Manetho, Josephus, and the Book of Abraham

[Marcus]

Oh, sure, I think it is perfectly fine for anyone to reject any text as divinely inspired for themselves, but to hold forth as if their personal standard invalidates the faith of others is, well, kinda dumb. Invalidates for the speaker and those of like mind, perhaps.

I bolded the part that concerns me. I know Shulem waxes poetic about what he thinks about various apologists, but i don't read the hard research part of his posts about Mormon scripture as something that is intended simply to "invalidate the faith of others", but rather as a form of education.

I read his posts as invalidating the scripture AS scripture, sure. He definitely considers things like Smith announcing that what was found on various papyri was written by the hand of Abraham, or Smith's incorrect labeling of parts of hieroglyphs to be evidence that invalidates the Book of Abraham.

Just because someone considers something divinely inspired doesn't mean factual information can't still be expressed and found useful.

For example, the information about how divining rods "work" or, more accurately, don't work, is pretty factual. Sharing that information may be perceived by some as invalidating their faith in the efficacy of this technique, but that is hardly a valid reason to not share it, nor is it typically considered something to repress because it might be construed as an attack on the sensibilities of those who believe.

[Physics Guy]

History in antiquity was not primarily, not to mention exclusively, about discovering the facts. It is a rhetorical exercise [emphasis added]. Someone uses data of various kinds and rhetorical tropes to convince you of their point of view. That’s history. The texts in the Bible and LDS scripture have different generic and rhetorical aims than history. It is difficult to say anything that applies well to all three of these snippets, but I tried.

This rings a bell with my own very limited education in ancient Greco-Roman culture. Even a freshman or high school exposure makes clear that these people were really interested in rhetoric. I can understand that, too. It was one of the best things they had. They probably liked rhetoric the way I like differential equations. So just as most things a modern theoretical physicist says carry the implicit preface, "Consider this model," I can imagine that most classical writing really did carry a sort of implicit hashtag of #RhetoricalDevice or #ConsiderThisAnalogy.

At the same time, though, I don't think that any human culture can have completely lost sight of the importance of #ThisReallyHappened. More sophisticated rhetorical culture only makes you more aware, I think, of how factual reality is the trump suit. If it really did happen once, then that's a strong argument for the claim that something like it could really happen again. Nobody who hoped to survive against wolves could afford to ignore that kind of rhetoric. And nobody who understood that principle could afford to ignore the extra power of a credible claim to #ThisReallyHappened. If anyone had evidence beyond Hey Listen to This, I bet they pounded the table for that evidence, hard.

Often, though, there was no way for anyone to get real evidence one way or the other, and everyone must have known it. You wouldn't have had to include a warning of unreliable data before recounting a story, any more than people nowadays have to include a warning if they show a cartoon. We see a cartoon and we know right away that it's just somebody's imagination of what could have happened. In the past, any story at all was probably received the same way.

And we may well be headed back into those times. Video and audio will soon be so convincingly faked that it will be hard to say what would count as solid evidence for anything. The notion of reliable history may turn out to have been a brief blip in our history.

[Kishkumen]

I bolded the part that concerns me. I know Shulem waxes poetic about what he thinks about various apologists, but i don't read the hard research part of his posts about Mormon scripture as something that is intended simply to "invalidate the faith of others", but rather as a form of education.

I read his posts as invalidating the scripture AS scripture, sure. He definitely considers things like Smith announcing that what was found on various papyri was written by the hand of Abraham, or Smith's incorrect labeling of parts of hieroglyphs to be evidence that invalidates the Book of Abraham.

Just because someone considers something divinely inspired doesn't mean factual information can't still be expressed and found useful.

For example, the information about how divining rods "work" or, more accurately, don't work, is pretty factual. Sharing that information may be perceived by some as invalidating their faith in the efficacy of this technique, but that is hardly a valid reason to not share it, nor is it typically considered something to repress because it might be construed as an attack on the sensibilities of those who believe.

I agree that the educational aspect of what Shulem does is fantastic. But if he dishes it out, I’ll be happy to respond in kind. It’s not that I don’t love Shulem like a brother, but his boastful crowing gets old.

[Marcus]

...At the same time, though, I don't think that any human culture can have completely lost sight of the importance of #ThisReallyHappened. More sophisticated rhetorical culture only makes you more aware, I think, of how factual reality is the trump suit. If it really did happen once, then that's a strong argument for the claim that something like it could really happen again. Nobody who hoped to survive against wolves could afford to ignore that kind of rhetoric...

Or who hopes to survive even something as mundane as a computer issue. It's a pretty standard response now to assume that if you have an issue with a laptop, phone, PC, internet connection, etc., you are not the first and by no means the only!!, and to do research based on that assumption.

The part I bolded is, in my opinion, a very significant conclusion.

[Kishkumen]

This rings a bell with my own very limited education in ancient Greco-Roman culture. Even a freshman or high school exposure makes clear that these people were really interested in rhetoric. I can understand that, too. It was one of the best things they had. They probably liked rhetoric the way I like differential equations. So just as most things a modern theoretical physicist says carry the implicit preface, "Consider this model," I can imagine that most classical writing really did carry a sort of implicit hashtag of #RhetoricalDevice or #ConsiderThisAnalogy.

At the same time, though, I don't think that any human culture can have completely lost sight of the importance of #ThisReallyHappened. More sophisticated rhetorical culture only makes you more aware, I think, of how factual reality is the trump suit. If it really did happen once, then that's a strong argument for the claim that something like it could really happen again. Nobody who hoped to survive against wolves could afford to ignore that kind of rhetoric. And nobody who understood that principle could afford to ignore the extra power of a credible claim to #ThisReallyHappened. If anyone had evidence beyond Hey Listen to This, I bet they pounded the table for that evidence, hard.

Often, though, there was no way for anyone to get real evidence one way or the other, and everyone must have known it. You wouldn't have had to include a warning of unreliable data before recounting a story, any more than people nowadays have to include a warning if they show a cartoon. We see a cartoon and we know right away that it's just somebody's imagination of what could have happened. In the past, any story at all was probably received the same way.

And we may well be headed back into those times. Video and audio will soon be so convincingly faked that it will be hard to say what would count as solid evidence for anything. The notion of reliable history may turn out to have been a brief blip in our history.

Yes, I did not say that history in antiquity was completely disconnected from the facts. I said it was not primarily or exclusively concerned with discovering the facts. Today I would like to think that many historians remain who are interested in discovering the facts.

[Alphus and Omegus]

Interesting, Reverend. I'm having trouble choosing which lenses I should use to understand these three written passages. If I asked each of the three authors at the time of their writings the question: "is what you wrote what really happened?" what kind of answer should I expect to receive? Today, we have additional information that we can use to judge the historicity of each passage. But on what basis can we say that each was not attempting to convey what each believed to be historically accurate information?

The very concept of what constitutes historically accurate has changed over time. I would guess that each author would likely affirm that their story was true and accurate, but what that meant would undoubtedly not match your definition. Surely, Joseph Smith’s time comes closest to the expectations of ours, but he was also consciously emulating Josephus and seeking to fill out Josephus’ account.

Mythology and history were the same for most of human history, both originally began as an attempt to explain why things were, not to chronicle in detail what actually happened. Thus, successive additions to stories were not lies, but rather methods of better understanding it.

This history as mystic story view seems to be in part what Joseph Smith was doing with some of his works. While he was deceitful in presenting his fabrications as divinely overseen, I do think he was using this earlier view of historiography in part.

[Physics Guy]

I hesitate to believe that when ancient writers wrote something like, "Pompey did X", they really meant something completely different from, "Pompey did X." Claims like, "Claudius borrowed a sestertius from me yesterday" would have been just as literal and factual in ancient times as anything we'd say today, and it would be strange to re-purpose the same grammatical forms that expressed literal claims about the recent past to make political or philosophical assertions by using claims about the more distant past as some kind of metaphor.

I think, though, of how movie fans can argue confidently about their favourite cinematic universes using lore which anyone can master in no more than a dozen or two hours of viewing. Everyone means everything they say seriously—in a sense. It's all serious statements about a fantasy world, and this is implicit in participation in the discussion. Nobody drops out of an argument about The Joker's exact mental condition by admitting that they really shouldn't try to say anything about this until they finish their residency in psychiatry. The fact that the whole discussion is about a cartoonish fantasy world is taken for granted.

And I think about the way that 20-year olds talk about their retirements. They mention things that could in principle be possible, barely, and they think they mean what they say quite seriously, but in fact they have devoted less serious thought to their plans for their seventies than they have to their plans for the weekend. Future events as remote as retirement aren't real to them; age and pensions are things in a fantasy world, and they discuss them confidently despite minimal knowledge because nobody needs a four-year criminology degree to talk about Batman. If asked, they may well insist that their plans for fifty years in the future are serious and realistic, because they themselves are not consciously aware that for them "fifty years in the future" changes the meaning of all that they say by adding the crucial qualifier "in a movie."

In a similar way I might agree that ancient historians really cared little about what really happened, and were almost if not entirely using the format of history to express other things. I would propose, though, that many ancient historians probably weren't doing that consciously. They probably thought they were making serious statements about what really happened, except that "in the distant past about which we obviously can't find any hard evidence" would have been implicit license to follow fiction-like rules that they would never have accepted for that loan to Claudius.

[Kishkumen]

I hesitate to believe that when ancient writers wrote something like, "Pompey did X", they really meant something completely different from, "Pompey did X." Claims like, "Claudius borrowed a sestertius from me yesterday" would have been just as literal and factual in ancient times as anything we'd say today, and it would be strange to re-purpose the same grammatical forms that expressed literal claims about the recent past to make political or philosophical assertions by using claims about the more distant past as some kind of metaphor.

Yeah, I don't think such an absurd thing is what we are talking about. What is necessary at this point is a thorough education in the nature of historiography in antiquity and its development over time. You need to know the conventions. This is the kind of thing I don't plan on getting deeply into. It is true, however, that stories that seemed appropriate to the time, or at least plausible, while fitting the objective of the author were indeed made up out of whole cloth. Accusations and invective were used as fact for historical reportage.

Do I know for a fact because so many people claimed it that Nicomedes III of Bithynia had a romantic relationship with Julius Caesar?

No. But a number of sources claim that he did, and Suetonius treats it as fact. What seems to be the case is that Caesar spent a good deal of time at the court of Nicomedes III, and so it was easy to accuse him, as orators were wont to do, of having an inappropriate relationship with the king.

I think, though, of how movie fans can argue confidently about their favourite cinematic universes using lore which anyone can master in no more than a dozen or two hours of viewing. Everyone means everything they say seriously—in a sense. It's all serious statements about a fantasy world, and this is implicit in participation in the discussion. Nobody drops out of an argument about The Joker's exact mental condition by admitting that they really shouldn't try to say anything about this until they finish their residency in psychiatry. The fact that the whole discussion is about a cartoonish fantasy world is taken for granted.

And I think about the way that 20-year olds talk about their retirements. They mention things that could in principle be possible, barely, and they think they mean what they say quite seriously, but in fact they have devoted less serious thought to their plans for their seventies than they have to their plans for the weekend. Future events as remote as retirement aren't real to them; age and pensions are things in a fantasy world, and they discuss them confidently despite minimal knowledge because nobody needs a four-year criminology degree to talk about Batman. If asked, they may well insist that their plans for fifty years in the future are serious and realistic, because they themselves are not consciously aware that for them "fifty years in the future" changes the meaning of all that they say by adding the crucial qualifier "in a movie."

In a similar way I might agree that ancient historians really cared little about what really happened, and were almost if not entirely using the format of history to express other things. I would propose, though, that many ancient historians probably weren't doing that consciously. They probably thought they were making serious statements about what really happened, except that "in the distant past about which we obviously can't find any hard evidence" would have been implicit license to follow fiction-like rules that they would never have accepted for that loan to Claudius.

I tend to think that the purpose of human communication is something that is not as straightforward as a lot of people would like to believe. This is the stuff that philosophers, theorists, rhetoricians, and scientists spend a great deal of time thinking about. I like your thoughts above. They are great grist for the mill.

Someone dear to me once complained that people spend a lot of time saying things that do not need to be said. I pointed out that if conveying information were the primary purpose of speaking, that would be true. Social connection, however, is at least as important, if not more important, than conveying information. People say a lot of nothing in the interest of forging, affirming, and strengthening social bonds.

[Kishkumen]

Mythology and history were the same for most of human history, both originally began as an attempt to explain why things were, not to chronicle in detail what actually happened. Thus, successive additions to stories were not lies, but rather methods of better understanding it.

This history as mystic story view seems to be in part what Joseph Smith was doing with some of his works. While he was deceitful in presenting his fabrications as divinely overseen, I do think he was using this earlier view of historiography in part.

Explain why things were and who the people were—where and who they came from, how their home came to be their home, and why they relate to others as they do. Yes, what you say is generally correct and insightful. I don’t know that I agree that Smith was generally speaking deceitful in the way you claim, and I don’t think it really matters. He could sincerely believe and yet be absolutely wrong.

[Physics Guy]

A silly mathematical joke might actually be worthwhile for historians. The "number" denoted by the lowercase i is defined by the arbitrary rule that i times i is equal to -1. This makes no sense in terms of the kind of arithmetic that you can do with apples or patches of carpet measuring so-wide by so-long, but it turns out to be a self-consistent game rule. It's an artificial game rule for an abstract kind of multiplication that doesn't match how carpet areas behave, but it turns out that it does match how a lot of other real things behave, in more abstract ways, so i is used constantly in physics. Mathematicians call ordinary numbers "real numbers", in contrast to the bizarre artificial "numbers" like i, which are called "imaginary numbers". Math and physics like to use "numbers" of the composite form a + i x b, where a and b are ordinary "real" numbers. These composite concepts are called "complex numbers". So one could say that history is complex: partly real and partly imaginary. It's a stupid joke, but maybe not completely stupid, because using the language of exact sciences might be a subtle way to assert the valid claim that history—especially ancient history—is an important and serious discipline even though some of its subject matter isn't real.

Anyway, Smith was doing two layers. He was writing a 19th century idea of what ancient historians would have written as history. I think this might push any honest component of his intentions into the unfathomable. If real ancient historians were in the first place writing a "complex" mixture of myth, metaphor, and fiction, with or without some notion that what they wrote also happened in some sense, and then we allow Smith to be mixing more myth and metaphor and fiction on top of all that, by using his imagined ancient historians in the complex ways that real ancient historians used their history, then I at least don't feel confident in ruling out anything whatever as something that Smith might have been intending to express.

So I'm willing to believe that Smith was not only committing a fraud, but was also trying to do something honest, though non-factual, with his imaginary ancient history. My problem, though, is that I don't have much faith in our ability to pin down any honest thing in particular that Smith might have been trying to do. Practically anything seems to be equally possible. So even if fraud wasn't the only thing Smith was doing, it seems to be the only thing he was doing that is worthwhile discussing. Everything else seems too nebulous. If Thucydides made things up, and Nephi is a made-up Thucydides, then I can't rule out anything that Smith might have been trying to express via Nephi.