Jeff Lindsay | Nov 10, 2017 wrote: The argument that I think stung both of us was compelling: Joseph claimed to have translated Egyptian by the power of God, apparently like he translated the gold plates.
Jeff,
We agree on one POINT: Joseph did claim to “translate” the gold plates and he also claimed to “translate” the papyrus. But HOW he translated and the method employed thereby is entirely another discussion as well as whether he did it through the power of God or not. We can leave those TWO points out of the picture for now. What matters right now and we both agree, Smith claimed to translate both items.
I can certainly understand the
sting coming from the argument on those various points you make in your statement. But for now, let’s just focus on one of them:
Smith claimed to translate both the plates and the papyrus.
What exactly does this mean? I think most reasonable people will agree that what it means is that what was on the plates is now in the paperbound book entitled the Book of Mormon and what was on the papyrus is now in the paperbound book entitled the Book of Abraham.
1) What’s on the plates is now in the Book of Mormon
2) What’s on the papyrus is now in the Book of Abraham
This also works in reverse, meaning that both paperbound books written in the English language or another language published in modern times could theoretically be translated BACK into the same exact content that is on the plates and the papyrus. In other words, someone who knows how to translate so-called “reformed Egyptian” could take the entire contents of the Book of Mormon and write it out in a complete
“reformed Egyptian” script. Likewise, someone who knows how to translate the conventional hieroglyphic language (John Gee for example) could take the Book of Abraham as presently constituted and translate it back into the same Egyptian that was on the original scroll.
This makes for a very interesting prospect. If this being the case we have the following two manuscripts written in the original foreign language:
1) Book of Mormon written in
reformed Egyptian
2) Book of Abraham written in hieroglyphic text
This, however, is not without problems! The chapters of the Book of Abraham could be penned on a very long roll and the Book of Mormon would be much longer. But what about Facsimile No. 2? Now we run into a serious problem because Smith restored certain portions of the damaged Hypocephalus using characters from other papyri as a template and translated the adopted characters in the registers into the Explanations. Thus, Smith tendered
Explanations of various hieroglyphs he inserted into the registers and those translations cannot possibly match what was on the original undamaged Hypocephalus. If the characters don’t match neither will the translation of the very characters in which they represent!
Therefore, it can be reasoned that the Explanations of Facsimile No. 2 are fatally flawed and the translation cannot possibly match what the original artists penned!
Do you see my point, Jeff?