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Sorry to respond late. There is a statement that Joseph Smith did not translate off of the plates. That is mostly true, however he did translate some individual characters, of which we know of four where we know the glyph and the translation given. I discuss this in my free pdf book available at http://www.bmslr.org entitled Translation of the Caractors Document if you are interested.
Sorry to be so late to this discussion, Mark, but I enjoyed many of your insightful methodological suggestions, as well as citation of some sources I had not seen. Thank you.
One important methodological approach which you did not mention is close reading of the text, and this has implications for your extensive comments on Fac 1. A very close reading of Abr 1:8-14 falsifies many of your primary assumptions. That is, an Egyptian vignette at that point cannot be justified by the text — which describes a Chaldean illustration of an event taking place in north Syria, in the presence of both Semitic and Egyptian gods. IOW, Abram’s illus was very different than anything offered by the Priest Horus, or by a Jewish redactor passing the document along.
Another methodological suggestion should be to employ standard Egyptology in understanding any and all explanations in the three facsimiles. That avoids rampant bias and prejudice in this sometimes polarized debate.
You admit to not being expert in this arena, but you continue the incorrect and unwise use of the inapplicable term “Urim and Thummim” (as does my friend John Gee). In addition, here are a couple of your quotes:
“To the best of my knowledge, scrolls of Jewish origin do not contain illustrations. * * * * . . . based on old traditions of Jewish aniconism.” Both claims are wrong, as I point out in my “Brief Assessment of the LDS Book of Abraham,” version 8 online August 18, 2014, at http://www.scribd.com/doc/118810727/A-Brief-Assessment-of-the-LDS-Book-of-Abraham .
Charles Larson (whom I knew back in the day when he was putting his book together) is spelled correctly in note 126, but incorrectly as “Larsen” in the main text. As Brant pointed out, such mistakes can be corrected.
My only other criticism for now is that pagination did not accompany the article — presumably to be added at publication of the whole volume.
Robert,
I am glad you enjoyed the article and I appreciate the feedback.
Could you provide me with two clarifications to your points? You mention the term Urim and Thummim is used incorrectly here. I assume that you are referring to the notion that the Nephite interpreters that were sealed up with the plates are often mistakenly referred to as the Urim and Thummim. I tried to clarify this point in footnote 42, but I fell into the same trap in footnote 53.
Secondly, you refer to the prohibition of imagery on Jewish scrolls as incorrect. Perhaps, but I am not sure if some of the items you refer to in your Brief Assessment paper (such as the 14th century Codex Sylvester) are an adequate comparison to my thesis. I was thinking of more traditional texts such as the Dead Sea Scrolls or the Nag Hammadi codices.
As far as the pagination goes, it is present in the pdf version presently.
-Mark
A distinction of royal female lineage
Brother Johnson,
My name is Ed Goble. I am a researcher on the Book of Abraham, but I am a faithful researcher, not a critic. I thought I would lay out some primary criticisms that I have of your article here, and I will be following up on my blog with an actual review of your article.
Firstly, you call for the formation of a solid methodology. Yet, the basis of what you want to argue for is not based on primary forensic evidence (i.e. the fact that the Kirtland Egyptian Papers show clear translations of Egyptian material, and clearly point out which items were being translated, and which hieroglyphics/hieratics were the things that were being translated). You suppose that because we don’t have the original primary documents that these were copied from, that the copies are of no use to determine what the essential information was in the originals. You are calling for us to rely yet again on old reports manifesting the hazy recollections of people that are unreliable reporters. While it is true that historians ought to assess these reports and what is the most reliable information in these reports, you expect that these old reports ought to trump the forensic evidence before us. You rely on the argumentation of Gee and other apologists for the length of the papyri which is very questionable, rather than engaging with the argument of Cook and Smith about the length of the papyri.
You mention the fact that there a number of copies of Egyptian documents in the Joseph Smith Papyri corpus that were copied, and we have no originals for them, and therefore we can expect that an original for the Missing Papyrus from whence the Book of Abraham was taken is among the things to be considered missing, yet somehow it existed in the first place.
Now, I am not saying that an original from the actual pen of Abraham did not exist in the first place. What I am saying is that it only existed in ancient times, and Joseph Smith never had his hands on a physical copy. Rather, *every time something is manifest where he is actually translating something,* it is not a copy of text from a Missing Papyrus containing the ancient text from an ancient actual copy of the Book of Abraham, but rather, it is iconotropic translations from text that doesn’t actually say what he says it means. Rather, in every case, it is a transformation of Book of the Dead or Sensen text into something else. This is the case with the translations of “text” in the Facsimile #3. This is the case with the translations of the Book of the Dead “text” in the Valuable Discovery documents in the Kirtland Egyptian Papers mentioning Katumin, the daughter of Onitos/Onitah. This is the case in the Book of Abraham manuscripts where he is lining Egyptian hieratics up with text. This is the case in the Egyptian Alphabet/Grammar documents where he lines hieratics/hieroglyphics up with English interpretations.
In other words, the methodology I am calling for is what I refer to evidence-based apologetics, a methodology based on the forensic, primary evidence for actual translation from the actual translations before us. Even the critics have always been able to see that this is what is going on, because the critics can see the forensic evidence, and their methodology, while coming to the wrong conclusions about it, at least is based on forensic, primary evidence from translation material. And what you are asking us to do, once again, is to not take this type of approach to assess what actual type of translation was being engaged in using information from actual translation activity. You want to argue in favor of using suppositions based on lack of information. However, your approach is the same exact kind of approach used in Book of Mormon geography that has failed over and over again, where Heartlanders want us to rely on the statements of past prophets about Geography that are unreliable, instead of the primary evidence of the Book of Mormon text itself. The old statements of past prophets and so forth need to be set aside to assess the primary information in the text. Similarly, in the Book of Abraham apologetics, old unreliable reports need to be set aside to ascertain what precisely was going on in the actual translation material. There is no evidence for a Missing Papyrus that was ever in the hands of Joseph Smith. Rather, there is evidence for pure iconotropic translations of Egyptian material. And when I say, iconotropic, I mean just that, not just iconotropy of big Egyptian pictures in facsimiles, but iconotropy of the little pictures in the Egyptian text, where they are not translations of those things as text, but treating them pictographically. And rather than Semites being responsible for this, what actually is going on is that there were Egyptians in the Greco-Roman period, Syncretists who had regard for the Jewish patriarchs who where doing this, Horos probably being one of them, as you have mentioned. However, Horos and friends were not just putting the Book of Abraham text in with their writings.
They were actually *pairing* Egyptian pictures, pictures big and small, even little pictures usually thought of as “text,” with the stories of Abraham and other patriarchs. And so, for example, Ritner shows how Joseph Smith translates the Egyptian DD hieratic to be Katumin, which is number 250 on Moeller’s table of hieratics, and Gardiner’s sign list number I10, the Cobra. The Cobra is vocalized as Iaret, which is the Uraeus, the sign for Egyptian Royalty and the goddess Wedjat. Yet Joseph Smith tells us that this very sign is “A distinction of royal female lineage.” Notwithstanding it is part of the Book of the Dead text, it is NOT treated as text. It is treated pictographically, just as the pictures in the facsimiles are not text. And it is translated on its own, for the actual Egyptian symbolism that it represents, but put in an Abrahamic context.
Therefore, while it is true that there was an ancient Book of Abraham written by the pen of Abraham in some ancient language, and Horos and other Egyptian Syncretists had this in his possession, it was not buried with him. And a copy in our day was never extant. Therefore, the Missing Papyrus existed, but not in our day, and was never in the hands of Joseph Smith. Instead, what we have is Joseph Smith being led by the Holy Ghost to produce actual iconotropic interpretations of Egyptian material, following the practice of the ancients, such as Horos. Therefore, there is no evidence of a missing papyrus in our day, only evidence of these types of translations. And this is the type of methodology that leads to good results, with all due respect to you and your work. Not a methodology that relies on old unsubstantiated reports and hopes for a missing papyrus that was extant in the early part of the restoration.
Therefore, respectfully, I call on you, and other apologists for the Book of Abraham to stop using the type of methodology that the Heartlanders use to try to justify their Book of Mormon geography, relying on old unsubstantiated reports, and to rely instead on the forensic evidence before us of the translations in the Kirtland Egyptian Papers, and to reverse-engineer what is going on in those translations, to assess the actual underlying iconotropy here. While the Book of Abraham existed in ancient times in an actual copy of its text, that is not what Joseph Smith ever had before him.
Brother Goble,
I appreciate your thoughts on the translation process of the Book of Abraham. You bring up a few points which I would like to touch upon briefly.
First, I agree that the witness reports have their issues with reliability; but I do not believe this eliminates them from the scholarly discourse. It is my opinion that these early witness statements cannot be relied upon with any certainty for an accurate description of the Egyptian (or Semitic) content and meanings of the scrolls. However, I believe these statements are valuable for their description of the physical scrolls themselves. The scrolls and vignettes they describe match up comfortably with the fragments acquired by the Church in 1967. Because of this tendency, I feel comfortable in giving consideration to these early statements regarding the physical description of the scrolls.
I have mentioned the difficulty with the witness statements of the papyri and the mummies as having been tainted by the expectations and mindset of these early members. This is the same difficulty that those who favor the so-called “Heartland theory” of Book of Mormon geography need to face. Statements are incorrectly taken at face value without looking at the surrounding assumptions that were established by their particular culture and time. The book Approaching Antiquity lays important groundwork for understanding the mindset of the Saints. Such an understanding diffuses some of the previously problematic issues such as Zelph the Lamanite and the Kinderhook papers. I also believe that the proponents of the Heartland theory ought to examine their own mindset and culture with regards to how our modern conservative viewpoints shape our understandings of freedom and liberty as pertaining to their definition of the Book of Mormon’s promised land and the United States.
Secondly (finally!), I think this early mindset is what resulted in the creation of the Kirtland Egyptian papers. I applaud you for looking at forensic evidence for proof of the translation in them, but it is my opinion (as I laid out in my paper) that while the KEPA papers might appear to be part of a translation process, the papers themselves are hardly explicit about what they actually are. Seeing them as witnesses of the translation process is an understandable assumption, but I don’t think it is any more than that. If others, such as W. W. Phelps believed the KEPE and KEPA papers would result in a key to translation, I can accepted that this is what they believed, but I do not think they were correct in their understanding. It seems problematic to me that Phelps began this project of defining and transcribing ‘ancient characters’ at least a few months before the brethren even acquired the papyri.
I wish you luck in your forensic approach to the documents and the papyri. I would be greatly interested to see such an approach redeem itself, but it is my view that it isn’t there yet. At least not enough to displace my preference for the Missing Scroll theory.
Dear Brother Johnson. I realize that you and others are not aware of the efforts of myself and my associates previous to this, but I am glad to hear that you are open to see if an approach like this can redeem itself. Therefore I invite you to familiarize yourself with it and the evidence as it is now as it stands, and you can decide for yourself if it has indeed redeemed itself. I have provided representatives of Mormon Interpreter with my contact information for you if you wish, and privately I can provide you with my information. Thank you
The reference to plates of brass should be changed to golden plates. Joseph Smith never possessed the plates of brass.
Benjamin, agreed. I should have caught that earlier, but I’m not sure there is much I can do about it now.
The miracle of electronic publication is the ability to fix such things. Send a message to Interpreter–I’m sure there is a way to make change. Of course the past does not change, but present and future can.
I realize this comment is on the periphery of the article, but I believe it is important.
Here are three reasons we should accept that an infinite regress of gods, although common, is an incorrect interpretation of the quote cited in footnote #138:
1-The text as cited in the article does not match up with what we have in the Book of Abraham:
And the Lord said unto me: These two facts do exist, that there are two spirits, one being more intelligent than the other; there shall be another more intelligent than they; I am the Lord thy God, I am more intelligent than they all (Chapter 3, verse 19).
That is very different than saying that, “Intelligencies [sic] exist one above another, so that there is no end to them.” In other words, “Abraham [did not reason] thus”.
As Joseph Smith taught, God the Father is, “the Eternal God of all other gods” (D&C 121:32).
2-The Bullock Report is the only source we have for the text that is cited in the article. If Joseph Smith had taught an infinite regress of gods, why do we not have another report of that, or at least some commentary about it from around the time of the report in June 1844?
3-The Joseph Smith Translation omits “and” from Revelation 1:6 (http://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/new-testament-revision-2/217#full-transcript) The relevant text from the JST is as follows:
Therefore, I John, the faithful witness, bear record of the things which were delivered me of the Angel, & from Jesus Christ the first begotten of the dead, & the prince of the Kings of the earth. & unto him who loved us, be glory; who washed us from our sins in his own blood, & hath made us kings & Priests unto God, his Father. To him be glory & dominion, for ever & ever. amen.
Ren,
Thanks for reading my article. If I may address your concerns:
#1. You are correct in that this quotation doesn’t match the quotation found in Abraham chapter 3. This is why I argue the possibility that the Prophet was instead quoting (or at least referencing) from later in the translation of the Book of Abraham. Since we don’t have the rest of the translation, we don’t have the words Abraham taught to Pharaoh and his court. The fact that this quotation by the Prophet Joseph is couched as coming from Abraham’s record on the papyrus leads me to the assumption that it is from a missing portion.
#2. I don’t have an answer for why this sermon isn’t duplicated by others. With due respect, I feel this is begging the question and that no actual satisfactory answer is possible. I have chosen to deal with this quotation from the Prophet at face value. The fact that only one account exists of this sermon needn’t necessarily discredit the contents of it. The date of the restoration of the Melchizedek Priesthood was never recorded, but it doesn’t diminish the reality of the event.
#3. The reference to John is apart from my purposes of using the quote. If there is a doctrinal discrepancy from the Bullock report and Joseph’s other teachings, I do not believe this indicates that the rest of the report is incorrect.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts, Mark. You bring up an interesting possibility in your response to #1 that I had not considered. I appreciate that.
With regard to your response to numbers #2 & #3, I did not intend to give the impression that I am suggesting that we should entirely dismiss the Sermon in the Grove or the Bullock Report because of one difficult part (or, it might be better to say because of the interpretation that has been put on that, and other, related parts of the Sermon).
Also, with due respect, I think a more apt comparison than the date of the restoration of the Melchizedek Priesthood can be found from the King Follett Discourse. Perhaps like me, you have also been asked to explain this quote from the most commonly referenced version of the KFD, “I am going to tell you how God came to be God. We have imagined and supposed that God was God from all eternity. I will refute that idea, and take away the veil, so that you may see.”
Perhaps you have also been grateful that the other reports of the KFD, as well as the Woodruff Journal for that matter, do not bind us down to the doctrine that God has not always been God in the sense that he “came to be God”.
In the absence of additional reports for the Sermon in the Grove, I think that the possibilities and assumptions that feed into the idea of an infinite regress of gods are not only uninteresting (unlike those you mentioned in #1), they are dissonant with the Prophet Joseph’s canonical revelations and translations (i.e. Abraham 3:19 and D&C 121:32).
Not only that, the idea that God the Father has a father who had a father ad infinitum seems to me to be dissonant with what Joseph taught in the Sermon in the Grove itself:
The head God organized the heavens and the earth…
‘The head one of the Gods said, let us make man in our image’
…
I believe those Gods that God reveals as Gods to be sons of God, and all can cry ‘Abba, Father.’
In the absence of any clarifying revelation, I see no compelling reason to even mentally entertain the possibility of putting someone above “Abba, [our] Father” and our “Head God”.
I think it is also instructive in this instance to consider that Joseph did not mentally entertain the idea of multiple saviors as some have speculated into his teachings. This is evidenced in his poetic rendering of D&C 76:
For the Lord he is God, and his life never ends,
And besides him there ne’er was a Savior of men.
…
And I heard a great voice bearing record from heav’n,
He’s the Saviour and only begotten of God;
By him, of him, and through him, the worlds were all made,
Even all that careen, in the heavens so broad.
Whose inhabitants, too, from the first to the last,
Are sav’d by the very same Saviour of ours…
Therefore, I think the best course until any additional clarifying revelation comes is to believe and think that our Heavenly Father is the Most High God of all that exists and that His Only Begotten Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, is the One and Only Atoning Savior.
Again, thank you for your reply.
Thanks for the response. That helps to clarify–
You’re right that there are things that we simply cannot know. Even so, we might be bumping up against the “lack of evidence is not evidence of lack” idea. I guess the only way to really know what kind of validity Kevin’s theory has is to find — or not find — evidence of pervasive “Semitic Adaption” at that particular time.
That said, I do need to keep my bias in check because, as you say, Kevin’s theory is a “salve” to me. It feels good–it lines up really well with Joseph Smith’s interpretations.
Thanks again.
Jack, one of my arguments regarding the documents is that it is a methodological error to view and judge all of the documents by the same criteria and as having coming from the same “Abrahamic” original. The hypocephalus is the key for this idea.
I argue that the hypocephalus of Sheshonq is a standard Egyptian funerary text, similar to the dozens of other existing examples. The hypocephalus was in the same collection as the rest of the scrolls by the time they were brought to America and purchased by Michael Chandler, but there is no scholarly way to know if they were collected together previously. The only thing truly linking the hypocephalus to the Book of Abraham is that Joseph Smith assigned meanings to its components after he knew the Book of Abraham story. Unfortunately, there isn’t anything in the hypocephalus itself that ties it to the Book of Abraham. Any connection comes from the explanations of the figures rather than the document itself.
By seeing Facsimile 2 as a reinterpreted hypocephalus, we can now view Facsimile 3 the same way. It is a good match for the Book of Breathings made by Horos and was assigned new meanings by the Prophet to illustrate a lost story from the translation.
Granted, an original Jewish owner of the documents could have viewed them that way, but that would require that he exist in the first place and there isn’t any scholarly way to know that he did. Indeed, I think it is methodologically difficult for him to exist as we would have to invent him to fill a specific purpose. If the Prophet Joseph Smith assigned meanings to the vignettes that weren’t apparent in the extant documents, the need for a Jewish redactor/editor disappears.
I appreciate Barney’s Semitic Adaption theory and think it would be a salve to the problems he mentioned, but it also creates new problems in the process.
Great article–lots of yummy stuff to chew on. The one quibble I have is regarding Kevin Barney’s theory. Maybe I misunderstood, but couldn’t the original owner of the manuscripts have viewed all three facsimiles with a “Jewish twist” simply because of the time and place he lived in? Does it really matter that much where they were located in the scrolls?
Great perspective on the Book of Abraham and it’s translation. Howard Coray, clerk to the prophet, also reported having seen Joseph “translate by the Seer’s stone,” probably in 1840 or 1841. I’m not sure that would have been the Book of Abraham, but it supports the idea that Joseph was still using a stone to translate.
Thanks for the feedback, Stan! The Coray account is another interesting source. I didn’t mention it in the paper, but one of the difficulties with studying the BoA is so many useful sources are difficult to find for the layman. This is why a book like Hauglid’s Textual History of the Book of Abraham is valuable, as it has a good collection of these early testimonies.
Perhaps a future volume of the SotBA series can feature photographs of these various journal enteries and early newspaper articles.