Philo Double Standard: Mithraists can Appropriate and Modify Symbols and Stories of Others, but not Hor Papyrus Author

[sock puppet]

I just noticed the Wikipedia entry on the book of Abraham states that the faithful position is now:

“Mormon scholars tend to accept it (the book of Abraham) as an authentic, ancient interpretation of more ancient scripture.”

Put the word "ancient" in there, and mopologists will do anything to make it happen. It is as if ancient is all that matters...

Bull's eye. It is probably why Joseph Smith concocted pseudopigrapha works (Book of Mormon, Book of Abraham, Book of Moses) rather than just say, as in the D&C, through me God has told us X, Y and Z. (Perhaps he got lazy with the D&C revelations, or maybe that helped his "modern prophets" claim so that the flock would follow him without questioning him.) Pseudopigrapha imbues Joseph Smith's pontifications (and story telling) with an air of authority. "All that glitters is ancient is gold, and she's buying a stairway to heaven."

[Manetho]

You say that Hor, an Egyptian of the Greco-Roman period, a literate Egyptian Priest of his day, no doubt very knowledgeable of other religions, the author of the Hor Breathing Permit cannot practice Iconotropy in the Joseph Smith Papyri to reflect Judeo-Christian elements, and LDS who observe this likelihood and evidence for it in the Book of Abraham/KEP are believers in nonsense, but here you say the widespread Mithraist religion, for which you quote one of the PGM papyri, i.e., an Egyptian Papyrus of the Greco-Roman period from which you quote the Mithras Litergy), and that the Mitraist system adopts and adapts stories and symbols from across the Empire, and you admit that the same practice was done in the New Testament. Yet, you say that it cannot happen in the Joseph Smith Papyri. Double standard my friend.

You say Mithraism is a synretistic hodge podge of borrowings of symbols and stories. But it can't happen in the Joseph Smith papyri. For that, we must have a special case to invalidate Mormonism, and stick with the classic Anti-Mormon assertion of no iconotropy there.

The key word here is "adapt". Mithraism adapted preexisting traditions, and quite radically so. The Papyrus of Hor, in contrast, is entirely explicable as a typical Book of Breathings. Its main deviation is somewhat unusual iconography in the vignette that became Facsimile 1. There is absolutely nothing to indicate that it is a "lost record of Abraham" or an Abrahamic text of any kind, and if the papyrus had never fallen into Joseph Smith's hands, nobody would be suggesting any such thing. Claiming that the Papyrus of Hor secretly encodes a book attributed to Abraham is no different from taking a Christian book — say a missal or something — and claiming that its bog-standard Christian text is actually a cipher for a lost work attributed to Hermes Trismegistus.

[Ed1]

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[Ed1]

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[Marcus]

Put the word "ancient" in there, and mopologists will do anything to make it happen. It is as if ancient is all that matters...

Good to see you are around. Ancient does matter, because ancient is the key to having reproduced something authentic, something that wasn't made up in the 19th century.

No, that's not correct. Having something not made in the 19th century means it can be ancient, by definition, but it in no way guarantees it is "authentic." I think that's Philo's point--looking ancient isn't enough.

[Philo Sofee]

Good to see you are around. Ancient does matter, because ancient is the key to having reproduced something authentic, something that wasn't made up in the 19th century.

No, that's not correct. Having something not made in the 19th century means it can be ancient, by definition, but it in no way guarantees it is "authentic." I think that's Philo's point--looking ancient isn't enough.

Not only that, being ancient isn't enough either. Just because something ends up ancient has nothing to do with its truth. Anciently they were human and mad all the same kinds of errors, biases, and problems we now have.

[Physics Guy]

Ancient does matter, because ancient is the key to having reproduced something authentic, something that wasn't made up in the 19th century.

But if there is no trace in ancient history of the lost Book of Abraham, and if the restored text was revealed to Smith using the catalyst of his associations with hieroglyphs in the Hor Papyrus, which are not actually related at all to the Book of Abraham text, then do we really have anything beyond Smith's word for it, that the text was not made up in the 19th century?

The claimed ancient provenance of the Book of Abraham seems to be a mere placeholder that is used to support its validity as revealed Scripture. If there is no actual evidence for its being ancient, however, then the claimed ancient provenance of the Book of Abraham does not actually offer any support for its validity as Scripture, anyway, but instead just represents one more thing about the Book of Abraham, besides its validity as Scripture, that has to be supported.

[Ed1]

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[Marcus]

... I don't have any expectation that anyone here will say much of use to me, and so, I'm close to just walking away yet again. I intend to continue pushing back on you when to me it matters, and challenging you, even though I consider you a friend. The other people who mock me here are not my friends though I foolishly continue to try to reason with any of you at all. The rest of most of you, I have nothing but sadness for, because of your continued unwillingness to truly reason through anything.

Yea, Ed, we get it. You come here when you need a self-victimization hit, you post aggressively and mean-spiritedly, you lose your shiit if anyone dares to respond to you in kind, you ignore anyone who actually responds to you because you are too unsure, deep down, about your work, then you lecture everyone, and then you flounce off.

because of your continued unwillingness to truly reason through anything.

[Ed1]

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