William Schryver wrote:
Hey, Ray ... how's the curse treating you so far?
It's been treating me excellently for the last 23 years, Will. Drop by and have a beer sometime, when you're in Oz.
William Schryver wrote:
Hey, Ray ... how's the curse treating you so far?
Danna, about three pages ago wrote:Could an apologist pleeeeease explain one thing for me. FAIR is no help, and I have asked this many times, yet am always ignored. A frequent apologetic response is that critics should actually read the Book of Abraham rather than nit-pick over its origin. OK. I have read the Book of Abraham. I once read it to confirm that JSjr would clarify and correct an anachronism in the Old Testament, only to be sharply disappointed.
The Book of Abraham is grossly inaccurate regarding the history of the Chaldeans. They simply did not exist at the same time as Abraham. As a people, or a place. The original reference to Chaldea as the origin of Abraham, in the Old Testament, is a scribal gloss - a scribe's attempted clarification of the identity of Ur. Abraham predated Chaldea and the Chaldeans by about 1000 years.
I know there is scholarly debate as to the location of Abraham's Ur and Haran and other locations mentioned. Fine. But that does not solve the question as to why Abraham in the Book of Abraham discusses a people, place, customs, and language that were not to exist for another millenium.
The logical answer to this is that Joseph took an anachronism from the Bible (an anachronism which was also repeated in non-biblical historical material) and transferred it, in uninspired fashion, into the Book of Abraham and magnified it by elaborating. Is there an apologetic alternative?
William Schryver wrote: I have my doubts that Joseph Smith even knew which Egyptian text corresponded to the Book of Abraham. We know he didn’t when it came to the Book of Mormon. Oh, sure, he knew that the big pile of plates contained the Book of Alma somewhere inside it, but he couldn’t have pointed to a page and said, “There’s Alma’s discourse on faith.”
Similarly, he knew that the scroll contained the Egyptian text of a Book of Abraham. But this long scroll probably contained several texts, and I don’t believe it was deemed necessary for him to know which was which. All he was assigned to do was to be the medium through which the text got rendered into modern English.
William Schryver wrote:I feel compelled to remark that, in my estimation, Kevin Graham has evolved into probably the single most tragic apostate case I have come across in my years of paying attention to such things.
Danna wrote:Danna, about three pages ago wrote:Could an apologist pleeeeease explain one thing for me. FAIR is no help, and I have asked this many times, yet am always ignored. A frequent apologetic response is that critics should actually read the Book of Abraham rather than nit-pick over its origin. OK. I have read the Book of Abraham. I once read it to confirm that JSjr would clarify and correct an anachronism in the Old Testament, only to be sharply disappointed.
The Book of Abraham is grossly inaccurate regarding the history of the Chaldeans. They simply did not exist at the same time as Abraham. As a people, or a place. The original reference to Chaldea as the origin of Abraham, in the Old Testament, is a scribal gloss - a scribe's attempted clarification of the identity of Ur. Abraham predated Chaldea and the Chaldeans by about 1000 years.
I know there is scholarly debate as to the location of Abraham's Ur and Haran and other locations mentioned. Fine. But that does not solve the question as to why Abraham in the Book of Abraham discusses a people, place, customs, and language that were not to exist for another millenium.
The logical answer to this is that Joseph took an anachronism from the Bible (an anachronism which was also repeated in non-biblical historical material) and transferred it, in uninspired fashion, into the Book of Abraham and magnified it by elaborating. Is there an apologetic alternative?
OK.
Could someone then explain why this is a stupid question not worthy of response? Am I missing something? Am I off-topic in some way I am too dense to fathom - I know that Book of Abraham origin debate has predominated, but it was a broad OP. And I am routinely ignored when I attempt to start threads on this topic. Maybe this is so obviously stupid that I cannot see it. I would appreciate someone taking the time to tell me to piss off at least.
But, for the record, Kevin Graham has fallen so far behind in terms of Book of Abraham issues that he might as well write a book on it.
when I was in my mid-twenties (I turn 51 in a few weeks) I occasionally chatted about Hofmann's "non-existent McClellin collection"; but unlike LDS apostle Dallin Oaks and now deceased general authority Hugh Pinnock, I never tried to sell it.
Could an apologist pleeeeease explain one thing for me. FAIR is no help, and I have asked this many times, yet am always ignored. A frequent apologetic response is that critics should actually read the Book of Abraham rather than nit-pick over its origin. OK. I have read the Book of Abraham. I once read it to confirm that JSjr would clarify and correct an anachronism in the Old Testament, only to be sharply disappointed.
The Book of Abraham is grossly inaccurate regarding the history of the Chaldeans. They simply did not exist at the same time as Abraham. As a people, or a place. The original reference to Chaldea as the origin of Abraham, in the Old Testament, is a scribal gloss - a scribe's attempted clarification of the identity of Ur. Abraham predated Chaldea and the Chaldeans by about 1000 years.
I know there is scholarly debate as to the location of Abraham's Ur and Haran and other locations mentioned. Fine. But that does not solve the question as to why Abraham in the Book of Abraham discusses a people, place, customs, and language that were not to exist for another millenium.
The logical answer to this is that Joseph took an anachronism from the Bible (an anachronism which was also repeated in non-biblical historical material) and transferred it, in uninspired fashion, into the Book of Abraham and magnified it by elaborating. Is there an apologetic alternative?