John Gee & "Interpreter" Deliver Yet Another Book of Abraham Embarrassment

[Shulem]

To spot it as an anachronism, one would have to take the Book of Abraham seriously as an ancient text, which most critics are unwilling to do. The purpose of this article is to discuss the apparent anachronism and why it is not one.

I do NOT take the Book of Abraham seriously as an ancient text. Why? Because it isn't historical ancient text. How so? Just look at the Explanations tendered by Joseph Smith in the Times and Seasons (1842) in how he gave translations and interpretations for the hieroglyphic writing in Facsimile No. 3. Therein is fraud and anachronisms galore. Therein was the nose chopped off the Egyptian god Anubis who is falsely labeled a slave by the fictitious name of Olimlah.

It's all lies, just as you are a liar, Mr. John Gee. You should be ashamed of yourself for the garbage you peddle. You're peddler of cheap wares and a liar down to the bone. History will not be kind to you. Your name will figure prominently as a traitor and an enemy to the ancient Egyptians.

[Everybody Wang Chung]

Bless John Gee’s heart. The last few years have been very difficult for him.

First, the Church throws him and his lifetime of research under the bus with the essay on the Book of Abraham. Next, he gets fired from the Maxwell Institute and then shortly after has his book pulled from Deseret Book because of dangerous homophobic content. Then John gets called down to the COB with DCP and gets yelled at by Church leaders for his derogatory and jealous rant about not being included in the Joseph Smith Paper’s project. Finally, he professionally implodes and resigns from a professional academic journal in an angry and bizarre tirade about the shortcomings of peer review. And now we get this crap?

I can hardly wait for what’s in store for John next. Truth really is stranger than fiction.

[Tator]

That is a very heavy shelf.

[Shulem]

The Egyptian term for horse (ssmt) itself was borrowed from Akkadian (sisi mati).

Poor pitiful John. It must have been somewhat difficult to have to explain how the sesmet (horse) was not indigenous to the Egyptian people and was imported into Egypt from abroad by the vile asiatics. The same can be said for the natives of North America during Book of Mormon times because there were no horses until they were imported by the Spaniards.

I wonder if that irked him while writing that? I'll bet it did. Horses in Egypt is an important feature and a marked occurrence in the chronology of Egypt. But with the Book of Mormon it's a big joke like riding pigs or whatever. Lipstick on a pig!

[Shulem]

• Archaeologically, the earliest horse remains from Egypt were “discovered in situ underneath a destruction layer dating to 1675 bc within the southern fortress of Buhen.”

• The earliest archaeological finds of chariots from Egypt come from the tomb of Amenhotep II (KV 35).

• Thus, the standard point of view is that both horses and chariots came into Egypt from Asia during the Hyksos period.

This is 3 strikes against the idea that a horse drawn chariot existed in Egypt prior to the Hyksos 15th Dynasty or the Asiatic incursion into Egypt which occurred long after the Abrahamic biblical era. Anyone who knows anything about ancient Egypt also knows that the war chariot was a convention brought into Egypt via the Asiatic conquering of the entire Egyptian kingdom.

Abraham, however, lived before the Hyksos. The most probable time for Abraham’s life would range from the end of the Twelfth Dynasty through the beginning of the Fourteenth Dynasty.

Indeed, Abraham proceeded the Hyksos by a very long time. The Hyksos war chariot was something Abraham never saw.

Therefore the passage in the Book of Abraham where God tells Abraham, “I am the Lord thy God; I dwell in heaven; the earth is my footstool; I stretch my hand over the sea, and it obeys my voice; I cause the wind and the fire to be my chariot” (Abraham 2:7) would appear, at first glance, to be anachronistic. In fact, it is not.

Professor Gee makes the important distinction that Abraham cited a reference to the heavenly chariot prior to making his sojourn to Egypt, hence he was still Abram. It should be noted that he had not received his divine commission of becoming a patriarchal father and Isaac was not yet born. Gee continues to tell us about the many types of foreign chariots that existed in the nations outside of Egypt prior to and during Abraham's lifetime. Chariots were known to predate Abraham by a great many years in the Asiatic regions. Therefore, Gee states, "The mention of chariots is thus no anachronism in the Book of Abraham."

To be continued.

[Shulem]

Professor Gee lists several early models and types of chariots had in the ancient world before and during the time of Abraham's life and thus rightfully concludes that they "they were in the vicinity of Abraham in his day." Of course they were not fashioned in style or modeled like the impressive Egyptian war chariots of a much later date but they were chariots or horse drawn carts, nonetheless. Gee continues to describe chariot models of Abraham's day in ancient Babylon and we are given the distinct impression that they are somewhat clumsy and bulkier than the sleek and agile Egyptian war chariot of much later times. The chariots of Abraham's day were nothing like the chariots the Hyksos used and the later refined Egyptian war chariot. But that's not to say the Babylonian or Mesopotamian chariots were not finely decorated and made elaborate with gold, silver, and precious stones because they were and Dr. Gee makes that point. Some were used for religious rituals and others for matters of royal celebration to honor the majesty of those who ruled. The chariot was an important feature during Abraham's day for a variety of reasons and not just for general transportation and hauling goods.

To be continued.

[Shulem]

Professor Gee shifts gears and beings to explain how the ancients associated chariots or wagons with divinities in which their gods used them in a dignified way to manifest and move about. At this point its important that Gee align chariots in this way in order to describe and justify the heavenly chariot mentioned in the Book of Abraham. The whole point of Gee's article is to justify Jehovah's chariot and not have to defend the idea that chariots in and of themselves were an anachronism because they are not.

Gee now feels he needs to substitute horse-drawn chariots with chariots of wind and fire that have no horse in order to justify Jehovah's supposed horseless chariot! Houston, we have a problem and Gee knows it. What to do with Jehovah's horseless chariot? This is when tricky apologetics comes into play and with Mormon apologetics there is always deception. Gee notes the following:

• "But the Book of Abraham does not identify a horse-drawn chariot."

• "It specifically identifies the chariot with “the wind and the fire” (Abraham 2:7)."

• "The use of a chariot does not necessarily entail the use of a horse."

To be continued.

[Moksha]

Finally, he professionally implodes and resigns from a professional academic journal in an angry and bizarre tirade about the shortcomings of peer review.

I feel sorry for that Canadian Egyptology journal which had to apologize and take the hit to its reputation after its journal was suckered into an LDS apologetics attack on Dr. Ritner. Oh well, even if all other BYU academics are tainted, BYU still has its Ferengi School of accounting which might be called on to serve Donald Trump after the next election.

[Shulem]

As noted earlier, it has been claimed that “horse-drawn chariots are a feature of the new order in the later second millennium, and do not seem to have played an important role before then” in Mesopotamia.

The apologetic move is to now find ways to describe a horseless chariot in order to justify Jehovah's chariot that is driven by wind and fire rather than a horse. But really, who ever heard of someone riding a chariot not being pulled by a horse? Doesn't that seem rather silly? But this is where Professor Gee wants to go so he's opening up a can of chariot worms. Gee brings up the following examples to introduce the horseless chariot:

• "The equids drawing the war chariots in the famous Standard of Ur are not precisely identified, and both donkeys and onagers have been suggested."

• "In one Old Babylonian account (thus contemporary with Abraham), the four winds (im.limmu.ba) are depicted as mules (parê) who provide the transportation of deities."

• "In another Old Babylonian account, the wind, particularly “a hot, humid, violent wind,” is thought of as an animal with wings that brought “most of the rain to the lands of southern Mesopotamia.”"

Gee wants to impress his readers into thinking that "the idea that the winds provided the animals that pulled a divine chariot is a known idea from Abraham’s day." He continues with how the wind is connected with the fire and so that "storm-winds" lift the chariots into the air, so to speak, and they fly about as the "chariot of God"! Hence, we have God riding a horseless chariot because the wind and fire is what is pulling it or driving it.


To be continued.

[Shulem]

First of all, let's make one thing perfectly clear. The Book of Abraham was NOT written by Abraham! It is not an ancient record and is not an authentic historical record written by Abraham on papyrus. The Book of Abraham was authored solely by Joseph Smith and everything in that book is a 19th century product plagiarized piece of fiction.

The fact there are no horses mentioned in Joseph Smith's chariot account in the Book of Abraham is because Smith neglected to include them and for no other reason than that. Smith did not envision his Man-god riding on a horseless chariot! That is a joke and totally ridiculous. Smith made no illusion at all that the chariot was horseless, he simply neglected to mention the horses.

This is more or less what Smith would envision in heavenly horse drawn chariots:

And it came to pass, as they still went on, and talked, that, behold, there appeared a chariot of fire, and horses of fire, and parted them both asunder; and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven.

John Gee is a dodo. He has turned Joseph Smith's chariot of God into buffoonery! He has opened up a can of worms in pointing out that chariots in the Book of Abraham are not an anachronism per se but the kind of chariot foreseen by Joseph Smith may very well have been! Gee should have kept his mouth shut. But heck, the Church is paying him to do apologetics and now they have this can of worms to deal with, thanks to Gee's stupidity.