How important should the Joseph Smith papyri be?

[_Equality]

Joseph Smith was no translator.

I give unto you my servant Joseph to be a presiding elder over all my church, to be a translator, a revelator, a seer, and prophet.

SAUCE

[_Bazooka]

Joseph Smith was no translator.

I give unto you my servant Joseph to be a presiding elder over all my church, to be a translator, a revelator, a seer, and prophet.

SAUCE

Jehovah was only speaking as a man?

[_Equality]

The facsimile is the only fly in the ointment by association.

Cue Shulem's arrival to this thread in 3...2...1...

[_Equality]

He goofed many times.

Can you please elaborate? What conclusions we can draw from this fact?

[_Shulem]

Keep hammering the Facsimile No. 3 because that is the quickest way to drive a wedge into Book of Abraham apologetics and silence the critics with a single swift stroke -- a slap across their lying Mormon faces.

1. What LDS idiot is going to say that the Egyptian god Anubis is really a slave as revealed by the Polygamous Joseph Smith?

2. What LDS apologist is going to read a king's name in the writing above Isis?

3. What LDS fool is going to say that the women in the Facsimile are really men dressed up like girls?

LDS liars can't do a damn thing about it but froth at the mouth and pretend all is well in Zion. Too bad the Mormon prophets have nothing to contribute in order to defend their founding prophet and the apologists who continue to get beat up every time this is brought up. It's a Mormon punching bag! Slap, kick, punch, and POW!

SLAM DUNK! Rot in your grave Maxwell -- you rotten swine! Go to hell, Nibley you lying bastard.

Ha ha DCP!

Kiss my ass, John Gee!



Paul O

[_CaliforniaKid]

Nevertheless, religion isn't about facts as much as it is about results. You don't really believe that the pagan ancients really believed that their myths were anchored in history, do you?

Uh... yes?

There isn't such a thing as "history". ... nothing predating human memory is factual anymore.

Nonsense. Facts are a somewhat slippery category, but insofar as we acknowledge the existence of facts about the present, we should also acknowledge the existence of facts about the past. In an Einsteinian relativistic view of time, past and present are equally real, equally existent. And regardless of the onotological status of the past, it has causal consequences which can be detected in the present. Like subatomic particles and magnetic fields that can't be directly seen but have detectable, predictable macroscopic effects, the past is indirectly accessible through its detectable, predictable effects upon the present.

[_Darth J]

Nevertheless, religion isn't about facts as much as it is about results. You don't really believe that the pagan ancients really believed that their myths were anchored in history, do you?

Gordon Bitner Hinckley, October 2002 LDS General Conference

I knew a so-called intellectual who said the Church was trapped by its history. My response was that without that history we have nothing.

[_Shulem]

He goofed many times.

Can you please elaborate? What conclusions we can draw from this fact?

To goof is to imply one makes a mistake or a blunder. The pretended translator wasn't just making a mistake or blundering. He was pretending -- he was lying! He knew he didn't know what the characters really meant. He knew he could't really read Egyptian. He made some stuff up out of thin air with the clear intention of deceiving everyone with his translations and explanations. This is not goofing up. It is lying.



Paul O

[_Darth J]

nothing predating human memory is factual anymore.

Therefore, the Grand Canyon does not exist.

[_son of Ishmael]

It seems to me, if the claims of the church are true, the Joseph Smith papyri should be one of the most important religious artifacts discovered in the past 200 years. Its the type of thing Indiana Jones would dig up to keep it out of the hands of the Nazis. The New York Metropolitan Museum handed it over to the church without much fuss. If they thought they actually had writings of Abraham, or even writings that dated from the time of Abraham and might possibly be his writings that they would have let it go so easily? Instead they called the church and told them to come pick up their crap. And since the discovery of the papyri, nobody cares, not even the church leaders and scholars at BYU. That alone should be a huge red flag.

If the papyri had anything even simular to what the Book of Abraham says, the church would be waving it in everybody's face. In every TBM home there would be a picture of Jesus, a picture of their local temple and a copy of the Book of Abraham papyri on the wall for the whole world to see.