Egyptologists and the Joseph Smith Papyri

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_harmony
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Post by _harmony »

This certainly suggests that Joseph Smith wasn’t translating in an ordinary manner as most people would expect. He was doing his own thing


Well, it's about time someone figured this out. Joseph wasn't translating, and Joseph was definitely doing his own thing.

I hereby nominate Paul O for prophet!

- and I think he was inspired.

Paul O


Oops. Spoke too soon. I hereby withdraw my nomination.
_Inconceivable
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Post by _Inconceivable »

Paul Osborne wrote:CK,

....This certainly suggests that Joseph Smith wasn’t translating in an ordinary manner as most people would expect. He was doing his own thing - and I think he was inspired.

Paul O



Was there anyone intimately familiar with his work (including himself) that didn't use the word "translate"?

I think most people expected him to translate in an "ordinary manner" because this was the impression he and others had given.

If he had been straight about his goofed up doodles and just claimed that God dictated to him something important, no one would have thought any less of him.

The fact of the matter is that he and others declared that he had formulated an alphabet with the help of God and translated a work written by the very hand of Abraham over 4,000 years ago.

This is not that.

Please help me to understand how I can possibly take the words of this book seriously?
_Gazelam
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Post by _Gazelam »

If you check the current thread in the Celestial forum I'm working my way through showing that Joseph essentially showed the same Abraham story that has ben poping up around the world in other sources. The same elements and stories were found in the Testament of Abraham, The Apocalypse of Abraham and the Midrash writings.

How did this man in Illinois come up with the classic Abraham tale of his being saved from beign sacificed and meeting with an angel who shows him Gods creation and educates him, with none of the source material? He states that he translated it from papyri that contained Abrahams writings, and evidence bears that he was teling the truth.

Far from showing him not to be a prophet, the Book of Abraham instead tetifies of him being a true seer. And evidence also shows that the facimilies were passed on after being given to the Egyptians by Abraham himself.

Gaz
We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light. - Plato
_Mercury
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Post by _Mercury »

Paul Osborne wrote:VegasRefugee,

How about you please stop slobbering all over this perfectly descent thread? If you can't talk coherently then it’s best you get the hell out of here. If you don’t, I’ll kick your ass you sorry punk!

Paul O


OOOO, your scarng me mr wannabe egyptologist. Tell me, Do you really think this s*** passes as scholarship? Seriously, your using absurd conclusions and total lack of logic. What your trying to prove with your bubble gum and duct tape faith-based b***s*** is that all those people who told you that your full of s*** will not be exhalted and you will. You think theres this giant brass ring full of endless worlds you lord over as God and a continuous Train Gang Bang with your spiritual wives.

[MODERATOR NOTE: VegasRefugee, please do NOT use the "S" word, or any of its variants, in the Terrestrial Forum.]

Your culture is sick and your reasonings for your beliefs are reminiscent of the Aryan Race shortly before Hitler blew his and Shotsy's brains all over his underground bunker.
And crawling on the planet's face
Some insects called the human race
Lost in time
And lost in space...and meaning
_Fortigurn
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Post by _Fortigurn »

Gazelam wrote:If you check the current thread in the Celestial forum I'm working my way through showing that Joseph essentially showed the same Abraham story that has ben poping up around the world in other sources.


No he didn't. His story was quite different.

The same elements and stories were found in the Testament of Abraham, The Apocalypse of Abraham and the Midrash writings.


Gaz, it has to be said that if the same criteria for identifying the apocryphal works as containing 'the same elements and stories' as the Book of Abraham were used in a comparison between the Book of Mormon and the Spaulding Manuscript, do you know what the inevitable conclusion would be?

Far from showing him not to be a prophet, the Book of Abraham instead tetifies of him being a true seer. And evidence also shows that the facimilies were passed on after being given to the Egyptians by Abraham himself.


If he had managed to write the same story as is contained in the apocryphals without ever having known them, that would be remarkable. But he didn't. Not only that, but the real problem is that the papyrus doesn't actually say what he claimed it did. That proves he wasn't a seer at all.
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_Inconceivable
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Post by _Inconceivable »

Gazelam wrote:same Abraham story that has ben poping up around the world in other sources.
Gaz


I think I understand what you are trying to say, Gaz. I'm sure you meant pooping down. This stuff generally goes down hill (taking into account historical trajectory).



Now it all makes sense... what were we talking about?
_jimmyspa
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Post by _jimmyspa »

VegasRefugee wrote:OOOO, your scarng me mr wannabe egyptologist. Tell me, Do you really think this s*** passes as scholarship? Seriously, your using absurd conclusions and total lack of logic. What your trying to prove with your bubble gum and duct tape faith-based b***s*** is that all those people who told you that your full of s*** will not be exhalted and you will. You think theres this giant brass ring full of endless worlds you lord over as God and a continuous Train Gang Bang with your spiritual wives.

Your culture is sick and your reasonings for your beliefs are reminiscent of the Aryan Race shortly before Hitler blew his and Shotsy's brains all over his underground bunker.


I´m afraid you are unfair to Paul and your insulting remarks don´t add credibility or strength
to your points, that can be made in the manner of civilized people.

What Paul is trying to do is quite rational and convincing and brings credibility to the Book of Abraham
subject.

A non-LDS egyptologist has written:

"It is not a matter here as I see it, of missing documents or texts with missing parts that might have contained what the "translator" claimed, but of actual pictures of very common Egyptian scenes that have been included in a book and are explained in a completely wrong manner, nothing dubious but rather quite clear in any sense and in black and white for all to see."

but he also concedes that:

"However, the above remarks refer to the plain meaning of these figures considered as examples of ancient Egyptian funerary images and texts, I think that if one day a statement is made that what Joseph Smith translated were concepts transmitted to him by God, not necessarily the ordinary understanding of such ancient documents, since anybody who believes in God will accept that He can use any medium he chooses to transmit knowledge, then there could be no further opposition between the readings made by scholars of these objects and that made by the Prophet, since it would become strictly a matter of faith which would be outside our field of study.

Some people have expressed an opinion that the Kirtland Papers seem to show that the Prophet was engaged in a conventional translation of the hieroglyphic texts and thus there was no divine inspiration using them as a mere medium as I suggested above, but in fact, nothing prevented the Prophet, if he had at first indeed attempted such conventional rendering, himself or through others, to have received at a later time a direct revelation that it was not the right way to go about it and then God inspired him with the correct version.

I think that the essential point in all this is if the books revealed to Joseph Smith are, with the limitations of the human mind to understand transcendental matters, solid, coherent, sensible scripture as other religious books such as the Hebrew Old Testament, the Christian New Testament or the Muslim Quran are. If so, the way in which this revelation was transmitted to a Prophet is not so important or relevant as the validity, the basic goodness and the internal consistence of such writings and their agreement with the contemporary events as known from other sources, all which would be clearly beyond the capability of a man without divine inspiration."

and I find these views worth careful consideration rather than insisting on beating a dead
donkey that has no life in it anymore.

I wonder what you other folks think about it.

Jimmy
_Jersey Girl
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Post by _Jersey Girl »

Yo Jimmy,

This is what I think. I think you should name the non-LDS Egyptologist, give us a date and source in context for the quote. Got a link?

Jersey Girl
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_Fortigurn
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Post by _Fortigurn »

Jersey Girl wrote:Yo Jimmy,

This is what I think. I think you should name the non-LDS Egyptologist, give us a date and source in context for the quote. Got a link?


Wouldn't happen to be JUAN JOSÉ CASTILLOS would it?
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_Fortigurn
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Post by _Fortigurn »

Here are some comments from Professor Castillos which weren't quoted:

The detailed interpretation and translation that Joseph Smith made of these common ancient Egyptian funerary scenes is quite absurd, to put it mildly, for instance, in Number 1, the figure is seen as a pagan priest about to sacrifice Abraham and the canopic jars are described as "idols", the ba or soul of the deceased is described as "the Angel of the Lord"; in Number 2 the version is even more creative and the "translation" completely divorced from reality, in spite of the Prophet's vivid imagination, he was baffled by a series of characters which he described as certain "numbers", which certainly was not anything of the sort but a simple line of writing; in Number 3, things really seem to get out of hand, the scene according to Joseph Smith was Abraham discussing astronomy with the Pharaoh.
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