Elkenah, Libnah, Mahmackrah and Korash ...Really?

[_BrianH]

ME>>Please explain why you "think" that I should let you change the subject here?<<

YOU>>You’re a funny guy, Brian. I like you.<<

[/quote]

Thanks I like you too. And I also recognize your failure to articulate precisely WHY you "think" that I should let you change the subject here. Keep trying.

-BH

.

[_BrianH]

ME>>Is there some reason that I should NOT raise this question in a forum explicitly named and supposedly dedicated to

"Mormon DISCUSSIONS" edited by harmony: do not use red.
????<<

YOU>Don't get your evangelical panties in a bunch!<

I see. So then ...can we conclude that you cannot provide us with any reason why I should NOT address issues of the "Book of Abraham" in a board labeled "Mormon DISCUSSIONS"...?

-BH

.

[_Corpsegrinder]

Hi, Brian.

By focusing on my failure to explain why you should let me change the subject, you have, in effect, changed the subject.

[_BrianH]

Hi, Brian.

By focusing on my failure to explain why you should let me change the subject, you have, in effect, changed the subject.

Asking you why you should be allowed to change the subject is ...changing the subject?

Really?

Wow. You really are a Mormon aren't you!

-BH

.

[_LDSToronto]

Brian,

Thank you for coming here with your well-thought inquiry. When I read that, I thought, "Wow, Brian has really done his homework". You are to be commended for your diligence in study.

Let's step back a pace or two. In The Book of Mormon we read how Ammon tells King Limhi of a man who can translate plates (Mosiah 8:13):

"...I can assuredly tell thee, O king, of a man that can translate the records; for he has wherewith that he can look, and translate all records that are of ancient date; and it is a gift from God ... And whosoever is commanded to look in them, the same is called seer."

A seer has the gift to translate records of ancient origin. But, more so, the gift of seer-ship is the greatest power that can bestowed upon a man (Mosiah 8:16-17):

"And Ammon said that a seer is a revelator and a prophet also; and a gift which is greater can no man have, except he should possess the power of God, which no man can; yet a man may have great power given him from God.

But a seer can know of things which are past, and also of things which are to come, and by them shall all things be revealed, or, rather, shall secret things be made manifest, and hidden things shall come to light, and things which are not known shall be made known by them, and also things shall be made known by them which otherwise could not be known."

A seer can reveal knowledge that has been previously concealed, and can even bring brand new knowledge to light.

Joseph Smith Jr was given the gift of seer-ship. While I don't discount the education that you or your colleagues in the field of ancient records and Egyptology hold - indeed, you are all learned and respected scholars, to be certain - such education is built upon when one considers that a seer can bring previously unknown knowledge to light.

While current research informs scholars, Joseph's power adds additional knowledge. Yes, scholar's have translated the records correctly. But Joseph has revealed new truths about the papyri that could not be known save by the gift given to a seer.

I hope this helps, Brian, and I look forward to your response.

H.

[_Droopy]

First of all there are NO Egyptian gods named “Elkenah”, “ Libnah”, “Mahmackrah” and “Korash”. Those names appear NOWHERE in the vast archives of Egyptian literature, mythology, lore, religion or even in Egypt's oral traditions. Nor do any of those names appear on any monument or on any other archaeological artifact. They simply do not exist anywhere in any Egyptian sources. In fact, they appear NOWHERE in any ancient lore and do not appear in any literature in the world before the "Book of Abraham" was supposedly rendered.

As John Tvedness has written:

The god whose name is rendered ‘Elkenah’ in the
published versions of Abraham 1:6-7, 13, 17, 20 and 29 appears with variant spellings in the Kirtland Egyptian Papers. In two of the manuscripts it is always spelled ‘Elkkene’. This is also the spelling in another of the manuscripts where it was changed later to ‘Elkenah’, that was mss 4 just prior to publication it waschanged from ‘Elkkene’ to ‘Elkenah’ and that was the version that was published.

This to me suggests that ‘Elkkene’ more closely approximates the way Joseph Smith intended to transliterate it. Robert F. Smith noted that the form ‘Elkkene’ seems to correspond with the form of El-kuni-ir§a “El, the maker of the of the earth” which is found in the Hittite text. It’s actually a Canaanite title of the God El; it’s in the text about Asherah. It’s also known in the Phoenician title ‘l qen `r§
“El, creator of the earth” together with the name baalshemayon(sp?) which means “the lord of heaven”, so it parallels that in an eighth century manuscript from the Phoenician king Azzitawatah.

The title clearly corresponds to the Hebrew El-
Elyon konei shamayim va-aretz which msseans “El the most high God, creator of heaven and earth.” It’s translated “Possessor” in the King James Version, that’s from Genesis 14:19, 22; and so, the title has been around for a long time.

The Hebrew name Elkanah is found in the Bible (1 Samuel 1:1), it’s a hypocoristic form of the same name that we just mentioned dropping off the ending element of it, the God El, head of the Canaanite pantheon, was identified by the Egyptians with the hawk-headed sun god Ra in their myth of Ra and Isis where he is also called Iry pt tA “Maker of heaven and earth” the same title.

The depiction labeled the idolatrous god of Elkenah in Abraham Facsimile 1, Fig. 5, is the Egyptian
jackal-headed god who is associated with the East where the sun rises. Indeed the verb denoting the rising of the sun derives from this same root.

John Lundquist has suggested another potential source of the name Elkenah, the Akkadian dIl-gi-na. The d part is just what we call a determinative, it derives from Sumerian and it refers to divine names. You don’t pronounce it though actually but it is written. So here we have the same kind of name that... at the beginning is the same as El, it means god also and so his suggestion was that this was the origin of it, this Akkadian name.

Nibley noted the report from Bar-Hebraeus, a medieval Jewish scholar who became a Christian, that in the days of Abraham’s father, Terah, the Egyptians
adopted Chaldeism and made an image in honor of Kenos(sp?). Kenos may very well be related here to Elkenah.

The god Libnah is mentioned in Abraham 1:6, 13 and 17. The god identified by this name in Abraham Facsimile 1, Fig. 6, is the falcon-headed Egyptian god who is identified with the West. Another Egyptian god, the jackal-headed (inaudible), we usually call him Anubis in English. Anubis, who is the jackal god who is called ‘the lord of the west’ and also ‘lord of the white land’—probably “white” because this word lebānāh comes from a word meaning “white”. The jackal is a nocturnal prowler; he goes out by
moonlight to find his prey and so is often associated with the moon. One of the Hebrew terms for moon, as we see here, is found in several Bible passages, three of them, it’s lbanah, the feminine form of laban, which you normally read as Laban, the brother of Rebekah in the Bible.

The same term lebānāh, meaning “white, or moon”, is used in the medieval Hebrew story of Abraham to denote the moon that Abraham studied in his youth. In the Bible, Laban is one of Abraham’s great nephews while the form Luban from the same root is a place name in records found at Ebla near Abraham’s homeland. The Bible also mentions a Canaanite city
named Libnah which is also mentioned on a list of cities conquered by the Egyptian King Thutmose III. So it’s well attested that we have here a moon god if
you will.

Deriving from the same root is the name Lebannon, Lbanown in Hebrew, which means “white place”; probably so-called because of the snow that’s atop Mt.
Lebanon. In the Zohar, a medieval Jewish text citing the Song of Solomon in the Old Testament, says of Lebanon that it should be reworded Lbanah thou moon
who receivest thy light from the sun.

Julius Levy considered Lebanon to derive
from the Canaanite moon-god Laban while John Lundquist drew attention, again, to an Akkadian god dLaban, same name—these gods didn’t change much from one country to the other when they spoke similar languages, languages that were
related—(inaudible) noted the variant forms of the name of Lebanon: Lbanown in Hebrew, Libnah in Phoenician, Libnana in Assyrian and (inaudible) in Hittite.

The god called Mahmackrah, in the published version of the Book of Abraham, is depicted in Abraham facsimile 1, fig. 7. He’s the baboon-headed god who
represented the North—an element perhaps found in his name because the word mútt means “north”. Is it possible that that’s what we have at the beginning of this name? It is possible. The name used in the Book of Abraham however may be related to a Hebrew word, the word mimkār which means “merchandise” since Egypt’s principal trading partners were to the north.

Closer in pronunciation however is the Akkadian divine name dMa-mi-hi-rat which is in Deimel’s list
again as quoted by Lundquist...

...The god called Korash in the Book of Abraham and depicted in Facsimile 1, Fig. 8, is a human-headed god who represents the South. It is possible that Korash in fact is from the Egyptian kA-rsy which would means “spirit of the south”. Nibley
noted that the Egyptian goddess Hathor was worshipped in Saba. Today we call it
Yemen, which in fact is a good Arabic-Hebrew name meaning south; and that she was worshipped by the people of Quraish. The Quraish tribe is the tribe that gave birth to the prophet Mohammed and in fact there is one tradition that the person who wanted to kill Abraham, the one who wanted him to be actually slain for not worshipping the pagan gods, was a fellow named Korash. John Lundquist draws
attention to another possibility, the Akkadian divine name dKur-ra-su-ur-ur and John Gee has noted also that KArs (and I’m not sure if I spelled that one correctly because I don’t have it written down but I remember you mentioning it) that this is
attested in New Kingdom Egypt.

Here’s one of my favorites, funny guy, funny name. The god Shagreel is mentioned only in Abraham 1:9 where he is said to be “the sun.” In this connection, one may perhaps compare the Egyptian hawk-headed god Sokar who is a form of the sun as depicted in fig. 4, facsimile 2, with the addition of the Semitic term El at the end—El meaning of course “God.” More likely, in my opinion, is Robert F. Smith’s identification with the Canaanite (inaudible) “the
gates of El” “the gates of God”, a title of the Canaanite god (inaudible) who in the
Ugaritic text is called in fact “gate of the sun.” An Akkadian seal impression has Shamash, the sun god, rising between two mountains on each side of which are hinged doors mounted by lions.

The Egyptian Sokar is sometimes accompanied by
a pair of lion guards and it’s (inaudible), we see them here, that’s the sun god rising between the mountains- between these two- actually they look more like, to me, they look more like cheetahs because they have spots but the face is more like
a lion. I think they have a lion’s mane there. Anyway the name (inaudible) means “twin lions” or “twin gates.” The twin lions guarding city gates were known
amongst other Ancient Near Eastern peoples including the Hittites who did a lot of that and these later made their way into Western Europe and even into the United States where today they flank the entrances of libraries, museums and other public
buildings and of course in Salt Lake City, the human-headed lions that guard the entrance to the Masonic Temple.

We should also compare the title Shagreel with the name Sheariah which in fact means the “gates of Jehovah” ‘yah’ in this case where ‘yah’ is substituted for ‘El.’ Sheariah is in fact found in the Bible, in 1 Chronicles 8:38 and 9:44. So the Hebrew form of the plural, which is not in those two passages, it has the singular there, would be Sheariel. The Semitic name for ‘gate’ is also known in Egypt by the way in later text because it was borrowed from Canaanite.

Food for thought.


http://fairlds.org/FAIR_Conferences/200 ... edtnes.pdf

[Guest]

...Food for thought.


http://fairlds.org/FAIR_Conferences/200 ... edtnes.pdf

"Thought"? Really? Not a single word of your copy-paste response provides a single molecule of evidence to support the LDS proposition that the canopic idols appearing throughout Egyptian lore were named "Elkenah", "Libnah", "Mahmackrah" and "Korash". Quibbling about how Mormons spelled those names using English letters is hardly "food for thought". Searching for Hebrew syllables among supposedly Egyptian deities is not "food for thought". What it is, is the usual LDS tactic known among rhetoriticians as "a snow job" - lots of minute but irrelevant detail thrown up in a cloud of words and speculations that never actually makes a point or provides any actual evidence. While this kind of lame rhetorical parlor trick can fool Mormons and the victims of corrupt politicians, used car salesmen and con artists all over the world, it will not pass as proper scholarship anywhere ...which is why the work of the "scholars" at FAIR/FARMS, etc is never published on presses other than those of the LDS church.

A "Snow Job" is not "thought"; its pure deception. YOU did not "think" when you resonded; you did what Mormons are mentally conditioned to do: run to some LDS source and just copy and paste the smoke screen boilerplate prepared for the gullible and "faithful", without thinking. Perhaps you did not understand the challenge I posed. I did not ask you to show us Mormons speculating on Hebrew syllables. Not even close. Let me condense the original challenge for you in four very simple steps.

1.) The indisputable FACT is, the canopic jar/idols depicted in the Lion Couch scene are UNIVERSALLY recognized by 100% of all informed Egyptologists, historians, archaeologists and antequarians as “Qebehseneuf”, “Duamutef”, “Hapy” and “Imsety” (also known with Egyptian variants and different spellings when rendered in English, for example "Imsety" is also known as "Amset").

2.) These idol/deities were not only very common but very important figures throughout Egyptian mythology - the very sons of the God known as Horus and each was recognized by the Egyptians to rule over various important functions of Egyptian life.

3.) Your so-called "prophet" appears in 1830 and pronounced a supposed divine revelation by means of his claimed prophetic gifts in which he declares and publishes the assertion that these deities are rightly known as "Elkenah, Libnah, Mahmackrah and Korash". But there are two problems.

4.) There is no record of any deity in Egypt, nor even any words in any known ancient Egyptian lexicon which render as "Elkenah", "Libnah", "Mahmackrah" and "Korash". Nor is there any etymological roots or meanings in any Egyptian dialect that can be derived from these names (as there most certainly IS for the established names of these idols).

So ...either the universal consensus of all informed scholarship pertaining to the identity and names of these deities is correct and your "prophet" was full of crap, OR your prophet was right, and all of the annals of Egytpology and relevant archaeology must be re-written and reduced to linguistic nonsense to accommodate the claims of some guy who claimed to have a magic rock in his hat.

The challenge I have posed for you here is to simply SHOW US some reasons to conclude what is necessarily the case if your "prophet" was right: that the canopic jars depicting the "Sons of Horus" are rightly known (including by the Egyptians themselves) as "Elkenah, Libnah, Mahmackrah and Korash".

We are still waiting for you, or someone, to meet that challenge.

Posting vague, rambling speculations based on mixing and matching syllables from different ancient languages or quibbling about how Mormons spelled the names rendered by Smith using English letters does not even begin to approach this rather minimal threshold of proof for the claims of the LDS organization.

What you must do to meet this very reasonable challenge is...

1.) Provide us (and the archaeological world) with some evidence (NOT empty speculations and LDS wishful "thinking") that the Egyptians really did include deities known as Elkenah, Libnah, Mahmackrah and Korash in their pantheon and...

2.) Show us that these names were each associated with the VERY common and easily recognized idol/deities depicted in the routine "Breathing Permits" - one of which was the source for your so-called "Book of Abraham".

(...And you will get bonus points for explaining WHY 1st. century AD Egyptians would bother to routinely bury their dead with copies of "the Book of Abraham" INSTEAD of the "Breathing Permits" required by their own pagan religion).

-BH

.

[_BrianH]

Brian,

Thank you for coming here with your well-thought inquiry. When I read that, I thought, "Wow, Brian has really done his homework". You are to be commended for your diligence in study.

Let's step back a pace or two. In The Book of Mormon we read how Ammon tells King Limhi of a man who can translate plates (Mosiah 8:13):

"...I can assuredly tell thee, O king, of a man that can translate the records; for he has wherewith that he can look, and translate all records that are of ancient date; and it is a gift from God ... And whosoever is commanded to look in them, the same is called seer."

A seer has the gift to translate records of ancient origin. But, more so, the gift of seer-ship is the greatest power that can bestowed upon a man (Mosiah 8:16-17):

"And Ammon said that a seer is a revelator and a prophet also; and a gift which is greater can no man have, except he should possess the power of God, which no man can; yet a man may have great power given him from God.

But a seer can know of things which are past, and also of things which are to come, and by them shall all things be revealed, or, rather, shall secret things be made manifest, and hidden things shall come to light, and things which are not known shall be made known by them, and also things shall be made known by them which otherwise could not be known."

A seer can reveal knowledge that has been previously concealed, and can even bring brand new knowledge to light.

Joseph Smith Jr was given the gift of seer-ship. While I don't discount the education that you or your colleagues in the field of ancient records and Egyptology hold - indeed, you are all learned and respected scholars, to be certain - such education is built upon when one considers that a seer can bring previously unknown knowledge to light.

While current research informs scholars, Joseph's power adds additional knowledge. Yes, scholar's have translated the records correctly. But Joseph has revealed new truths about the papyri that could not be known save by the gift given to a seer.

I hope this helps, Brian, and I look forward to your response.

H.

First of all I would like to commend you for your very reasonable tone - quite refreshing after all the instant acrimony and rage I have encountered here from most participants in this forum, regardless of their positions and persuasions.

Nevertheless, despite your very reasonable tone, your response does not even begin to meet the challenge posed in the Opening Post of this thread. Your answer is best represented in your closing statement: "While current research informs scholars, Joseph's power adds additional knowledge. Yes, scholar's have translated the records correctly. But Joseph has revealed new truths about the papyri that could not be known save by the gift given to a seer."

The problem is, the mere translation of a language or the identification of the (false) deities believed by the Egyptians does not require a revelation from God nor the "gifts" of an alleged "seer". They require only that one recognize some basic linguistic and historical facts. Moreover, IF the universal consensus of relevant scholarship has indeed, as YOU said, "translated the records correctly", then Joseph Smith did NOT, BY DEFINITION. Smith identified these idols as "Elkenah, Libnah, Mahmackrah and Korash". The full consensus of linguistic, Egyptological, historical and archaeological scholarship published throughout the world recognizes these deities as “Qebehseneuf”, “Duamutef”, “Hapy” and “Imsety”.

They cannot both be right. There is no "new truth", here. Either the old idols were known to the authors of the original papyrus as “Qebehseneuf”, “Duamutef”, “Hapy” and “Imsety” OR they were known to those authors as "Elkenah", "Libnah", "Mahmackrah" and "Korash". One of these is the CORRECT translation, the other is a fraud. The first one is attested by countless textual representations found in the vast archives of Egyptian language lore, the other appears nowhere outside the so-called "Book of Abraham".

The challenge I have posed above is not for you to state what you have been led to believe, that "Joseph has revealed new "truths" about the papyri in question, but to provide some REASONS to conclude that what you have been led to believe is actually TRUE.

Egyptian history, language and lore is not a "spiritual" matter and requires no "revelations" or "new" truths. It is simply a matter of basic historical and linguistic scholarship. This is what you will need to present if you intend to provide a credible response to the challenge of this debate.

Please do not just tell us what you have been led to believe. The challenge here is for you to SHOW US some evidence that will lead a reasonable person to conclude that what the LDS church has led you to believe is actually TRUE.

thank you

-BH

.

[_honorentheos]

I have a question for you BrianH.

As a nonbeliever, I think I could take your argument about the names of Egyptian Gods and with a little rearranging make the same case against the Book of Genesis. So my question: Were we to substitute Noah, the creation, the Garden of Eden, etc., with scientifically acquired views about the age of the earth, the evolution of species, the origin of man, and the physical problems posed by Noah's ark - how would your own explanations for this differ from LDST's?

[_LDSToronto]

First of all I would like to commend you for your very reasonable tone - quite refreshing after all the instant acrimony and rage I have encountered here from most participants in this forum, regardless of their positions and persuasions.

Thank you.

The problem is, the mere translation of a language or the identification of the (false) deities believed by the Egyptians does not require a revelation from God nor the "gifts" of an alleged "seer". They require only that one recognize some basic linguistic and historical facts. Moreover, IF the universal consensus of relevant scholarship has indeed, as YOU said, "translated the records correctly", then Joseph Smith did NOT, BY DEFINITION. Smith identified these idols as "Elkenah, Libnah, Mahmackrah and Korash". The full consensus of linguistic, Egyptological, historical and archaeological scholarship published throughout the world recognizes these deities as “Qebehseneuf”, “Duamutef”, “Hapy” and “Imsety”.

Joseph's translation was different than modern scholarship. This does not make it incorrect. As I have pointed out, a seer can reveal new truths about ancient writings. Just as Joseph's translation does not invalidate modern scholarship, modern scholarship does not invalidate Joseph's translation.

They cannot both be right. There is no "new truth", here. Either the old idols were known to the authors of the original papyrus as “Qebehseneuf”, “Duamutef”, “Hapy” and “Imsety” OR they were known to those authors as "Elkenah", "Libnah", "Mahmackrah" and "Korash". One of these is the CORRECT translation, the other is a fraud. The first one is attested by countless textual representations found in the vast archives of Egyptian language lore, the other appears nowhere outside the so-called "Book of Abraham".

Why can't they both be right? How can you claim there is no new truth when Joseph's gift of seer-ship was given for the express purpose of bringing forth new truth? Calling something a fraud does not make it a fraud...

Egyptian history, language and lore is not a "spiritual" matter and requires no "revelations" or "new" truths. It is simply a matter of basic historical and linguistic scholarship. This is what you will need to present if you intend to provide a credible response to the challenge of this debate.

Ah! This paragraph clarifies much - thank you! The problem is that you view the Book of Abraham as a treatise on Egyptian folk lore, while Joseph claimed it to be no such thing. Rather, it is new scripture, revealed using a different tool other than scholarly research.

If you approach the book as scripture, you may have a different perspective.

Please do not just tell us what you have been led to believe. The challenge here is for you to SHOW US some evidence that will lead a reasonable person to conclude that what the LDS church has led you to believe is actually TRUE.

I believe the Book of Abraham is scripture. What evidence could I provide to show that is true?

Once again, thank you for the opportunity to chat.

H.