I would think that the Supreme Being, the Creator of the Universe, would not have to use these half-baked, inept, fake-looking Rube Goldberg incompetent fails to try to promulgate his message. Why not a papyrus that actually says what it needs to? A powerful God couldn't arrange that? Really?
You have to CHOOSE to see it. Believe it or not that magically changes EVERYTHING! All becomes clear, it jumps out of obsurity and into the light... EVERYONE knows that...
This book provides a detailed description of the process by which Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon. Drawing from firsthand accounts of Joseph himself and the scribes who served with him, From Darkness unto Light explores the difficulties encountered in bringing forth this book of inspired scripture. Recent insights and discoveries from the Joseph Smith Papers project have provided a fuller, richer understanding of the translation and publication of the Book of Mormon. This book helps readers understand that
the coming forth of the Book of Mormon was a miracle. Faith and belief are necessary ingredients for one to come to know that Joseph Smith performed the work of a seer in bringing the sacred words of the Book of Mormon
from darkness unto light. https://deseretbook.com/p/darkness-unto ... -hardcover
The QUALIFIED Egyptologists got it all wrong! The didn't have the necessary ingredients, FAITH & BELIEF in Jo Smith.
if you were half the critic of the stature of apologist you once were, you would take the time to understand where I'm coming from.
That is not difficult at all. (See above). What must really bother Mr. Gobble is that Philo absolutely understands where he's coming from:
People separate from the creators of the document, after the fact, applied the stories anciently, which is the knowledge transferred by Joseph Smith into our day.
It is compatible with the catalyst theory, because it makes sense why Joseph Smith sensed something "Abrahamic" about these symbols without that being literal. Because for these people, at one time, they used them this way. Therefore, from this standpoint, he understood their ancient usage, and didn't make that up, and that could have been why they may have been functional as a "catalyst" in receiving revelation on the Book of Abraham text.
This isn't really anything new theologically, because there are many things like this in the Scriptures with the way prophecy and symbolism work in the regular Jewish scripures. For example, if we look at the scriptural use of "Babylon," there is a literal Babylon, and then there are many symbological uses for Babylon that all seem to share the theme of a kingdom or state of evil of some sort. Babylon can mean ancient Rome when it was Anti-Christian. It can mean the "Great and Abominable Church" in general. It can mean the early apostate Christian entities that removed contents from the scriptures that the Book of Mormon talks about. It can mean the people that led the Jewish nation at the time that killed Jesus. It can mean Anti-Mormons. It can mean Hell. It can mean the Kingdom of the Devil in any gang or mafia, or evil governments in the world. Babylon becomes an "abstract" symbol in this way that is dependent on something outside of the original meaning for it, when given a specific usage, yet it is still a literal place in the ancient world.
The same thing for Zion or the "Kingdom of God." This can be the Church. This can be a state of mind. This was the Salt Lake Valley for the early pioneers. This was Jerusalem for the Jews. This will be the New Jerusalem in the Millennium. There is nothing new here theologically.
Therefore, for ancient people to use the Egyptian figure of Osiris for a symbol for Abraham, is like us using Superman for Jesus, as I mentioned before. You can swap in and out these meaning assignments. Its all contextual. It requires an assignment of meaning on a symbol that is otherwise an empty thing with a very general meaning that takes on more specific meanings given to it by contextual usage.
This is important because people have been so critical of the use of the symbols in the Sensen Papyrus as they are used in the Kirtland Egyptian Papers, because some of these symbols are just Egyptian letters (which incidentally are also little pictures of things), but they were used in this same specialized way as the big pictures in the Book of Abraham facsimiles. And therefore, this sort of de-couples us from the expectation that the Sensen Papyrus had to be a text only, and could have no other usage the way Anti-Mormons are insisting. This means that there is nothing wrong with this secondary way that these symbols were employed where the Kirtland Egyptian Papers show these characters with strange, irregular meanings being attached to them. When we realize that there is a non-conventional usage of these symbols, and it is the same way that Babylon or Zion is used in the scriptures, suddenly it all makes sense, and there is no more mystery to it. The accusations of Anti-Mormons melt away, because we can then realize that Joseph Smith never made the claim that this system of using these symbols this way was the same way of translation where the document translates as a "text." Edited November 11, 2016 by Ed Goble
Hieratic script is NOT really "little pictures" of things. Again, a gross oversimplification. They are symbols associated with things. How do you make a picture of a concept like love or hate or death? You take a symbol and make it universal for that concept. You also do this with letters that add up to words. You do not ascribe multiple meanings to each symbol, (as a general rule) it makes any script useless.
http://www.omniglot.com/writing/egyptian_hieratic.htmThis is all
ad hoc BS. You would have to show a specific precedent where this was done, another document that proves this theory. Where is that evidence? Nowhere to be found. Instead, we have these vague conjectures like the concept of "Zion" means thus and so, and so because that was done with that word, that the ancients did so with the hieratic and Joseph SOMEHOW... how did he put that, oh yeah, "sensed" this.
(Que "Holy Ghost")
Do we have whole documents made using alternate concepts of words or letters? For what purpose? Where are they? Why can't this be reproduced? That would be the whole point, right?
Then you have the HUGE hurdle in trying to prove that this is what Joseph Smith did with the Book of Abraham and the papyrus. Every shred of evidence we have says otherwise. The GAEL itself says otherwise as admirably shown by Kevin Graham and others. We can actually SEE and study this evidence for ourselves, we don't have to take his word for it, we don't have to rely on someone claiming that ABSTRACT, ALTERNATE meanings for the heiratic somehow translates into the Book of Abraham and that Joseph KNEW this and that is what his GAEL is all about. It's just crackpot speculation. Oliver Cowdery, July, 1835:
The morning Mr. Chandler first presented his papyrus to bro.-Smith, he was shown, by the latter, a number of characters like those upon the writings of Mr. C. which were previously copied from the plates, containing the history of the Nephites, or Book of Mormon.
Being solicited by Mr. Chandler to give an opinion concerning his antiquities, or translation of some of the characters, bro. S. gave him the interpretation of some few for his satisfaction.
Joseph Smith stood there with Chandler, and in that moment "sensed" that the characters he was interpreting had some alternate meaning and he figured all this out right then and there? Really? Where did Joseph Smith learn to "understand their ancient usage?" He had seen hieratic before? Where?
Is that how the Book of Mormon was "translated" since Joseph said the "caractors" from the Book of Mormon were like those on the papyrus. But we know they are not, because Jo copied some of them for us. Funny that Joseph Smith did the same thing with the Kinderhook Plates when he showed them to a group of people on May 7, 1843, as reported by "A Gentile" who was Sylvester Emmons.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvester_EmmonsBut only Mr. Gobble has figured this all out. Right.
PS: Where are any SERIOUS religious texts that use (or even WOULD USE) Superman in place of Jesus Christ? Why would anyone who is trying to convey a SERIOUS history do so? This is called talking out of your ass or Red Herring Soup. Just throw context and common sense out the window and THEN you will understand where he's coming from. Do we now associate peep stones with Kryptonite? Red or Green?
https://moviepilot.com/p/kryptonite-sup ... Relief Society/4072596 Ability to "translate":
While trying to find an antidote to green kryptonite, Supergirl accidentally created X-Kryptonite. This version is again harmless to Kryptonians, but happens to give normal life-forms - humans and animals - superhuman abilities. Action Comics #261 saw Supergirl's pet cat, Streaky, become the first life-form affected by X-Kryptonite.
More Gobble bits on Superman:
On 11/11/2016 at 0:38 PM, hope_for_things said:
Ok, but you're saying the Papyrus contains an adapted story of Abraham, that is somehow loosely connected to myths about Abraham that were passed down over the years. Do you see this as conflicting with the catalyst theory, or bolstering that theory?
Are you trying to say that Joseph non only received the Book of Abraham text through direct revelation, but that there was some ancient story of Abraham preserved in the papyrus and that looking at the decorative themes a person could objectively find the parallels to Abraham? Is this unique to these funerary scrolls, or could a person do this same kind of comparison with other funerary texts from the same time period and find similar loose decorative parallels to the story of Abraham? I'm not trying to be dismissive, I just wonder how your theory would hold up to scrutiny.
I didn't say that the Papyrus contains an adapted story of Abraham. The Papyrus doens't contain anything like that.
The papyrus in this approach is an empty template that is dependent on outside information to give it meaning, because the meaning applied to it is not what it originally or inherently contained.
I'm saying that people applied these stories [to?] it. It doesn't contain them itself. There is a distinction there.
This isn't the catalyst theory but it could be thought of as compatible with it.
Try to understand this concept. This has to do with not what the papyrus contains or what the papyrus originally was used for. Rather, it is how later people used it (i.e. adapted it for use to), and what they used it for that matters here. They didn't encode the Book of Abraham in it or put his story in it somehow. They used these pictures in a different way than they were intended before. Its like using a picture of Superman to represent Jesus Christ. Superman isn't Jesus Christ and there is nothing in a picture of Superman that encodes the meaning of Jesus Christ in it. But they are Savior figures, and to use Superman symbolically for Jesus Christ even though the inventors of Superman didn't intend it that way, is entirely acceptable because its my own thing if I do that.. The fact that Superman can be used as a symbol for Jesus is because the two have attributes in common. Edited November 11, 2016 by Ed Goble
Then why use the papyrus as any kind of evidence? It literally MEANS NOTHING then. And how do you arrive at what "people" were ascribing to certain symbols? Filch material from other cultures out of context and whatever suits your fancy? This is beyond bizarre. (And there's a Kryptonite for that
)
Was Smith familiar with all the ancient languages and cultures and people in the entire ancient world? This is literally the silliest thing I have ever read. He actually says above that this is a "non-conventional use of the symbols". But here he says, "This has to do with not what the papyrus contains..."
Does it contain the symbols that he says mean something other than what they were intended for and that Joseph Smith "sensed"? He even contradicts his own contradictions!
More of the Great Gobbler:
1) Abraham wrote a book. This was the original thing that he wrote. This is not a mythological or pseudepigraphical book, but it was actually written by Abraham.
[There is no evidence for this](2) Either a copy of this original, or traditions about it came down into the Greco-Roman era into the Alexandria area of Egypt, perhaps, sometime in a range of time perhaps between 400 BC to 200 AD.
[There is no evidence for this](3) During this era above (The Greco-Roman Era) either Egyptian Priests or Jewish Egyptians or Jewish Gnostic Egyptians or Egyptian Syncretists of some kind liked this story and revered Abraham. These people decided to adapt the Sensen Papyrus and Hypocephalus for Illustrations for the Book of Abraham. My theory has to do with what these people were doing with these portions of the papyri and how they were using them. This is a separate concern entirely from text from the original book that Abraham wrote, long before these people started doing this stuff.
[There is no evidence for this](4) At the time of Joseph Smith, he had a set of papyri. This included at the very least, the Sensen Papyrus, the Hypocephalus, and copies of the Book of the Dead. These are the papyri we have evidence for (i.e. forensic evidence).
[Hurray! He gets one right!](5) In our day, we have an English representation of the actual ancient text of the Book of Abraham that Abraham himself wrote.
[There is no evidence for this]I don't care how that came to be, whether there was yet another papyrus, or by revelation that we got this English text. I believe that the papyrus that Abraham originally wrote his book on disappeared in antiquity, and all copies have since disappeared as well, and Joseph Smith never had his hands on a papyrus like this.
[There is no evidence for this]The evidence, I believe, is that Joseph Smith got this text that Abraham originally wrote by revelation.[AND THERE YOU HAVE IT FOLKS. Holy, holy, holy Ghost... ]
What did Philo say?
Apologists exacerbate this problem by claiming that God inspired Joseph Smith in his translations.
Now... what did Mr. Gobble say in response?
If the underlying reality of the situation was a simple literal, straight-across translation of the facsimiles that the Holy Ghost was trying to inspire Joseph Smith to produce, you [Philo] would be correct. But it is not the only option, and there is no reason to assume that it must be, other than the fact that you as a "partisan" newly-hatched-from-the-egg critic insist that it must be.
Here, he condradicts himself again. So Mr. Gobble knows how (exactly) the "holy ghost" gave Joseph the translation? What, does he read minds or talk to dead people? He just said that Smith got the "translation" by "revelation". So why the need for the wacky theory that he "sensed" alternate meanings in the symbols? Why would he need the papyrus at all? Jo had already done this trick (D&C Section 7).
Bottom line, Mr. Gobble is selling the "Joseph got it from the Holy Ghost" line. All the rest is just a bizarro diversion. (6) In spite of the fact that you have a bunch of accounts that describe what you think are evidence for Joseph Smith having had a papyrus like this, and that you want to argue about them because of your passion for them, I can say, like scientists continually say to Bigfoot researchers, "Where is the body?" Though you spend a lot of time arguing, the fact remains that your accounts are not evidence of anything, as much as Bigfoot-encounter accounts are not evidence. We need a body to know that there is a Bigfoot, not stories. We need forensic evidence of a missing papyrus of this sort to know it existed. You believe that I ought to spend time responding to each and every part of your arguments for about these things that amount to Bigfoot stories, with all due respect. I don't see why I should do that, especially because I don't have a lot of interest in that. And since a body cannot be produced, and the only forensic evidence we have is for the other papyri, a better explanation is that
Joseph Smith got that part by revelation.(7) Mesoamericanists take me to task all the time about my belief in Cumorah in New York, but they choose a different candidate, because
I cannot produce evidence of weapons at Cumorah in New York, yet I still believe. I get it that you want to believe in a Missing Papyrus that Joseph Smith had his hands on that had the Book of Abraham text on it in some ancient language. But until you can show me something forensic about it, and not just stories, I believe there is a better explanation. If Mesoamericanists can do this to me, and dismiss my belief on the issue of Cumorah in New York for lack of forensic evidence, I am justified by virtue of that to also take a similar position with regard to lack of forensic evidence about the Missing Papyrus.
Stories are great, but forensic evidence is actual science. Edited November 11, 2016 by Ed Goble
Oh if he only REALLY believed that last line. And he calls Philo dishonest?
