any one's guess). In the end Don's presentation shows that the GAEL was valued as a translation device. Besides being problematic to Will's theories it also attacks the missing scroll theory since the GAEL shows us exactly where Joseph Smith thought the beginning portions of the Book of Abraham were located on the extant portion of the scroll of Hor.

I believe Joseph Smith did this knowing perfectly well that someone would eventually make the connection (as did Bradley) and then would say: "Hey look at this translation from Kinderhook, it looks very similar to a translation from the Egyptian Grammar." At which point comparisons are made with the corresponding characters, and then the final conclusion: "The characters look alike too! Holy crap, Joseph Smith really is a prophet after all!" It would at the very least suggest there was a method to the madness based in ancient linguistics.

[_DonBradley]

Hi Kevin,

Please keep in mind that I completed the findings that later went into my Kinderhook plates presentation about five years ago--while out of the church and an atheist. I saw then that these findings both gutted the Kinderhook plates criticism of Joseph Smith and indicated that he took the KEP more seriously than many had hitherto assumed, which of course has implications for the Book of Abraham debates. I felt it was as much a matter of honesty to acknowledge the one as to acknowledge the other.

While, as mentioned, I see Joseph Smith's use of the GAEL as a possible key to the Kinderhook plates as having implications for KEP-BoA debates, I don't see it as having the same implications you do. Also, it seems rather pointless to me to discuss the potential implications of this Kinderhook plates find for understanding the Book of Abraham while many have yet to acknowledge even that it has implications for understanding the issue of the Kinderhook plates.

After my book on the lost 116 pages comes out, Mark Ashurst-McGee and I will be completing and publishing a paper on the Kinderhook plates, laying out the data even much more clearly and fully than I did in my FAIR presentation. Once the information from that paper has seeped into the discourse, then I think (or at least hope) that people will be able to have a more sober discussion about this finding's implications for understanding Joseph Smith's view of the KEP.

Cheers,

Don

[_Bazooka]

Thanks for doing this separate thread Kevin.

[_sock puppet]

many have yet to acknowledge even that [the GAEL and Kinderhook Plates character shared] has implications for understanding the issue of the Kinderhook plates.

* * *

Cheers,

Don

Let me take a whack at those implications. JSJr saw a boat-shaped grapheme within a character on the Kinderhook Plates that was similar/same as a boat-shaped character in the GAEL labeled "ho e oop hah". JSJr linguistically "translated" the boat shaped character on the Kinderhook Plates, assigning to it the meaning ascribed to a similarly shaped character in the GAEL. JSJr did not, that we know of anyway, give translations from the GAEL of other Kinderhook Plates characters or graphemes.

I understand that you conclude from this that JSJr's translation of the boat-like grapheme that is part of a character near the top of one of the Kinderhook Plates as a non-revelatory translation. As non-revelatory in nature, that translation attempt casts no cloud over JSJr's claims of divine revelation and assistance with other translations, such as Book of Mormon, Book of Abraham, and BoMoses.

Hauglid, I understand, likes to point out that JSJr stopped so quickly after starting a translation, suggesting that JSJr stopped because no revelation came.

Now, the non-Mormon Charlotte Haven's account only suggests that in enticing the possessor (Joshua Moore) of the Kinderhook Plates to leave them with JSJr, he "thought that by the help of revelation he would be able to translate them." I do think that the timing here is important. It was before the fact of attempting translation, not after the fact, that "by the help of revelation" was mentioned by JSJr. Maybe he thought at that point he would receive revelation when attempting to translate them, but when he later tried, no revelation came.

Going to the account by Clayton, JSJr's diarist from 1842-44, he noted that the Kinderhook plates "contain the history of the person with whom they were found & he was a descendant of Ham, through the loins of Pharaoh king of Egypt." Significantly, this was an entry that had to be made AFTER JSJr had translated the boat-shaped character from the Kinderhook Plates. Prior to JSJr's 'translation' it would not have been known that it was a descendant of Ham. Yet, after having made that translation, it is noted the Kinderhook Plates "contain[ed] the history" of that person. Thus, JSJr did not simply give up on the Kinderhook Plates when revelation did not come after translating that single, boat-shaped character by connecting it to the GAEL entry for a boat-shaped character. JSJr is recorded by Clayton as pronouncing, after identifying the descendant of Ham, that the Kinderhook Plates contained a history of this descendant of Ham. Rather than having an attitude of resignation about the Kinderhook Plates after having translated that one character, JSJr yet thought that those Kinderhook Plates were genuine, and containing a history of this descendant of Ham that JSJr had identified. That sort of shoots Hauglid's theory down.

Of course, that does not shoot down your theory of a non-revelatory translation. But something suggested to JSJr that there was more than just mention of this descendant of Ham's on the Kinderhook Plates, but that they contained the history of this very descendant of Ham's. That's something that does not come out of the GAEL explanation for the boat-like character--i.e., the GAEL explanation does not both identify a descendant of Ham and also of that same character suggest that the writing on which it appears includes a history of that descendant of Ham. Either JSJr received that extra bit of information from what he thought was revelation, by having 'translated' other (likely surrounding) characters on the Kinderhook Plates, by his imagination of good fortune (like he assumed the Chandler papyrus was good fortune landing the writings of Abraham in JSJr's lap), or by simple exuberant hope and assumption.

Since the GAEL was a by-product itself of what JSJr thought was divine providence and intervention--the papyrus and the Book of Abraham text--I think it is a bit of a stretch to conclude that JSJr's use of the GAEL was strictly a non-revelatory translation exercise by JSJr.

[_Kevin Graham]

Please keep in mind that I completed the findings that later went into my Kinderhook plates presentation about five years ago--while out of the church and an atheist. I saw then that these findings both gutted the Kinderhook plates criticism of Joseph Smith and indicated that he took the KEP more seriously than many had hitherto assumed, which of course has implications for the Book of Abraham debates. I felt it was as much a matter of honesty to acknowledge the one as to acknowledge the other.

I'm just going by what I sensed from a Facebook chat you and I had a few months prior to your presentation. I kept bringing up the possible conflict with current apologetic and you seemed confused that I would think that. And it wasn't until I explained what I thought about the subject (after you asked several questions) that you finally said something like, "OK, then this presentation may be of interest to you." But in retrospect I can understand why you were trying to keep a lid on the whole thing before your actual presentation.

While, as mentioned, I see Joseph Smith's use of the GAEL as a possible key to the Kinderhook plates as having implications for KEP-BoA debates, I don't see it as having the same implications you do.

Well, obviously. You're no longer approaching this strictly with your brain ;). You said so yourself. It got you nowhere, you said. You're now engaged in "spiritual" reasoning, so to speak. Which means you might as well be speaking to us in Greek since we're going to be talking past one another anyway.

Also, it seems rather pointless to me to discuss the potential implications of this Kinderhook plates find for understanding the Book of Abraham while many have yet to acknowledge even that it has implications for understanding the issue of the Kinderhook plates.

Just curious, but do you know how Dan Peterson and his buddies are taking this? I remember he was skeptical of your claims and would withhold judgment until he read your evidence.

After my book on the lost 116 pages comes out, Mark Ashurst-McGee and I will be completing and publishing a paper on the Kinderhook plates, laying out the data even much more clearly and fully than I did in my FAIR presentation. Once the information from that paper has seeped into the discourse, then I think (or at least hope) that people will be able to have a more sober discussion about this finding's implications for understanding Joseph Smith's view of the KEP.

I doubt there will be much discussion at all from the apologists. You just hammered the coffin nail on one of their classic apologetic arguments, and they don't take too kindly to those kinds of treasonous acts. Unless of course you can find some way to spin it as evidence for Joseph Smith's status as prophet.