Jeff Lindsay and Stephen O. Smoot take aim at Dan Vogel over “Shinehah”

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Shulem
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More Shinehah

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While in Kirtland, in February of 1834, long before the papyrus arrived, Smith recalled his feelings in dealing with the gold plates and had formulated in his own mind that in the end he would be illuminated in the firmament and “shine like the sun.”

Joseph Smith, DHC 2:25-2 wrote:I then gave a relation of my situation at the time I obtained the record, the persecutions I met with, and prophesied that I would stand and shine like the sun in the firmament, when my enemies and the gainsayers of my testimony shall be put down and cut off, and their names blotted out from among men.

The point I wish to make is that Smith viewed the sun, moon, and stars as objects in the firmament (sky) among the starry expanse of heaven.

Secret code names were used in the 1835 edition of the Doctrine and Covenants to protect the identity of persons and places. Like Shinehah, these names were instituted in 1834 manuscripts before any Book of Abraham translation. The code name for Kirtland was Shinehah. The code name for the printing office was Lane-shine-house. It’s interesting that “Shine” was incorporated into other code names as well:

1) Shinelah: print
2) Shinelane: printing

It seems that there is a lot of Shine going on and it has everything to do with the printing of scripture in Kirtland for the 1835 edition of the Doctrine and Covenants. Oliver Cowdery’s code name was “Olihah” and yes, that’s with a “hah” at the end. We can conclude at this time that Shinehah and words directly related to it have everything to do with Kirtland and the printing process.

Joseph Smith later gave section 117 of the Doctrine and Covenants in 1838:

D&C 117:8 wrote:Is there not room enough on the mountains of Adam-ondi-Ahman, and on the plains of Olaha Shinehah, or the land where Adam dwelt, that you should covet that which is but the drop, and neglect the more weighty matters?

Clearly, this Shinehah in 1838 is not referencing Kirtland but refers to lands in Missouri! So it seems that Smith is quite versatile in his Shinehah usage:

1) 1834 City of Kirtland
2) 1838 Land in Missouri
3) 1842 Sun in Outer Space

Notice particularly how the term “Olaha” is jointly used in conjunction with Shinehah! It has been speculated, and for good reason, the term Olea is a variant of Olaha which was Smith’s Egyptian moon in the Book of Abraham. Afterall, if Shinehah is the sun then Olaha must be the moon although spelled slightly different. So, in hindsight it appears that Smith borrowed the previous invented name of 1834 (Shinehah) and incorporated it later in 1838 as the land of Adam and finally in 1842 it was converted into the sun whereby Olaha became Olea the moon. Thus, it was a long journey and a literal transformation for Shinehah.

Now, with that said, apologists have dreamed up all kinds of ideas to justify these things. More speculation on their part in order to try and vindicate Smith’s erroneous translations. That seems to be something apologists are constantly having to do with all of Smith’s translations. They are constantly on the defense!
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Re: More Shinehah

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Shulem wrote:
Tue Nov 02, 2021 9:16 pm
Secret code names were used in the 1835 edition of the Doctrine and Covenants to protect the identity of persons and places. Like Shinehah, these names were instituted in 1834 manuscripts before any Book of Abraham translation. The code name for Kirtland was Shinehah. The code name for the printing office was Lane-shine-house. It’s interesting that “Shine” was incorporated into other code names as well:

1) Shinelah: print
2) Shinelane: printing
It would make sense to use code words. Never can tell when the FBI might place a wiretap or the DOJ conduct a RICO investigation.
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Re: More Shinehah

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Moksha wrote:
Wed Nov 03, 2021 6:21 am
Shulem wrote:
Tue Nov 02, 2021 9:16 pm
Secret code names were used in the 1835 edition of the Doctrine and Covenants to protect the identity of persons and places. Like Shinehah, these names were instituted in 1834 manuscripts before any Book of Abraham translation. The code name for Kirtland was Shinehah. The code name for the printing office was Lane-shine-house. It’s interesting that “Shine” was incorporated into other code names as well:

1) Shinelah: print
2) Shinelane: printing
It would make sense to use code words. Never can tell when the FBI might place a wiretap or the DOJ conduct a RICO investigation.

The code names were given in order to help protect the United Order and the Church from potential lawsuits. In other words, it was a move to avoid lawsuits.

I find it very telling that the word “SHINEHAH” was conceived before Smith’s encounter with Chandler and the Egyptian exhibit. Shinehah, Shinelah, and Shinelane seem to come out of nowhere. But where? Where did they come from? Where did they originate?

The apologists are just happy that they seem to have what they feel is a real Egyptian word in which Smith translated but we are to understand that none of this was a translation because it wasn’t based on anything to translate. The papyrus rolls had not yet entered the scene. The “shine” words were something Smith came up with BEFORE he ever knew anything about the Egyptian papyrus. That is something the apologists have to come to terms with. I’ve shown in this thread that the word “Shinehah” was originally a code word used by the prophet to protect the Church’s interest and that the very word was recycled and used to represent different things in different places.

All of this is devastating for the apologist’s arguments in trying show that the word was originally used to represent something Egyptian when in fact it was not.
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Re: More Shinehah

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Shulem wrote:
Thu Nov 04, 2021 4:50 pm
I find it very telling that the word “SHINEHAH” was conceived before Smith’s encounter with Chandler and the Egyptian exhibit. Shinehah, Shinelah, and Shinelane seem to come out of nowhere. But where? Where did they come from? Where did they originate?

Professor David J. Whittaker, a BYU church historian and library Curator, proposed the following explanation in his 1983 article entitled “Substituted Names in the Published Revelations of Joseph Smith.”

Professor Whittaker wrote:One question still remains unanswered. What was the source of the code names? It is possible that they were simply invented, but it appears more likely that most of these names came from the Hebrew studies of early Mormon leaders. Orson Pratt specifically interpreted “Baurak Ale” as a Hebrew word, and a recent study of these pseudonyms, while admittedly speculative, does suggest possible Hebrew meanings for these words. It must be remembered that these early Mormons were just beginning their Hebrew studies, and perhaps a closer search of their texts and dictionaries might reveal the actual source of these pseudonyms.
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The Land of Shinehah is Kirtland Ohio

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Orson F. Whitney wrote: Born 1855
Quorum of the Twelve Apostles
April 9, 1906 – May 16, 1931

Image

Chapter Five
The Land of Shinehah
Such was the name
given by revelation to
Kirtland,


Image

BYU Library wrote:Materials include chapter five of "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: A History" written by Orson F. Whitney. The chapter is titled "The Land of Shinehah" and is about the experiences of the members of the Church while in Kirtland, Ohio. Date of production not identified.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints : A History, chapter five
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Re: More Shinehah

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Shulem wrote:
Thu Nov 04, 2021 8:02 pm
Professor Whittaker wrote: Orson Pratt specifically interpreted “Baurak Ale” ...
Pelé Ale was the favorite beverage of a former Brazilian soccer star.
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Ra

Post by Shulem »

An emissary from a foreign land who visits Egypt would've a certainly know the Egyptian word for “sun”. The character Abram, when visiting Egypt was a mature adult, educated, and a man of means. He would have known the word for SUN while enjoining in a conversation about astronomy with learned Egyptians, more especially in the king’s court. He would have conveyed the ONE word that expresses the sun and its relation to Egyptian deity. Funerary spells and invocations prescribe Egyptian rites that glorify the sun and we see this clearly in Facsimiles No. 2 & 3; therein the language is Egyptian and the iconographic images match perfectly with the messages conveyed by the written spells.

If the Book of Abraham (3:13) was accurately reporting from an Egyptian perspective, it would have been translated as:

“And he said unto me: This is Ra, which is the sun.”

Instead, we get a fictitious word and more nonsense that collaborates into something totally unEgyptian:

Facsimile No. 2 wrote:Fig. 5. Is called in Egyptian Enish-go-on-dosh; this is one of the governing planets also, and is said by the Egyptians to be the Sun...
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More refutation

Post by Shulem »

Other Book of Abraham critics have also voiced concern about Shinehah being evidence to support Smith’s work as a bonafide Egyptian word or expression for the word “sun” given in the text of the Book of Abraham. Expert Book of Abraham critic (Philo Sofee) has made available a link on this board and I will happily quote that source here to compliment this thread.

LDS Discussions Website wrote: LDS Discussions Blog

The problem again is that this is another example of parallelomania, where apologists are trying to find anything that could possibly connect the Book of Abraham to being an ancient source, but again it simply is not there.

According to Dr. Robert Ritner, the problem is that Shinehah is not a single word as the Book of Mormon, but two words: Shen (šn-(sh)n ) Neh (or nhh or eneh). When you put those two words, it means “the circle of eternity” in Egyptian.

Dr. Robert Ritner said the following about these two words:

“If you throw enough sounds together, you could get accidental sounds that sound like something Egyptian. So the question is not as the apologists proposed(?) it: If we make this sound, could it sound like something cobbled together in Egyptian? The question is, does such an Egyptian term even exist? You know, where is the proof? They [apologists] don't go there because they don't. And so I asked one of my colleagues to search in the Thesaurus Linguae Aegyptiae, otherwise known as the TLA, our reference work that includes all of the published Egyptian hieroglyphic inscriptions. So he did a global search for the number of times that the words Shen (circle) and Neh are put next to each other. Then he did a search to see the number of times that they are closer than 10 words apart. The number of hits he got was zero.

What I'm saying is there is not a single case of where ‘Shen neha’ occurs as a combination, not one. There's not even a case where Shen is 10 words next to Neh, So the combination of Shen next to represent the sun or anything else is a total fabrication. It's an accidental coincidence of sounds, but it's unsupported by any evidence whatsoever.” (Dr. Robert Ritner Interview Part 2, Mormon Stories Podcast)

To be clear, what apologists are doing here is to take two words that form something that sounds like Shinehah and then they mold the meaning of these words to fit the claim. In this case, Shen Neh means the circle of eternity, where in the Book of Abraham it is simply the sun. That’s a stretch to begin with, but when you realize those two words are never used next to each other in the history of Egyptian inscriptions, it becomes clear that just like the Olishem and Ulisum “bullseye,” this is a manufactured parallel.

In this case not only is Shinehah not an ancient term, but the terms within the same verse (Kolob, Olea, and Kokaubeam) have nothing to do with ancient Egyptian either. Often times the apologetic argument is to cherry pick a supposed “bullseye” while ignoring all of the problems surrounding it, and these two problems (Shinehah and Olishem) are examples of that strategy.
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In a nutshell

Post by Shulem »

Dr. Ritner confirmed that Shinehah is not found anywhere in the vast corpus of ancient Egyptian records, and neither is the word found in the Middle Egyptian Dictionary. It is not written on any tomb wall, monument, papyri, or any other ancient Egyptian document that describes the sun. Mormon apologists are making stuff up out of whole cloth in order to support Smith’s later translation for a fictitious word he originally used to describe as a location here on earth for Zion, i.e., Missouri & Kirtland. It should also be noted that “Shinehah” is not found in Smith’s Grammar and Alphabet of the Egyptian Language or in any of the Kirtland Egyptian Papers. The introduction to an Egyptian connection was first made in 1842 in Nauvoo when the Book of Abraham was published. Prior to 1842, the word Shinehah was associated with places on earth to represent Zion.

  • The word Shinehah was conceived prior to Smith obtaining the papyrus
  • The word Shinehah was originally used to describe earthly places
  • The word Shinehah is not found in the Kirtland Egyptian Papers
  • The word Shinehah was adopted to later represent the Egyptian sun in 1842
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Re: Jeff Lindsay and Stephen O. Smoot take aim at Dan Vogel over “Shinehah”

Post by Philo Sofee »

Remarkable detective work Shulem! I had not thought before of seeing if Shinehah was pre-papyri days. That changes it all, without question. Of course, I was familiar with Ritner, that is, long after my apologetic song and dance attempting to crib Egyptian hieroglyphics words together to produce Shinehah, but this is a major match to the hay of the apologetic Shinehah... I marvel at your insights!
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