Question about Book of Mormon vs. Book of Abraham translation method...

[_Eyepatch]

I little bit of a shower-thought:

When J. Smith "translated" (whatever that means) the Book of Mormon, he was translating "reformed" Egyptian. We also know that he used a seerstone to produce the completed work. When he "translated" (whatever that means) the Book of Abraham, he was translating actual Egyptian, but he chose a completely different method to produce the work.

My question is why didn't Joseph simply use the seerstone again for the Book of Abraham? He still had the seerstone. The languages MUST have been remarkably similar. Why did he make such a big production about actually translating this time? The KEP papers show that he was puzzling through the intricacies of learning Egyptian (or at least pretending to do so). Why not just whip out the old seerstone and get the whole thing over with in a matter of days? Instead the book took years to complete.

Of course, the answer that springs to mind is that THIS time there was an actual script, of an actual language, that had to be dealt with. More proof of how ridiculous the whole "seer" quagmire becomes.

[_Fence Sitter]

There are a few sources that talk about him using the U&T, by which they meant Joseph Smith's seer stone not the original U&T that was returned to the angel after Joseph Smith lost the 116 pages. These sources date from the Nauvoo period.

Wilford Woodruff wrote in his journal in Feb of 1842 that Smith was translating the Book of Abraham "through the Urim & Thummim".

Parly P. Pratt wrote in the LDS Millennial Star in July 1842, published in England, that the Book of Abraham was "in course of translation by the means of the U&T."

[_Eyepatch]

Thanks for the information Fence Sitter. If it's true that he WAS, in fact, using the U&T...why did it take so long, when compared with the relative speed of the Book of Mormon translation?

[_slskipper]

Captain Obvious here. He never used a seer stone. He never used the Urim and Thummim. Those were simply props he "used" when there was a mark present that he wanted to dupe. For the actual production of the book, he simply wrote (or possibly dictated to a scribe) whatever popped into his head. He spent years planning and constructing his narrative, and then one day decided to write it out and try to make some money.

He knew it was a fake. He only decided to turn it into a religion when no commercial publisher would look twice at it.

By the time of the Book of Abraham, and Kinderhook plates and all that, he had the reputation in place to dupe people without any props.

[_SuperDell]

My question is why didn't Joseph simply use the seerstone again for the Book of Abraham? He still had the seerstone.

Yep, he had the stone... but the hat was at the dry cleaners.

[_moksha]

Yep, he had the stone... but the hat was at the dry cleaners.

Do you think the cleaning fluid may have denatured the sorting and translating abilities of the hat?

[Guest]

Thanks for the information Fence Sitter. If it's true that he WAS, in fact, using the U&T...why did it take so long, when compared with the relative speed of the Book of Mormon translation?

I do not believe that the Book of Mormon was produced in the time frames the church would have us believe. It may have been written down in that time frame, but I think the story was well fleshed out by Joseph Smith in the years leading up to the time he claimed to actually receive the plates. Even so the Book of Mormon was produced in roughly the same time frame that the Book of Abraham was so your question does deserve some thought.

Here is how I envision Joseph Smith produced the Book of Abraham and what else was going on that prevented him from working on it.

Chandler shows up in Kirtland at the end of June 1835 and sells his remaining Egyptian artifacts to the locals who pony up $2400.00 of their own money because their conman turned prophet tells them that the two intact scrolls are the writings of Abraham and Joseph and that he can read them. Chandler gushes over how well Joseph Smith can translate the documents, even going so far as to provide a certificate attesting to the fact that Joseph Smith's translation matches what others had said.

"Kirtland July 6th, 1835

This is to make known to all who may be desirous, concerning the knowledge of Mr. Joseph Smith, Jr., in deciphering the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic characters, in my possession, which I have, in many eminent cities, shown to the most learned; and from the information that I could ever learn, or meet with, I find that Mr. Joseph Smith, Jr., to correspond in the most minute matters.

Signed Michael H. Chandler

This is interesting for two reasons. One, Champollion work was relatively unknown in the U.S. at this time, at best the men who had viewed the artifacts back east might be able to identify a few different pictographs on the facsimiles, like the Crocodile God or Isis & Anubis. Secondly, and more importantly, it is known that Chandler talked with Joseph Smith initially when Chandler arrived in Kirtland with the artifacts, and allowed Joseph Smith to take some of the artifacts home to examine them more closely. When he returned the next day, Joseph Smith's translation matched what the scholars back east said. What we have here is evidence that Chandler told Joseph Smith what the scholars back east thought was on the scrolls and by sheer coincidence that is exactly what Joseph Smith found when he also "translated" them. Amazing.

I also envision this conversation happening.

Joseph Smith. "Hey Mike how much do you want for the artifacts?'

Chandler "How much do you have?"

Joseph Smith. "Well I might be able to scrape together $2400.00 if I pretend that God wants me to translate these documents."

Chandler "Well today is your lucky day."

Joseph Smith gets these documents and mummies and he does so by pretending to the people whom he convinced to pay for them that he could translate them. But unlike the Book of Mormon he has not spent years regaling his friends and family with stories about fictional Nephites. He does not have a prebuilt narrative about Abraham ready to provide his followers. He has to create a new one and not only does he have to create a new one he now has to show where this new narrative exists on the documents he conned others into buying for him. He spends the next few months inventing the Abraham narrative we find in the first two chapters or the PoGP and trying to make it fit the glyphs we find at the beginning of the Hor scroll. Simultaneously he and a few others are trying to construct a grammar and alphabet of the Egyptian language that can be used to translate Egyptian. He is so enamored of this work that years later when someone presents him with the fraudulent Kinderhook plates he actually uses it to translate a portion of those bogus plates. He also contemplates publishing his Egyptian alphabet and grammar because he thinks it is so good.

Toward the end of 1835 his focus changes. He decides that Hebrew is the new orange and he no longer interested in spending time on the papyri. After all Egyptian is a corrupt language and Hebrew is, well, closer to the Adamic language that God and Adam spoke in the Garden of Eden. He also finds out in 1836 that it is ridiculously easy to set up your own bank and start printing money.

To be continued

[_Fence Sitter]

Okay, where were we?

None of the contemporary accounts in Kirtland in 1835 have Joseph Smith translating using the U&T. As far as we can tell he was trying to match his made up story about Abraham to the Hor scroll and intergrating that same story and Egyptian characters into the KEP. This process was very time consuming and produced the manuscripts that we now call, for the most part, the Kirtland Egyptian papers. I believe that when he saw the chance to get out of this laborious time consuming project that had only produced the first two chapters of the Book of Abraham he took it by switching to learning about Hebrew. He was never able to get back to working on the Book of Abraham in Kirtland.

Kirtland blew up in Joseph Smith's face when the investors in his fraudulent Kirtland banking scheme realized how worthless their money was. They took control of the temple and ran Joseph Smith out of town on horseback in the middle of the night in 1838. The Egyptian artifacts were being stored in the Kirtland temple at that time so Joseph Smith lost control of them for a period of time. After a few months the mummies and documnets arrived in Missouri, but by that time the Missourians had also realized that they were not happy that a large population of religious fanatics controlled by a single narcissistic self proclaimed prophet had moved into their state and within a short time Joseph Smith found himself at war with them and eventually in their custody for four months at the beginning of 1839 at Liberty jail. He "escapes" and flees to Illinois where his peeps have set up base which will be called Nauvoo.

June 1840 is the first time we have a record of Joseph Smith working again on the Book of Abraham. By this time all of the original participants or scribes in the Kirltland efforts at translating the Book of Abraham (F. Williams, O. Cowdery, W. Phelps and W. Parrish) had left the church or had been excommunicated. (Poor Oliver,who knew if you accused Joseph Smith of boinking Fanny in the barn, that would be an excommunicable offense?) So in 1840 onward Joseph Smith worked with different scribes on the translation and from some reports used a different methodology, that of the U&T. What, in fact happened is that Joseph Smith turned to the Bible and like he had done in the past with the Book of Mormon when he ran out of ideas, he copied sections of it, with his own adaptations, into what we now have as the last parts of the Book of Abraham. Poor Joseph, it appears that God didn't tell him that the last sections of the Book of Abraham he copied from the Bible weren't written in their present form until 8-900 BC and couldn't possible be something that Abraham wrote 1200 years earlier.

By Sept 1841 Smith grew tired of selling overpriced disease infested swamp land to the newly arrived naïve converts and extorting exhorting members to build him a really big expensive house, so he pleaded with the 12 to take over his exhausting work of scamming people out of their time and money so he "might attend to the business of translation". What really is going on here is that he has incurred enormous debts once again, which he can no longer pay and now he want the 12 to take over the debt and the work of paying off the debt. It's too bad he didn't have a sound financial advisor around to tell him that buying two steam boats when your already heavily in debt is probably not a good idea.

Okay so now we are into 1842 when Joseph Smith finally appears to get back to the "translation" of the Book of Abraham, and as has been noted this really means he is just copying from the Bible for the most part. He is now the editor of the Times and Seasons and he becomes directly involved in the publication of the written text of the Book of Abraham as well as overseeing the creation of the printing plates for all three facsimiles as well their publication along with his made up descriptions of the content on the three facsimiles. Joseph Smith promised more after that but there are no physical records for anything beyond what was published in the Times and Seasons. Joseph Smith was murdered two years later in 1844.

So I believe the main reason he was unable to produce more or that it took so long was he didn't have the years storying telling behind him like he did with the Book of Mormon, he got bored and or frustrated with his initial attempts to actually translate Egyptian and then his life exploded in Missouri and Nauvoo. You have to remember he married something like 40 women in Nauvoo. I am sure that "Not tonight dear, I have to translate." didn't go over well with a lot of them.

[_sunstoned]

Captain Obvious here. He never used a seer stone. He never used the Urim and Thummim. Those were simply props he "used" when there was a mark present that he wanted to dupe. For the actual production of the book, he simply wrote (or possibly dictated to a scribe) whatever popped into his head. He spent years planning and constructing his narrative, and then one day decided to write it out and try to make some money.

He knew it was a fake. He only decided to turn it into a religion when no commercial publisher would look twice at it.

By the time of the Book of Abraham, and Kinderhook plates and all that, he had the reputation in place to dupe people without any props.

Don't forget the inspired version of the Bible. Which is another great example of Joseph Smith's prophetic abilities.

[_Shulem]

Nice summary, Fence Sitter.

And now, after all this time perhaps the great and powerful President NelSatan would like to step up to the plate and provide more Explanations. How about it, Russell, you old fart?

Ought not to be revealed at the present time. . . . will be given in the own due time of the Lord.