Joseph claimed to have been visited by Elohim,Jehovah/Jesus Christ,
Michael/Adam, Peter James and John, Moses etc. and knew about Kolob (countless light years away) yet didn't know what was going on in England and France re translating Egyptian hieroglyphics.

The Book of Abraham is a 'slam dunk' for proving Joseph's 'modus operandi' as a con man. Larson, By His Own Hand Upon Papyrus plus articles such as those on RFM, MormonThink and other sites prove Joseph was no translator. Even the church now admits this with their re-wording of the introduction in their 2013 digital scriptures.

My point is this. Joseph acquired the papyri in 1835 and started to publish his translation in March 1842. The 'Rosetta Stone' was found in 1799 and by the 1820's a Frenchman by the name of Jean-François Champollion had used this to decipher hieroglyphics. The code had been broken. His first translation of the stone was published in 1822, 20 years before JS published his 'translation' of the BoA. In fact Jean-François Champollion died in 1832, 10 years before JS publication. An Englishman by the name of Thomas Young (who died in 1829) had made great strides in the deciphering but Jean-François Champollion added to his work. So 2 of the great pioneers in breaking the code were dead before JS started to publish his phoney 'translation'.

Others followed Jean-François Champollion, so why didn't JS ask one of them to do the translation or use their methodology himself? Did he not know about them? What kind of a prophet of God knows about creating universes and 'black holes', speaks face to face with the creator of the universe(s) and doesn't know about French and English translators of Egyptian hieroglyphs? Oh yes, a con man rather than a prophet of an omniscient god. He also mistakenly taught the sun 'borrows' its light from Kolob. What nonsense.

I have seen the 'Rosetta Stone' with my own eyes in a museum. JS should have used that instead of a magic rock, if he used the same method to translate the BoA as he did the BoM. The difference between the stone and the rock is the stone was not considered magic. It was a key, having 3 different languages, to breaking a code using man's ingenuity. Joseph's rock was pure magic - the tool of a con artist, not a serious linguist.

Tom Phillips



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/08/2013 01:55PM by anointedone.

The church today has a different stance on the origin of the BOA than was originally thought. Had one asked Joseph Smith if the BOA was translated directly from the papyri, one would have received a very unambiguous answer to the affirmative.

I love your argument. Funny how he could know so much about the cosmos and be clueless about the world's forthcoming knowledge of egyption thanks to the Rosetta Stone.

The hat rock has become the millstone tied around Joe's neck.

anointedone Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
...
> Joseph's 'modus operandi' as a con man.
...

Of course Joe knew enough about the current state of
Egyptian translation (articles on the subject appeared
in his region's newspapers) to provide himself some
protection, in the case of the Book of Mormon. There
any possible detection of language fraud was obscured
by the "reformed Egyptian" subterfuge. Only the brass
plates were said to be engraved in regular Egyptian,
and their contribution to Joe's book was just biblical.

So, why did Joe go out on a limb, when the mummies came
before him? Probably for the same reasons as in the cases
of his subsequent pretensions of understanding the writings
in the Greek psalter and the Kinderhook plates -- to
further impress his gullible dupes.

And yet, Joe took an additional step with the Book of
Abraham fraud -- one which he avoided in those other cases.
He purported to translate (and publish original pieces of!)
Egyptian texts of a known genre -- written in glyphs which
were even then becoming more and more widely known?

Why did Joe take that additional risk? Why not simply
say that his looking at the mummies' papyrus rolls had
thrown him into a divine trance, during the course of
which he received a "revelation" of Abraham's words?

Joe could have saved himself (and today's LDS leaders) a
lot of trouble, by his carefully inserting an escape
route out of the Abraham maze.

But -- he did not do that. Why not?

UD

tom,

I wanted to reach out to you, was talking to bc on FB he suggested I touch base with you, I have been thinking about topics relating to the aftermath of losing ones religion, have a book outlined (sorta) thought you might like an article along those lines on MT.

I got a little experience with writing if that helps. if it is of interest drop me a line at sparkyguru@gmail.com


tx

I would prefer a Babel Fish.

anointedone Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>

> My point is this. Joseph acquired the papyri in
> 1835 and started to publish his translation in
> March 1842. The 'Rosetta Stone' was found in 1799
> and by the 1820's a Frenchman by the name of
> Jean-François Champollion had used this to
> decipher hieroglyphics. The code had been broken.
> His first translation of the stone was published
> in 1822, 20 years before JS published his
> 'translation' of the BoA. In fact Jean-François
> Champollion died in 1832, 10 years before JS
> publication. An Englishman by the name of Thomas
> Young (who died in 1829) had made great strides in
> the deciphering but Jean-François Champollion
> added to his work. So 2 of the great pioneers in
> breaking the code were dead before JS started to
> publish his phoney 'translation'.
>
Exactly. I used to be a docent at the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum (largest collection of Egyptian artifacts west of the Mississippi, with more than 2000 pieces on exhibit; if you're ever in the SF Bay Area, please do visit). Part of what I did was teach classes on the history of scribes, writing and ::wait for it:: the Rosetta Stone. We actually had a casting that was done for us by the British Museum (although I have seen the original as well). We *know* how to read hieroglyphs, and it was definitely known at the time of this alleged translation.

Ths is (part of) the reason why the Nibley apologetics drive this particular nevermo crazy; we have the actual information. An "inspired translation" (as TSCC is now calling it) just means "nonsense someone made up" at this point. Argh.

/rant by a forensic anthropology major who is also fascinated by the science of linguistics

Bingo Tomas!!!

But of course you know that the bigger issue really was that the Rosetta Stone couldn't fit in Joseph's Hat!!!

We can all thank our lucky stars that French Lieutenant Pierre Francois Bouchard just happened to be around that day when Napoleon's Science Expedition personnel were kicking and moving rocks around huh?

Doesn't it sometimes make you wonder if Mormons even know how to read???

Do Mormons have an inherent "learning problem" when it comes to otherwise widely accepted evidential information???

Can you think of another group or culture of like-minded folks that know absolutely everything about everything yet they never open a non-approved book to expand their horizons???


http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,502888,502888#msg-502888


Or so it seems to me...

Sorry I missed that post BTDTEM. You're the man.

I was surprised that they left the facsimiles in the BOA in the new edition since their translation has been debunked. I guess kids need something to look at when they get bored in Sacrament Meeting.

I was quite young when I was jarred by the similarity of the "fac-similes" in the BoM to things I'd seen in books. I started being highly suspicious at that time about it. I put it on my shelf, though.

Pretty tough to pull out when the text refers directly to fascimile 1.

The can't revise history quite as easily with the internet. Better to leave it hiding in plain site (to most TBMs) than to call attention to it.

Yeah. I tried to figure those out in SM as a kid and always gave up.

JS admitted he was playing the game. He used chunks from the KJV verbatim anachronistically, he translated lyrics from a Chinese tea chest in the Kinderhook hoax provided by Wilbourn Fugate and friends, he described with a straight face the Quakerish residents of the moon, and similar--which he would never have done if he had thought seriously of establishing a new religion intelligent people could adopt. Obviously he was concocting one fraud on top of another as fast as he could, in the cause of self-aggrandizement. Worked like a charm until he hung his rear end in front of Levi Williams' rifle in 1844.

Well said.

You mention it is a slam dunk for his MO. Agreed. Then when you consider he did exactly the same thing with:

D&C 104 - fabricated "revelation of Enoch" - which the church now freely admits he lied about

The Kinderhook plates

The Greek Psalters

It's a half court swish at the buzzer on establishing an MO.

Or maybe JS had heard about the Rosetta Stone and called his BS language "reformed" to get around that complication.

"Discovery of the Stone

"The Stone was discovered in mid-July 1799, but the circumstances are unclear. Some say it was found just lying on the ground. Others claim that it was part of an old wall which was ordered demolished by French soldiers in order to extend Fort Julien. This claim is supported by the Institute's Egyptian map which indicates the fort being on the west bank of the Nile in the area of Rosetta.

"The Stone was discovered by Captain (or Lieutenant, sources differ) of Engineers, Pierre François Xavier Bouchard, who headed the demolition team. Scholars immediately recognized that this stone contained the key to deciphering the ancient Egyptian language. This was because it appeared that the Stone's message was repeated in the three scripts, and because Greek could be read, over time it might be used to decipher the other two. General Jacques-François Menou, military governor of Rosetta, quickly arranged to have the Greek characters translated in order to determine the nature of the text.

"The discovery of the Stone was not made public until September 1799, in an article printed in the 'Courrier de l'Egypte.' It was shipped to Cairo in mid-August, and became an object of study at the Institute. Jean-Joseph Marcel and Remi Raige were able to identify the unknown cursive script, Demotic, but they were unable to read it.

"Copies of the scripts were made by the lithographers Marcel and A. Galland, who covered the Stone's surface with printer's ink and lay sheets of paper over it and used rollers to obtain an impression. Several sheets were sent to scholars throughout Europe, and two copies were presented to citizen Du Theil of the Institute Nationale de Paris by General Charles-François-Joseph Dugua (former Commandant of Cairo) on his return from Egypt.

"A French translation of the text was made by Du Theil, revealing that the Stone 'was a monument to the gratitude of some priests of Alexandria, or some neighboring place, towards Ptolemy Epiphanes.'

"A Latin translation was made in 1801, and English in 1802.


"Deciphering the Stone

"In 1802, a French Orientalist, A.I. Sylvestre de Sacy began to decipher the Demotic text. Equivalents for proper names found in the Greek section were identified in Demotic. Working at the same time, the Swedish diplomat, J.D. Åkerblad recognized the words: 'temples,' and 'Greeks.'

"Later in 1814 the Englishman Thomas Young discovered that Demonic words were not always alphabetically written, and closely compared the Hieroglyphic and Demonic scripts. He made many advances, identifying 86 signs. He studied the repetition of Greek words and looked for the same number of repeated signs in the Demonic script. In this way he identified the words 'and' as well as 'king,' 'Ptolemy,' and 'Egypt.' He was hampered by the missing parts of the Stone and the fact that the Greek and Demonic sections were not literal translations of one another.
He later identified the word 'Ptolemy' in Hieroglyphics and in 1816, he determined that some hieroglyphs were not only word symbols, but at least in some cases were phonetic values.

"The French scholar Jean François Champollion, working at the same time, reached similar conclusions. Each worked with the Stone scripts and with other script discoveries, such as an Hieroglyphic inscription found at Karnak and a bilingual inscription on an obelisk discovered at Philae in 1815 to advance understanding of the ancient Egyptian language.

"In September 1822, Champollion presented his 'Lettre À M. Dacier Relative À l'Alphabet Des Hieroglyphes Phonéntiques,' which deciphered the hieroglyph forms for many of the Roman Emperors of Egypt. Young was unable to make further progress but Champollion continued making great strides. He classified many hieroglyphs, formulating a system of grammar and general decipherment. He was greatly aided by his use of Coptic, a language of the Christian descendants of the Egyptians. He is now looked upon as the "Father of the Decipherment of Hieroglyphs."

("The Discovery of the Rosetta Stone." by Max Sewell, under "Research Studies--Miscellaneous: The Napoleon Series," at: http://www.napoleon-series.org/research/miscellaneous/c_rosetta.html)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/08/2013 06:37PM by steve benson.