Kerry Muhlestein responds

[Guest]

The LDS canon is only as unhistorical and problematic as the Bible, and the only people who think the Bible is more legitimate than LDS scripture in terms of history have not come to grips with the historical tenuousness of their literature. ...A story about Moses composed in the Iron Age is no more factually verifiable than one composed in 1830.

It may not make sense to read the Bible and think we are hearing the voice of Moses but we are definitely hearing voices from the distant past. The world of which those voices speak is not an invention of a modern imagination. It's the actual ancient world from which our own is descended. We care what it says the way we care what our grandparents say, even if we don't always believe them. We value its stories even when they are lame, the way we value antiques that don't work.

So isn't it an exaggeration to say that the Bible is just as unhistorical as the Book of Mormon? Sure, the two Scriptures have the same Boolean value of zero for the bit of whether their fundamentalist reading is right, but you are urging Muhlstein not to read Scripture as a fundamentalist. Aren't you kind of downplaying the letdown involved in giving up the ancient status of the Book of Mormon?

The fundamentalist concept of inerrant revelation is only one end of the spectrum of ways to revere a special book, but rightly or wrongly I think pretty much everyone on that spectrum cares about provenance. The special book might not have to be ancient to be revered; perhaps an account of a vision by a revered modern figure like Abraham Lincoln would be an acceptable Scripture. Imagine how fast the value of Lincoln's vision would drop if it turned out not to be by Lincoln at all, though. Who cares what nonsense Andrew Johnson dreamed up?

Joseph Smith looks less like a Lincoln than ever these days, so an ancient Book of Mormon is hard to give up. If instead of its witness statements every Book of Mormon had had a foreword by Joseph Smith saying, "I made up this story but I think it's from God, so I hope you'll let me marry your wives," would there be any Mormons?

[Guest]

Remarkably specific identification of the accusation. Why is he not able to be as specific about the defense?

FACSIMILE NO 1

1. How do you defend an ignorant 19th century version of the god Anubis appearing in human form when he doesn't have his jackal head?

2. How do you defend an ignorant 19th century version of the god Anubis appearing in human form when he doesn't have a headdress?

3. How do you justify Anubis waving a knife at Osiris who is rising from the dead?

FACSIMILE NO 3

1. How do you defend an ignorant 19th century version of the heavenly god Anubis whose snout has been hacked off?

2. How do you reconcile Anubis having a man's head and a jackal's ear?

3. How do you justify Smith's translation of the label above the figure of Anubis that identifies him as a god?

How do you think Gee and Muhlestein would fair having a formal discussion with a panel of Egyptologists posing these questions? All they can do is fall back on some kind of Catalyst theory which is NOT what Smith and his comrades claimed. The apologists would have to throw Smith under the bus in order to fall back on the Catalyst theory in order to validate Mormon claims to their peers. They will have to confess that Smith could not translate Egyptian hieroglyphic writing or interpret iconographic images as understood by the Egyptians.

Game over.

RFM, are you taking notes?

[_Dr Exiled]

This is pure garbage:

Additionally, whether originally the drawing depicted Anubis’s jackal head or the head of a human, it would have been understood that the role being performed would have been performed by a priest. Perhaps it was a priest representing Anubis, but a priest nonetheless. Thus, if that piece of papyrus were missing when Joseph Smith first acquired it, and if he said it should be reconstructed to depict a priest, such a reconstruction would be accurate to the meaning of the drawing, which would be remarkable in and of itself.

Joseph was presented with a human body only as the missing part of the papyri contained the head. The "remarkable" would be if Joseph drew in Anubis' jackal head and not a human head as one would normally expect a human head with a human body. Dr. Muhlestein deliberately and intentionally gets this backwards. Claiming that Joseph somehow knew it was a priest representing Anubis and in this rendition had taken off the Anubis mask is laughable, embarrassing.

I anticipate that as time goes on these will be discussed in an appropriate and reasonable fashion. This will happen over the course of time, and for some audiences it is crucial that they know now that the self-congratulatory echo chambers they may have encountered are not all that they seem.

.......

Yet as we think of these podcasts and attempting to turn them into something that is trustworthy and useful, we must keep in mind that high-level academic discourse is slow. It requires detailed and painstaking research, careful writing, review and revision, then editorial and peer review, further revision, further review, editing, typesetting, more review, and finally publication. Then others can respond in kind. And that is in a process where no problems are encountered. The review process hopefully helps identify bad assumptions, misinterpretations, etc., though it is not perfect at doing so. It is exactly this lengthy process which raises the chances that the information is viewed by many qualified individuals as being methodologically sound, and that unseemly discourse is avoided. It does not ensure that everything meets the highest standards, and not all publications go through this full process. Further, mistakes will inevitably creep in. Still, this process greatly increases the chances of good scholarship delivered in suitable rhetoric. It also allows for proper academic rebuttals that can help correct mistakes and advance knowledge appropriately.

Don't take too long Dr. Muhlestein. Your flock is leaving now due to your and your buddies' lack of answers or poor answers. Also, Dr. Ritner needs a kidney and perhaps isn't long for this world. You should quickly respond and engage with him while he is alive in order to correct the supposed misstatements and misunderstandings his podcast with Dehlin and Consiglieri supposedly created. We want to see the back and forth you claim you want. You know the issues and so does Dr. Gee. So, go to it and don't continue to appear to be afraid of the confrontation of ideas or the lack thereof.

[_Shulem]

Well said. I hope Dr. Muhlestein listens to you. Although, based on his videos, I doubt any change is forthcoming.

Muhlestein is a coward and an obstinate liar. He will continue to hide behind the safety of his Mormon venue and write carefully crafted articles based entirely in obfuscation and deception having no regard to what Smith and his associates actually said.

Muhlestein will continue to pervert Egyptology and slander their religious works of art. The man has a criminal mind. He's twisted and evil.

[_Shulem]

Joseph was presented with a human body only as the missing part of the papyri contained the head. The "remarkable" would be if Joseph drew in Anubis' jackal head and not a human head as one would normally expect a human head with a human body. Dr. Muhlestein deliberately and intentionally gets this backwards. Claiming that Joseph somehow knew it was a priest representing Anubis and in this rendition had taken off the Anubis mask is laughable, embarrassing.

"Dr." Muhlestein (if you can call him that) is committing malpractice. He perpetuates the slander and libel the Church is guilty of in their continued publication of the Facsimiles and their accompanying Explanations.

The characters displayed in both Facsimiles are not representatives of Anubis. They are not wearing masks. Both figures are the actual depiction of Anubis -- one before Osiris at his divine resurrection and the other in heaven escorting a vindicated earth man before the presence of Osiris.

This business of the so-called "mask" in the Facsimile is an apologetic ruse and is designed to fool the faithfull. But it will not fool a single nonMormon Egyptologist. The entire world body of Egyptologists disagree with Muhlestein's heretical teaching. He is guilty of malpractice and should be ejected from the professional body of Egyptologists.

You're out, Muhlestein! Defrocked and shamed.

[_Shulem]

Don't take too long Dr. Muhlestein. Your flock is leaving now due to your and your buddies' lack of answers or poor answers.

Muhlestein makes a futile attempt to justify the head of Anubis in Facsimile No. 1.

Can he apply that same faulty reasoning to the body of the ithyphallic serpent god Nehebkau in Facsimile No.2?

No! He can't.





Think about it, according to Muhlestein's twisted logic it would be akin to saying the surviving snake head was wearing a mask consisting of a dove's body in order to validate the idea that it was the sign of the Holy Ghost unto Abraham's God who just so happens to be impersonating an idolatrous Egyptian god! None of this sounds biblical at all. None of it makes any sense. The fact remains, Smith was wrong and Mormons today with their hard hearts deny the truth when it stares them in the face like sunshine. It's the darkness of perdition in which Muhlestein walks and he carefully drags others down into the darkness in which he resides.

I hope RFM is taking notes.

[_Dr Moore]

As David Bokovoy said much better in another context, why on earth did you see to it that David did not obtain employment at BYU for saying essentially the same thing you just have, Kerry? Has your understanding of the Book of Abraham now changed to the point that you feel you must allow for the possibility that Joseph Smith was employing antiquity for purposes other than describing ancient history? Should the LDS Church now fire you for arriving at the place you were afraid David occupied less than a decade ago?

The only reason Kerry and John have jobs at BYU is because the church believes the Book of Abraham must be somehow historical. So I am now very confused by Muhelstein. The Book of Abraham is historical but it might not be historical? And if it’s not historical, that’s OK too? Kim B Clark just spoke to FAIR and he was very clear that historicity is critical.

[_Philo Sofee]

Muhlestein
"Further, a sad aspect of these online communications has been the efforts to just be dismissive of those who hold opposing points of view. Those who say that scholars such as myself or John Gee are pseudo-Egyptologists or only have a patina of scholarship have either completely failed to do their homework, or have willingly misconstrued the truth, presumably to help further their agendas"

We are getting the information from the professionals who taught you and Gee. Are you saying they haven't done their homework?! Just, for instance, how many YEARS truly, have you studied to acquire a bonafide Egyptologist degree? We have it on good authority you went streamlined instead. But is that possible to do in order to learn Egyptian and how to work with texts, a few sped up years instead of the full, complete, and entire 8-12 it takes normal Egyptologists? I'm just curious is all.

And lets be crystal clear here, it is your work that is shoddy and pseudo valuable, not your person. We have seen critiques of your "translations" of Abraham on the Lion Couch in the Leiden," and you, according to Robert Ritner, are so wrong in your view, let alone translation. Can you rebut him with actual evidence? Are you willing to do so in a valid scholarly tome that is peer reviewed by other than John Gee and D. Michael Rhodes?

[_Dr Exiled]

Muhlestein
"Further, a sad aspect of these online communications has been the efforts to just be dismissive of those who hold opposing points of view. Those who say that scholars such as myself or John Gee are pseudo-Egyptologists or only have a patina of scholarship have either completely failed to do their homework, or have willingly misconstrued the truth, presumably to help further their agendas"

We are getting the information from the professionals who taught you and Gee. Are you saying they haven't done their homework?! Just, for instance, how many YEARS truly, have you studied to acquire a bonafide Egyptologist degree? We have it on good authority you went streamlined instead. But is that possible to do in order to learn Egyptian and how to work with texts, a few sped up years instead of the full, complete, and entire 8-12 it takes normal Egyptologists? I'm just curious is all.

And lets be crystal clear here, it is your work that is shoddy and pseudo valuable, not your person. We have seen critiques of your "translations" of Abraham on the Lion Couch in the Leiden," and you, according to Robert Ritner, are so wrong in your view, let alone translation. Can you rebut him with actual evidence? Are you willing to do so in a valid scholarly tome that is peer reviewed by other than John Gee and D. Michael Rhodes?

He is ready to respond (and the response will be respectful and glorious, unlike what some have done), except it will take a few years to put together, then a few more years to go through the peer review process, then there must be a year that passes and then he will review his work, contact colleagues, make changes, find the proper academic venue, and then and only then will he put forth the holy response to Dr. Ritner (who probably won't be with us any longer to respond).

[_Kishkumen]

It may not make sense to read the Bible and think we are hearing the voice of Moses but we are definitely hearing voices from the distant past. The world of which those voices speak is not an invention of a modern imagination. It's the actual ancient world from which our own is descended. We care what it says the way we care what our grandparents say, even if we don't always believe them. We value its stories even when they are lame, the way we value antiques that don't work.

Joseph Smith's revelations belong to the same tradition albeit at a much later date. The world of Moses as described in the Hebrew Bible is one that was imagined by the author of the book centuries after Moses purportedly lived. Moses is important for reasons other than the historical. He is important as a figure who was believed to have had a special relationship with God. The conception of what that relationship was and its significance is what keeps people coming back to the texts, not the historical accuracy of the Hebrew Bible.

One of the pillars of Mormonism is that Joseph Smith was a prophet because of his interactions with Deity. Without a testimony of those interactions, there is no reason to read anything Joseph Smith uttered or penned. I have a hard time seeing the fundamental difference between the two in religious terms.

So isn't it an exaggeration to say that the Bible is just as unhistorical as the Book of Mormon? Sure, the two Scriptures have the same Boolean value of zero for the bit of whether their fundamentalist reading is right, but you are urging Muhlstein not to read Scripture as a fundamentalist. Aren't you kind of downplaying the letdown involved in giving up the ancient status of the Book of Mormon?

What difference does it make if the Book of Daniel belongs to the second century BC versus the early sixth century BC. Do people find it less compelling for some reason? Is it less influential or culturally significant? Is it less a part of the canon on that account? If I lived in the first century BC, would I necessarily dismiss the Book of Daniel out of hand because I could easily see it was written just a few decades earlier?

The fundamentalist concept of inerrant revelation is only one end of the spectrum of ways to revere a special book, but rightly or wrongly I think pretty much everyone on that spectrum cares about provenance. The special book might not have to be ancient to be revered; perhaps an account of a vision by a revered modern figure like Abraham Lincoln would be an acceptable Scripture. Imagine how fast the value of Lincoln's vision would drop if it turned out not to be by Lincoln at all, though. Who cares what nonsense Andrew Johnson dreamed up?

Benjamin Franklin was an important figure in the visions of 19th century Spiritualists. So there you go.

Provenance confers bogus authority inasmuch as the best evidence shows that we have no clue who wrote the vast majority of the books contained in the Biblical canon. So what does the identity of the author mean? The date of composition? Evidently people were blissfully unaware of their errors for centuries, and yet the Jewish and Christian traditions survived. One can either reject the evidence and insist that earlier assumptions about these books have to be true, or one can embrace the evidence and reframe questions of authorship and spiritual authority.