Kerry M's and Book of Abraham

[hauslern]

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/stu ... u?lang=eng

"Although academic research can provide helpful information, revelation from God is the most trustworthy and valid source of knowledge."

In that link you talks about how evidence has been found for Human sacrifice. I thought someone argued that they would not sacrifice someone just for having a different belief. Was that Ritner's position?

[Moksha]

"Higher and faster"

[jfro18]

This was part of Ritner's response to this claim about human sacrifice during his Mormon Stories episodes:

“Kerry wrote his dissertation on this very topic, and he was very careful to describe these as political executions rather than human sacrifices. So he walked a careful line that passed muster with Egyptologists. He did not prove that there was human sacrifice. He in fact, just pointed these out as being human, as being political execution…

It's a death penalty for committing a crime. This is not for failing to worship the gods or failing to respect a deity or a ritual. It's if you commit a crime, there will be capital punishment that is not sacrifice. And yet this is the kind of example they want to choose. This is like saying, ‘If you kill someone and we hang you for it, it's a human sacrifice.’ If that's the way you want to understand it, fine. Any execution could be taken in a religious way and given a connotation, and we execute people now. Is that human sacrifice? For some, you would say yes, but it's a question of ‘Is this how the Egyptians are understanding it?’ And the answer is certainly not…

So all of the examples that they like to point to, the so called recent ones, are in fact either criminal published punishment or military activity. It's not a question of human sacrifice on an altar. There's no altar that's been found at this site. In the Delta, there's no altar that is found in mere guesses. There is no altar found adjacent to the never Hotel Stella, so all of that is smoke and mirrors and confusion of terms and attempting to juggle anything in order to make it all makes sense. But the bigger question is so what if the Egyptians practiced human sacrifice? Would the Egyptians have practiced human sacrifice in north Syria, where they didn't have any physical control? Would they have looked like that on that illustration [Facsimile 1], which we know is doctored and therefore cannot be an illustration of it? So it's not a question of finding one little thing that might work. You have to make all the pieces fit. And that is the continual problem with the apologists is they find one small aspect which, if you squint your eyes and look, you know, slightly to the left, you can say, ‘Well, it sort of looks like this,’ but then it doesn't fit the entire picture because you're asked to ignore all of that, and you can't ignore all of it. If the story is true, then all parts of it have to be true. Not just one aspect of one picture or two lines.” (Dr. Robert Ritner, Mormon Stories Part Two)

[hauslern]

I asked Kara Cooney about the controversial things going on about the cemetery. Does anyone here know what happened and the result? I heard the Egyptians banned him but later allowed to return.

It is interesting what Ritner said. Kara was interested.

"Do you have an article or other information that Muhlestein had to stop work excavating that cemetery in Fayum? He didn’t publish anything. Would love to know more.

And yes, as for human sacrifice, many of us have never stopped believing that human sacrifice happened, myself included —during the 1st Dynasty especially as sacrificial burials of fellow courtiers, and just recently proved for the 17th Dynasty of foreign (?) enemies. But most smiting motifs suggest the practice continued ritually, and we just haven’t found the evidence. Such human sacrifice would have looked nothing like the sacrifice on a funerary bier as presented in the Book of Abraham because that funerary bier comes from the mummification from a book of breathing. "

Thanks for sending.

K
Kathlyn M. Cooney
Professor of Ancient Egyptian Art & Architecture

[Manetho]

I thought someone argued that they would not sacrifice someone just for having a different belief. Was that Ritner's position?

Yes, and that of every non-apologetic Egyptologist.

Religion in ancient Egypt worked profoundly differently from religion as we think of it. One of the core functions of the Egyptian state was to perform rituals to satisfy the gods, but there was no requirement that the general populace participate. The vast majority of people were actually excluded from participating in the most essential rituals, the daily offering rites that took place within the secluded interiors of temples. Ordinary people did pray and make offerings to the gods for personal reasons, but those activities were largely separate from state-sponsored rituals. A monotheistic proto-Israelite wandering around in Egypt, the way Abraham is portrayed in the Book of Genesis, might be considered a weirdo for not doing anything to propitiate the local deities (in ancient polytheistic societies, it was generally considered a good idea to appease the gods who were in charge of whatever land you were traveling through), but the government would neither have known nor cared.

The idea that people could be killed because they "would not bow down to worship gods of wood or stone" pretty clearly derives from the Book of Daniel and from the Roman persecutions of Christians. Although Daniel is set in Babylon in the sixth century BC, it is generally thought to have been written in the second century BC, in response to the actions of Antiochus IV, the ruler of the Greek Seleucid Empire, whose realm included Judea. He tried to forcibly transform traditional Second Temple Judaism into the worship of a Jewish-Greek deity, a fusion of Yahweh and Zeus. His efforts are often considered the first religious persecution in history. No such thing existed in Abraham's time, or in most of ancient Egyptian history.

[Moksha]

Dr. Muhlestein publically announced the cemetery the BYU crew was working on had 2 million mummies. The Egyptian Director of Antiquities called BS on that and numbered them as several thousand. Dr. Muhlestein was basing his estimate on the BYU variant of Bayes Theorem. He was booted off the dig for being reckless.

Dr. Muhlestein was able to redeem himself with some maneuvering of BYU and his discovery of a 7 ft tall redheaded priest mummy he named Zelph-Hotep who was folded up in a shaft due to his height. Dr. Muhlestein reckoned Zelph-Hotep had been extra valiant. He pointed to the BYU variant of Bayes Theorem as confirmation.

https://www.livescience.com/49147-egypt ... mmies.html
https://english.alarabiya.net/life-styl ... ummy-find-