KEP Debate in Pundits

[_CaliforniaKid]

Hey Chris, here is the context of Will's comments about Parrish.

I agree that in these quotes, Will does not appear to know what he's talking about.

[_dartagnan]

We know for a fact that Parrish was involved in writing down a dictated translation. His testimony goes as follows: "I have set by his side and penned down the translation of the Egyptian Hieroglyphicks as he claimed to receive it by direct inspiration from Heaven."

Notice he did not say anything about being involved in a "copying" effort. He explicitly described his duties as that of a scribe transcribing a dictated translation via "direct inspiration from Heaven."

Here is where it gets bad for Will.

We have manuscripts in his handwriting that fit the exact description of what he said he was doing, which date to the time when he was said to have done them.

We know for a fact that Parrish was hired as a scribe at the end of October 1835. We also know that from at least 22 December 1835 to 8 February 1836, Parrish did not serve as a scribe because he was ill.

The manuscripts in Parrish's handwriting consist of Abr 1:4-2:18. These were probably transcribed sometime between November and mid December of 1835. Will insists, with no evidence whatsoever, that this was already translated "long before" these manuscripts were produced.

Well, if that is true, then how do we make sense of Parrish's testimony that he was involved in writing down Smith's translation of the Egyptian texts? Meaning, what original translated portion of the Book of Abraham was Parrish responsible for, if, according to Will, all of it had already been produced before Parrish came onto the scene?

At the very least, Parrish's testimony shatters their insistence that the Book of Abraham was "already translated" by November 1835.

[_Wheat]

We know for a fact that Parrish was involved in writing down a dictated translation. His testimony goes as follows: "I have set by his side and penned down the translation of the Egyptian Hieroglyphicks as he claimed to receive it by direct inspiration from Heaven."

Notice he did not say anything about being involved in a "copying" effort. He explicitly described his duties as that of a scribe transcribing a dictated translation via "direct inspiration from Heaven."

Here is where it gets bad for Will.

We have manuscripts in his handwriting that fit the exact description of what he said he was doing, which date to the time when he was said to have done them.

We know for a fact that Parrish was hired as a scribe at the end of October 1835. We also know that from at least 22 December 1835 to 8 February 1836, Parrish did not serve as a scribe because he was ill.

The manuscripts in Parrish's handwriting consist of Abr 1:4-2:18. These were probably transcribed sometime between November and mid December of 1835. Will insists, with no evidence whatsoever, that this was already translated "long before" these manuscripts were produced.

Well, if that is true, then how do we make sense of Parrish's testimony that he was involved in writing down Smith's translation of the Egyptian texts? Meaning, what original translated portion of the Book of Abraham was Parrish responsible for, if, according to Will, all of it had already been produced before Parrish came onto the scene?

At the very least, Parrish's testimony shatters their insistence that the Book of Abraham was "already translated" by November 1835.

I've been trying to catch up with everything that has been said. It's not easy. But I'm pretty sure that I understand that they are not arguing that Parrish wasn't involved in the translation, just that he only was involved in translation that came after Abr. 2:18. I read in one of the threads where it was argued that Parrish was the scribe for portions that had to do with astronomy, which is in chapter 3. As I understand their argument, they're saying that Abr.1:1-2:18 was completed before November 1835. The rest of chapter 2 and most of chapter 3 *or more*, as I understand their argument, was done after November 1835, but before the Mormons left Kirtland. They even say that there is probably more of the book that was never published, though it leaves one wondering where that text might be.

By the way, you said above that Parrish started scribing for Smith in October 1835. That's not correct. He didn't actually start until mid-November. A minor detail, I know, but I think it should be acknowledged.

[_dartagnan]

I've been trying to catch up with everything that has been said. It's not easy. But I'm pretty sure that I understand that they are not arguing that Parrish wasn't involved in the translation, just that he only was involved in translation that came after Abr. 2:18. I read in one of the threads where it was argued that Parrish was the scribe for portions that had to do with astronomy, which is in chapter 3. As I understand their argument, they're saying that Abr.1:1-2:18 was completed before November 1835.

John Gee argued that the entire Book of Abraham was finished by that time. His evidence? "It has to be!"

The rest of chapter 2 and most of chapter 3 *or more*, as I understand their argument, was done after November 1835, but before the Mormons left Kirtland. They even say that there is probably more of the book that was never published, though it leaves one wondering where that text might be.

Yeah, another wild theory that leaves them asking more questions. We know that there was hardly anything beyond 2:18 finished as late as 1842 because the first published portion ended at 2:18, precisely where the KEP mss ended more than six years earlier. And then we have Joseph Smith's 1842 statement about having to produce more translation for the next published installment, which began at 2:19.

By the way, you said above that Parrish started scribing for Smith in October 1835. That's not correct. He didn't actually start until mid-November. A minor detail, I know, but I think it should be acknowledged.

Well he was technically hired in October, and we know he had done some writing for Smith in early October, whether he was paid or not. As to when he started scribing for the papyri translation, that is the question. Will has argued that Parrish must have been involved in something else, not what we actually have in his handwriting!

[_Wheat]

[dartagnan]John Gee argued that the entire Book of Abraham was finished by that time. His evidence? "It has to be!"

I agree that I haven't seen much evidence that supports the claim that all of the current b-o-a was written down in Kirtland in 1835, although _ if I remember right _ there is some evidence of references to concepts and specific names and terms that come from the 3rd chapter of the book.

The other thing I read [I think it was from Gee's 2007 FAIR conference paper] is that you can do measurements based on the regular pattern of the lacunae and determine _according to some standard calculation for papyrus scrolls_ the total length of the scroll from which the extant fragments came. Gee argues for a minimum length of [if I recall correctly] of 18 feet for that scroll. And he said that he had to actually adjust the variables for how tightly the scroll was wound in order to obtain his lower figure of 18 feet. The standard calculation returned a length of 40 feet! He also uses the "eyewitness" testimony of people who saw the scrolls in Nauvoo to support his claim that the scrolls would stretch from one room into another when Joseph Smith rolled them out.

What do you think of these claims?

[_dartagnan]

What do you think of these claims?

Well, at this point they are just claims. John Gee doesn't delineate an argument or its methodology in publication so there isn't anything to critique, but I have spoken with Lanny Bell from Brown and he thinks Gee is out of his gourd. I got the gist of his argument from others who heard it. We discussed this over at my forum a year ago but that is closed now. I think Gee is unreliable as an apologist and right now he is just trying to save as much face as possible by trying to salvage his embarrassing missing roll theory.

But in the unlikely event that he does manage to give plausibility to said theory, it would still do nothing to explain why all the evidence points to the extant papyrus as the source for the Book of Abraham. In other words, he is just avoiding the real problem.

This is what Traveler was trying to do over at LDS.net.

He needed to pull a Nibley by changing the debate onto the subject of the supposed "ancient content" of the Book of Abraham. They make it seem absurd that critics don't deal with the content! Well, the content has been dealt with. it was the basis for the criticism, after all. It is just that only a few LDS scholars seem to be astonished by its so-called "ancient" literary forms; no one else. The fact that we pretty much know Joseph Smith couldn't translate ancient documents, didn't seem to bother him.

I used an analogy of a student claiming he had found some writings of Moses in his back yard. When presenting the text to his Hebrew Professor, it was quickly pointed out that the text was just a note that some Jew wrote to his grandmother many centuries after Moses. It didn't even come close to mentioning Moses or anything remotely similar to what the student had "translated."

The student then proceeds to argue with his professor by telling him that they should study to "content" of his translation, to scrub it for parallels to ancient literary forms. The professor would probably fail the student on principle, just for stupidity. This is conparable to the current Book of Abraham situation. Apologists are bending over backwards deperately trying to excuse Joseph Smith's inability to translate ancient documents. They've reinvented the word "translate" as a smoke and mirror tactic. They've bored everyone to death with these long, speculative diatribes about the possibility of missing rolls. They've even gone so far as to suggest that Joseph Smith and his scribes didn't even know that the real Book of ABraham source was on another portion of the scroll, which is of course, conveniently non-existent.

It just gets worser and worser...

[_Chap]

[dartagnan]John Gee argued that the entire Book of Abraham was finished by that time. His evidence? "It has to be!"

I agree that I haven't seen much evidence that supports the claim that all of the current b-o-a was written down in Kirtland in 1835, although _ if I remember right _ there is some evidence of references to concepts and specific names and terms that come from the 3rd chapter of the book.

The other thing I read [I think it was from Gee's 2007 FAIR conference paper] is that you can do measurements based on the regular pattern of the lacunae and determine _according to some standard calculation for papyrus scrolls_ the total length of the scroll from which the extant fragments came. Gee argues for a minimum length of [if I recall correctly] of 18 feet for that scroll. And he said that he had to actually adjust the variables for how tightly the scroll was wound in order to obtain his lower figure of 18 feet. The standard calculation returned a length of 40 feet! He also uses the "eyewitness" testimony of people who saw the scrolls in Nauvoo to support his claim that the scrolls would stretch from one room into another when Joseph Smith rolled them out.

What do you think of these claims?

1. If John Gee manages to publish his formula for estimating the original length of fragmentary papyri in a refereed Egyptological journal, one might pay some attention to it. But till then, no. There is just too much implausibility in the idea that one can tell how much of a text was there before you lost parts of it by applying a formula to what is left.

2. The "eyewitness" accounts you refer to consist of Preston Nibley, father of Hugh Nibley, recounting in old age a memory of a conversation he claimed to have had in 1906, when Joseph F. Smith, then himself elderly, told a story of what he thought he remembered having seen at the age of five ... I don't think we need discuss the weight of such testimony for very long, need we, especially if we apply to it the same criteria that LDS apologists insist on applying to (say) evidence of Joseph Smith's relations with his plural wives?

[_Sethbag]

1. If John Gee manages to publish his formula for estimating the original length of fragmentary papyri in a refereed Egyptological journal, one might pay some attention to it. But till then, no. There is just too much implausibility in the idea that one can tell how much of a text was there before you lost parts of it by applying a formula to what is left.

Given a repeating gap that is assumed to be a notch or some other cut-out in the scroll while it was rolled, you could figure out the radius of the cylinder, but that doesn't tell us much. You could start out with a narrow cylinder and wrap papyrus around it a few times, or a many times, or you could start out with a fat cylinder, and wrap papyrus around it a few times, or many times, and there would be a very large range in the final lengths of the scroll depending just on how many times it was wound up, for a given radius.

If we're missing the end of the scroll, then how do we know how many times it was wrapped? Some unknown number of wraps were torn off, and so it's simply not possible to know how many that might have been.

Unless you can know that the end of the scroll that you still have is the end that was outer-most in the wraps. Then you can put an upper bound on the length the inner part might have been based simply on the radius of the cylinder at the point where the scroll was torn, the thickness of the papyrus, and how tight an angle the papyrus could possibly be wrapped at and not come apart. But do we know that the portion of the papyrus that still remains with us is the outermost portion?

I haven't seen anyone show evidence that we do know this.

And, as has been mentioned plenty of times, this still doesn't do anything at all to address the abundant evidence that the Book of Abraham story does in fact derive from (or was claimed by Joseph Smith to have derived from...) the portion of the papyrus that we still have.

[_Chap]

Incidentally, has anyone ever see this commentary on a piece of Gee's work before:

http://www.buchabraham.mormonismus-onli ... hment1.htm

The author description (in 1993) is:

Edward H. Ashment, former Coordinator for Translation Services,
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is a doctoral
candidate in Egyptology at the University of Chicago.

The conclusion is pretty devastating, expecially the last paragraph:

CONCLUSIONS

Although he declares that faith is the 'real proof of scripture', John Gee paradoxically has gone to great lengths in his articles to develop evidence out of Christian Era magical spells from Egypt in an effort to authenticate the historicity of the Book of Abraham. Unfortunately, none of the six authenticating references he has presented is historically rigorous. Gee provides his own dramatic demonstration of that fact when he abandons the extraordinary claim he makes in his first article that he actually has a reference suggesting Abraham lying on a lion-couch altar calling on God, which he boldly declares 'compares closely with Joseph Smith's indication that Facsimile 1 from the Book of Abraham is an illustration of "Abraham fastened upon an altar" to be sacrificed by idolatrous priests'. After the review of his first piece pointed out that the evidence indicated clearly that the person on the lion-couch was a woman who was the object of a love spell, Gee abandons his remarkable claim and admits in his second article that the person on the lion-couch was a woman and that she was the object of a love spell. Only now he claims that she was to be sacrificed (on the lion couch) if she would not yield to her suitor, 'according to an old Egyptian formula'. The spell no longer is 'evidence' of Abraham on the altar. Now it is 'evidence' for three young virgins on the altar. Less dramatic, but no less significant is the fact that Gee has, as the reviews have shown, misquoted and misinterpreted the data and the sources in order to develop his authenticating evidence.

Gee's articles are illustrative of one of the two approaches that the Mormon apologetic school uses to deal with the major problem it faces, viz., for the plethora of proclaimed Truths that are to be rooted in history, there is a dearth of evidence.44 The first approach, used elsewhere,[45] involves the denial of contrary evidence on philosophical grounds. It assumes relativistically that evidence that is not faith-promoting exists only in the head of the 'objectivist' historian, who would have a hidden agendum, but who would pretend to be empirical. On the other hand, it assumes objectivistically that the apologist would have the sure, 'objective knowledge' of proclaimed Truth, with the result that he could be more discretionary with evidence.[46]

The second approach the implicit method of Gee's articles involves the logical fallacy of 'affirming the consequent'. Gee appeals to the 19th-century CE Book of Abraham as an already historically-True template to recognize or ignore 'evidence' regarding its historicity. In other words, the Book of Abraham would reflect an original revelation (an 'Uroffenbarung'), of which authenticating bits and pieces survive in various sources.[47] Something is hailed as 'evidence' if it authenticates the template and ignored if it does not. That is why Gee does not inform his readers about the magical nature of the papyri in his first article. That is why he avoids the fact that his occurrences of the name of Abraham in the magical spells have no more meaning than potent abracadabra words. That is why to Gee a white stone with several magical words on it becomes a seer stone as in DC 130:10-11. That is why he freely interprets the lion-couch vignette and the magical spells following it in accordance with Joseph Smith's interpretation of Facsimile One in his first article, or Abr 1:11-12 in his second. That is why he feels free to connect Magical 8.8 to Book of the Dead chapter 163 to Book of the Dead chapter 162 to the hypocephalus to Abraham to Joseph Smith's interpretation of Facsimile Two. That is why he omits significant amounts of original material in the last two magical texts he cites to make them appear as strong evidence for the the Book of Abraham.

More than anything, the articles indicate that Gee's scholarly vision is clouded by his anxiety to produce 'faith-promoting evidence'. Readers of apologia, consequently, must be extremely cautious about accepting such 'faith-promoting' claims. As the above reviews show, apologia can present 'faithful history' that is not historically rigorous to an unsuspecting audience. Unfortunately, everyone loses: apologists are not taken seriously by their collegues in the academic world; church members are mis-informed; and embarrassment may ultimately come to the church, which prides itself in adhering to the honorable claims of its Thirteenth Article of Faith.

Another piece of Ashment's writing is here:

http://www.buchabraham.mormonismus-onli ... onance.htm

The conclusion to that piece still seems applicable today:

In conclusion, there is no factual basis to the rationalizations which have been devised to explain away the dissonance caused to the Book of Abraham by the Joseph Smith Egyptian Papers and by the Joseph Smith Papyri. Moreover, the attempt to demonstrate the historicity of the Book of Abraham by means of searching far and wide for parallels is suspect because of its complete disregard for the cultural, temporal, and spatial matrices of the material it uses.

It is therefore suggested that such means of dealing with the dissonance concerning the Book of Abraham be abandoned. An observation by biblical scholar Jacob Neusner is appropriate here: "an old Christian text, one from the first century for example, is deemed a worthy subject of scholarship [by historians of religion]. But a fresh Christian expression (I think in this connection of the Book of Mormon) is available principally for ridicule, but never for study. Religious experience in the third century is fascinating. Religious experience in the twentieth century [or the nineteenth] is frightening or absurd."58
Mormon apologists have thoroughly accepted the flawed hypothesis of which Neusner speaks. Evidence of this is their attempt to make the Book of Abraham "a worthy subject of scholarship" and to keep it from being an object of ridicule by unnecessarily archaizing it. It seems more appropriate--as well as more accurate--to regard it as "a fresh Christian expression" also. Let the LDS community begin to study, ponder, and learn from the Book of Abraham for what it is--not for what some within that community want it to be.

I can only say it seems strange that such sensible advice was ignored. Of course it may be that it only seems sensible to me because, unlike John Gee and his colleagues, I do not have a spiritual testimony of the truth of the Book of Abraham to help me over the obstacles posed by the secular evidence against its historicity.

[_dartagnan]

Over at MADB Will declares again with more bombastic certitude that chapter 3 of the Book of Abraham was produced before 1842. He says there is little or no evidence for the critics to "assert" otherwise.

Really now?

On March 1, 1842 the Number 9 issue of Times and Seasons is published.

It includes only Book of Abraham 1:1-2:18.

This is precisely what the KEP manuscripts 1a and 1b - which were done in 1835 - have in common. Is this just a coincidence? Will requires that it must be, and cannot possibly constitute "evidence."

Chapter 3 first appears in issue Number 10, which was published March 15th. We have diary entries from Joseph Smith that suggest he spent at least the days of March 8th and 9th translating for this issue. On the 8th he says he was, "Translating from the Book of Abraham for 10 No of the Times and Seasons and was engaged at his office day & evening." On the 9th he describes the day as: "in the morning; in the afternoon continued the translation of the Book of Abraham." In a letter written to Howard hunter that same day, he said, “I am now very busily engaged in Translating."

This is all from March 1842.

Yet, according to John Gee, there isn't the slightest evidence that Joseph Smith worked on any Book of Abraham translation after 1835!!

One must wonder why Gee didn't reseazrch this properly. I meanw aht's his excuse? Dean Jesse's publication was available since 1992. He had nine yearsd to read up on the relevant history. And now Will is over at MADB telling Chris that he can't have any evidence unless he has managed to get into the archives! What an idiot. The apologists love to keep their apologetic arguments unverifiable and secure in the bosom of Church security. But such isn't the case here. Will is just too ignorant to realize there is evidence out there that he and the Church hasn't managed to lock away.