Backyard Professor The Easter Message of the Egyptian Hypocaphali - New Light

[Philo Sofee]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ew8UHNaq7E4

You are all cordially invited to join me Sunday night (Easter) for an updated Egyptological analysis of the Egyptian hypocephali (Book of Abraham fac #2 - the round one) and its Easter message, comparing and contrasting the Egyptian views with Joseph Smith's and Easter in general. It is remarkable the work the Egyptologists have been doing on this class of documents.

[Moksha]

It is remarkable the work the Egyptologists have been doing on this class of documents.

Will you be touching on the Temple symbolism of the Rabbit, the Basket, and the fancy Eggs?

[Philo Sofee]

It is remarkable the work the Egyptologists have been doing on this class of documents.

Will you be touching on the Temple symbolism of the Rabbit, the Basket, and the fancy Eggs?

Well, of course.... the entire hypocephalus is an Easter egg.....

[Shulem]

comparing and contrasting the Egyptian views with Joseph Smith's

Just when you may have thought that dear Shulem couldn't slam out another post in the king's name thread -- this one rocks, yeah baby!

Take that, Nelson. POW! Take that Gee. BAM!

King Pharaoh, whose name is given in the characters above his *HAND*

[Gabriel]

Happy Easter BYP,

The following may or may not be germane to your subject tonight.

Of late, I have been finding the whole Ehrman-Carrier back and forth fascinating. As regards the subject of Osiris: Here is Ehrman's side of their kerfuffle.

Richard Carrier: A Fuller Reply to His Criticisms, Beliefs, and Claims about Jesus

The Dying and Rising God:

In my book I argue that there is very thin evidence indeed for anything like a widespread pagan belief in a dying-rising god, on which Jesus was modeled. In the context of showing the shortcomings of Freke and Gandy’s book The Jesus Mysteries, I make a passing comment on the Egyptian god Osiris, first by asking a series of questions: “What, for example, is the proof that Osiris was born on December 25 before three shepherds? Or that he was crucified? And that his death brought atonement for sin? Or that he returned to life on earth by being raised from the dead? In fact, no ancient source says any such thing about Osiris.”

Richard Carrier does not seem to disagree with most of this statement, but he takes very serious issue indeed with the claim that Osiris was not raised from the dead to return to life on earth. He indicates that I received this information entirely from an article by Jonathan Z. Smith and that if I had been a “real scholar” I would have looked up the ancient sources themselves. As it is I made a “hack mistake” showing that I was “incompetent.”

Plutarch the Philosopher

His counterclaim is that “Plutarch attests that Osiris was believed to have died and been returned to earth… and that he did indeed return to earth in his resurrected body.” He gives as his reference Plutarch “On Isis and Osiris,” 19.358b.

Carrier is wrong on all points. I did not get this information just from J. Z. Smith (who, by the way, is one of the most eminent and distinguished historians of religion walking the face of the planet, and certainly no hack) and his charge that I have not behaved like a “real scholar” is completely unfounded. I have read Plutarch’s account of Osiris many times. For years I used this text in the graduate seminars I taught on Graeco-Roman religion. In my reading of the myth of Osiris, he does not rise from the dead back to life here on earth.

Isis & Osiris

One of our principal sources of knowledge of the myth of the gods Isis and Osiris, brother and sister but lovers, is the famous second-century pagan philosopher and priest Plutarch. The myth as Plutarch recounts it is not long; most of his treatise De Iside et Osiride consists of a range of ways people had interpreted the myth, in particular the various allegorical interpretations. A convenient translation of the treatise can be found here: http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/R ... and_Osiris*/

I do not need to relate all the details of the myth in this context. Suffice it to say that Osiris is killed by an enemy and hidden away in a chest/coffin that was lost. Isis finally finds it and mourns the loss of her dead lover. But (another) enemy finds the body and does something unspeakable. Here is the passage from Plutarch, in the Babbitt translation of the Loeb Classical Library:

18 As they relate, Isis proceeded to her son Horus, who was being reared in Buto, and bestowed the chest in a place well out of the way; but Typhon, who was hunting by night in the light of the moon, happened upon it. Recognizing the body [of Osiris] he divided it into fourteen parts and scattered them, each in a different place. Isis learned of this and sought for them again, sailing through the swamps in a boat of papyrus. This is the reason why people sailing in such boats are not harmed by the crocodiles, since these creatures in their own way show either their fear or their reverence for the goddess. The traditional result of Osiris’s dismemberment is that there are many so called tombs of Osiris in Egypt; for Isis held a funeral for each part when she had found it. Others deny this and assert that she caused effigies of him to be made and these she distributed among the several cities, pretending that she was giving them his body, in order that he might receive divine honours in a greater number of cities, and also that, if Typhon should succeed in overpowering Horus, he might despair of ever finding the true tomb when so many were pointed out to him, all of them called the tomb of Osiris. Of the parts of Osiris’s body, the only one which Isis did not find was the male member, for the reason that this had been at once tossed into the river, and the lepidotus, the sea-bream, and the pike had fed upon it; and it is from these very fishes the Egyptians are most scrupulous in abstaining. But Isis made a replica of the member to take its place, and consecrated the phallus, in honour of which the Egyptians even at the present day celebrate a festival. 19 Later, as they relate, Osiris came to Horus from the other world and exercised and trained him for the battle.

Osiris’s Body

In this telling of the myth – the one the Carrier refers to – Osiris’s body does not come back to life. Quite the contrary, it remains a corpse. There are debates, in fact, over where it is buried, and different locales want to claim the honor of housing it. It is true that Osiris “comes back” to earth to work with his son Horus: ἔπειτα τῷ Ὥρῳ τὸν Ὄσιριν ἐξ Ἅιδου παραγενόμενον.

Literally, he came “from Hades.” But this is not a resurrection of his body. His body is still dead. He himself is down in Hades and can come back up to make an appearance on earth on occasion. This is not like Jesus coming back from the dead, in his body; it is like Samuel in the story of the Witch of Endor, where King Saul brings his shade back to the world of the living temporarily (1 Samuel 28). How do we know Osiris is not raised physically? His body is still a corpse, in a tomb.

Evidence to that comes from various places in the treatise. For example, section 20, 359 E:

not the least important suggestion is the opinion held regarding the shrines of Osiris, whose body is said to have been laid in many different places. For they say that Diochites is the name given to a small town, on the ground that it alone contains the true tomb; and that the prosperous and influential men among the Egyptians are mostly buried in Abydos, since it is the object of their ambition to be buried in the same ground with the body of Osiris. In Memphis, however, they say, the Apis is kept, being the image of the soul of Osiris, whose body also lies there. The name of this city some interpret as “the haven of the good” and others as meaning properly the “tomb of Osiris.”

It is his soul that lives on, in the underworld. Not his body in this world. Richard Carrier wants to argue that the body comes back to life, and points to a passage that speaks of its “revivification and regenesis.” But that is taking the Plutarch’s words out of context. Here is the relevant passage:

35 364F-365A Furthermore, the tales regarding the Titans and the rites celebrated by night agree with the accounts of the dismemberment of Osiris and his revivification and regenesis ὁμολογεῖ δὲ καὶ τὰ Τιτανικὰ καὶ Νυκτέλια 5 τοῖς λεγομένοις Ὀσίριδος διασπασμοῖς καὶ ταῖς ἀναβιώσεσι καὶ παλιγγενεσίαις. A similar agreement is found too in the tales about their sepulchres. The Egyptians, as has already been stated, point out tombs of Osiris in many places, and the people of Delphi believe that the remains of Dionysus rest with them close beside the oracle.

NOTE:

Whatever his revivification involves, it is not a return to his physical body, which remains in a tomb someplace. It is his soul that lives on, as seen, finally in a key passage later:

54 373A It is not, therefore, out of keeping that they have a legend that the soul of Osiris is everlasting and imperishable, but that his body Typhon oftentimes dismembers and causes to disappear, and that Isis wanders hither and yon in her search for it, and fits it together again; for that which really is and is perceptible and good is superior to destruction and change.

Richard Carrier and I could no doubt argue day and night about how to interpret Plutarch. But my views do not rest on having read a single article by Jonathan Z. Smith and a refusal to read the primary sources. As I read them, there is no resurrection of the body of Osiris. And that is the standard view among experts in the field.

Looking forward to your video.

Gabriel

[Moksha]

Mormon theologian Kwaku El thought Joseph Smith was among the Council of Gods that created the famous Plan. Could you touch on this point, if it pertains even tangentially to the hypocephalus?

[Shulem]

Mormon theologian Kwaku El thought Joseph Smith was among the Council of Gods that created the famous Plan. Could you touch on this point, if it pertains even tangentially to the hypocephalus?

Well, I must be on a roll today because I just drilled Royal Skousen a new one. Oh boy, I busted him straight in the chops with a left hook! I dare him to take me on!

I guess I'm starting to get pissed off again....

Royal Skousen

[Philo Sofee]

It's 5:55 and Moksha is here. Come on over folks just about time to start...

[Shulem]

It's 5:55 and Moksha is here. Come on over folks just about time to start...

Whatever new apologetic plan those rascals have in mind for revamping their position on the Book of Abraham is DOA. It will not work. They can't get rid of Smith's words. They can't change what Smith said and that is all that counts. The changing world of Mormon apologetics cannot change the past.

The Book of Abraham is dead. It will never provide any manner of usefulness to the inhabitants of this planet. The idea of Egypt being founded in 2300 BC after a worldwide flood is religious nonsense.

Gee can go straight to hell.

[Shulem]

Philo,

I thought your presentation was extremely good and covered a lot of material and concepts and you did a great job. Maybe even better than I could do but I express things very differently as I see things.

Anyway, Joseph Smith's interpretations of the hypocephalus are not anything that science and the scholarly world can use. Smith's explanations are crap. And we are seeing that more and more apologists are giving up on the facsimile explanations and sticking with just the text or chapters that comprise the main story. But, as you know, chapter one explains HOW (Ham) and WHEN (2300 BC) Egypt came into existence is just as bad as anything given in the silly Facsimile explanations! I am hammering away at that in the Celestial forum and it is the driving force that prevents the apologists from salvaging the text in a vain attempt to introduce it into real academic world scholarship. It simply can't be done! The Book of Abraham has always been DOA and ever will be.

Look, I've sewn it up and my cross-examinations of Smith's Egyptology are 100% foolfroof.

We (you and me) have won the war!