wenglund wrote:beastie wrote: Each time you assert that Joseph Smith would have known what was or was not Egyptian, you engage in presentism.
I am quite certain that I am not. But, I am open to you attempting to make your case.You, nor Will, have presented any actual evidence that would support your assertion...
This is demonstrably incorrect, though understandable if you haven't carefully read through, nor fully or accurately comprehended, my posts.
The first argument that I presented was that Phelps and Joseph were known to have been studying Latin and Hebrew at the time the KEP was being produced. I should also mention that there is evidence that Phelps had studied Latin and other language prior to the Egyptian papyri arriving in Kirtland. One can reasonably induce from this evidence that Phelps and Joseph would likely have known that a Latin character was not Egyptian, and that an Aramaic or Hebrew character was not Egyptian. In other words, they would have been able to tell the difference between Latin, Aramaic, and Egyptian characters even if they didn't know Egyptian, patricularly given the marked difference between the characters used by these respective languages..
My second argument was that even though Phelps and Joseph may have considered Masonry in general to be Egyptian in origin, they likely didn't consider every specific thing about Masonry to be Egyptian. I gave as a reasonable example the English words used by Masons, which clearly would not be considered as Egyptian by the English-speaking Phelps and Smith.
I then went on to note that the Masonic cipher used English alphabet letters. This should suggest to the logical mind that the English portions of the Masonic cipher would clearly not be mistaken as Egyptian by the English-speaking Phelps and Smith.
Furthermore, I pointed out that the English letters in the Masonic cipher were separated by an obvious grid--a grid that even in Phelps' and Smith's day, was called a "pig pen" because of its shape. And, because it would obviously be considered as a grid by anyone in any age who was at all familiar with grids (which Phelps and Joseph obviously were, given the grid-like tables they used to formate the key documents of the KEP), it is then reasonable to argue that Phelps and Smith would not mistake an obvious cipher grid for an Egyptian heiroglyph or hieratic--and this even given that they may not have known Egyptian.
Certainly, as Phelps and Smith perused the Egyptian papyri in their possession at the time, and would nowhere on that papyri find anything close to resembling the Masonic cipher gride, we have no reason to believe that they would have mistaken the cipher grid for an Egyptian hieroglyph or hieratic, or thought that is what it was.
In short, since it is reasonable to suggest that Phelps and Smith knew that some of the characters came from an English version of an obvious cipher grid, then it is also reasonable to conclude that they knew that the Masonic cipher characters were not Egyptian.
I am sorry, but this seems so self-evident and uncontroversial that I have to wonder why you seem so iincapable of redily grasping it and/or are highly resistant to accepting it.
Now, is this the only case of alleged presentism that you mistakenly assumed was in my posts? If so, then I will gladly accept your apology. If not, feel free to make the other alleged case.
Thanks, -Wade Englund-
You still are not offering evidence to back up your assertions. Your entire argument is based on what seems reasonable to you. You haven't offered evidence that Smith et al would have reasoned in the manner that you have. For example, it wouldn't be unthinkable that a nineteenth century individual might have imagined that certain figures could overlap in various ancient languages, particularly when the ancient language in question was pretty much a great unknown.