An evening with Dr. Gee

[_Sethbag]

The one thing that make jews go crazy is to tell them the figure Abraham had a relationship with an apocalyptic savior who's blood would cleanse them after he was crucified and then rose from the dead. If you read about the people in that era the picture just does not add up. The one thing that Christians do with the old testament is take two verses out of a whole paragraph and say that this is about the apocalyptic savior. Jews and Christians can look at the hebrew Bible and discuss the interpertation and translation. With regards to the Book of Abraham, you are in a totally different universe. It is all spin.

I had an exchange once over on MAD with someone who claimed that it was obvious, from a reading of the Old Testament, that Jesus was the Messiah. It must be pointed out that 14 million Jews would beg to differ. I think it's clear that people read these verses and understand them from the point of view they've already chosen. Christians see Jesus the Messiah, Jews don't - no big surprise there.

Does anyone remember the thread here where Gazelam posted a photo of some, I think it was Babylonian carving, and argued point by point that this guy was basically an ancient Mormon, temple clothes and all. He saw what he wanted to see.

In the case of the Book of Abraham, once you decide that the book is true, without the possibility of being wrong in that, then that will automatically color the way evidence and argumentation is viewed. The evidence must support the Book of Abraham, so it's looked at until a way is found to explain it as actually supportive. Hence you get things like Nibley arguing that the Book of Breathings was an Egyptian "endowment" - the assumption being that it may not contain the actual contents of the Book of Abraham, but it's still obviously supportive of Mormonism, right?

And about Gee saying that non-Mormon Egyptologists will accept any interpretation of the facsimiles except the Mormon one. I think that's blatant dishonesty. I challenge Gee to find a single non-Mormon Egyptologist who will accept that, for example, the figure on the lion couch represents Gumby, and the "priest" supposedly sacrificing Gumby is actually Adolf Hitler. Let's not be ridiculous here - non-Mormon Egyptologists will support interpretations that are supported by evidence, and by other elements of Egyptian writing, imagery, religion, etc. that are already understood. They will support interpretations that are consistent within the broader context of Egyptology. Gee and others know this, too, which is why they're constantly looking for any little shred of evidence that they can use to tie in Abraham with Egypt, as if it really helps.

Abraham as a concept is one that we know was a real meme in the ancient Near East, whether Abraham actually existed as a person, or not.
Egypt actually existed in the Ancient Near East.
It's therefor entirely reasonable that the Abraham meme might have been known, or discussed, or shared, to whatever extent, in ancient Egypt. This fact lends absolutely zero evidence that the Book of Abraham is true. Joseph Smith didn't write the Book of Abraham in a vacuum. Since the Old Testament already ties Abraham and Egypt together in some way, Joseph Smith could use that as a sort of jumping-off point for his work. The Book of Abraham becomes a strange sort of historical fiction.

If I wrote a crime novel that was set in Washington, DC in 1800, and which involved Thomas Jefferson, would the fact that historians have verified that Thomas Jefferson actually was in Washington, DC. in 1800 serve as evidence that my novel was actually true?

If there's a reason non-Mormon Egyptologists won't accept the Mormon interpretation of the facsimiles, it's because they recognize that the Mormon interpretation was not arrived at by earnestly seeking to discover the actual meaning of the symbols, but rather by a need to defend and support the notion that Joseph Smith was a true prophet. That's not true scholarship - it's apologetics, and non-Mormon Egyptologists simply aren't interesting in Mormon apologetics as a serious, scholarly discipline.

ps: Not to mention that Muslims, at least in concept, accept the Old Testament scriptures, and likewise aren't convinced that Jesus was the Son of God or the Messiah.

[_Yoda]

After Emma’s death, her stepson (Charles Bidamon) divided the material and sold it to interested parties.

Thanks for all of the information regarding this. I find it odd that Emma didn't leave this in a will to her own son(fathered by Joseph). It's interesting that her stepson managed to obtain this.

[_Droopy]

This whole lecture by Gee is a very good example of something that humans as a species do very well - problem solving.

This is a fantastic example of why when intellectuals finally get their hands on real power, economies collapse and large numbers of people end up in camps.

The perennial fascination by a particular type of mind with human beings as nothing more than another, albeit cognitively sophisticated biological species, intrigues me. Once we've finally reduced the entire human condition: free will, ethics, morality, love, marriage, family, art, music, philosophy, aesthetics, everything, to biology, will the world that the secular humanists really desire, a world in which everything is permitted, really materialize?

Yes, it will, but when we say everything, we mean, everything...

Be careful then, what you hope (and work) for.

[_CaliforniaKid]

What is this *testimony* of Seyffarth that you’re talking about? I haven’t heard about that.

From the St. Louis Museum Catalog (brackets added, but parentheses in original):

“These mummies were obtained in the catacombs of Egypt, sixty feet below the surface of the earth, for the Antiquarian Society of Paris, forwarded to New York, and there purchased, in the year 1835, by Joe Smith, the Mormon Prophet, on account of the writings found in the chest of one of them, and which he pretended to translate, as stating them to belong to the family of the Pharoahs’ – but, according to Prof. Seyffarth, the papyrus roll is not a record, but an invocation to the Deity Osirus, in which occurs the name of the person, (Horus,) and a picture of the attendant spirits, introducing the dead to the Judge, Osirus [sic]. The body of one is that of a female, about forty – the other, that of a boy, about fourteen. They were kept by the Prophet’s mother until her death, when the heirs sold them, and shortly after, were purchased for the Museum.”

Also, what about the other scroll? I thought Gee was suggesting that it was the other scroll that would have contained the Abraham text.

As you know, the eyewitness who describes the collection most fully and who had spent a considerable amount of time with its contents-- Oliver Cowdery-- indicates that Joseph Smith & co. purchased from Chandler 2 rolls and a few other assorted pieces of papyrus besides. One of the rolls was the Hor Book of Breathings, discussed above. This is the roll the prophet identified as the writings of Abraham. The other roll was apparently the Ta-shert-min Book of the Dead, which the prophet identified as the writings of Joseph. The assorted fragments apparently included the hypocephalus and pieces of a few other copies of the Book of the Dead (one for Amenhotep and another for Neferirnub). The LDS Church presently has fragments of both the Hor Book of Breathings and the Ta-shert-min Book of the Dead, including most of the vignettes that were described by eyewitnesses. The pieces in the possession of the Church are the ones that were cut off the ends of the rolls and mounted under glass for preservation purposes.

So now for your question, "what about the other scroll?" It is possible that the fragments in the possession of the Church constitute all of the Ta-shert-min scroll that was in the prophet's possession. There is only one indication that part of the Ta-shert-min roll survived as a roll after the preservation under glass; we find it in Charlotte Haven's report of March 1843. Here is what Ms. Haven said:

Then she turned to a long table, set her candle-stick down, and opened a long roll of manuscript, saying it was "the writing of Abraham and Isaac, written in Hebrew and Sanscrit," and she read seven minutes from it as if it were English. It sounded very much like passages from the Old Testament -- and it might have been for anything we knew -- but she said she read it through the inspiration of her son Joseph, in whom she seemed to have perfect confidence. Then in the same way she interpreted to us hieroglyphics from another roll. One was Mother Eve being tempted by the serpent, who -- the serpent, I mean -- was standing on the tip of his tail, with which his two legs formed a tripod, and had his head in Eve's ear. I said, "But serpents don't have legs."

They did before the fall," she asserted with perfect confidence.

The first roll mentioned was undoubtedly the Hor roll, and the translation Lucy read was more than likely straight out of the Times and Seasons publication of the Book of Abraham. Mother Smith then "interpreted... hieroglyphics from another roll." (By "hieroglyphics" Ms. Haven appears to mean the vignettes. This was a common error at the time.) The construction of Ms. Haven's sentence is ambiguous. It may imply that the second roll was at least partly intact. On the other hand, it may merely mean that Charlotte viewed several mounted fragments which she was informed were "from another roll". That she describes a serpent with legs-- which matches one of the vignettes on a Ta-shert-min fragment presently in the Church's possession-- implies the latter. We never hear again of a second intact roll.

And what calculations do you use to come up with *4 or 5 feet in length* ?

Seyffarth's statement, quoted above, implies that the roll ended after the end of the Book of Breathings and Facsimile 3. For my calculation, I used figures from Michael Rhodes' critical edition of the Hor Book of Breathings, in which he indicates how much text is missing from the end of the BoB and approximately how wide the missing columns and vignette would be.

I thought the descriptions from people in Nauvoo talk about scrolls stretching from one room into another.

The quote you're referring to has serious credibility problems, due to its being a childhood reminiscence of Joseph Fielding Smith (who would have been about 5 at the time), which he told to Preston Nibley, who before he died told Hugh Nibley, who told the story very differently on the two occasions he mentioned it. The version of the story you are appealing to was the second telling and the more fantastic of the two.

-Chris

[_karl61]

I would add that I did see a photo of a letter by (If I recall correctly third century bce jews) who were from elephantine island in Egypt who were angry that egyptians had destroyed their small temple there and pleading for help to build another one - perhaps the original authors of the papyrus help destroy that temple.

[Guest]

Matthew Tandy, ever the amiable fellow he his, has noted the source of the notes and has requested the poster to get permission from Shades, or remove the text.

I went to go check this out, but apparently the MADerators felt that the participants on that board would be best served by not knowing about Shades' notes at all. All posts ackowledging the existence of Shades' notes have been deleted, with the sole exception of one of Matt's comments surviving as a quotation in the post of another.

While I would have liked for more MADites to find their way over here, I just can't complain about the MADerators willingness to entertain me with their silliness.





Edited to add: Sixteen minutes after I posted the above, Chaos wrote, "The FAIR link above has a link to the notes in question, so there is no need to further the discussion here and off topic posts have been removed. If FAIR leaves it up great, problem solved. I will also repeat the link to the FAIR Blog post is [here], second comment has the link."

[_Brackite]

As to the length of the scrolls, Gee is apparently relying on several eyewitness accounts from the Nauvoo era, and also a calculation that is based on the surviving fragments.

...

Also, what about the other scroll? I thought Gee was suggesting that it was the other scroll that would have contained the Abraham text. And what calculations do you use to come up with *4 or 5 feet in length* ? I thought the descriptions from people in Nauvoo talk about scrolls stretching from one room into another.

Hello,

The Following is from the Discussion Thread Titled, 'In Search for the Missing Papyrus', Here on MD Board, a while ago:

Hi There,
The Following is from Brent Metcalfe [who] wrote several years ago about this, on the Zion Lighthouse Board:

In the Improvement Era, Hugh informs readers that Preston Nibley had supplied the Joseph F. Smith account. Preston published his 1906 encounter with Joseph F. in the early 1940's (if memory serves), but omitted the recollection about the BoAbr papyri. According to Preston, in 1906 Joseph F. was recalling an event that occurred over six decades earlier when Smith was 5 years old, or younger. Four years later, in 1910, Hugh was born. Before Preston died (in the mid 1960's?) he related Joseph F.'s recollection to Hugh. Finally, Hugh published the reminiscence in the mid/late 1960's. Given this transmission history, scholars would be reckless to uncritically appeal to Joseph F.'s story as an unblemished depiction of the BoAbr papyri.

( Brent Metcalfe, Zion Lighthouse Message Board, 2003 )

Man, it is even worse than I thought. And that, friends, is probably the best evidence for the missing text. Feast your eyes and gasp in amazement.

It's worse still. Nibley published two different versions of the same reminiscence:

"President Smith (as Elder Nibley recollected with his remarkable memory) recalled with tears the familiar sight of 'Uncle Joseph' kneeling on the floor of the front room with Egyptian manuscripts spread out all around him, weighted down by rocks and books, as with intense concentration he would study a line of characters, jotting down his impressions in a little notebook as he went." --Hugh W. Nibley, "A New Look at the Pearl of Great Price," Improvement Era (March 1968): 17–18

"We are told that they were in beautiful condition when Joseph Smith got them, and that one of them when unrolled on the floor extended through two rooms of the Mansion House." - Hugh W. Nibley, "The Joseph Smith Egyptian Papyri - Translations and Interpretations - Phase One," Dialogue 3:2 (Summer 1968): 99-105

In the latter case he doesn't even identify his source, and he just sort of throws it out there randomly. Given Nibley's laziness about citations and the frequency with which he worked from his somewhat faulty memory, it seems altogeter probable that the Preston Nibley account gradually became amplified in his mind as it took on greater significance in terms of being able to answer certain critics' arguments.

-Chris

Here is the Hyper-link to this whole Discussion thread: Please Click Here:


Edited to add:

Here is Again, From what Egyptologist Dr. R. Ritner Stated:

There is no justification for Gee's unsubstantiated attempt to more than double this figure to '320 cm (about 10 feet)' in Gee, A Guide to the Joseph Smith Papyri, pp. 10 and 12–13. Gee presumably wishes to allow space for a supposedly 'lost hieratic text' of The Book of Abraham; his figure derives from the average length of a manufactured (blank) Ptolemaic papyrus roll—not comparable, individual documents cut from such a roll.

[ R. Ritner, "Among the Joseph Smith Papyri," Journal of Near Eastern Studies 62.3 (July 2003): 166 n33 ]

[_Brackite]

The $64 question is then this. If Joseph Smith and the others had direct, physical possession of all of the scrolls, why choose the "wrong" scroll, ie: the one we have possession of right now, to base all of the written and drawn material on? Why attach symbols from the Breathing Permit of Hor to verses from the Book of Abraham, when the actual Book of Abraham scroll was sitting right there on their desk? Why engrave the vignette from the Breathing Permit of Hor for inclusion in the Book of Abraham when the "real" Book of Abraham scroll, with the image "at the commencement of this record" was sitting right there? Why engrave the hypocephalus image and claim it to be part of the Book of Abraham, when the "real" Book of Abraham scroll was physicall in their hands, on their desk, etc.?

Hello,

The Answer to those questions is easy and simple.

Here is the Answer:

The Book of Abraham was 'Translated' from the Breathing Permit of Hor Scroll Papyrus.

[_Gadianton]

Shades,

This might be the best example of note taking I've ever seen in my life. I wish I knew more about the details of the Book of Abraham stuff to comment. But, I can find something to talk about:

50% simply don't care where the text came from. TO MY SURPRISE, everyone laughed at this. A woman sitting two or three chairs down from me said, "Like me!" PLEASE NOTE that they weren't laughing at Gee, they seemed to be laughing with him, although he wasn't laughing. It was sort of like a, "well, of course no one cares!" kind of laugh, if that makes any sense.

Of course! That's why they're all there spending a few hours trying to get some reassurance on the matter. And that's why Gee built a career to answer precisely this question.

To his credit, he immediately included himself in that list, and said "I'm biased, but at least I'm open about my biases

I do have to disagree with you here. I can understand why you feel this way, but this is really nothing more than a cheap apologetic tactic. Other apologists have also made a big deal about this "admitting one's biases" stuff. Remember, apologists deep down know they've lost. They know they can't win against the skeptics so the best they can do is try for a stalemate.

Imagine that I believe the spirit of Haggar makes my favorite plant grow. And you believe water and soil nutrients make it grow. While it may seem you have all the facts on your side, there is always that little problem that humans are fallible and even the hardest science is subject to mistakes and bias. So you could be wrong, and I could be right, even though the odds might be a billion to one.

So it's to my advantage to admit that my views on plants incorporate my personal bias and that so do yours. And if you won't admit it, then I go on and on about how narrow-minded and rigid you are and so on.

The peer-review process exists to weed out bias. It isn't perfect, but it does pretty well. you can't compare the ideas in terms of "bias" that have passed through the fires of peer review with the outlandish speculations of Gee that only gets checked by nodding Saints who "don't care" anyway. His refusal to submit to peer review demonstrates his bias is orders of magnitude beyond that of his would-be peers.

[_Boaz & Lidia]

Excellent writeup Doc.

The story was reported in the MormonTimes.com website, which is owned, staffed and operated by the LDS owned Desret News.



click image for story

You will love the opening paragraph:

A Brigham Young University Egyptologist and researcher says scholars cannot prove or disprove the authenticity of the Book of Abraham.

Gee admits his work is a waste of time as related to the majority of LDS membership:

Most Latter-day Saints don't care how the translation was done, Gee said.