Bazooka wrote:Sock, forgive me.
I know the timeline scuppers a number of things but I'm being "blonde" today.
Please can you summarise the ramifications?
In Kevin Graham's thread, Bazooka: The Significance of Don Bradley's Work,
Don was positing that before one could consider the impact of the KPs episode for understanding the Book of Abraham, one needed to understand the issue of the KPs. So in that thread, I focused on what implications for the Kinderhook Plates I see from the fact (Don discovered and reported) that JSJr ascribed meaning to the boat-shaped grapheme from of the KP characters that the precedent GAEL had tabled out for a boat-shaped character.Don wrote: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.
As I understand Don's thesis, because applying the GAEL lexicon to the boat-shaped KP grapheme to identify it as referring to a descendant of Ham is something a human may due sans divine participation, JSJr's doing so did not involve revelation--therefore the whole KP fiasco does not cast a cloud over JSJr's claims to be a prophet of the divine.
I don't see it that way, but in that other thread tried to look at the implications for the KP incident first, as Don suggested. I won't rehash my thoughts set forth in that other thread, or expand on them here (though I have more ideas on that topic than those set forth here).
It seemed to me in focusing in that other thread that to arrive at Don's thesis, one had to presume that the GAEL was the product of human-only effort, no divine intervention. Well, at least that's what JSJr's thinking regarding the GAEL had to be.
JSJr claimed to be a prophet. What JSJr thought about the divine's involvement in his experiences and thinking is essential to the evaluation of those claims. For example, if JSJr did not himself think there was divine involvement, then he was a simple fraud for saying that he was a prophet for the divine. If JSJr believed divine involvement in his experiences and thoughts, it does not mean there was actual involvement by the divine. But at least his belief would dispel the idea of knowingly misrepresenting to others such divine involvement.
For me, what JSJr thought then about the KPs, particularly after 'translating' the boat-shaped grapheme with the GAEL, and what he thought the GAEL was, are key to whether the KP grapheme translation is part of his body of divinely-inspired work or not. If it is part and parcel to it, then the fact that the KPs were bogus, not what diarist Clayton and apostle Pratt reported, is a critical indictment against JSJr's claims re the Book of Mormon, Book of Abraham, D&C, LoF, other 'revelations' etc.
In focusing on the implications of JSJr's use of the GAEL for understanding the KP incident, as Don had suggested needed to be addressed before one then looks at what the KP incident implications are for the GAEL, I realized that Don's thesis hinges on an assumption that the GAEL is a human-only invention, no divine auspices.
I think this order of addressing the relationship between the KP incident and the use by JSJr of the GAEL to translate a KP grapheme will only yield a result in line with whatever presumption one first makes about the GAEL. If in the apologetic view, the GAEL is not part of JSJr's prophetic body of work, then his use of the GAEL on the phone KPs does not impeach his prophetic claims in other regards. If on the other hand, the GAEL was instrumental in the production of the Book of Abraham, and the GAEL itself was the product of what JSJr claimed was divine intervention, then his use of the GAEL to interpret the grapheme from the phone KPs stands as a stark indictment against what JSJr had claimed for then more than two decades to be up to.
So, for me, the questions of the divine involvement in the production of the GAEL is a question that must be addressed first. Otherwise, the result of one's analysis of the implications of the GAEL's use by JSJr to translate the KP grapheme is a mere bootstrap conclusion. Consequently, I dredged through some old notes, took several search terms to each of the volumes of the HoC and came up with the history of the GAEL, and what seem to me to be some of the contexts to help inform us about how JSJr/scribes viewed the GAEL. That was the point of the OP.
Also, in that other thread, Kevin Graham referred to what I have included as the last historical reference in the OP. That's the 11/15/1843 entry in the HoC: "P.M. At the office. Suggested the idea of preparing a grammar of the Egyptian Language." To me, this bears on how JSJr regarded the GAEL more than 6 months earlier when he applied to the GAEL to translate the boat-shaped grapheme he spotted in a KP character. GAEL is an acronym for Grammar and Alphabet of the Egyptian Language. Does this 6 month later suggestion that an Egyptian Language grammar be prepared suggest that JSJr did not consider the GAEL to be such a grammar itself? How then did JSJr regard the GAEL if not a grammar of the Egyptian Language?
In the OP, I endeavored to cull and set forth all of the HoC entries that pertain to the KEP (of which the GAEL is part). Nevertheless, my OP has been brushed with the 'polemic' label. I have made few observations, trying to hew very closely to the HoC entries. I noted that similar to how JSJr assumed from a KP grapheme translation identifying a descendant of Ham that the KPs included a 'history' of that Ham descendant (diarist Clayton)/'genealogy' of that descendant (ancient Jaredite) all the way back to Ham (apostle P P Pratt), JSJr had from 'translating' just a couple of characters from the Chandler papyrus assumed that they contained the writings of Abraham and the writings of Joseph of Egypt. I don't think drawing that parallel is all that polemic in nature.
I have quoted and reiterated the verbiage of the 7/19/1835 HoC entry itself that for the rest of July 1835 Joseph Smith was continually engaged in "translating an alphabet". Since factual, I do not see how this is polemic.
I do cite to Chris Smith's work in regard to what came first, the chicken or the egg (the English text of the Book of Abraham or the GAEL). I do find it more than merely persuasive, but compelling and convincing, that Book of Abraham 1:1-3 was derivative of the GAEL, not the otherway around. In describing it in the OP, I gave the latitude that the Book of Abraham and GAEL productions could have been interdependent on one another.
I took JSJr's descriptions, albeit as written down by scribes, at face value. Such as that for 7/19/1835 that JSJr spent 7/19-7/31/1835 continually "translating an alphabet." Also, the 9/30/1835 entry that gives us, in my opinion, the best glimpse into the process of the production of the English text of the Book of Abraham. It explains that while laboring on and researching the alphabet, an understanding of Abraham's astronomy unfolded for JSJr and scribes. That entry promises more would appear later. In fact, it was on March 1, 1842 that Abraham's astronomy did appear, when the Book of Abraham was published in the Times and Seasons. That astronomy is now known as the third chapter of the Book of Abraham. (I do not consider this observation to be polemic, but I can understand that for believers that need to think that there was no divine hand in the GAEL, this is unsettling. Ergo, to them, this observation could be 'polemic'.)
Again, as I find it quite relevant to analyzing the KP incident, particularly in light of Don's finding that JSJr used the GAEL to translate a KP grapheme, not only how the GAEL came to be, but how it had been used by JSJr. So, I found particularly relevant the 11/14/1835 HoC entry where JSJr displayed the alphabet to Erastus Holmes, to strengthen his faith. If JSJr considered the GAEL to be merely man-made (no divine involvement), it seems a strange if not deceptive use of the GAEL to strengthen another's faith in JSJr's claims of being a prophet of the divine. Perhaps that was too polemical for some tastes for me to point out that HoC entry and how JSJr had used the GAEL.
I did note that from February 16, 1835-November 2, 1836, there was many mentions of Hebrew translation efforts (such as with parts of the Old Testament), but nothing about translating the Egyptian papyrus in that time.
Towards the end of my OP in the timeline, I note that on 4/19/1842, the Greek Psalter incident. I do label it a fiasco. I do note that JSJr snuck quietly out the back of his office when Caswall corrected him that it was really just a Psalter in Greek, not a "Dictionary of Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphics" as JSJr proclaimed the book to be after examining it. I suppose that referring to that as a fiasco and mentioning that JSJr took a powder from the scene--something for which I have seen no historical contradiction--brushes up against the polemic. So be it. That's how I see it.
by the way, I did not address my OP to Don. The only reference to him was to his historical finding, as I phrased it "April - June, 1843, the GAEL is used by JSJr to translate a boat-shaped grapheme in a character on the Kinderhook Plates." towards the end of the timeline.
I did not expect that Don would enter into the fray of this thread, and did not think he was under any compunction to do so. Granted, the idea for this thread was spawned by discussion from that other thread, but I don't think Don need respond to anything in the OP.
