How is the Book of Abraham NOT a secular translation?

[_Buffalo]

Academic translation is the wrong term here. Even if Joseph didn't seek divine guidance, there is obviously nothing academic about his understanding of translation.

[_Dad of a Mormon]

The trick is to only apply apologetic claims to the specific issue they were meant to address. Don's discovery only has relevance to the Kinderhook plates and wasn't meant to have any relevance to any other potential issues.

Apologists aren't interested in considering side effects or collateral damage.

This is the pot calling the kettle, or maybe the white rabbit, black.

You folks want to take certain implications for other issues from this Kinderhook plates evidence without first accepting its genuine implications for the Kinderhook plates incident itself. I'm not against looking at its implications for other things at all. But I'm against the silly sleight of hand that wants to skip the step of honestly assessing their implications for the KP.

The evidence on the Book of Abraham can then be hashed out on its own terms, including whatever implications the newly understood KP incident brings to bear on it.

Don

Please show me one place where I have refused to consider the implications of your discovery. The fact is that the critics have examined the implications and showed where it doesn't remove the many difficulties related to the KP incident. I guess you were so sure that it would that when it was demonstrated that it didn't, this frustrated you.

What has been shown here is that:

1) Even if it was a translation done by normal means, there is plenty of evidence that Joseph Smith could have considered it a revelatory translation anyway, because he considered other translations done by similar means revelatory In other words, Joseph Smith didn't consider normal translation methods as precluding that it was God-revealed.

I think critics have conceded that it can't be definitively proven that he thought his translation was revelatory, but the point is that your discovery doesn't show that he didn't either and other incidents do give some indication that it is quite possible he may have thought it to be so or would have at least tried to claim that it was.

2) It isn't necessary for it to be revelatory for it to be a problematic episode because it shows how he would so confidently proclaim to others that he had abilities that he clearly doesn't have. Your contention is that we should simply ignore that because his normal claims should be considered separately from his divine claims. I and others have demonstrated how this is an absurd approach that you would not grant to others.

3) You simply haven't dealt with the side effects of your claim. You want to give yourself an out because you imagine that critics aren't taking your claims seriously and acknowledging that they solve the problems you thought it would solve. But it isn't that we aren't taking them seriously. It is that we have demonstrated that they don't help the apologetic enterprise in the way that you envision them.

[_truth dancer]

Seems to me, simplifying here, the big news Don has discovered is that Joseph Smith consulted the GAEL to translate the KP.

What seems more problematic is the idea that Joseph Smith used a secular rather than revelatory means of translation, since the GAEL is certainly not a secular or academic lexicon, and it came to be through a revelatory (or made up), means.

I mean is it really a translation of any sort, let alone academic when we are discussing made up, random, meaningless symbols?

Maybe it would be more accurate a description if rather than terming the process of "translation," "secular," or, "academic," it was explained that Joseph Smith utilized a document he claimed he received during a previous revelatory experience? (Which is what I believe believers would assert regarding the GAEL).

I suppose non-believers would suggest Joseph Smith used a, "previously made up lexicon?" ;-)

Or maybe just state that in the moment of Joseph Smith's attempt to translate the KP, he referred to the GAEL, a document he previously created through revelatory means, and there is no evidence that Joseph Smith prayed for a revelation while attempting the translation.

Just thinking out loud here.

:-)

~td~

[_Socrates]

What are the implications, Don, other than instead of using a magic rock in a hat as he did to 'translate' the gold plates to be the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith, Jr. used a magic alphabet to 'translate' the Kinderhook Plates to explain that the buried bones were those of a descendant of Ham, an Egyptian?

By the way, where are the bones of that Egyptian now? Have they been DNA tested to see if they are Egyptian?

[_jon]

We are experiencing a slight derail to the thread.

I guess I was hoping for someone to show some evidence that the Book of Abraham was translated by some other method than was used on the Kinderhoax Plates.

Anyone?

Failing that we must assume, as Don has done with the KP, that it was also a secular translation and cannot be trusted to be correct.

[_ezravan]

You know, maybe the long-term goal of apologetics here is to get the church to decanonize the Book of Abraham. Ever since the papyrus were found, it's been an albatross around the neck of the church.

To de-canonize this book would knock the legs out from under Joseph Smith

[_wenglund]

What I find very curious about all this is that a number of critics, many of whom do not believe in revelation, contending that the KP translation was revelatory, whereas a number of apologists, who do believe in revelation, are contending that it is not a revelatory translation.

Even more curious, is certain critics are taking a one-way-only view of Joseph's translations--they are either all revelatory or all academic. Whereas, certain apologists are suggesting that at times Joseph translated using revelation, and at other times he translated academically (let me explain for Buffalo's benefit that I am using the word "academic" loosely to refer to the kind of translating with lexicons that students perform when learning other languages).

It may interest you to discover that shortly after the arrival of the papyri in Kirtland and production having begun on the KEP, Joseph formed schools for the study of secular subjects, including ancient languages like Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, in which he was an active student. It would be reasonable to conclude that Joseph's studies of these ancient languages was academic in nature, and not revelatory. Certainly, Joseph didn't described them as revelatory.

Yet, there were translations performed by Joseph that he attributed to revelation (translations by the gift and power of God).

The question then becomes, were there any discernible differences in processes between the two?

The answer to this question will give us a clue as to whether the KP translation was academic or revelatory and differed from other of Joseph's translations that were revelatory.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[_CaliforniaKid]

What I find very curious is that certain persons who a year ago rejected the theory that the Book of Abraham was dependent on the GAEL partly on the basis that Joseph's translations had to be all of one type, are now chiding others for saying Joseph's translations had to be all of one type. :-P

[_Equality]

hat I find very curious about all this is that a number of critics, many of whom do not believe in revelation, contending that the KP translation was revelatory

I think you misunderstand the critics' point (or are disingenuously pretending to). Though I don't claim to speak for all, I can speak for one, namely me. When I argue that the translation was revelatory as opposed to secular or academic in this context, what I am arguing is that at root the translation of the character in question into English is based on something other than a secular or academic source for the meaning of the character. In other words, Joseph Smith used a means to translate different from what an academic would use in the normal course of translating from one language to another. He either made it up (conscious fraud) or he believed he got it from God (pious fraud) or, I suppose, there is a chance that some deity actually gave him the translation directly through supernatural means (true revelation). I don't believe the latter was the case as I don't believe there are gods out there speaking to humans through supernatural means. But I do know that Joseph Smith claimed to translate by revelation in many instances, that he claimed to have a "spiritual gift" to translate unknown languages into English, and that he came up with a translation for the character on the K-hook plates that was not, near as I have been able to determine despite the apologists' continuing dodge of the question, based on any non-Mormon, secular, academic text. I also know that his close associates believed and proclaimed that he got the translation through revelatory means, a position that LDS believers (including purported "prophets, seers, and revelators") continued to maintain (including in church publications) for 130 years, even long after the hoax perpetrators confessed to forging the plates. When I say it appears it was a revelatory translation rather than a secular or academic one, I am not professing a belief that Smith actually received a revelation; rather, I am saying that he pretended to. He definitely was engaged in the act of deceiving others. Whether he was also deluded enough to be deceiving himself at the same time, I suppose, is still an open question for me.

[_wenglund]

What I find very curious is that certain persons who a year ago rejected the theory that the Book of Abraham was dependent on the GAEL partly on the basis that Joseph's translations had to be all of one type, are now chiding others for saying Joseph's translations had to be all of one type. :-P

Such curiosity is understandable if one inadvertently conflates what I said about a specific subset of Joseph's "translations" (e.g. canonized translations) with what I am now arguing about the whole set of things Joseph has translated. I have, since 2009, been quite open to Joseph having academically translated the KP. I have also considered his translation of Hebrew (as a part of his lessons with professor Siexas) to have been academic. And, I have long considered his Hebrew translation of the first verse of Genesis to have been academic.--to name several things hat immediately came to mind.

I am even willing to concede that during those times when Joseph evidently translated academically, he may have received some inspirational assistance from God. In fact, his journal speaks to praying to God for assistance with his Hebrew studies.

Where I tentatively draw the line, though I haven't entirely closed my mind to, is the suggestion of academic translations in the production of scripture--and this because to me it is not only without basis, but counter-intuitive.

Having said this, your clever quip did bring a smile to my face.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-