how mopologists explain the Book of Abraham:

[_Shulem]

Stupid damned Mormons follow Horny Holy Joe and his Book of Abraham TRANSLATION.

Brainwashed Mormons will believe anything Horny Joe says!

[_KevinSim]

The KEP does two things. It demonstrates the the papyrus found in 1967 is THE one Joseph Smith and scribes supposedly translated into being the Book of Abraham (even though as enabled by the Rosetta Stone, Egyptologists agree that there is nothing on the papyrus that matches up with the Book of Abraham story). The KEP proves it was a linguistic translation that Joseph Smith and scribes were attempting, taking characters in one language and creating corresponding text in English.

In his book _An Introduction to the Book of Abraham_, Egyptologist John Gee says that statements by eyewitnesses to the translation process prove that none of the recovered papyrii is the one Joseph Smith translated the Book of Abraham from. The document they saw him working on had features that simply don't match any of the recovered papyrii. Does the KEP somehow refute that? If so, is John Gee currently aware that it refutes that? I'd like to hear Gee's reaction to HolyGhost's statement above.

[_Holy Ghost]

The KEP does two things. It demonstrates the the papyrus found in 1967 is THE one Joseph Smith and scribes supposedly translated into being the Book of Abraham (even though as enabled by the Rosetta Stone, Egyptologists agree that there is nothing on the papyrus that matches up with the Book of Abraham story). The KEP proves it was a linguistic translation that Joseph Smith and scribes were attempting, taking characters in one language and creating corresponding text in English.

In his book _An Introduction to the Book of Abraham_, Egyptologist John Gee says that statements by eyewitnesses to the translation process prove that none of the recovered papyrii is the one Joseph Smith translated the Book of Abraham from. The document they saw him working on had features that simply don't match any of the recovered papyrii. Does the KEP somehow refute that? If so, is John Gee currently aware that it refutes that? I'd like to hear Gee's reaction to HolyGhost's statement above.

Kevin, have you read Robert Ritner's response to the Gospel Topics Essay on the "translation" of the Book of Abraham? https://oi.uchicago.edu/sites/oi.uchica ... inal-2.pdf

Chris Smith's article on this? "The Dependence of Abraham 1:1—3 on the Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar", Christopher C. Smith, The John Whitmer Historical Association Journal, Vol. 29 (2009), pp. 38-54 https://www.academia.edu/2357346/The_De ... o=download

Read these for yourself; then you can evaluate for yourself what John Gee has to say. You'll see that it is inescapable that Joseph Smith and scribes were "working" from the sensen papyrus found in 1967.

[_jfro18]

In his book _An Introduction to the Book of Abraham_, Egyptologist John Gee says that statements by eyewitnesses to the translation process prove that none of the recovered papyrii is the one Joseph Smith translated the Book of Abraham from. The document they saw him working on had features that simply don't match any of the recovered papyrii. Does the KEP somehow refute that? If so, is John Gee currently aware that it refutes that? I'd like to hear Gee's reaction to HolyGhost's statement above.

If you look at the manuscripts against the papyrus fragment that was found you'll see that they match up not just in the symbols, but in the order of the symbols on the papyrus. It's impossible to ignore once you look at where they come from.

The other response to this is from Brian Hauglid, who was a lost scroll apologist who later worked on the Joseph Smith Papers project. Following his work on the JSP and the Book of Abraham, Hauglid posted this on Facebook:



I think that speaks about as strongly against Gee's apologetics as anything else could.

[_KevinSim]

Following his work on the JSP and the Book of Abraham, Hauglid posted this on Facebook:



I think that speaks about as strongly against Gee's apologetics as anything else could.

Because Brian Hauglid finds his apologetics abhorrent?

[_jfro18]

Because Brian Hauglid finds his apologetics abhorrent?

I guess I'd break that down a few ways:

1. Brian Hauglid used to believe in the lost scroll theory, but through his work going through documents on the Joseph Smith Papers project determined his own apologetics were so wrong that he had to publicly denouce his old ones.

2. He agreed with Dan Vogel's work that details how the Book of Abraham was produced, which was detailed through YouTube videos before the JSP part on the Book of Abraham was released.

3. Hauglid literally called the work of Gee and Muelhstein "abhorrent," which as a member of the church that is working on the JSP seems as strong as he could possibly get in attacking the lost scroll theory in an official setting.

[_Kevin Graham]

Because Brian Hauglid finds his apologetics abhorrent?

Yes. I had lunch with Brian a few years ago. He disagree with Gee on just about everything.

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=44920

Back when I was posting as dartagnan: http://www.mormondiscussions.com/phpBB3 ... hp?p=89262

[_Holy Ghost]

The KEP does two things. It demonstrates the the papyrus found in 1967 is THE one Joseph Smith and scribes supposedly translated into being the Book of Abraham (even though as enabled by the Rosetta Stone, Egyptologists agree that there is nothing on the papyrus that matches up with the Book of Abraham story). The KEP proves it was a linguistic translation that Joseph Smith and scribes were attempting, taking characters in one language and creating corresponding text in English.

In his book _An Introduction to the Book of Abraham_, Egyptologist John Gee says that statements by eyewitnesses to the translation process prove that none of the recovered papyrii is the one Joseph Smith translated the Book of Abraham from. The document they saw him working on had features that simply don't match any of the recovered papyrii. Does the KEP somehow refute that? If so, is John Gee currently aware that it refutes that? I'd like to hear Gee's reaction to HolyGhost's statement above.

Kevin, have you studied it out in your mind, fasted and prayed with an earnest heart and mind to ask God whether the Book of Abraham is the word of God, is truth? Specifically, (1) That's the Mormon epistemological method, right? In that first step, studying it out in your mind, have you (a) compared the hieratic characters in the top row of the sensen papyrus, going right to left, (b) found that those hieratic characters correspond, even in the order presented, with those in the Grammar and Alphabet of the Egyptian Language, (c) looked at the English text of the GAEL to the right of each hieratic character, (d) read over Chris Smith's article referenced and linked for you above, and then (e) prayed to ask if Joseph Smith had translated the Book of Abraham from the Sensen papyrus despite there being no linguistic correlation of the hieratic characters that appear on it with the English text known as the Book of Abraham?

In your studying it out in your mind first, have you (f) looked at the entry for Sunday, July 19, 1835 in the History of the Church (Vol. II, Ch. XVII) "Sunday, 19th.--Our public meeting was attended by more than a thousand people, and during our conference nine were baptized. ORSON HYDE, Walmart. E. M'LELLIN, Clerks. The remainder of this month, I was continually engaged in translating an alphabet to the Book of Abraham, and arranging a grammar of the Egyptian language as practiced by the ancients.", (g) looked at the entry for September 30, 1835 in History of the Church (Vol. II, Ch. XXI) "I was at home on the 30th, and was visited by many who came to inquire after the work of the Lord. This afternoon I labored on the Egyptian alphabet, in company with Brothers Oliver Cowdery and W. W. Phelps, and during the research, the principles of astronomy as understood by Father Abraham and the ancients unfolded to our understanding, the particulars of which will appear hereafter.", (h) looked at Abraham 3, that contains the astronomy, and then (i) prayed to ask if the GAEL was just an attempt after the Book of Abraham was used by them as workpapers as Joseph Smith translated the Book of Abraham? (rather than the GAEL being an attempt by Joseph Smith and his scribes to 'reverse engineer' an ancient Egyptian Alphabet by trying to match up some of the English verbiage of the Book of Abraham to the hieratic characters).

In your quest for truth using the Mormon epistomology, have you (j) prayed fervently and asked if the Book of Abraham is, as Joseph Smith and the LDS Church yet proclaim, "A Translation of some ancient Records that have fallen into our hands from the catacombs of Egypt. The writings of Abraham while he was in Egypt, called the Book of Abraham, written by his own hand, upon papyrus."?

In your quest for truth using the Mormon epistomology, have you (k) studied out in your mind the issues raised with how Joseph Smith restored the torn, missing parts (the lacunae) of the papyri from which taken (e.g., http://www.sicketnon.com/2018/12/04-boo ... tland.html) and then (l) prayed fervently and asked if the Facsimiles were restored correctly by Joseph Smith?

In your quest for truth using the Mormon epistomology, have you (m) studied out in your mind the Egyptological translations and interpretations of the Facsimile pictures, compared those to what the Book of Abraham includes, as LDS canonical scripture, as the Explanations, and then (n) prayed fervently and asked if the Explanations to the Facsimiles that are part and parcel to the Book of Abraham are true explanations of what is depicted in and written in hieroglyphics/hieratics on the Facsimiles taken from the papyri?

[_Fence Sitter]

In his book _An Introduction to the Book of Abraham_, Egyptologist

This is a really poor book, that has very little scholarship and is apologetic in nature, both openly admitted by the author. One review of the book said it best.

This book isn't scholarly, Dr Gee says so himself in the first paragraph of his introduction on page ix. I gave the book two stars because Dr Gee does provide some useful translation timeline charts on pages 16-19, a useful list of Book of Abraham Manuscripts in the Mormon Church's possession on pages 35 & 35 as well as an abundance of charts, maps and diagrams explaining other aspects of the Book of Abraham. So this book is useful to me as a reference tool for that alone. All of this data can be found elsewhere but not in one spot so the book has that going for it.

Beyond that, the book is purely apologetic in nature and unabashedly so, a fact Dr. Gee excuses by claiming that "no scholarship is neutral; almost all scholarship is defending a particular point of view and thus constitutes apologetics of one sort or another." (See pg 95) Well that may be true but that doesn't mean that all points of view are equal or defended equally as well. And, as we can see in this book, not only is that point of view presented in full force it is done so with no attempt at neutrality.
If you are a staunch Mormon looking for a book that with provide you with a basic background on the how the Book of Abraham was produced and how it might have some resemblance to what we know about any possible historical figure named Abraham, this is worth buying and reading. But, if you are looking for a book that will provide you with substantive answers to questions from even a modestly informed critic, this book will not suffice. Here are just two examples of why.

On page 86 Dr Gee notes that "..it is impossible to directly compare the Book of Abraham with the papyri from which Joseph Smith translated it,..." This is simply not true. For example we can take Joseph Smith's translations of facsimile#3 and ask if the hieroglyphic writing contained in the registers of the vignette of Facsimile No. 3 are the source material from which Joseph Smith translated and interpreted Egyptian into English? And the answer is of course yes they are, and here is where we can compare the Book of Abraham directly to the papyri. Joseph Smith himself tells us this in his explanations #4 & #5 on Facsimile #3. Number 5 reads: "5. Shulem, one of the king's principal waiters, as represented by the characters above his head." Even Gee would tell you that this isn't a waiter but rather this is Hor who is being ushered into the presence of Isis and Maat and that is what the characters above figure #5 say contrary to what Joseph Smith claimed it said.

Secondly, Dr. Gee spends quite a bit of time in the first few chapters of the book explaining why he thinks that the missing long scroll theory is the best explanation, concluding on Pg. 85 that "the theory that Joseph Smith translated the Book of Abraham from papyri we no longer have accounts for most of the evidence with the fewest problems. But what he doesn't say is that one of those remaining problems is that none of the evidence we have, none of the contemporary content descriptions of the scrolls, no loose extant fragments from missing portions of the scrolls, none of the pages of hand copied figures or glyphs that Joseph Smith and Co drew and labeled as "Valuable Discovery" contain or represent ANYTHING TO DO WITH ABRAHAM. Even if by some miracle the missing long scroll Gee proposes were to turn up, every indication point to the probability that it would still be just ordinary Egyptian Funerary documents. So if you are faithful LDS and just looking for a short little basic book that will take very little time to read and leave you feeling good about the fact that some really smart guy out there has answered all the difficult questions, this may be for you.

John Gee says that statements by eyewitnesses to the translation process prove that none of the recovered papyrii is the one Joseph Smith translated the Book of Abraham from. The document they saw him working on had features that simply don't match any of the recovered papyrii.

Of course he claims this. His entire justification for his role as a BYU Egptologist rests on there being a missing scroll which contained our current Book of Abraham. A backhanded admission, by the way, that what we currently have does not contain anything about the Book of Abraham. Gee and Muhlestein are pretty much the only living Egyptologist who are advocating the missing scroll theory because their place in apologia depends on it. It will be interesting to see what Smoot does if/when he gets his degree, though by that time the church itself may have moved away completely from that theory and he will no longer have a reason to keep defending such a bad theory.

Does the KEP somehow refute that?

Yes it does. You need to read what Robin Scott Jensen (A Church historian working on the JSPP) and Brian Hauglid have written in Joseph Smith Papers, Revelations and Translations, V. 4: Book of Abraham and Related Manuscripts regarding the timeline of the creation of the KEP and the production of the Book of Abraham. Basically the KEP came first which means it was created in Kirtland off of the papyri we currently have in 1835. These are not Egyptological questions (Gee & Muhlestein's field) rather they are textual criticism (Jensen's field as well as Hauglid's somewhat) and historical (Vogel's field) questions. Relying on Gee for historical and textual criticisms is where you are going wrong. While he may be a competent Egyptologist, he has show himself time and time again an utter failure in other fields that examine the Book of Abraham.

If so, is John Gee currently aware that it refutes that? I'd like to hear Gee's reaction to HolyGhost's statement above.

Gee is well aware of Hauglid's, Jensen's and especially Vogel's work and has not responded to any of it. Similar to the lack of response on his part to Smith and Cook's refutation of his horribly flawed scroll length work.

See here for Vogel's refutation of Gee's sources regarding the missing scroll.

[_grindael]

Joseph Smith had an M.O.

He used it in relation to the Book of Mormon "caractors".

It was to submit some gobbledygook glyphs/characters to the linguists of the day and see if they could translate them. If they could not, he was "safe" and could claim that he (Smith) could.

He claimed to get his miraculous power from looking in a peep stone which he put inside of an old white stovepipe hat. He used this same claimed miraculous power for "money-digging" and to find people's lost items.

He claims to find a set of gold plates with the peepstone, and that the "caractors" he wrote down were on the plates. He then claims to "translate" the unknown language which he calls "reformed Egyptian" with the same peepstone that he used to search for buried treasure. And the peepstone that he used wasn't his, he had borrowed it from a neighbor and never gave it back.

Jo starts a church using his "translation" as it's "keystone". When his "church" took off, he was constantly harangued about how he "translated" and he bragged about what a great linguist he was, when in actuality he was a con man who could hardly write coherently in English, let alone any ancient language.

But he was a quick study when it came to telling tall tales.

He gets to Kirtland and they all want to know everything about the Book of Mormon translation but he tells them, nah, it's just not anything you all need to know. Even when his own brother urged him to give it up, he declined.

Jo made so much about his abilities that some of his followers got together with him and he couldn't resist inventing some more phony glyphs/characters and claiming that they were the pure Adamic language!

They looked amazingly like the gobbledygook Book of Mormon "caractors". (imagine that).

Right in the middle of all this, a man named Michael Chandler shows up with some Egyptian mummies that were found in Egypt, and that have some rolls of papyri which contain passages from the Egyptian Book of the Dead and other funeral texts from 1st Century B.C. Egypt written on them.

Joseph Smith had an M.O.

Jo and the others quiz Chandler and they find out that no one really knew how to translate the Egyptian hieroglyphics. This excited the young Mormon prophet, who bragged to Chandler that he alone could decipher them -- easily. He demonstrates:

Being solicited by Mr. Chandler to give an opinion concerning his antiquities, or translation of some of the characters, bro. S. gave him the interpretation of some few for his satisfaction.

Smith then "translates" some of the Egyptian right then and there and lo and behold the scrolls are the lost writings of Abraham and Joseph (patriarchs from the Old Testament) and are 3500 years old. What Jo initially "translated" from the papyri was never written down so we don't know what he claimed at that time.

But Jo wasn't done yet and began to "translate" in earnest. And while he was at it, to impress his followers he began a Grammar of the Egyptian Language, because he was the only one who could decipher the hieroglyphics and was familiar with Egyptian Hieroglyphics because of his "gift and power of God".

But the project stalls and Smith lets it be for almost a decade...

But Joseph Smith has an M.O.

In mid April, 1842 a professor named Henry Caswell heard about Smith's legendary ability to translate and so decided to test him. He brought an old Greek Psalter to Nauvoo which Joseph identified as Egyptian after Caswell handed him the book:

I handed the book to the prophet, and begged him to explain its contents. He asked me if I had any idea of its meaning. I replied, that I believed it to be a Greek Psalter; but that I should like to hear his opinion. "No he said; "it ain't Greek at all, except, perhaps, a few words. What ain't Greek, is Egyptian; and what ain't Egyptian, is Greek. This book is very valuable. It is a dictionary of Egyptian Hieroglyphics." Pointing to the capital letters at the commencement of each verse, he said: Them figures is Egyptian hieroglyphics; and them which follows, is the interpretation of the hieroglyphics, written in the reformed Egyptian. Them characters is like the letters that was engraved on the golden plates."

What is interesting is that Smith had just published his "translation" of the papyri he had acquired seven years earlier in Kirtland in the Times and Seasons.

Caswell claims it is a Greek Psalter and that ol Jo had been duped. Jo disappears and refuses to speak with Caswell again.

A year later a small group of men from Kinderhook decided to also play a prank on the "prophet", and made some phony brass plates and acid etched some gobbledygook glyphs/characters on them. They were far more subtle than Caswell and made sure a Mormon Elder was there when they dug them up, after planting them in one of the Native American mounds near their town. They then claim they don't want them to go to Jo, but someone borrows them and takes them to Smith anyway. As one of the conspirators, Wilbur Fugate later wrote,

Sharp, the Mormon Elder, leaped and shouted for joy and said, Satan had appeared to him and told him not to go (to the diggings), it was a hoax of Fugate and Wiley's, but at a later hour the Lord appeared and told him to go, the treasure was there.

Smith, having learned his lesson from Caswell, wanted the plates sent to Antiquarian Societies to find out if they were any KNOWN language...

Another of the conspirators, Robert Wiley wrote in 1843 to,

...J. J. Harding suggesting that he was interested in selling the plates to 'the National Institute,' and that he was also interested in the 'opinions of your different Entiquarian friends.' In reference to having the plates examined by 'the Antiquarian society at Philadelphia, France, and England,' Wilbur Fugate stated: 'They were sent and the answer was that there were no such Hyeroglyphics known, and if there ever had been, they had long since passed away. Then Smith began his translation.'"

Like the Book of Abraham Smith set it aside for a time it seems. But before he did, he did an initial "translation" like he did with the papyri for Chandler. Then, in front of "a gentile" who Don Bradley and I have identified as Sylvester Emmons.

Sylvestor Emmons wrote to the NY Herald as "A Gentile" who said they (the KP) were compared by Joseph with the "Egyptian Alphabet which he took from the plates from which the Book of Mormon was translated, and they are evidently the same CHARACTERS. (plural). He says that Joseph said he would be able to decipher them. Emmons also comments on the size of the person (the skeleton the Mormons claimed was found with plates) that he was very large. When these little plates were written about later, we learned that they were interpreted in this way: Pictures at the top, below a line drawn horizontally on each plate with the hieroglyphics below.

“We remember one remarkable occasion that came to our attention while we were there, as an example, to prove what has been said, and to show the irrationality and power of prejudice. On the 16th of April, 1843, a man by the name of Robert Wiley, a merchant in Kinderhook, Pike County, state of Illinois, dreamt that there were some treasures hidden in a hillock known to him in the neighborhood; and after digging for about thirteen feet from the surface, he found six brass plates, four inches long, an inch-and three-quarters wide at one end, and two-and-three-quarter inches wide at the other end; four lists of letters (hieroglyphics) on each side of them. On one of the plates is the picture of three skulls, the largest in the middle, surrounded by rays similar to those one sees surrounding the head of our Savior in the pictures that are made of him now. Underneath the two smaller ones is the picture of two trees, and their branches; on one of the plates is the picture of a large head, and the picture of two hands pointing to it. We saw those plates, and the case was publicized through the newspapers, and I did not hear that anyone disbelieved it; but if the one who found them were to utter a word that angels had anything to do with the matter, we do not think that he would be believed about this, any more than Joseph Smith is believed that he received gold plates. ...And is not the fact that this uneducated Joseph Smith has translated the one set of plates, [Kinderhook] while knowledge of the hieroglyphics has been lost to the world, almost since the time immemorial, apart from a few letters, proof that he also translated correctly the others that were given to him through angelic ministry? [Gold Plates] No doubt these, in addition to the many others that could be noted, are incontrovertible facts in the eyes of every reasonable man.” (Dan Jones, Prophet of the Jubilee, pages 37-38)

Some want to claim that the KP were compared with Joseph's Egyptian Grammar and that a deconstructed character was where Jo got his off the cuff "translation" of the plate, but the character was looked upon not as writing, but as a pictograph. Therefore, Smith would not have deconstructed that particular character, as it wasn't one. (See Dan Jones account)

Lest some want to discount what Emmons wrote, we have another witness who said Joseph claimed the KP characters were like those from the gold plates of the Book of Mormon:

Haven: “We hear very frequently from our Quincy friends through Mr. Joshua Moore, who passes through that place and this in his monthly zigzag tours through the State, traveling horseback. His last call on us was last Saturday and he brought with him half a dozen thin pieces of brass, apparently very old, in the form of a bell about five or six inches long. They had on them scratches that looked like writing, and strange figures like symbolic characters. They were recently found, he said, in a mound a few miles below Quincy. When he showed them to Joseph, the latter said that the figures or writing on them was similar to that in which the Book of Mormon was written, and if Mr. Moore could leave them, he thought that by the help of revelation he would be able to translate them. So a sequel to that holy book may soon be expected.” (“A Girl's Letters From Nauvoo,” Overland Monthly, Dec. 1890, p. 630)

Joseph Smith had an M.O.

Can the Mopologists explain that?