" Smith mistook Osiris, Isis, and Anubis as human rather than gods. Isis and Maat as male, and the Jackal Anubis as human. Anubis was also mistaken as human in facsimile 1 and Smith frequently misidentified images of Ta-sherit- Min as male in Papyri Joseph Smith 2. In the book of Abraham Smith's explicit references to texts in the facsimiles and his use of the subtitle "translated the Papyrus" by Joseph Smith can mean only that he misrepresented or did not understand the concept of translation. There is no other choice and I have no reason to regret my earlier description of his translations as "outlandish," "nonsense" "hopeless" and "uninspired fantasies." These are factual assessments derived from scholarly analysis not "partisan language" as asserted in the truly partisan (in other words based on pre-existing religious bias) defended by Morris and Muhlestein. as I noted in 2003 true personal attack and the vituperative language (in the words of Muhlestein p. 479) was the hallmark of Nibley's anti Egyptological approach now adopted by FARMS. In sum, Smith's pseudo Egyptological work (rather than his person) deserves no greater respect than that of Charles Piazzi Smyth (Our inheritance in the Great Pyramid), Immanuel velikovsky (Oedipus and Akhenaten, etc.), Erich von Daniken (Chariots of the Gods) and John Anthony West (Serpent in the Sky, etc.) which have all been rightly disparaged by Scholars." P. 171, note 350.
He also says in the main body of the text on page 171 the explanations of facsimile three offered by Joseph Smith are fanciful in the extreme and are now abandoned in the Mormon sponsored publication by Rhodes. As several of Smith's explanations state explicitly that they are based on his understanding of text "given in the characters above his head," "as written above the hand" or "as represented by the characters above his hand," facsimile three provides indisputable evidence that Smith had absolutely no abilities to read or translate Egyptian or even deride accurate information from Egyptian images. He could not distinguish deities from humans females from males or even human from animal figures!
John Gee published his article "Facsimile 3 and the Book of the Dead 125" in the book "Astronomy, Papyrus and Covenant," (2005) and proceeded to say "Most of what has been said about this facsimile is seriously wanting at best, and highly erroneous at worse."(p. 95) He further said "What an ancient Egyptian understood by a vignette and what a modern egyptologist understands by the same vignette are by no means the same thing. Until we understand what the Egyptians understood by this scene we have no hope of telling whether what Joseph Smith said about them matches what the Egyptians thought about them" (p. 95-96). He ends up by saying "The real parallels to facsimile 3 have not yet been publicly identified. Having established what facsimile 3 is not, however, we are free to look for those real parallels to facsimile 3." (P 101)
This is all very interesting, however, it is fundamentally irrelevant to the only point that matters. Did Joseph Smith understand and translate this facsimile correctly? No he did not. John Gee's exposition here reminds me of William Hamblin's attempting to refute Phil Jenkins with all the background gobbledygook trying to take our eye off the point of view that we have absolutely no evidence of any kind for either the Nephites or Lamanites reality. John Gee, as well as William Hamblin, as well as Daniel C Peterson, and pretty much most apologists, always seem to fall into this pattern. They attempt to build up so much background that we lose track of the only essential question. Hugh Nibley was the absolute master of this and in fact that was his entire approach to the papyri.
Every time an egyptologist takes a look at the papyri or the facsimiles and Joseph Smith interpretations of those manuscripts, end up saying Joseph Smith got it wrong. This is simply not the kind of evidence we would expect to have or see if Joseph Smith got it correct. Facsimile 3 really is the silver bullet against Joseph Smith prophetic abilities. He absolutely, completely messed up on every single figure in this facsimile. And he claimed to be directly translating the hieroglyphs in the facsimile by those figures. Apologists exacerbate this problem by claiming that God inspired Joseph Smith in his translations. Historically and linguistically as well as religiously, Joseph Smith completely blew it with facsimile 3.
I predict this is going to get the attention of Paul O.
