Robert Ritner update - posted on behalf of Radio Free Mormon

[malkie]

RFM has asked me to post this for him. The text is taken directly from the RFM Facebook page (link below), and reproduced here to widen the net.

ROBERT RITNER UPDATE--It has been almost a year since Dr. Ritner was kind enough to spend 13-hours of his time with John Dehlin and me discussing the Book of Abraham on a cross-over podcast between Mormon Stories and Radio Free Mormon.
At that time, we were soliciting kidney donors to help Dr. Ritner with medical difficulties he was facing.

Many listeners have contacted me asking how things went with the kidney donation and how Dr. Ritner is doing. I have generally avoided answering those questions because I was not authorized to spell out in detail what has been transpiring.

Until yesterday. (26 May 2021)

Yesterday I called Dr. Ritner and he gave me authorization to let everybody know what has been going on.

Shortly after our final podcast last year, there was a kidney donor lined up and Dr. Ritner was expecting the phone call at any minute for him to rush to the hospital for the transplant. He did get a phone call, but it was the hospital telling him that a check of his blood showed leukemia. Dr. Ritner could not do any kidney transplant until his leukemia situation was resolved.

The delay in the transplant necessitated Dr. Ritner's being put on dialysis, something he had hoped to avoid.

Long story short, the cancer was treated, went into remission, but is back again. When I spoke with Dr. Ritner yesterday, he was out of the hospital but in a midway placement facility where he could rest and get well enough to return home.

I know we are all hoping for a complete recovery for Dr. Ritner.

Something else Dr. Ritner told me on the phone I want to pass along. What with his medical situation, Dr. Ritner has been concerned that he will be forgotten when he is gone. I assured him that this was not the case; that he would not be forgotten; that for his work on the Book of Abraham alone, there were hundreds if not thousands of Latter-day Saints who would always remember him.

Dr. Ritner was the right man at the right time in the right place with the right education, and willing to commit the resources necessary to write and speak about the Book of Abraham in a way that has created life-changing clarity for many, many people.
It was my idea to post this here, which I am doing with his permission.

REQUEST FOR COMMENTS--It was also my idea to ask all my listeners and anybody who has been impacted by Dr. Ritner's work to comment below. My intent is to send Dr. Ritner a link so he can read what everyone has to say.
Please feel free to share this post with as many people as possible so we can get a healthy sampling of comments from those who have benefitted from Dr. Ritner and his work.

Here's to you, Dr. Ritner!!!

Feel free to add your comments on the original Facebook page:
https://www.Facebook.com/RadioFreeMormo ... %2CO%2CP-R

If you are not a Facebook user, or prefer to make your comment under your account here, please reply to this OP, and (unless you tell me you don't want your comment to be passed on) I'll collect comments from here and send them to RFM.

Thanks.

[Dr Exiled]

Dr. Ritner:

I wish you well and hope you recover, getting the needed transplant! Hang in there. You have done excellent work bringing out the truth and will always be remembered among the ex-Mormon community. Also, news of your work will be passed on to many in the future. You will live on. Please take comfort in this from one who listened intently to your podcast with RFM and John Dehlin and who has read your work on the Book of Abraham.

Thank you!

[Shulem]

Robert Ritner will be well remembered in the history books for years to come as one who spoke the truth. I'm afraid that the history books will not be so kind to John Gee. History will remember him for being a conniving liar -- one who defended the obvious and proven lies of Smith's false translations.

YOU, John Gee, will be remembered as a liar for the Lord. How do you feel about that? It's already become your legacy. You've written it for yourself, you silly fool. Well, you did it to yourself. You have nobody to blame but YOURSELF.

[Moksha]

Sending my best wishes to Dr. Ritner. I truly enjoyed his podcasts with John Dehlin and RFM.

I suspect his colleagues from Yale, the University of Chicago, those he met in his personal life, as well as current and future Egyptologists will keep his memory alive.

[kairos]

RR will be held in both high esteem and Ill favor in the Mormon community. To me I see him as a scholar who nailed more than a few nails in the Book of Abraham coffin- a hero is he!

[DrW]

Dr. Ritner is well known to academically minded Mormons, and to academia in general, as a leading authority in his chosen field of Oriental Studies and Egyptology. Like many others, I greatly appreciated his knowledge, insight and ability to graciously set the record straight when confronted by the kind of nonsense ginned up by the likes of Gee and other apologists calling themselves LDS scholars.

Dr. Ritner, I wish you all the best and am confident that you will not be forgotten. Many thousands of us looked to you as a champion, and hope for your recovery.

Thank you.

[hauslern]

Ritner certainly has a lot of academic work to his credit
https://humanities-web.s3.us-east-2.ama ... 20CV_0.pdf
Hope he recovers so that that work "in progress" is finished. Seven books and a host of journal articles.

[Philo Sofee]

Dear Dr. Ritner,
You don't know me, lucky you, but I most certainly know you, lucky me! At least through your voluminous writings about the Joseph Smith Papyri. I am so very grateful for the straight shooting, simple analysis and describing things and evidences and history as they are as you have done. You have added a layer of truth and reality to my world view that I never would have had had you chosen not to involve yourself and write out the entire shebang honestly. God bless you, and I truly wish you the very best! Thank you for all your inspiration, scholarship and greatness. I simply cannot tell you how very much I enjoyed your book on the papyri, which I read and then re-read, and then re-read, and tell others about, then re-read, and so enjoy! THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU! YOU DA EGYPTOLOGIST! And that's vastly superior to YOU DA MAN! Even though, YOU DA MAN!
Your life and your work has blessed so very many of us with intelligence, exact scholarship, honesty of issues, etc. There is no adequate way to say thank you, other than say from our very hearts THANK YOU Dr. Ritner. You simply will not be forgotten, and continue to be used and quoted for centuries on the issue of the Book of Abraham and the papyri issues.
Sincerely,
Kerry A. Shirts

[Manetho]

I'm sad to hear that Dr. Ritner is beset by so many health problems.

As a non-Mormon interested in ancient Egypt who is only on this forum because of the Book of Abraham, I'd like to thank Dr. Ritner for his other works. Most people on this board will be unfamiliar with them, and probably not interested, but believe me when I say that The Mechanics of Ancient Egyptian Magical Practice is one of the most important books ever written about ancient Egyptian religion and elucidates one of its most fundamental principles. (Anyone who is interested can download it from the publisher here.) For that, and for his many other works that explore how the ancient Egyptians saw the world, I am deeply grateful.