John Gee leaves bizarre message as he steps down from editorship, also his inappropriate Ritner review

[Lem]

From reddit, WOW. a full description of Gee's implosion in the academic world. Bolding mine.

I haven't seen much discussion of something very noteworthy that Bill Reel dropped last week on his Facebook feed - scans of John Gee's final words as editor of the Journal of the Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities (JSSEA). What Gee wrote in his remarks is not about apologetics directly, but the connection to his apologetic studies is obvious; in fact, I think it is apparent in Gee's final words that apologetics are his first priority. All that being said, I should probably confess that, although the repercussions for Gee's style of apologetics are obvious in these scans, the actual reason I enjoy this stuff is less about detached academic curiosity, and probably something closer to the reasons my wife watches The Bachelor.

The JSSEA is, as far as I can tell, a legitimate academic journal publishing in the field of Egyptology, based in Toronto. According to Gee's CV, he edited three volumes of this journal from 2008-2010. The final volume he edited (vol. 37) begins with some editorial remarks by Gee, an odd diatribe railing against the concept of peer review, titled "The Problem With Peer Review." Scan can be found here, but I am including a transcription:

The Problem with Peer Review

Peer review is supposed to be an unalloyed good, but anyone who thinks so cannot have spent much time in the process.

In theory peer review works as follows: A submission is received and the editor sends the submission without the name attached to one or more reviewers, each of whom is an expert in that subject. The reviewers independently recommend whether to accept the submission or suggest revisions. The reviewers do not know who wrote the paper and the author does not know who the reviewers are. If the paper does not pass muster, the editor is relieved of the responsibility of rejecting a friend's paper.

In practice, however, there are numerous problems with peer review.

Since Egyptology must cover four thousand years of human history and every facet of a complex civilization, Egyptologists must specialize of necessity. While the pool of Egyptologists is not very large, the number of peers in some specialized areas can in some cases be numbered on the fingers of one hand. In such small specialties, any reviewer who cannot figure out who the author is within a couple of minutes probably does not know enough to review the piece, and the same is true of an author who cannot discover who the reviewer is. If, as is true for some specialties, none of the specialists agree, it will simply not be possible to publish anything in a peer reviewed journal.

Peer review can be manipulated for malicious purposes. Examples from other disciplines have gained some notoriety. Under such circumstances, peer review can actually impede progress in a discipline as it prevents publication of new ideas, or correction of mistakes.

Because peer review is mostly anonymous and unremunerated work, there is no incentive for a peer reviewer to invest time or effort in it. As a result, some peer reviews are perfunctory without much thought or effort. I am aware of one papyrus published in an ostensibly peer-reviewed journal where the author cannot possibly have even read the papyrus he was publishing, but none of the reviewers even noticed showing that they cannot have read it either. This publication has been cited numerous times showing that none of the scholars citing the publication had bothered to read the papyrus either. This is clearly a failure of the review system.

As part of the peer review process, reviewers sometimes make suggestions to improve the article. These suggestions should improve the article. Sometimes, however, they do not improve the article. At other times they would have improved the article but the author has chosen to reject them.

Finally, one cannot edit a journal without stepping on various toes. I regret that I had to turn down many papers, including some written by friends. No personal slight was intended even if some was taken.

It is understandable why a freshly graduated student might be justifiably proud of themselves. It must be so wearisome to work with mere mortals. Mere mortals might not be overawed with a freshly graduated student's certifiable brilliance (just look at the diploma) and might actually make editorial suggestions or have the temerity to question the logic of the argument. I apologize to those who were offended at the prospect of working with mere mortals.

I am sorry for the inordinate delay in this issue. As one literary character expressed it, "I am afraid you have been long desiring my absence, nor have I any thing to plead in excuse of my stay."1 When an editor can no longer bring the Journal in on time, it is time to leave. I wish Katja Goebs the best as she takes over the helm of the JSSEA...

Wow, that's... really something. While I'm sure that many of the imperfections of peer review he cites are real, it is nevertheless surprising to me that he would finish his editorship in an academic journal with a rant that seems to imply the academic community would be better off without it, not to mention a weirdly sarcastic tangent apparently directed at some student whose article he must have rejected. I am also curious about this alleged incident where someone published in "an ostensibly peer-reviewed journal where the author cannot possibly have even read the papyrus he was publishing," which he claims is a failure of the peer review system. RfM speculated this is a reference to Robert Ritner's 2000 article published in Dialogue titled, "The 'Breathing Permit of Hor' Thirty-four Years Later." The article is an update to Klaus Baer's original translation of the named papyrus. As the article notes in the introduction, Baer's initial work was based on photographs, and Ritner's own update is based on newer color photographs, since the church hadn't published an official volume yet, and since the church did not grant much outside access to the actual papyrus. Although the essay itself is tangential to any apologetics on the Book of Abraham, there is some criticism of Gee's arguments therein, mostly in the footnotes. After reading the rest of Gee's remarks in his journal, I am inclined to agree with RfM that this is probably what Gee is referring to.

So let's move on to Gee's next contribution to his final edited edition of this journal, a book review of The Libyan Anarchy: Inscriptions from Egypt's Third Intermediate Period by Robert Ritner. As many of us are aware, Ritner was once Gee's professor's, and there is a history between the two, much of it centered around Gee's apologetics on the Book of Abraham. The book being reviewed, however, apparently has nothing to do with the Book of Abraham. The scan of the review can be found here, but I will transcribe the text as well:

Robert K. Ritner, Jr., The Libyan Anarchy: Inscriptions from Egypt's Third Intermediate Period, [Writings of the Ancient World 21) (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2009). ISBN-13: 978-1-58983-174-2. xx + 622 pp. $59.95.

For twenty years, the Society of Biblical Literature's series, Writings of the Ancient World has made available affordable and accurate translations of ancient texts that prove invaluable to students and professionals, especially ancient historians and biblical scholars who might not be proficient in the various languages. This book continues that series with translations of a number of texts from the Libyan period - the Egyptian time period contemporary with the bulk of the biblical narrative. Professor Ritner is generally a capable scholar, but has been known to badly misread the texts that he was proportedly (sic) publishing,24 so his translations and particularly his transliterations need to be checked against the original glyphs. The work under consideration shows that still to be the case.

Professor Ritner translates nearly three hundred texts in his anthology but numbers them rather oddly so that it seems as though there are only about two hundred. Most Of this material is conveniently available in the more comprehensive work of Karl Jansen-Winkeln25 and Olivier Perdu26 neither of which does Ritner mention. Anyone who uses Ritner's work will want to have Jansen-Winkeln at his elbow. For example, Ritner's translation of the settlement text of Henuttawy (C) from the Tenth Pylon of Karnak (pp. 138-43) is missing significant portions of the text, which may be found in Jansen-Winkeln.27

The translations are adequate. Hyper-Polotskian translations often leave the impression that the text has been translated but not into English. The translator seems to have avoided the worst excesses of the Polotskians but the translations are still often awkward and mechanical. "This is one of Ritner's few positive contributions to the field, one not written with the primary intent of attacking someone, and he seems thoroughly bored. It is disappointing that Ritner's considerable verbal gifts vanish when he is not writing vitriol.

Professor Ritner seems proud that his was the first Egyptological volume in the series Writings of the Ancient World to provide transliterations of the texts (p. 9). This would have been a real achievement if the transliterations were on the facing pages of the translations like those of the Other volumes of the series. Alas, such was not the case. Five pages of straight transliteration (pp. 88-92,349-53) followed by six or seven pages of translation (pp. 92-98, 353-58) becomes ludicrous besides useless. pinnacle is ten pages of straight transliteration (pp. 468-77). Think of the paper and ink wasted on pages that will scarcely be read! Without them the volume would have been much shorter, and probably significantly less expensive. Inclusion of the transliterations might have been helpful if the transliterations were accurate. Ritner's transliterations are generally an idealized view of the text as though they were written in the correct Middle Egyptian of a thousand years previously. But they were not, so the text in the transliteration often does not reflect what is written the hieroglyphs, and Ritner's transliterations suppress or distort numerous features of the contemporary language. Throughout the book brackets are so commonly misplaced that it is a wonder that they were included at all.

The poor formatting can at least be explained by noting that Professor Ritner simply dumped material on Bob Buller who tried to pull together "a coherent manuscript" out of the mess that Ritner gave him (p. 10). Buller has spent an enormous amount of work on this volume and the fact that it is as good as it is says much to Buller's credit. Buller should be exonerated for the continuous type-setting problems such as not placing the transliterations and translations on facing pages, or the ubiquitous breaks of lines in the middle of the words. Professor Ritner should have caught some of those. It was simply beyond Buller's skill to make a silk purse out of the sow's ear that he had been given.

The book appears in print a decade out of date. Only four works in the bibliography date after 1999. At one point, Ritner says that a book that came out five years before his did was too late to be considered (p. 193). Ritner only lists it as "Wilson 2005" but does not include it in the bibliography and so leaves follow-up impossible. Several times Ritner says that the "dimensions [are] not given" (pp. 66-67) even though they are in a book that he lists in his bibliography (p. 601) and published by the Oriental Institute where he works, but apparently could not bother to use as a basis for the inscriptions that he published from it.

The numerous historical errors will lead those who are not specialists on Third Intermediate period studies astray. Here are a sampling:

- Ritner provides a helpful genealogy of Ankhefenkhonsu (p. 16) showing the High Priest Menkhepere (conventionally 1035-986 B.c.) ten generations apart from Sheshonq 1 (924-889 B.C.). This would mean that if Ritner has reconstructed the genealogy correctly, then for ten generations, the men in this genealogy were consistently having children at the average age of eleven. Either Ritner's reconstruction is incorrect or the chronology of the Third Intermediate Period needs to be expanded on the order of a century.

-Ritner often assigns rulers incorrectly. This is attributable to a number of reasons. Sometimes it simply reflects the uncertain nature of work on the Third Intermediate Period. Sometimes it reflects the inability or unwillingness to stay current in an active field. Sometimes it reflects carelessness. A few examples from the first seventy pages will suffice:

- An inscription of Sheshonq Vla (Janssen-Winkeln's V II) is attributed to Sheshonq I (p. 34).

- An unattributable inscription is attributed to Osorkon II (p. 36).

- An inscription of Petubastis I is attributed to Sheshonq Ill (p. 37).

- An inscription of Takeloth Ill is attributed to Osorkon Ill (p. 39).

- An inscription of Osorkon II is attributed to Osorkon Ill (p. 40).

- Inscriptions from different rulers are combined (p. 51).

- An inscription of Sheshonq IV is attributed to Osorkon Ill (p. 57).

- An inscription likely of Osorkon II is unattributed (p. 59).

- A unattributable inscription of early Dynasty 22 is attributed to Osorkon I (p. 61).

For this reason, Ritner's book needs to be used very carefully and everything should be double-checked.

While the Twenty-First through Twenty-Fourth Dynasties can properly be called the Libyan period, and there is certainly Libyan influence, Ritner has a tendency to see influence when it is not actually there. Two examples will suffice. Ritner labels one individual a "Libyan Dynast" and reads his name 'Pk-wꜣ-iw- šꜣ(?)" (p. 79). He has misread the name, which is Pkwꜣrꜣwr, an odd spelling for the well-attested Egyptian name Pꜣ-krr. In one of the priestly annals, his insertion of the title "chief of the Man is simply his own invention surreptitiously inserted into a lacuna (p. 53).

The preceding has been a mere sample of the hundred of errors that plague the volume. There seems little point wasting paper by listing all of them.

In the end, this book constantly reminds the reader of Breasted's Ancient Records, a ground-breaking translation effort making many texts available for the first time in English, which unfortunately is out-of-date and in desperate need of revision. Breasted's work took at least half a century to achieve that feat, but Ritner's needed merely to roll off the press. While Egyptologists may find Professor Ritner's numerous mistakes amusing, no historian or biblical scholar should rely on his work. In that sense the volume defeats its purpose.

John Gee

Wow! It's hard to know where to begin with a book review that's dripping with so much personal invective. The actual validity of his criticisms is well outside of my expertise, but I am reminded of when Gee published a similarly scathing review of Volume 4 of the Joseph Smith Papers Project. It looks like a pattern that when Gee perceives an enemy to his apologetic endeavors, he publishes scathing "proxy reviews" that don't address his underlying apologetic concerns, but which are clearly motivated by them. In the case of the JSPP volume 4, both Mormon and non-Mormon academics outside his circle of apologetic allies agreed that his criticisms were spurious. In searching for opinions from Ritner's peers on his book, I can only find one review from the Journal of the American Oriental Society, which is very positive, labelling it "expertly produced and efficiently organized," "extremely important for anyone researching the Egyptian Third Intermediate Period," and his translations "as fresh as they are up-to-date." Google scholar lists 96 citations of this work.

But of special note is footnote 24, which is supposed to cite Gee's allegation that Robert Ritner "has been known to badly misread the texts that he was proportedly (sic) publishing." Some of you may have been wondering what egregious academic error he cites here that establishes such a poor reputation for poor Robert Ritner. Surely, if Gee is publishing such a hostile assessment of Ritner's abilities in an academic journal, he must be citing something substantial and widely accepted within the Egyptological community right?

That's where this gets good. Following footnote 24, it turns out his citation is an article from freaking FARMS! In an Egyptological journal! I kid you not. He cites "Kerry Muhlestein, "The Book of Breathings in Its Place," FARMS Review 17/2 (2005):482-86."

But we aren't done, because the cherry on top are the editorial remarks by Gee's successor, Katja Goebs, in the subsequent volume. I will transcribe her relevant remarks here:


2) Peer Review

It is the conviction of the current editor and board that peer review is an indispensable, even if not infallible, factor in ensuring high academic standards. It has also become — at least in the North American context — a sine qua non for young scholars seeking to bolster their CVs when applying for grants and jobs. What is more, the referees' comments often furnish helpful additional materials and theoretical insights for author and editor. JSSEA will remain peer reviewed.

...

4) Book Reviews

Recently, there has been some discussion about the appropriate level of criticism that might be conveyed in a review. Our Book Reviews Committee is committed to ensuring that a scholarly discussion of new academic works takes place that neither descends into insubstantial generalities, nor into angry personal vendettas. An apparent recent exception to this rule represents an oversight resulting from time-pressures shortly before publication of the issue in question.

Lol.

I think this episode is valuable as a demonstration of why one should not mix apologetics with scholarship. Even though none of the content here is ostensibly about the Book of Abraham, it's all about the Book of Abraham, and that has seemingly compromised Gee's academic career. It's fine to defend one's faith on intellectual as well as faith-centered grounds, but the Interpreter-style apologetics frequently forgets that they cannot claim the authority of academic inquiry without adhering to its core precepts.

https://old.reddit.com/r/Mormon/comment ... ast_stand/

[Lem]

It looks to me like Gee tried to take the Peterson-Hamblin-Midgley version of lds apologetics outside his bubble and into the actual academic world, where it failed spectacularly. As it should. The immaturity of the lds mopologist approach to the academic world is ridiculous.

[Lem]

From the new editor, after Gee left:

Book Reviews

Recently, there has been some discussion about the appropriate level of criticism that might be conveyed in a review. Our Book Reviews Committee is committed to ensuring that a scholarly discussion of new academic works takes place that neither descends into insubstantial generalities, nor into angry personal vendettas. An apparent recent exception to this rule represents an oversight resulting from time-pressures shortly before publication of the issue in question.

She's being polite. The review in question was by the then editor Gee.

All of this shows exactly why Peterson and his crowd were dumped from The Maxwell Institute. BYU was attempting to enter the real academic world, an endeavor simply not possible with the mopologists tainting the efforts.

[Lem]

Another comment from the reddit thread

ihearttoskate [score hidden] an hour ago

Ritner stated in his recent interview on Mormon Stories that the book review debacle got him a free lifetime membership to the journal and very sincere apologies from many members in the egyptologist community.

That is just nuts. The Interpreter has cemented its bad reputation with their association with Gee.

[Lem]

Some additionalexplanation regarding Gee's accusation that Ritner 'badly misreads' Egyptian texts:

John Gee's Last Stand by ImTheMarmotKing in Mormon

[–]NotTerriblyHelpful [score hidden] an hour ago*

The paper that Gee cites in support of his contention that Ritner "badly misreads" his texts is here:

https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/vie ... ontext=msr In the paper, the author Kerry Muhlestein compares Ritner's translation of the Joseph Smith papyri to a translation made by Michael Rhodes of BYU. Both translations were made about the same time.

In order to support the claim that Ritner "badly misreads" his translation texts, you would assume that Muhlestein found some egregious translation differences between Ritner's translation and Rhodes' translation, right? Well here is Muhlestein's summary of his comparison:

As Larry Morris has argued, a comparison of two nearly concurrent translations of the Hor Book of Breathings—those of Rhodes and Ritner—should be made. I have made such a comparison and have not found variations that would suggest a remarkably different interpretation of the document or its context.

That's right, Muhlestein found that Rhodes' and Ritner's translations were about the same. The handful of "notable" differences he highlights are insubstantial. In other words, Muhlestein did not find any evidence that Ritner had mistranslated the Joseph Smith papyri. Both he and Rhodes produced remarkably similar translations.

Let's be very clear here, by citing to Muhlestein's paper to support the idea that Ritner "badly misreads" his text, Gee is lying. Muhlestein's paper says nothing of the sort.

Of course, we should not be surprised. Gee is a liar. He lies all the time. He is pathological about it. He is an embarrassment to BYU, the Church, and his profession.

Also, as demonstrated by the OP, he is a ________ little ________. (edited to remove the personal attack that accurately communicated my feelings about John Gee.)

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[Manetho]

It's funny how Gee's apologetic efforts, and his corresponding attacks on Ritner, have consistently backfired. Ritner has done some brilliant Egyptological work, but very little of it is aimed at the general public. Therefore, Ritner's greatest fame outside the Egyptological community, modest though it may be, comes from Gee's feud with him and his resulting studies of the Joseph Smith Papyri, which seem to have made him something of a celebrity in ex-Mormon circles. Meanwhile, Gee looks like an obnoxious fool to anyone who isn't a committed Mormon.

[Philo Sofee]

If memory serves me correctly, it was precisely the translation of Rhodes which Ritner destroyed in his book on the Joseph smith Papyri, even demonstrating that Rhodes stole....that's right, STOLE from Ritner's unique, never before published translation of some of the papyri! He used Ritner's materials WITHOUT attribution (can anyone say "Dr. Peterson" please?). If THAT is the translation that Morris is talking about, he is guilty of ignoring the Ritner devastation of Rhodes two bit amateur hour attempts at translation which were more in line with thievery, unless of course, Morris said this before Ritner had published his materials.

Quoting FARMS in a scholarly journal??? and a Muhlestein article supposedly refuting Ritner himself??? Now, NOW we see the wisdom of apologetics written materials should be allowed to just slowly be swallowed in the glob of irrelevancy to actual academic scholarship. Good job Gee... The total clown thing called apologetics is hilariously disastrous.

[Doctor Scratch]

Wow--I'm surprised that they are allowing commentary like that on the r/Mormon section of Reddit. That would *never* be permitted on FAIR Mormon, "Sic et Non," Interpreter, or the MD&D board. And yet, all of those claim to be "mainstream" LDS. As for Gee: I agree with those who've already pointed out the similarities to his crashing-and-burning of this Egyptology journal versus Daniel Peterson's crashing-and-burning at the Maxwell Institute. Both of them had issues that were badly overdue; both of them were using the journals to exact revenge on critics. Both of them were sent packing as a consequence.

But something really seems to be up with Gee lately. I can't imagine that his antics have gone completely unnoticed by the power structures in Salt Lake City. All that said, he's commented elsewhere on the fallibility of peer review. (If Tom comes along, he might know of yet another link.) It's funny how the Mopologists insist up and down that their own crap is "peer reviewed," and yet when it comes to other (legitimate) scholarship, suddenly peer review is fraught with all kinds of problems.

[Dr. Shades]

It looks to me like Gee tried to take the Peterson-Hamblin-Midgley version of lds apologetics outside his bubble and into the actual academic world, . . .

Dear Lem,

You'll be happy to learn that there's a quicker, easier, shorter word for "the Peterson-Hamblin-Midgley version of lds apologetics." The word is "Mopologetics."

You're welcome for all the future saved keystrokes. :-)

[Moksha]

I assume that Kerry Muhlestein will remain as Vice President for the Canadian Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities/Société pour l'Étude de l'Égypte Ancienne.