Reorganized LDS

[hyrum]

Originally Posted by MikeWaters

okay, show me the article in the Ensign. Let's say for purposes of argument that any article in the ensign is the equivalent of a First Presidency signed statement.

One I know of: Ensign, March, 1997

Its widely quoted on the Internet.

[fusnik11]

Originally Posted by All-American

Tell you what. You point me to the papyri that Joseph Smith used to translate the Book of Abraham, and then I'll work on your request.

The issue he presented deals with the facsimiles.

[MikeWaters]

This is what that article says:

In the year 1799, an intensified interest in ancient Egypt was kindled in the Western world when the Rosetta Stone was discovered near Alexandria, Egypt. Made of black basalt, the stone was found by an officer of Napoleon’s engineering corps. It bore inscriptions in three ancient languages—Egyptian hieroglyphics, demotic (a simplified script that succeeded hieroglyphics), and Greek. Among the European linguists who began to work on deciphering these inscriptions was the young French scholar Jean Francois Champollion. Hieroglyphics, the written language of ancient Egypt, had been a riddle to scholars for many centuries. Working from clues found in the last inscription on the Rosetta Stone, written in Greek, Champollion was finally able to decipher the other two inscriptions. In 1822 he published the results of his work and the science of Egyptology was born, allowing scholars to begin to read the most ancient texts of Egypt. 3

These developments involving the Rosetta Stone and Champollion contributed to the coming forth of the book of Abraham in a significant way. As one writer put it, during the early 19th century “worldwide interest in Egyptian antiquities fanned itself to a searing blaze. Egypt was soon overrun with scientific expeditions, adventurers, soldiers of fortune, and robbers of catacombs and ancient burial sites.” 4 Into this atmosphere entered Antonio Lebolo, an Italian excavator of Egyptian antiquities.

According to Oliver Cowdery’s account written in 1835, Lebolo and his work crew had discovered several mummies in one of the catacombs near the place where once stood the renowned Egyptian city of Thebes. 5 After Lebolo’s death, these mummies and two papyrus rolls and some papyrus fragments that had been placed in some of the sarcophagi eventually found their way to New York City and then into the hands of Michael Chandler. 6 He was told that no one could translate the papyri’s inscriptions. He learned, however, that a man named Joseph Smith Jr. claimed some kind of special power that allowed him to decipher ancient writings. The Prophet’s name continued to come up, mostly in derision, at the various places where Chandler stopped to display his traveling mummy show. 7 In 1835 Chandler finally made contact with the Prophet Joseph Smith in Kirtland, Ohio. An entry in the Prophet’s history dated 3 July 1835 reads:

“On the 3rd of July, Michael H. Chandler came to Kirtland to exhibit some Egyptian mummies. There were four human figures, together with some two or more rolls of papyrus covered with hieroglyphic figures and devices. As Mr. Chandler had been told I could translate them, he brought me some of the characters, and I gave him the interpretation.” 8

The Prophet Joseph Smith was then inspired to raise money to purchase Chandler’s mummies and the accompanying papyri even though he did not know exactly what the writings would disclose. Kirtland Saints contributed the funds for the purchase. The price was $2,400—not an inconsequential sum considering that the temple was under construction, but the faith of members who knew the Prophet and his works led them to help. 9

After the purchase, the Prophet Joseph began to translate some of the papyri with the assistance of scribes W. W. Phelps and Oliver Cowdery. (Warren Parish was later called and employed as scribe.) This is what the Prophet recorded in his personal history: “With W. W. Phelps and Oliver Cowdery as scribes, I commenced the translation of some of the characters or hieroglyphics, and much to our joy found that one of the rolls contained the writings of Abraham, another the writings of Joseph of Egypt, etc.,—a more full account of which will appear in its place, as I proceed to examine or unfold them. Truly we can say, the Lord is beginning to reveal the abundance of peace and truth.” 10

There is no doubt that the Prophet Joseph Smith regarded the manner in which these writings came to him as the result of divine intercession. The testimony of W. W. Phelps is no less certain: “God has so ordered it that these mummies and writings have been brought in the Church.” 11 This happened only after the Lord had prepared his Church and the world to receive the book of Abraham. The rekindled spirit of excitement about ancient Egyptian writings in the 19th century, owing to the discovery of the Rosetta Stone and Champollion’s work, was one step in that preparation. Speaking of the way the Lord has guided discoveries and achievements of the human family to further his purposes, President Joseph Fielding Smith said:

“There has never been a step taken from that day [ancient times] to this, in discovery or invention, where the Spirit of the Lord … was not the prevailing force, resting upon the individual, which caused him to make the discovery or the invention. … Nor did the Lord always use those who have faith, nor does he always do so today. He uses such minds as are pliable and can be turned in certain directions to accomplish his work, whether they believe in him or not. …

“Now, do you think that these discoveries and inventions … have come just because these men have been sitting down and concentrating their minds upon these matters and have discovered them though their thought or accidentally? Not in the least, but the Spirit of the Lord, the Light of Christ, has been back of it. … We are ready for these discoveries, these inventions, and they all have a bearing upon the restoration of the gospel and preparation for the time which is yet future, but which is shortly to come, when Christ shall reign on the earth, and for a thousand years peace shall be established.” 12

Hence, this remarkable book of Abraham was brought forth in a remarkable way to help prepare us for the Second Coming of the Savior.

So you took away from this that the church is defending the Book of Abraham as a literal translation of the papayri, as in Joseph learned hieroglyphics and translated it? I don't see that at all.

We do understand that Joseph's definition of "translation" is different than what most people think. It means revelation.

I've yet to meet a scholar who uses a urim and thummim to translate documents.

[All-American]

Originally Posted by fusnik11

The issue he presented deals with the facsimiles.

Only in part:

Originally Posted by hyrum

So point me to a single non-Mormon Egyptologist who translates the papyri (or even the facsimiles which cannot be argued to be different items than what Smith was looking at) the same way as Joseph Smith, Jun.

[SteelBlue]

Originally Posted by fusnik11

Have you ever spoke with a current RLDS? I can introduce you to an RLDS scholar who will show you that Joseph never had a polygamous wife, that the 'evidence' brought up against him is stretched at best, and that it was Brigham who introduced this way of living.

RLDS members now accept that Joseph had polygamous wives. They have for some time.

[Jeff Lebowski]

Originally Posted by hyrum

One I know of: Ensign, March, 1997

Its widely quoted on the Internet.

Here is another interesting ensign article on the topic. Note the bold part. It basically supports Mike's argument.

Originally Posted by ensign

Why doesn’t the translation of the Egyptian papyri found in 1967 match the text of the Book of Abraham in the Pearl of Great Price?

Michael D. Rhodes, “I Have a Question,” Ensign, July 1988, 51
Michael D. Rhodes, researcher in ancient scriptures, Brigham Young University. The papyri in question are a part of the collection of Egyptian mummies and papyri that the Prophet Joseph Smith bought from Michael Chandler in 1835. After the Prophet’s death, the papyri were lost to the Church. But in 1966, Dr. Aziz S. Atiya, a professor of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Utah, discovered some twenty-two separate papyri fragments in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, which were clearly part of Joseph Smith’s original collection. The papyri were acquired by the Church, and they are now located at Brigham Young University.
Perhaps the most famous of these papyri fragments is the one depicted in the book of Abraham as facsimile number one [Facsimile 1]. It is said to represent Abraham being sacrificed on an altar by the priest of Elkenah. This picture can be connected with several of the other papyri fragments that relate to the text of an ancient Egyptian religious document known as the “Book of Sensen” or “Book of Breathings.” Abraham refers to a picture in the text of the book of Abraham (Abr. 1:12), and this picture is presumed to be the one we call facsimile one; therefore, some people have concluded that this Book of Breathings must be the text Joseph Smith used in his translation of the book of Abraham.
However, there are some serious problems associated with this assumption. First of all, from paleographic and historical considerations, the Book of Breathings papyrus can reliably be dated to around A.D. 60—much too late for Abraham to have written it. Of course, it could be a copy—or a copy of a copy—of the original written by Abraham. However, a second problem arises when one compares the text of the book of Abraham with a translation of the Book of Breathings; they clearly are not the same. Enemies of the Church have noted this and, without considering any other facts, have assumed that this proves the Prophet’s translation to be a hoax.
Actually, there are two possible explanations why the text of the recently discovered papyri does not match the text in the Pearl of Great Price.
One explanation is that it may have been taken from a different portion of the papyrus rolls in Joseph Smith’s possession. In other words, we don’t have all the papyri Joseph Smith had—and what we do have is obviously not the text of the book of Abraham. The Prophet described the papyrus he used in translation in these words: “The record … found with the mummies, is beautifully written on papyrus, with black, and a small part red, ink or paint, in perfect preservation.” (History of the Church, 2:348.) The Book of Breathings papyrus has no writing in red ink and is in an extremely poor state of preservation. It must have been in much the same condition in Joseph Smith’s day when fragments of it were glued haphazardly to other totally unrelated papyri. In fact, part of the outer border of facsimile two [Facsimile 2] in the book of Abraham has some of these unrelated fragments inserted in it.
Although the picture found as facsimile one in the book of Abraham stands at the beginning of the Book of Breathings, this does not necessarily mean that it belongs to the text. The Egyptians often placed vignettes next to texts that bore no relationship to them. J. C. Goyon, in his study of the Louvre papyrus number 3279 (a Book of Breathings text, incidentally), says that the vignettes of religious papyri often have only a very distant connection with the subject of the accompanying text. (Bibliotheque D‘Etude, Vol. XLII, “Le Papyrus du Louvre N. 3279,” Cairo, 1966, p. 2.) Edouard Naville, in his invaluable publication of the Theban version of the Book of the Dead, also notes that the vignettes of many Book of the Dead papyri have absolutely nothing to do with the text they accompany and are clearly not meant to illustrate that text. (Das Aegyptische Totenbuch der XVIII, bis XX, Dynastie, Einleitung, Berlin, 1886, p. 39.) Thus, the text that gave rise to the book of Abraham could have been located elsewhere on the same papyrus or even on another.
But if the text were on the same papyri, what is a text written by—or attributed to—Abraham doing with a bunch of pagan religious texts some two thousand years after his time? This is really not as unlikely as it may seem. The Egyptians had a mania for things of the past. It is not unreasonable to suppose that Abraham’s ancient record could have been copied many times through the generations and treasured for its antiquity centuries later. Perhaps it was just such a multigeneration copy that finally ended up with the mummies and documents that came into Michael Chandler’s possession, a text that we do not now have.
A second explanation takes into consideration what Joseph Smith meant by the word translation. While translating the Book of Mormon, he used the Urim and Thummim rather than dictionaries and grammars of the language. Translating with the Urim and Thummim is evidently a much different process than using the tools of scholarly research.
Section seven of the Doctrine and Covenants provides us with a good example of that process. It is a revelation given to the Prophet through the Urim and Thummim of a translation of a “record made on parchment by John [the Revelator] and hidden up by himself.” (See section heading to D&C 7.) In other words, the document being translated wasn’t even in the Prophet’s possession; yet by means of the Urim and Thummim he was able to translate it.
His translation of the Bible, parts of which are in the book of Moses in the Pearl of Great Price, was also done without having the original text before him. Instead, while he was using the King James Version of the Bible, the correct meaning or content was revealed to him, including extensive revelations of both Enoch and Moses that are not found in the King James Version.
We can envision a possible similar process taking place in Joseph Smith’s translation of the papyri he got from Michael Chandler. Instead of making a literal translation, as scholars would use the term, he used the Urim and Thummim as a means of receiving revelation. Even though a copy of Abraham’s record possibly passed through the hands of many scribes and had become editorially corrupted to the point where it may have had little resemblance to the original, the Prophet—with the Urim and Thummim, or simply through revelation—could have obtained the translation—or, as Joseph Smith used the word, he could have received the meaning, or subject-matter content of the original text, as he did in his translation of the Bible. This explanation would mean that Joseph Smith received the text of our present book of Abraham the same way he received the translation of the parchment of John the Revelator—he did not even need the actual text in front of him.
In reality, the actual method Joseph Smith used is far less important than the resulting book of scripture he produced. But here the Prophet’s critics prefer to ignore the evidence of the text itself. The book of Abraham should be evaluated on the basis of what it claims to be: a record of Abraham. A wealth of material on Abraham has come to light since the Prophet’s text was published, and the book of Abraham compares astoundingly well with these documents. (Hugh Nibley has discussed in detail the correlations between the book of Abraham and the subsequently discovered texts on Abraham. See Abraham in Egypt, 1981, and The Message of the Joseph Smith Papyri, An Egyptian Endowment, 1975, both published by Deseret Book Company.)
In the final analysis, however, the proof of the truth of the book of Abraham does not come by human means. As with all aspects of the restored gospel, “by the power of the Holy Ghost [we] may know the truth of all things.” (Moro. 10:5.) I have studied the book of Abraham, and the truth of it has been made known to me in a way I can’t deny. I know that anyone who earnestly wants to know if the book of Abraham is true can also receive this same witness and knowledge from God.

[MikeWaters]

my point is that this revelatory translation process that may have been used for the BoA is very similar to what we know of the translation fo the BoM.

So what's the difference? I don't understand why someone could buy the BoM (knowing how it was translated) and then leave the church over the BoA. But who said people had to be consistent? Not me.

[fusnik11]

Originally Posted by MikeWaters

So what's the difference? I don't understand why someone could buy the BoM (knowing how it was translated) and then leave the church over the BoA. But who said people had to be consistent? Not me.

Because the plates are not around and the KEP are?!?

If the plate of the BOM was found, and the subsequent translation was that of a marriage license between two people from Asia, would your views of the BOM not change? I think the seed is planted with the POGP, you introduce the real method of 'translation' (head buried in the hat) and the proverbial red flag is raised.

I for one wish more 'seerisms,' 'prophecy,' etc, came out of SLC, as I wish that the facsimiles were removed from canon.

[RockyBalboa]

Whatever happened to the good ol' fashioned power of faith?

[SeattleUte]

You know, of course Mike is right, with respect to post-1967 pronouncements. What did people expect the LDS Church to do after the papyri were proven to have as much to do with Abraham as does your latest issue of the Deseret News? Say, "okay, now we know, he was a fake and a fraud." Some people did that, indcluding the gentlemen who used to go around giving firesides that you could prove the truth of Mormonism as in a court of law, and who financied much of the original scholarship on the papyri. But most active LDS weren't going to just give up on the Church in light of this evidence. Most active LDS wouldn't change their belief if they found an authentic affidavit from the BofM witnesses confessing that this was all along the greatest literary fraud of at least the last 200 years.

For one thing, too much blood, too many lives, too much money, and too many careers, egos, etc., had been invested in the enterprise, without even getting into the subjective stuff such as spiritual affirmations, the Church's role in aiding happiness, etc. The LDS Church had become a culture that to many was intrinsically worth preserving, in other words. Most active LDS therefore either 1) ignored this evidence, simply blocked it out; or 2) came up with an explanation. The explanation didn't have to be plausible from a common sense perspective (e.g., which court of law gives credence to heavenly "revelations" as congizable evidence?) when you consider what active LDS were already willing to accept at face value, and their overpowering motivation to believe the explanation.

There was a third category--those who continued to maintain that Joseph did literally translate the papyri, i.e., a portion of it that hasn't been recovered. Such people are either not too bright or extremely intellectually dishonest. The latter group seems for the most part to have found employment at FARMS.