Zub Zool oan and Abraham 1:2b?????3

[_CaliforniaKid]

Hi Mak,

With respect to the semicolons, you're looking at the wrong degree. There appear to be several other errors in your analysis, but I want to do some careful fact-checking and make sure I do your post justice when I reply, so I will probably have to defer a full response for a few days. I am moving back to Claremont on Wednesday night and have a list the length of my right arm of things to do before I leave and after I arrive. So it may be Saturday or Sunday before I can get back to you.

In the meantime, I want to make sure you didn't miss this.

Peace,

-Chris

[_maklelan]

Hi Mak,

With respect to the semicolons, you're looking at the wrong degree. There appear to be several other errors in your analysis, but I want to do some careful fact-checking and make sure I do your post justice when I reply, so I will probably have to defer a full response for a few days. I am moving back to Claremont on Wednesday night and have a list the length of my right arm of things to do before I leave and after I arrive. So it may be Saturday or Sunday before I can get back to you.

In the meantime, I want to make sure you didn't miss this.

Peace,

-Chris

Thanks Chris. I look forward to your response. I've looked over that thread once already, but I'll take a closer look.

[_Kevin Graham]

I seriously don't believe there are more than two or three people on this message board who have enough intellectual rigor and capacity for objective thought to even appreciate how thoroughly maklelan has already decimated the Smith thesis.

So you're a comedian now? We'll I'm drunk, and I didn't find that funny. In the case of Will vs. Brent, Will is to be taken seriously because he is published. In the case of Will vs. Chris, Will is to be taken seriously because...?

Enough. Let's get this straight...because Joseph Smith recycled the same theological concepts in all his works, this proves there must have been a preexistent text from which these phrases were copied in the case of the Book of Abraham? Why doesn't this go ther other way too? How come that doesn't work when critics use the same argument to prove Joseph Smith essentially plagiarized the KJV?

This might stun you, but critics readily accept the notion that the concepts found in the D&C and Book of Abraham come from the same source: Joseph Smith's mind. Shocked? Don't be. No one really believes they were translating Egyptian documents, even though the evidence pretty much proves this is what they thought they were doing, or at the very least, wanted other people to think they could do it.

I'm still waiting for someone to explain to us what the purpose of the Alphabet was. Mak wants too strain at gnats for the purpose of shedding clouds of doubt on Chris' thesis, by pointing out that the process wasn't a perfect science. Well exactly! This is precisely what we'd expect from people who didn't have the faintest clue what they were doing. Now a prophet inspired by God on the other hand...

I see a lot of missing the forrest for the trees, trying to create a science out of something a few men got together and conjured up from their own delusions.

Oh, and FYI, Will totally misrepresented the data in his presentation. The character he calls "Ki Ah Broam" was never represented by the characters he presented. The concepts that accounted for the bulk of Abr 1:1-3, he got right in his presentation, but the character is actually this character:

Why Will did this? Because the character which he already admits accounts for the bulk of Abr 1:1-3, was one of the characters sitting before the text in the translation document, and he knew that by highlighting that fact, he'd be undermining his apologetic. In other words, he pulled a John Gee.

The character he references is "Ki ahbram Kiah broum Zub-zool-oan" which is actually two characters. But he also fails to point out that the character Kulsidon Hish was the first character on the translation manuscripts, which litereally translated to "The Land of the Chaldees." And the second character representing Abraham was rigtht below it.

Instead, we get this smoke/mirror game the same as Gee provided by hiding trhe fact that the characters really did have a sequence to them. He did this by misdirection. Focus on everything else while throwing out rhetoric and emotionally charged conclusions. You're sure to win minds that way. Well, those minds anyway.

Come on guys. I never said the entire Book of Abraham was translated via the A&G. Never. No one has. Abr 1:1-3 was worked on in some fashion that only deluded frauds would understand, but that doesn't change the established fact that there is clearly a lot of tinkering with Abr 1:1-3 in the A&G, and this is just a coincidence that this happens to be absent in the earliest Translation manuscripts? But the historical evidence creates a time line that pretty much decimates this theory of yours. Mak is approaching this like he is used to, as a scholar using text-critical skills to discover provenance with ancient documents from multiple authors. But this isn't what we are dealing with in the case of the KEP. We are dealing with someone who is already a proven fraud because we already know he erroneously translated the Facsimiles. So the critical theory fits what we already know to be true.

This acid trip down Will's apologetic nightmare has plenty of entertainment value simply because it is amazing to see someone go through so much trouble, doing ridiculous word counts, etc, and then act like he's following some standard text-critical procedure. You just can't make this stuff up.

The Book of Abraham was to be encrypted! Genius! Evidence? None. But who needs it when it is simply brilliant! But then they published it. Hmm... kinda defeats the purpose, but who cares, it is brilliant! Oh, and they used symbols that look identical to 4, 5, 7 and 8 to represent the numbers 4, 5, 7 and 8. Genius! The world's first reverse-psychology type cipher.

[Guest]

Hey, mak,

You note that what Chris Smith termed, at least at one time, about Abr 1:1-3 as choppy and repetitive of the degrees in the EG for a single character are idiosyncratic of Joseph Smith's prior productions, such as the Book of Mormon. From the seer stone in the hat, the character from the gold plates would appear above the stone along with the English translation. This suggests a tight translation, not a loose one. It also suggests that the choppy/repetitiveness in the Book of Mormon as you point out is either God's composition idiosyncracy or a prose style of Nephi passed down to other prophet/authors of the gold plates.

So I am wondering what you think would account for it? Loose translation of Book of Mormon and it is an idiosyncrasy of Joseph Smith (contradictory to the accounts of the English text appearing as such above or on the surface of the seer stone)? Tight translation and it's God's composition style? Tight translation and its the Book of Mormon prophets' handed down style? Or something else that you could explain.

It would be a truly incredible coincidence if Father Abraham had the same idiosyncrasies in his composition style that are particularly pronounced in the writings of the Book of Mormon prophets/writers, even though absent for centuries between them. Seems more likely that this is the style or technique used by the common denominator, Joseph Smith, at whose hand the Book of Mormon, the D&C and Abr were all produced.

Whether EAG depends on Abr or vice versa, this choppy/repetitiveness of text in Abr 1:1-3 looks very much like the stuttering of thought/concept.

Do you know of any Egyptologists that claim that a single Egyptian character implies five degrees of explanation that are all used serially in the translation, right by one another, rather than just one degree used at a given point of text (and that degree being the appropriate expansion/derivative degree for the context of the text in which it is found)?

Alternatively, do you know of any ancient Egyptian writings using either hieroglyphs or hieratics that are repeated the same character up to 5 times on the papyri on which found? With or without indication of the degree each repetition of the character is? I don't recall having seen such hieroglyphic or hieratic characters so appearing on any piece of papyri.

If not, then this 5 part progression of thought/concept seems to be something peculiar to Joseph Smith. Unless loosely translating the Book of Mormon (cf. seer stone and English text appearing accounts), then the 5 part progression appears to be something of God's idiosyncrasies and thus, the 5 part progression of the EG would be divinely inspired and not the vain attempt of Smith and scribes to develop an enciphering tool, but the EG itself the word of God. What then was God's purpose for the EG?

The concerns implied by this post suggest to me, as you too have implied, that these 5 part progressions in writing are something peculiar to Joseph Smith. Therefore, that connects Joseph Smith to the EA and EG more tightly than Will Schryver and apologists would admit. It was not just some progression/derivations composed by Phelps from a single meaning that Joseph Smith channeled from God.

When I look at Smith's oratory style, such as reading the King Follett Sermon, I do not detect this 5 part progression style. So now, it would appear to be something particular to his composition style when divinely inspired for scriptures. That the 5 part progression is commonly found in his written productions but not his oratory style, it suggests that it is an affected style that comes from the greater opportunity for deliberation than when one is speaking, such as from having early drafts or notes from which to draw---even if not lift every word of---when composing the final narrative.

All this suggests to me that the 5 part/multiple degrees for symbols were composed in the EG as "working papers" before placed into prose in Abr 1:1-3, as Chris Smith suggests, or more likely from my perspective, to be evidence that work on the EA/EG and Abr 1:1-3 were simultaneous, each borrowing from the other. Bi-directional dependence.

* * * * *

And now to the mystery more perplexing me, who is this Betty your signature line notes that you like? (And God, I hope it's not some commonly known pop culture reference that everyone 5 years or more younger than me already gets.)

[_Paul Osborne]

Zub Zool oan

[Personal attack deleted]

[_maklelan]

Hey, mak,

You note that what Chris Smith termed, at least at one time, about Abr 1:1-3 as choppy and repetitive of the degrees in the EG for a single character are idiosyncratic of Joseph Smith's prior productions, such as the Book of Mormon. From the seer stone in the hat, the character from the gold plates would appear above the stone along with the English translation. This suggests a tight translation, not a loose one. It also suggests that the choppy/repetitiveness in the Book of Mormon as you point out is either God's composition idiosyncracy or a prose style of Nephi passed down to other prophet/authors of the gold plates.

Again, I'm not approaching this from a position of traditional orthodoxy. I'm approaching this from a strictly academic point of view. None of this is relevant from that point of view.

And now to the mystery more perplexing me, who is this Betty your signature line notes that you like? (And God, I hope it's not some commonly known pop culture reference that everyone 5 years or more younger than me already gets.)

1:20 mark here (but the whole thing is phenomenal): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mo0baknL ... re=related

[_Darth J]

This thread appears to be a thoughtful, analytical discussion about the KEP, without vulgarity, misogyny, religious megalomania, or claiming to have a one-way ticket to godhood.

Now I'm really confused.

[_sock puppet]

And now to the mystery more perplexing me, who is this Betty your signature line notes that you like? (And God, I hope it's not some commonly known pop culture reference that everyone 5 years or more younger than me already gets.)

1:20 mark here (but the whole thing is phenomenal): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mo0baknL ... re=related

Ah, a reference an old geezer like me once knew, but had forgotten. As Chevy said, "I like you, Danny." Here's another phenomenal tie in, at the 0:48 mark
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULjCSK0oOlI

[_Paul Osborne]

This thread appears to be a thoughtful, analytical discussion about the KEP, without vulgarity, misogyny, religious megalomania, or claiming to have a one-way ticket to godhood.

Now I'm really confused.

Yes, and it feels soooo good.



Paul o

[_Kevin Graham]

I'm approaching this from a strictly academic point of view. None of this is relevant from that point of view.

I'd love to believe this Mak, but the fact is scholars have tackled this issue for years and none of them felt it was necessary to take us down Will's yellow brick road that creates more problems than it solves.

I don't think you're being disingenuous, I just think you don't fully appreciate how we are affected by our own biases. This goes for everyone, and academics are no exception. Now having said that, I think it is fine to argue that the Book of Abraham would have been too difficult to produce via the convoluted mechanics - which perhaps none of us will ever truly understand - found in the GAEL.

But I think most critics are open to the notion that Joseph Smith had a preexistent storyline before ever trying to "translate" the papyri. But of course that storyline could have just as easily been in his mind, rather than on paper. After all, he pumped out D&C scripture while in prison without benefit of a preexisting text. It all came from his mind. There is no manuscript or historical evidence to suggest a translation was transcribed before the KEP manuscripts. None. This should mean something to those insisting the contrary, but I don't see how this thesis (the manuscripts came before the A&G) really does anything to thwart the evidence that the translation manuscripts prove there was a transcription via dictation involved. That, for me, has always been the big issue and I think that it is the issue for most modern critics. This is why Will's presentation ended up arguing against some obscrure RLDS figure from the late 60's, and really no one else.

At the very least the evidence means Joseph Smith wanted his scribes to believe he was translating to them as they transcribed the text. This has to be explained by teh apologists, and Will has presented nothing. He cannot claim to have explained the meaning or purpose of the project without dealing with the best evidence against his argument.

The evidence is just too overwhelming, and after four years, the apologists don't want to address it (seriously they don't). But every time they get a crazy idea from left field, the nomads and Greg Smiths crawl from the woodwork and start declaring victory, and if we don't indulge them with thorough analysis and explication as to why said theory is wrong, they just take it for granted they've "decimated" us. It is really a double standard, but that is to be expected.

Anyway, I suppose it is even possible that the A&G did come after the translation manuscripts. But then, what would that really prove? It goes against a ton of historical evidence that flies in its face, but I really don't see the problem even if we just concede the argument. Maybe by doing that, they'll finally decide to address the elephant in the room.

OK, I'll go pass out now.