beastie wrote:Once again, Will leaves questions unanswered:
How was Nibley mistaken in this quote?
It was not the habit of Joseph Smith to suppress his revelations. He made every effort to see to it that each excerpt from the book of Abraham was published to the world the moment it was presentable. "One cannot read the pages of the early periodicals of the Church," writes James R. Clark, " . . . without being impressed with the fact that to Joseph Smith, availability of the new revelations of God where people could read them and immediately profit by their instruction was more important than the technicality of having acomplete text of these ancient records at the start . . . " Hence, Clark notes, it was his custom to publish them in the form of extracts as he went along.
Did he and Clark just make up the bit about Joseph Smith trying to publish each excerpt from the Book of Abraham the "moment it was presentable?" What evidence did they misread and misunderstand?
And why won't you answer my simple question about whether or not you knew that Joseph Smith et al likely thought the Masonic ciphers WERE Egyptian?
[Ponders to self: why bother with this singularly obnoxious specimen of a woman?]<sigh>
1. There is no basis for the Nibley/Clark assertion. Indeed, we know, without a doubt (and neither critics nor apologists dispute this), that substantial portions of the Book of Abraham
were available and could have been published in 1835, had Joseph Smith so desired. In fact, there is very little that was changed between the 1835 manuscripts and what was subsequently published in 1842.
Furthermore, the history of the church is clear on the point that Joseph Smith withheld the revelation on plural marriage
for even longer. Therefore, your thesis is demonstrably flawed. There were, and demonstrably so, certain of his revelations that Joseph Smith deliberately withheld from publication until he felt the time was more propitious. It is not hard to perceive why he would have been reluctant to publish chapters 3 - 5 of the Book of Abraham in 1835 (the plurality of gods being one innovative doctrine among others that the Book of Abraham introduces). Still, we have identified several indirect references to these doctrines (as contained in chapters 3 - 5) in the period between 1835 and 1841 (prior to the publication of the Book of Abraham).
2. I've seen no persuasive evidence whatsoever that Joseph Smith et al. (yes, "al." is an abbreviation for
"alli", and should have a period after it) "likely" thought the Masonic cipher characters were Egyptian. But, even if they did (as I have stated
repeatedly!) it matters not one whit to my theses. A better question for you, assuming they
did believe them to be of Egyptian origin, is why they only selected seven of the characters. (And, incidentally, the Masonic cipher only allows for 26 characters -- one for each of the letters in the English alphabet. It would appear, on the face of it, counter-intuitive for any 19th century Mason to have thought the
cipher originated in ancient Egypt, since it was designed to encipher the
English alphabet. Even so, it is irrelevant to my theses. The fact remains that these characters do not derive from the papyri (and, in fact, their use by Phelps
pre-dates the arrival of the papyri in Kirtland).
Furthermore, you're left with the question as to why substantial portions of the GAEL are based, not on elements from the Book of Abraham, but rather on others of Joseph Smith's previously received revelations (primarily D&C 76, 88, and 107).
