(NOTE: There are a total of four Exhibits, A and B in this first post, with B and C in the follow-up post).

--EXHIBIT A: A Professional Mormon Egypytologist Demonstrates that Joseph Smith Knew Nothing About Ancient Egyptian--and Lays OUt How Smith's So-Called "Translation" of the Book of Abraham Proves It

LDS Egyptologist Stephen E. Thompson helps drive the stake into the heart of the Mormon Church myth about Joseph Smith supposedly directly translating from ancient Egyptian papyri. FOR EMPHASIS, Thompson is a REAL Egyptologist.

Thompson shows on a variety of informed fronts that Joseph Smith didn't actually translate the Book of Mormon and that, in fact, Smith knew nothing of genuine substance about ancient Egyptian language, history, beliefs. culture, art or customs. (Never let the facts get in the way of a Mormon prophet's "revelations").

Thompson's explanations of Book of Abraham realities are found in his article entitled, "'Egyptology and the Book of Abraham" (also paragraphed-out for easier reading).

To better understand what Thompson is referring to in his following article, it is recommended that readers examine the Book of Abraham facsimiles, provided under the heading, "Significant Details and Problems that Most LDS Are Not Aware Of--Per Critics of the [Mormon] Church," at: http://www.mormonthink.com/book-of-abraham-issues.htm


Now, Thompson's anaylsis:

"In the entry on the facsimiles from the Book of Abraham in the 'Encyclopedia of Mormonism' we are told that 'the Prophet's explanations of each of the facsimiles accord with present understanding of Egyptian religious practice.'

"This is a remarkable statement in view of the fact that non-Mormon Egyptologists who have commented on Joseph Smith's interpretation of the facsimiles uniformly agree that his interpretations are not correct from the perspective of the Egyptologist, who attempts to interpret Egyptian religious literature and iconography as he or she believes the ancient Egyptians would have.

"For example, in the famous pamphlet compiled by the Reverend Spalding in 1912, James H. Breasted--the first person to hold a chair devoted to Egyptology in America--stated, 'Joseph Smith's interpretation of [the facsimiles] . . . very clearly demonstrates that he was totally unacquainted with the significance of these documents and absolutely ignorant of the simplest facts of Egyptian writing and civilization.'

"More recently, Klaus Baer, speaking of Joseph Smith's interpretation of the original of Facsimile 1 and the accompanying text, noted that 'the Egyptologist interprets it differently, relying on a considerable body of parallel data, research and knowledge.'

"The matter which I propose to examine is whether the 'present understanding of Egyptian religious practice' supports Joseph Smith's explanations of the facsimiles found in the Book of Abraham. In addition, I will discuss the contribution which a study of Egyptian history can make to our understanding of the nature of this book of scripture.

"Let us begin with Facsimiles 1 and 3 of the Book of Abraham.

"A correct understanding of the original context and purpose of these scenes has been made possible by the recovery of the Joseph Smith Papyri [P.JS] from the files of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 1967. Within this group of papyri is the original from which Facsimile 1 was derived.

"A study of the papyri shows that P.JS 1 was originally a vignette belonging to an Egyptian funerary text known as the First Book of Breathings, dating to the first century B.C., portions of which are also among the papyri recovered by the LDS church.

"A comparison of the material found in some of the Kirtland (Ohio) Egyptian papers with P.JS 1 and 11 indicates that the scene was damaged when Joseph Smith received it and that the missing portions were restored when Facsimile 1 was created.

"It is also very probable that Facsimile 3 served as the concluding vignette of this text. This conclusion is based on the fact that the name of the individual for whom this particular copy of the Book of Breathings was prepared occurs as Horus in both P.JS 1 and Facsimile 3, that Facsimile 1 and 3 are similar in size, and that scenes similar to Facsimile 3 also occur in other known copies of the First Book of Breathings.

"'The First Book of Breathings' is an Egyptian funerary text whose earliest attestation is the end of the 30th Egyptian Dynasty (ca. 380-343 B.C.). This text was buried with the deceased and was intended to serve as a sort of 'passport and guide' to achieving a blessed state in the hereafter. This involved the continued existence of the deceased in the company of Osiris, king of the Netherworld, and with the sun-god Re in his celestial bark.

"As a first step in achieving these goals, the deceased had to undergo the proper rituals of mummification. Papyrus Joseph Smith 1 (Facs. 1 in Abr.) depicts the god Anubis (Fig. 3 in Facs. 1) officiating in the embalming rites for the deceased individual, Horus (Fig. 2 in Facs. 1), shown lying on the bier. This scene does not portray a sacrifice of any sort.

"To note just a few instances in which Joseph Smith's interpretations of these figures differ from the way they are to be understood in their original context, consider the fact that Fig. 11 (in Facs. 1), which Joseph interprets as 'designed to represent the pillars of heaven, as understood by the Egyptians,' is actually a palace fa[c]ade, called a serekh, which was a frequent decoration on funerary objects. The serekh originally depicted 'the front of a fortified palace . . . with its narrow gateway, floral tr'cery above the gates, clerestories and recessed buttresses.'

"Furthermore, Joseph interpreted Figure 12 (Facs. 1) as 'raukeeyang' [a transliteration of the Hebrew word for firmament], signifying expanse or firmament over our heads; but in this case, in relation to this subject, the Egyptians meant it to signify 'Shaumau' [another Hebrew word], to be high, or the heavens, answering to the Hebrew word 'Shaumahyeem' [another Hebrew word].'

"In fact, these strokes represent water in which the crocodile, symbolizing the god Horus (Fig. 9 in Facs. 1), swims. Altcough it appears that the water is supported by the palace fa[c]ade, this is simply an illusion produced by the perspective adopted in Egyptian art. Actually, everything shown above the fa[c]ade is to be understood as occurring behind it, i.e., Figure 11 represents the wall surrounding the palace in which the activity depicted in the scene occurs.

"Baer has described Facsimile 3 (in Abr.) as 'a summary, in one illustration, of what the [text] promised: The deceased, after successfully undergoing judgement, is welcomed into the presence of Osiris.' Facsimile 3 shows the deceased, Horus (Fig. 5), being introduced before Osiris, the god of the dead (Fig. 1), by the goddess Maat (Fig. 4) and the god Anubis (Fig. 6). Osiris's wife, Isis (Fig. 2), stands behind him. That Figure 6 is to be identified as Anubis I consider a virtual certainty, owing to the fact that he is black (which is the customary color of Anubis) and because of the spike found on his head, which is actually the remnant of a dog's ear.

"In my opinion, none of Joseph Smith's interpretations of the figures in these scenes accord with the way in which the ancient Egyptians probably understood them.

"So, if this is the way the ancient Egyptians would have interpreted these figures, how can the statement be made that the prophet's explanations of each of the facsimiles accords 'with present understanding of Egyptian religious practice'?

"First, it is important to note that the originals of these facsimiles of the Book of Abraham were created for a specific purpose--to provide for the successful transition of an individual to the afterlife upon his death. Every figure in the facsimiles had as its purpose the accomplishing of that goal. While it is possible that some of these figures might appear in other contexts and take on other meanings in those contexts, in the context of the funerary papyri their interpretation is related to funerary purposes.

"The approach taken in attempting to support Joseph's interpretations of these figures is to compare them with figures found in other historical and textual contexts. It is simply not valid, however, to search through 3,000 years of Egyptian religious iconography to find parallels which can be pushed, prodded, squeezed or linked in an attempt to justify Joseph's interpretations.

"For example, there has been an effort made to associate Facsimile 1 with an Egyptian royal festival known as the Sed festival, whose purpose was 'the symbolic renewing of the power of the kingship.' [Hugh] Nibley has claimed that 'in [the Sed-festival] the king is ritually put to death and then restored to life. An important part of the Sed festival was the choosing of a substitute to die for the king so that he would not have to undergo the painful process to achieve resurrection.'

"There are serious obstacles which render this comparison invalid.

"First, there is the element of time. The last known depiction of the Sed festival dates to 690-664 B.C., and there is no evidence that the Sed festival was celebrated during the Greco-Roman period--the time during which P.JS 1 was created.

"Second, it is important to note the context in which these supposed parallels occur. Scenes of the Sed festival occurring in a private context, i.e., on an object belonging to a non-royal individual, are extremely rare and I know of none which occur in funerary papyri.

"Third, the so-called 'lion-furniture' scenes from the Sed festival bear no resemblance to the scene in P.JS 1.

"Finally, it should be noted that, while early generations of Egyptologists thought that the Sed festival involved the ritual murder of the king or his representative, more recent analysis has shown this is not the case. So even if the scene were derived from earlier depictions of the Sed festival, it would still have nothing to do with the sacrifice of anyone.

"Nibley has compared Facsimile 3 (in Abr.) with scenes from Eighteenth Dynasty (1550-1295 B.C.) Egyptian tombs depicting the tomb owner in the presence of the King, since Joseph Smith claims that the scene shows Abraham 'reasoning upon the principles of Astronomy, in the King's court.'

"Comparison of these two types of scenes runs into many of the same obstacles as the attempt to equate Facsimile 1 with the Sed festival scenes.

"There is a gap of over 1,000 years between the two types of scenes being compared. Nibley attempts to get around this by stating that this is a 'timeless scene recognizable from predynastic monuments on down to the latest times.' He cites no evidence which substantiates this claim. The work which Nibley relies on in making his comparison does not discuss any examples of such scenes from the period from which the Joseph Smith papyri derive. In fact, the scenes with which Nibley wishes to compare Facsimile 3 are atypical when viewed from the perspective of the history of Egyptian tomb decoration. It is also significant that the type of scene with which Nibley wishes to compare Facsimile 3 does not occur in funerary papyri. Comparison of Facsimile 3 to this type of scene is as spurious as that of Facsimile 1 with Sed festival scenes.

"In addition to invalidating comparisons made between the facsimiles and other genres of Egyptian texts, attention to the original context of the facsimiles also serves to settle an on-going debate about whether Figure 3 in Facsimile 1 originally held a knife.

"Before the discovery of the papyri it was argued if this knife was original or if it was added by Joseph Smith. With the discovery of the original of Facsimile 1, it became apparent that Joseph indeed was the source of the 'restoration' of the knife, as demonstrated by [Ed] Ashment. There continue to be attempts, however, to argue that a knife was originally present based on accounts from individuals who saw the papyri in Kirtland or Nauvoo.

"The question never asked in arguments for the original presence of a knife is, '[W]hat would the knife have meant in its original, funerary, context[?]' As stated earlier, Facsimile 1 represents the deceased individual, Horus, lying on a bier undergoing the rites of mummification by the god Anubis. While part of the mummification process did involve evisceration, I am aware of no instance in which this procedure is depicted.

"Given the Egyptians' reticence in depicting things which might be harmful to the deceased in his tomb, it is unlikely that an Egyptian would ever wish himself depicted being approached by a god with a knife. Knives are usually found in the hands of demons, protective deities such as Bes and Thoeris (who were the Egyptian god and goddess responsible for protecting women during childbirth), the door-keepers in the afterworld and the devourer in the scenes of the judgement of the dead. I know of no instance in which Anubis is depicted with a knife. The original context of Facsimile 1 would not seem to admit the possibility of a knife in Anubis's hand and the restoration of a knife does not, in my opinion, represent the original state of the papyrus.

"Facsimile 2 is a drawing of an Egyptian funerary amulet known as a hypocephalus, which was placed under the head of the mummy and was intended to protect the head of the deceased, provide him with the sun's life-giving warmth and to make it possible for him to join the sun god Re in his celestial boat, and thereby insure his continued, pleasant existence in the next life. Hypocephali are attested in Egypt during the Late Period and the Ptolemaic period.

"The interpretation of Facsimile 2 poses more of a challenge to Egyptologists and therefore is a more fruitful ground for those seeking to justify Joseph Smith's interpretations of the figures in this facsimile.

"The challenge arises from the fact that many of the figures in the hypocephalus are not labeled and can only be tentatively identified through citing parallel illustrations and allusions in other texts. In interpreting the figures in the hypocephalus, Egyptologists rely on the fact that 'the image of the hypocephalus presents the rising from the Duat, the rebirth of the deceased with the sun, the scenes are rich illustrations of Ch. 162 of the Book of the Dead.'

"Concerning Joseph Smith's interpretations of the figures in this facsimile, it has been stated that 'his explanations are, in general, reasonable in light of modern Egyptological knowledge.' A comparison of Smith's interpretations with current Egyptological scholarship shows that this statement is also incorrect.

"For example, Figure 5 is identified by Joseph Smith as 'Enish-go-on-dosh,' which he claims 'is said by the Egyptians to be the sun.' This figure actually depicts the celestial cow-goddess known as 'Ih.t-wrt,' or 'Mh.t-wr.t' (the great flood), or Hathor. Varga has identified this figure as 'the most important in a hypocephalus.' These goddesses were thought of as the mother of Re, the sun-god, with 'Mh.t-wr.t' representing the flood from which he arises daily.

"It is important to note that, while this figure is associated with the sun, i.e., as the mother of the sun-god, it is never equated with the sun. The sun is always a masculine deity in Egyptian religion. Joseph Smith's interpretation might be adjudged close by some, but in my opinion it cannot be judged as 'generally correct.'

"As another example of the attempt to justify Joseph's interpretations of the figures in this facsimile, note Facsimile 2, Figure 4, which has been claimed to be an instance in which the prophet 'hits it right on the mark.' The explanation given in the Book of Abraham notes that this figure 'answers to the Hebrew word "Raukeeyang," signifying expanse, or the firmament of the heavens, also a numerical figure, in Egyptian signifying 1,000."

"Admittedly, certain identification of this figure is not possible with the information currently available to the Egyptologist. Varga originally identified the figure as the god Sokar but later resorted to the more vague description of 'the mummy of a falcon with outspread wings.' The problem is that this figure does not match exactly the iconography of any known falcon god, i.e., mummiform with outspread wings. One suggestion is that this figure is to be identified with the falcon who rises from the Duat in Book of the Dead spell 71.

"When attempting to evaluate the correctness of Joseph's explanation of the figure, it should be noted that there is no evidence that the ancient Egyptians ever depicted the sky (firmament of the heavens) as a ship of any sort.

"In order to get around this, Mormon apologists dissect the wings of the bird in the ship and compare them with depictions of the sky as outspread wings. [Michael D.] Rhodes [whose FARMS fax Neal A. Maxwell invoked] identifies the bird in Figure 4 as Horus-Sokar and claims that 'Horus was a personification of the sky.' It should be pointed out, however, that Joseph's interpretation of the figure apparently applies to the whole figure, not to only a part of it. I can see no justification for removing a part of the figure and then claiming to find interpretations which can be forced to agree with Joseph's explanation.

"In order to support Joseph's identification of this figure as the number 1,000, reference is made to a supposed Egyptian 'ship of 1,000' found in a passage from a sarcophagus dating to the Egyptian 26th Dynasty. There we find the expression 'wi3.f n h3 r tpwy.fy,' which Sander-Hansen renders as 'seinem Schiffe der 1000 bis zu seinen beiden K pfen' (his ship of 1,000 up to its two heads). In Sander-Hansen's discussion of the passage, he notes that he understands this phrase to mean a ship 1,000 cubits in length. This text is a later version of Book of the Dead Spell 136a.

"Recent translators have recognized that 'h3' in this phrase does not refer to the number 1,000, but to the word 'h3.' meaning flowers or buds. T. G. Allen, in his translation of the Book of the Dead, renders the phrase as 'the bark with blossom(s) at its ends,' and Faulkner, in his translation, renders it as 'the bark . . . which has lotus-flowers on its ends.' In connection with this spell, Milde notes that 'lotus-shaped prows are very common in various vignettes.'

"In other words, there is no Egyptian 'ship of 1,000,' only a ship with lotus-shaped prows.

"And all this is quite beside the point. Joseph, in his explanation of the figure in the facsimile said that it was 'also a numerical figure, in Egyptian signifying 1,000.' It was not. There is no evidence that any ship was ever used as a numerical figure to represent 1,000 or any other number. It should also be noted that of those who wish to equate the figure from the facsimile with the so-called "ship of 1,000,' none has ever produced an image of this ship and then compared it to the facsimile. It is simply assumed that if a ship of 1,000 can be found in an Egyptian text, it must be the one Joseph Smith was talking about.

"Finally, it has been repeatedly claimed that Figure 6 in Facsimile 2, which is a depiction of the four sons of Horus (also found as Figures 5-8 in Facsimile 1) 'could indeed "represent this earth in its four quarters" in the ancient world, as the explanation to the facsimile in the Book of Abraham says.' As far as ancient Egypt was concerned, there is no evidence currently available to support this claim. There is only one context in which the sons of Horus are associated with the cardinal directions, i.e., the 'earth in its four quarters.' They were sent out, in the form of birds, as heralds of the king's coronation. In this setting, Duamutef (Facs. 1, Fig. 6) went to the East, Qebehsenuef (Facs. 1, Fig. 5) to the West, Amset (Facs. 1, Fig. 8) to the South and Hapi (Facs. 1, Fig. 7) to the North. I must emphasize that it is only in this context, and in the form of birds, that these gods were associated with the cardinal points. In a funerary context no such relationship is evident. Furthermore, the fact that these gods were sent to the four quarters of the earth does not mean that the Egyptians equated them with these directions. There is no evidence that they did so.


"Authorship

"One area in which the field of Egyptology aids our understanding of the nature of the Book of Abraham is in its authorship.

"On one hand, it has been claimed that the Book of Abraham is an actual Abraham holograph. Recently, Paul Hoskisson stated that 'the content of the Book of Abraham did not pass through numerous revisions, the hands of countless scribes. . . . It purports to be a rendering of an ancient document originally composed by Abraham himself' and, as such, he maintains that the Book of Abraham cannot contain anachronisms, i.e., things that could not have occurred during Abraham's lifetime.

"Others have argued that while the contents of the text might in some way go back to Abraham, Abraham himself was not the author of the text of the Book of Abraham as it now stands in the Pearl of Great Price.

"In view of the fact that the heading of the Book of Abraham in the current edition of the Pearl of Great Price states that the text represents 'the writings of Abraham . . . written by his own hand, upon papyrus,' I believe it is likely that many members of the [Mormon] Church believe that the Book of Abraham is the result of a translation of a direct Abraham holograph.

"One way to judge whether the Book of Abraham was translated directly from an Abraham holograph is by whether the text of the book contains anachronisms.

"Of course, the first thing that has to be determined is when Abraham lived. The answer to this is by no means simple and scholarly estimates for the age of the patriarchs range from 2200 to 1200 B.C. Many scholars maintain that it is not possible to define a time-period as the most likely setting for the tales of the patriarchs. Others would argue that while it is not possible to assign a date to the lifetime of Abraham, it is possible to situate chronologically the so-called 'Patriarchal Age.' Many scholars would place this sometime during the first half of the second millennium, i.e., 2000-1500 B.C., while others would narrow the time frame within this period.

"In our search for anachronisms it would be safe to say that anything occurring after 1500 B.C. is definitely anachronistic to Abraham's lifetime and since Abraham is portrayed as the first patriarch, anything occurring at the end of this period is probably anachronistic.

"What, then, are the anachronisms which I believe can be identified in the Book of Abraham?

"First, the association of Facsimile 1 with the Book of Abraham cannot derive from Abraham since Facsimile 1 dates to approximately 100 B.C.

"There are passages in the text of the Book of Abraham which are attributed to Abraham and which refer to Facsimile 1 (Abr. 1:12, 14). The most straightforward reading of these passages indicates that Abraham himself was responsible for the association of Facsimile 1 with his own attempted sacrifice.

"The book opens with Abraham speaking in the first person (v. 1), and there is no reason to think that the 'I' in verse 12, where we read 'I will refer you to the representation at the commencement of this record,' refers to anyone except Abraham. These passages are unquestionably anachronistic to Abraham's day.

"Second, there are several proper nouns in the text of the Book of Abraham which also postdate Abraham. I will consider them in the order of their occurrence in the text.

"The first such term, Chaldea, occurs in Abraham 1:1, and subsequently verses 8, 13, 20, 23, 29-30, and 2:4. The Chaldeans (Hebrew: 'kasdim') were a people who spoke a West-Semitic language similar to Aramaic and who appeared in the ninth century B.C. in the land south of Babylonia, and appear to have migrated from Syria. Westermann has noted that the city of Ur could be qualified as 'of the Chaldees' only from the 10th to the 6th centuries, in any case, not before the first millennium.

"The second anachronistic word we encounter in the text is 'Pharaoh.' In Abraham 1:6 we find 'Pharaoh, king of Egypt.' In Abraham 1:20 we are told that Pharaoh 'signifies king by royal blood.' There is one passage in which the term is treated as a name, rather than as a title. In Abraham 1:25 we read 'the first government of Egypt was established by Pharaoh, the eldest son of Egyptus, the daughter of Ham.'

"The word 'Pharaoh' derives from an Egyptian term for the king's palace, which in Egyptian could be called 'pr-c3,' i.e., 'great house.' This term is not attested as a title for the ruler of Egypt until 1504 B.C., during the reign of Thutmosis III, but was probably used as such earlier in the Eighteenth Dynasty (which began in 1560 B.C.).

"It has been suggested that 'Pharaoh' was simply Joseph's method of translation for a word meaning 'king' and that the word never actually occurred in the text. I would reiterate that in Abraham 1:25 'Pharaoh' appears to be used as a proper noun. That Joseph considered 'Pharaoh' to be an individual's name is apparent from his explanation of Facsimile 3, Figure 2, where we read "King Pharaoh, whose name is given in the characters above his head."

"The next anachronistic word encountered is the name of the place of the attempted sacrifice of Abraham, which is called 'Potiphar's hill' (Abr. 1:10, 20). ''Potiphar is the Hebrew form of the Egyptian name 'P3-di-p3-rc,' which means 'the one whom Re (the sun god), has given.' The name occurs in two forms in the Old Testament, as 'Potiphar'--the name of the Egyptian who bought Joseph (Gen. 37:36)--and as 'Potiphera'-- the priest of On, who was Joseph's father-in-law (Gen. 41:45). Names of the form 'P3-di DN' are common in Egypt but are first attested during the 11th century B.C. The only occurrence of the Egyptian equivalent of 'Potiphar' is found on Cairo stele 65444, which dates to the Egyptian 21st dynasty (1069-945 B.C.).

"The final anachronistic name in the Book of Abraham is Egyptus. In Abraham 1:23 we read: 'The land of Egypt being first discovered by a woman, who was the daughter of Ham, and the daughter of Egyptus, which in the Chaldean signifies Egypt, which signifies that which is forbidden.'

"First, 'Egyptus' is not a Chaldean word, but Greek, and does not mean 'forbidden' in any language. The Greek 'Egyptus' apparently derives from Egyptian 'hwt-k3-pth' [meaning] 'the house of the "ka of Ptah,"' which was the name of a temple of Ptah in Memphis. During the New Kingdom, this term came to designate the town of Memphis, the capital of Egypt, in which the temple was located.

"There is some evidence that forms of this name were being used by foreigners to refer to the country of Egypt. It is attested in a Mycenaean Linear B tablet from Knossos, which is usually dated to around 1375 B.C., i.e., 125 years after Abraham, as a man's name, presupposing that it was already a name for Egypt. Note also that the text (Abr. 1:22-25) implies that Egypt derived its name from an eponymous ancestor, Egyptus. Given the facts concerning the origin of the word 'Egyptus,' however, this cannot represent historical reality.

"From the foregoing discussion, it appears that if one accepts a date of sometime in the first half of the second millennium for Abraham, then there are four anachronistic names in the text: 'Chaldea,' 'Potiphar,' 'Egyptus' and probably 'Pharaoh.' Since these are names, it is not likely that they are translation equivalents of other words in the original text.

"I believe that there is sufficient evidence of anachronisms in the text of the Book of Abraham to conclude that it cannot be an actual Abraham holograph, i.e., that it was not 'written by his [Abraham's] own hand upon papyrus.'


"History

"One of the primary events of the Book of Abraham is the attempted sacrifice of Abraham. We are told that in the land of the Chaldeans the 'god of Pharaoh,' which apparently should be taken to mean 'the god Pharaoh,' was worshipped (Abr. 1:7, 9-10, 13, 17). There was even a priesthood dedicated to the worship of Pharaoh and this priesthood offered human sacrifices to him. We are told that a 'thank-offering' was offered consisting of a child (v. 10), and that three 'virgins' were killed on the sacrificial altar because they 'would not bow down to worship gods of wood or of stone' (v. 11). Finally, the priest of Pharaoh attempted to sacrifice Abraham, at which point the Lord intervened, rescued Abraham and destroyed the altar and the priest (vv. 15-20).

"From this we can infer several things. Apparently Pharaoh and several other Egyptian deities were being worshipped in Chaldea. We are not told specifically that the other gods were Egyptian but we are told that the worship practices were 'after the manner of the Egyptians' (Abr. 1:9, 11) and the images which are said to represent these gods are Egyptian (v. 14). We can therefore plausibly infer that they were Egyptian deities.

"Part of the worship of these gods involved human sacrifice. The religion of that time and place was intolerant; anyone choosing not to engage in these worship practices ran the risk of losing his or her life. These practices seem to have been endorsed or promoted, or at least encouraged, by the Egyptian pharaoh. We are told that at the death of the priest who attempted to sacrifice Abraham there was 'great mourning . . . in the court of Pharaoh' (v. 20).

"The first thing we have to ask ourselves is to what extent were Egyptian worship practices introduced into Asia. If one accepts that Ur of the Chaldees refers to Tell Muqayyar, in southern Mesopotamia, then from the start the text must be judged historically erroneous because the Egyptians never had a strong cultural influence on Mesopotamia. There have been attempts to locate Abraham's Ur near Haran. This area is also outside of Egypt's sphere of influence, even at the height of its empire.

"In order to evaluate the verisimilitude of the account found in the Book of Abraham, we have to examine Egypt's religious policy toward its Asiatic Empire, which first came into existence during the New Kingdom. The results of such a study indicate that Egyptian gods were only rarely worshipped in Syria-Palestine, and then exceptionally. Rather than introducing Egyptian gods into Asia, the most common occurrence was for Egyptians stationed at posts and garrisons in Palestine to adopt the worship of the local Asiatic gods.

"Stefan Wimmer has recently written that the Egyptians 'never thought about forcing the local population [of Syria-Palestine] to forsake their gods in exchange for Egyptian ones.' Donald Redford states that the Egyptians 'forced no one to accept Egyptian ways.' Concerning the Egyptians' religious tolerance, J. Cerny has written:

"'Egyptians were tolerant to each other within Egypt itself and they were equally tolerant to the gods of a conquered country. . . . towards the native gods they behaved as they so often did in Egypt towards the god or goddess of another town: they simply considered them as different names and forms of their own Egyptian deities. It is clear that in these circumstances no heresy could arise and with the exception of a short period under and immediately after Ekhnaton, nothing is known of religious persecution of any kind in Egypt.'

"One could argue that it is the Chaldeans doing the persecuting, not the Egyptians. In response, it could be said that Chaldeans had nothing to gain from forcing Egyptian worship practices on their people since Egyptians did not expect it.

"Further, there is no evidence that any Asiatic land ever became so thoroughly Egyptianized that they would have adopted such a zealous attitude toward the Egyptian pharaoh on their own. Again, Redford has noted that 'we have no evidence that these "official" Egyptian cults exerted a serious attraction on the local population [of Canaan].' Bleiberg maintains that "in Palestine, traces of the state religion of Egypt can be found. These traces, however are restricted to the Ramesside period [1295-1069 B.C.]. Their influence is superficial."

"So, it appears that in the area over which they had direct control, and at the height of their imperial power in Syria-Palestine, the Egyptians made no effort to introduce their religion to their subject peoples and they, in turn, exhibited little interest in the gods of their conquerors.

"It is therefore extremely unlikely that any of the areas suggested for the location of Ur would ever have adopted Egyptian religious practices to the extent called for in the Book of Abraham.


"Conclusion

"In the preceding I have argued that:

"(1) Joseph Smith's interpretations of the facsimiles in the Book of Abraham are not in agreement with the meanings which these figures had in their original, funerary, context;

"(2) anachronisms in the text of the book make it impossible that it was translated from a text written by Abraham himself; and

"(3) what we know about the relationship between Egypt and Asia renders the account of the attempted sacrifice of Abraham extremely implausible.

"If one accepts that Joseph Smith was using the facsimiles in a fashion which was not consonant with their original purpose, it does not make sense to then insist that 'the Prophet's explanations of each of the facsimiles accord with present understanding of Egyptian religious practices.'

"I see no evidence that Joseph Smith had a correct conception of 'Egyptian religious practices' or that a knowledge of such was essential to the production of the Book of Abraham."


--"Stephen Thompson received his Bachelors of Arts in Near Eastern Studies from Brigham Young University in 1984. He received his Masters of Arts and his Doctor of Philosophy in Egyptology from Brown University in 1988 and 1991, respectively."

("Egyptology and the Book of Abraham," by Stephen E. Thompson, at: http://www.lds-mormon.com/thompson_book_of_abraham.shtml



A few more gems from Thompson on Smith's utter ignorance about and, phony "translation" of, ancient Egyptian:

". . . [T]here are several proper nouns in the text of the Book of Abraham which also postdate Abraham. I will consider them in the order of their occurrence in the text.

"The first such term, Chaldea, occurs in Abraham 1:1, and subsequently verses 8, 13, 20, 23, 29-30, and 2:4. The Chaldeans (Hebrew: 'kasdim') were a people who spoke a West-Semitic language similar to Aramaic and who appeared in the ninth century B.C. in the land south of Babylonia, and appear to have migrated from Syria. Westermann has noted that the city of Ur could be qualified as 'of the Chaldees' only from the 10th to the 6th centuries, in any case, not before the first millennium."

("Egyptology and the Book of Abraham," by Stephen E. Thompson, at: http://www.lds-mormon.com/thompson_book_of_abraham.shtml

_____



--EXHIBIT B: Mormon Apostle Hugh B. Brown Admitted that Joseph Smith Knew Nothing About Ancient Egyptian and Couldn't Translate It

When it comes to the inauthenticity of Joseph Smith and his Book of Abraham, LDS apostle and member of the First Presidency Hugh B. Brown was on to something. Brown is said to have admitted his assessment to Mormon amateur archaeologist and eventual LDS non-believer, Thomas S. Ferguson. Ferguson played a prominent role in 20th-century efforts to scientifically authenticate the Book of Mormon. Authors Richard K. Ostling and Joan K. Ostling, in their work, “Mormon America: The Power and the Promise,” describe Ferguson as “[t]he father of LDS Mesoamerican research"--who ultimately “concluded that the [B]ook [of Mormon] was a piece of fiction."

(Richard and Joan K. Ostling, "Mormon America," Chapter 16, "The Gold Bible" [San Francisco, California: HarperSanFrancisco, 1999, p. 272)



As to the nature of Brown's opinions that he is said to have shared with Ferguson, Brown reportedly did not accept Smith's claims of having translated ancient Egyptian--with Brown going so far as to also acknowledge that the Book of Abraham itself was not genuine. Mormonism researchers Jerald and Sandra Tanner point to a letter Ferguson wrote to another member of the Mormon Church, James Boyack, on 13 March 1971, in which Ferguson described a closed-door meeting he had with Brown:

"According to Mr. Ferguson, Apostle Brown had [along with Ferguson] also come to the conclusion that the Book of Abraham was false and was in favor of the [Mormon] church giving it up.

"A few years later, Hugh B. Brown said he could 'not recall' making the statements Thomas Stuart Ferguson attributed to him.

"Ferguson, however, was apparently referring to the same incident in the letter of March 13, 1971, when he stated: 'I must conclude that Joseph Smith had not the remotest skill in things Egyptian-hieroglyphics. To my surprise, one of the highest officials in the Mormon Church agreed with that conclusion . . . privately in one-to-one [c]onversation.'"

(Jerald and Sandra Tanner, “Ferguson's Two Faces,” in “Salt Lake City Messenger,” Issue #69, September 1988; included in the article is a copy of Ferguson's actual letter, at: http://www.utlm.org/newsletters/no69.htm)


Ferguson's fatalistic doubts about the authenticity of Mormon scripture--and how those doubts were privately shared by him with a sympathetic Brown--is chronicled in telling detail by Stan Larson, curator of the J. Willard Marriott Library at the University of Utah, as found in his book, “Quest for the Gold Plates: Thomas Stuart Ferguson's Archaeological Search for the Book of Mormon." Larson reports how Ferguson's growing disbelief in the truthfulness of Mormonism's canonized scripture led him in December 1970 to make a “pivotal trip to Salt Lake City . . . for a very important purpose":

"Ferguson first paid a visit to ['the liberal LDS apostle'] Brown in his office at LDS Church headquarters and reviewed with him the translations of the Egyptologists had made of the Joseph Smith Egyptian papyri.

"During this conversation Ferguson emotionally exclaimed to Brown that Joseph Smith did not possess 'the remotest skill' in translating Egyptian hieroglyphs.

"Ferguson reported an unexpected response from Brown: 'To my surprise, one of the highest officials [Hugh B. Brown] in the Mormon Church agreed with that conclusion when I made that very statement to him.'"

"['Ferguson, letter to James Boyack, 13 March 1971, in Ferguson Collection, University of Utah. For a reproduction of this letter, see Charles M. Larson, 'By His Own Hand Upon Papyrus: A New Look at the Joseph Smith Papyri' [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Institute for Religious Research, 1992), pp. 182-83]'"


Larson references an additional source that lends credence to Ferguson's description of Brown's expressed reservations about Smith's professed ability to translate ancient Egyptian and about the Book of Abraham as a supposedly divinely-translated work. It came in the form of an interview conducted with Ferguson by LDS Church Historical Department employee Ronald O. Barney on 4 January 1983. Barney's account of his interview with Ferguson reads as follows:

“Ferguson said the thing that first led him to seriously question the [Mormon] church was the papyri purported to be the source of the Book of Abraham. He said he took he took a photograph of the papyri to a couple of friends of his that were scholars at Cal., Berkeley. They described the documents as funeral texts. This bothered Ferguson in a serious way!

"Later he said that he took the evidence to Hugh B. Brown. . . . After reviewing the evidence with Brother Brown he [Ferguson] said that Brother Brown agreed with him that it was not scripture. He did not say or infer [imply] that it was his evidence that convinced Brother Brown of this conclusion. But nevertheless, he did say that Hugh B. Brown did not believe the Book of Abraham was what the [Mormon] church said it was.”

(Barney's interview was typed 19 April 1984 and is located in Box 77, Fd 13, Marquardt Collection, University of Utah)


Larson then notes that the door to closer examination of Ferguson's assertions has been slammed shut by the Mormon Church:

“Brown's harsh indictment [as expressed to Ferguson] of the official position of the LDS Church--that the Book of Abraham is not 'what the church said it was'--cannot be either confirmed or disproved by the Hugh B. Brown papers in the LDS Church archives, because they are closed to researchers."

Larson does mention, however, the release of a carefully-worded and selectively-edited non-denial denial made by Brown regarding his (Brown's) conversation with Ferguson:

“The following is the only available paragraph of a photocopy of a letter purportedly dictated by Brown and sent to Robert Hancock:

"'I do not recall ever having said anything to Mr. Ferguson which would have led him to think I do not believe the Book of Mormon to be true. This is certainly not the case, for I know, even as I live, that Christ is directing this Church and that Joseph Smith was His prophet chosen to restore His Church in its fullness.'

"([Hugh B. Brown], letter to [Robert Hancock], [partial photocopy], 26 September 1974, in Box 77, Fd 13, Marquardt Collection, University of Utah)


Larson points out what is noticeably missing from Brown's partially-released correspondence:

“It should be noted that Brown did not address the central question of whether he and Ferguson discussed Joseph Smith's inability to translate Egyptian hieroglyphics.”

Larson further notes that “[d]uring this meeting [with Brown], Ferguson 'seemed to be absolutely convinced that [Hugh B.] Brown did not believe the Book of Abraham,' that is to say, did not believe that the Book of Abraham was a translation from Egyptian. Since it is assumed that Brown believed that it was inspired scripture, this seems to indicate that Brown held a non-historical, 'mythic interpretation' of the Book of Abraham,” as suggested by Edgar C. Snow, Jr., in his article, “One Face of the Hero: In Search of the Mythological Joseph Smith.”

(Stan Larson, “Quest for the Gold Plates: Thomas Stuart Ferguson's Archaeological Search for the Book of Mormon" [Salt Lake City, Utah: Freethinker Press, in association with Smith Research Associates, 1996, pp. 132, 138-39, 165fn12, 166fn14, 166fn15 and fn16, 212]; see also, Edgar C. Snow, "One Face of the Hero: In Search of the Mythological Joseph Smith, in “Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought” 27, Fall 1994, p. 247n39).


To summarize:

Ferguson reported that Hugh B. Brown personally told him in a meeting with Brown in Salt Lake City, Utah, that:

--Brown did not believe Joseph Smith could translate ancient Egyptian; and

--Brown did not believe that the Book of Abraham was what the Mormon Church claimed it was.

Larson reports that:

--Ferguson's account of meeting with a confessing Brown was backed by an employee of the LDS Church' Historical Department who interviewd Ferguson about the meeting;

--Brown acknowledged having met with Ferguson but insisted in a partially-released letter that he did not recall making any such assertion about the Book of Abraham to Ferguson; and

--the Mormon Church has refused to allow researcher access to Brown's papers in order to further investigate Ferguson's Hugh B. Brown: Joseph Smith Couldn't Translate the Book of Abraham . . .

. . . because Joseph Smith didn't know a damn about ancient Egyptian. Which means that not only is the Book of Abraham bigoted, it was translated bogusly.


When it comes to the inauthenticity of Joseph Smith and his Book of Abraham, LDS apostle and member of the First Presidency Hugh B. Brown was on to something. Brown is said to have admitted his assessment to Mormon amateur archaeologist and eventual LDS non-believer, Thomas S. Ferguson. Ferguson played a prominent role in 20th-century efforts to scientifically authenticate the Book of Mormon. Authors Richard K. Ostling and Joan K. Ostling, in their work, “Mormon America: The Power and the Promise,” describe Ferguson as “[t]he father of LDS Mesoamerican research"--who ultimately “concluded that the [B]ook [of Mormon] was a piece of fiction."

(Richard and Joan K. Ostling, "Mormon America," Chapter 16, "The Gold Bible" [San Francisco, California: HarperSanFrancisco, 1999, p. 272)



As to the nature of Brown's opinions that he is said to have shared with Ferguson, Brown reportedly did not accept Smith's claims of having translated ancient Egyptian--with Brown going so far as to also acknowledge that the Book of Abraham itself was not genuine. Mormonism researchers Jerald and Sandra Tanner point to a letter Ferguson wrote to another member of the Mormon Church, James Boyack, on 13 March 1971, in which Ferguson described a closed-door meeting he had with Brown:

"According to Mr. Ferguson, Apostle Brown had [along with Ferguson] also come to the conclusion that the Book of Abraham was false and was in favor of the [Mormon] church giving it up.

"A few years later, Hugh B. Brown said he could 'not recall' making the statements Thomas Stuart Ferguson attributed to him.

"Ferguson, however, was apparently referring to the same incident in the letter of March 13, 1971, when he stated: 'I must conclude that Joseph Smith had not the remotest skill in things Egyptian-hieroglyphics. To my surprise, one of the highest officials in the Mormon Church agreed with that conclusion . . . privately in one-to-one [c]onversation.'"

(Jerald and Sandra Tanner, “Ferguson's Two Faces,” in “Salt Lake City Messenger,” Issue #69, September 1988; included in the article is a copy of Ferguson's actual letter, at: http://www.utlm.org/newsletters/no69.htm)


Ferguson's fatalistic doubts about the authenticity of Mormon scripture--and how those doubts were privately shared by him with a sympathetic Brown--is chronicled in telling detail by Stan Larson, curator of the J. Willard Marriott Library at the University of Utah, as found in his book, “Quest for the Gold Plates: Thomas Stuart Ferguson's Archaeological Search for the Book of Mormon." Larson reports how Ferguson's growing disbelief in the truthfulness of Mormonism's canonized scripture led him in December 1970 to make a “pivotal trip to Salt Lake City . . . for a very important purpose":

"Ferguson first paid a visit to ['the liberal LDS apostle'] Brown in his office at LDS Church headquarters and reviewed with him the translations of the Egyptologists had made of the Joseph Smith Egyptian papyri.

"During this conversation Ferguson emotionally exclaimed to Brown that Joseph Smith did not possess 'the remotest skill' in translating Egyptian hieroglyphs.

"Ferguson reported an unexpected response from Brown: 'To my surprise, one of the highest officials [Hugh B. Brown] in the Mormon Church agreed with that conclusion when I made that very statement to him.'"

"['Ferguson, letter to James Boyack, 13 March 1971, in Ferguson Collection, University of Utah. For a reproduction of this letter, see Charles M. Larson, 'By His Own Hand Upon Papyrus: A New Look at the Joseph Smith Papyri' [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Institute for Religious Research, 1992), pp. 182-83]'"


Larson references an additional source that lends credence to Ferguson's description of Brown's expressed reservations about Smith's professed ability to translate ancient Egyptian and about the Book of Abraham as a supposedly divinely-translated work. It came in the form of an interview conducted with Ferguson by LDS Church Historical Department employee Ronald O. Barney on 4 January 1983. Barney's account of his interview with Ferguson reads as follows:

“Ferguson said the thing that first led him to seriously question the [Mormon] church was the papyri purported to be the source of the Book of Abraham. He said he took he took a photograph of the papyri to a couple of friends of his that were scholars at Cal., Berkeley. They described the documents as funeral texts. This bothered Ferguson in a serious way!

"Later he said that he took the evidence to Hugh B. Brown. . . . After reviewing the evidence with Brother Brown he [Ferguson] said that Brother Brown agreed with him that it was not scripture. He did not say or infer [imply] that it was his evidence that convinced Brother Brown of this conclusion. But nevertheless, he did say that Hugh B. Brown did not believe the Book of Abraham was what the [Mormon] church said it was.”

(Barney's interview was typed 19 April 1984 and is located in Box 77, Fd 13, Marquardt Collection, University of Utah)


Larson then notes that the door to closer examination of Ferguson's assertions has been slammed shut by the Mormon Church:

“Brown's harsh indictment [as expressed to Ferguson] of the official position of the LDS Church--that the Book of Abraham is not 'what the church said it was'--cannot be either confirmed or disproved by the Hugh B. Brown papers in the LDS Church archives, because they are closed to researchers."

Larson does mention, however, the release of a carefully-worded and selectively-edited non-denial denial made by Brown regarding his (Brown's) conversation with Ferguson:

“The following is the only available paragraph of a photocopy of a letter purportedly dictated by Brown and sent to Robert Hancock:

"'I do not recall ever having said anything to Mr. Ferguson which would have led him to think I do not believe the Book of Mormon to be true. This is certainly not the case, for I know, even as I live, that Christ is directing this Church and that Joseph Smith was His prophet chosen to restore His Church in its fullness.'

"([Hugh B. Brown], letter to [Robert Hancock], [partial photocopy], 26 September 1974, in Box 77, Fd 13, Marquardt Collection, University of Utah)


Larson points out what is noticeably missing from Brown's partially-released correspondence:

“It should be noted that Brown did not address the central question of whether he and Ferguson discussed Joseph Smith's inability to translate Egyptian hieroglyphics.”

Larson further notes that “[d]uring this meeting [with Brown], Ferguson 'seemed to be absolutely convinced that [Hugh B.] Brown did not believe the Book of Abraham,' that is to say, did not believe that the Book of Abraham was a translation from Egyptian. Since it is assumed that Brown believed that it was inspired scripture, this seems to indicate that Brown held a non-historical, 'mythic interpretation' of the Book of Abraham,” as suggested by Edgar C. Snow, Jr., in his article, “One Face of the Hero: In Search of the Mythological Joseph Smith.”

(Stan Larson, “Quest for the Gold Plates: Thomas Stuart Ferguson's Archaeological Search for the Book of Mormon" [Salt Lake City, Utah: Freethinker Press, in association with Smith Research Associates, 1996, pp. 132, 138-39, 165fn12, 166fn14, 166fn15 and fn16, 212]; see also, Edgar C. Snow, "One Face of the Hero: In Search of the Mythological Joseph Smith, in “Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought” 27, Fall 1994, p. 247n39).


To summarize:

Ferguson reported that Hugh B. Brown personally told him in a meeting with Brown in Salt Lake City, Utah, that:

--Brown did not believe Joseph Smith could translate ancient Egyptian; and

--Brown did not believe that the Book of Abraham was what the Mormon Church claimed it was.

Larson reports that:

--Ferguson's account of meeting with a confessing Brown was backed by an employee of the LDS Church' Historical Department who interviewd Ferguson about the meeting;

--Brown acknowledged having met with Ferguson but insisted in a partially-released letter that he did not recall making any such assertion about the Book of Abraham to Ferguson; and

--the Mormon Church has refused to allow researcher access to Brown's papers in order to further investigate Ferguson's version of events.

**********

(continued) . . .



Edited 6 time(s). Last edit at 08/11/2015 12:49AM by steve benson.

EXHIBIT C: Those Supposed Authentic "Caractors" from the Anthon Transcript Were Lifted from Other Sources

There certainly are more reputable and exminable explanations for the "caractors" Smith supposedly replicated from the "Book of Mormon" gold plates/

"'Reformed Egyptian Or Deformed English?'

"There are a number of theories as to what the characters on the transcript sent to Anthon actually represent. Joseph Smith, of course, maintained they were 'reformed Egyptian.' Charles A. Shook, on the other hand, felt that:

"Instead of 'Reformed Egyptian' many of the "Caractors" are deformed English, as any one will observe who will compare them with English letters, figures and signs. I have counted thirty-six different characters in the fac-simile, some of them occurring more than once, which are either identical with, or which closely resemble, the English. . . .Latter-day Saints are very quick to see a resemblance between the 'Caractors' and the letters in the Maya and Egyptian alphabets of Le Plongeon; will they be as quick to see the similarity between the "Caractors" and the English? If similarity proves anything, it proves that the transcript is a bold, bare forgery and one not above the ability of a Smith or a Harris to execute ('Cumorah Revisited,' 1910, pp. 538-39).

"After the discovery of the vertical transcript was announced, Grant Heward suggested that it would be interesting to see if an English message could be conveyed with Joseph Smith's characters. It did not take us too long to find characters on the transcript which could represent every letter and every number in the English language. Below the reader will find the English alphabet, numbers up to ten and an English message written in 'reformed Egyptian' characters. As early as 1834 Professor Anthon suggested that the letters appearing on the transcript had been 'inverted or placed sideways.' We have taken the liberty, therefore, of turning some characters around and in some cases have used the same character to represent more than one letter or number. Nevertheless, all the characters are taken from photographs of the original document and have not been recopied by hand."

http://www.utlm.org/images/newsletters/43alphabetnumbersp4.gif

http://www.utlm.org/images/newsletters/43messagep5.gif

"While we do not feel that our experiment actually proves that the transcript is composed of "deformed English," we think that it should serve as a warning to those over zealous scholars who cannot refrain from making dubious parallels between Egyptian characters and those penned by Joseph Smith.


"'MAGIC CHARACTERS?'

"A former Brigham Young University professor has maintained for a number of years that the characters on the Anthon Transcript are taken from works on magic and astrology. Although we felt that he could demonstrate a few parallels, we have never taken this idea too seriously.

"In recent years some evidence has come forth which definitely proves that Joseph Smith was involved in magical practices. For instance, in 1971 Wesley P. Walters discovered an original document which proves that Joseph Smith was a 'glass looker' and that he was arrested, tried and found guilty by a justice of the peace in Bainbridge, New York, in 1826 (see 'The Changing World of Mormonism,' pp. 67-75).

"Three years after Walters made this startling discover (1974), Dr. Reed Durham, who was director of the LDS Institute of Religion at the University of Utah and president of the Mormon History Association, discovered that what had previously been identified as the 'Masonic jewel of the Prophet Joseph Smith" was in reality a "Jupiter talisman.' This is a medallion which contains material relating to astrology and magic. Dr. Durham, apparently not realizing the devastating implications of his discovery, announced this important find in his presidential address before the Mormon History Association on April 20, 1974:

"'. . . I should like to initiate all of you into what is perhaps the stangest, the most mysterious, occult-like esoteric, and yet Masonically oriented practice ever adopted by Joseph Smith. . . . All available evidence suggests that Joseph Smith the Prophet possessed a magical, Masonic medallion, or talisman, which he worked during his lifetime and which was evidently on his person when he was martyred. His talisman is in the shape of a silver dollar and is probably made of silver or tin. It is exactly one and nine-sixteenths in diameter, . . . the talisman, . . . originally purchased from the Emma Smith Bidamon family, fully notarized by that family to be authentic and to have belonged to Joseph Smith, can now be identified as a Jupiter talisman. It carries the sign and image of Jupiter and should more appropriately be referred to as the Table of Jupiter. And in some very real and quite mysterious sense, this particular Table of Jupiter was the most appropriate talisman for Joseph Smith to possess. Indeed, it seemed meant for him, because on all levels of interpretation: planetary, mythological, numerological, astrological, mystical cabalism, and talismatic magic, the Prophet was, in every case, appropriately described.'


http://www.utlm.org/images/newsletters/43josephmagictalismanp5.gif

"The characters on the talisman are primarily in Hebrew, but there is one inscription in Latin. Every letter in the Hebrew alphabet has a numerical equivalent and those numerical equivalents make up a magic square:

"'I wasn't able to find what this was, for—as I said—two months; and finally, in a magic book printed in England in 1801, published in America in 1804, and I traced it to Manchester, and to New York. It was a magic book by Francis Barrett and, lo and behold, How thrilled I was when I saw in his list of magic seals the very talisman which Joseph Smith had in his possession at the time of his martyrdom. . . .

"'So closely is magic bound up with the stars and astrology that the term astrologer and magician were in ancient times almost synonymous. The purpose of the Table of Jupiter in talismanic magis [magic?] was to be able to call upon the celestial intelligences, assigned to the particular talisman, to assist one in all endeavors. The names of the deities which we gave to you, who could be invoked by the Table were always written on the talisman or represented by various numbers. . . .

"'When properly invoked, with Jupiter being very powerful and ruling in the heavens, these intelligences—by the power of ancient magic—guaranteed to the possessor of this talisman the gain of riches, and favor, and power, and love and peace; and to confirm honors, and dignities, and councils. Talismatic magic further declared that any one who worked skillfully with this Jupiter Table would obtain the power of stimulating anyone to offer his love to the possessor of the talisman, whether from a friend, brother, relative, or even any female.' ('Mormon Miscellaneous,' published by David C. Martin, vol. 1, no. 1, October 1975, pp. 14-15).

"Reed Durham was severely criticized by Mormon scholars and officials for giving this speech. He was even called in by Mormon President Spencer W. Kimball, and finally found it necessary to issue a letter in which he reaffirmed his faith in Joseph Smith and said that he was sorry for the 'concerns, and misunderstandings' that the speech had caused. We feel that Dr. Durham's identification of Joseph Smith's magic talisman is one of the most significant discoveries in Mormon history and that he should be commended for his research. In 'The Changing World of Mormonism,' pp. 90-91, we show that the possession of a magic talisman by Joseph Smith fits well with evidence presented in his 1826 trial.

"In any case, the recent discovery of the vertical transcript which Martin Harris took to Professor Anthon has revived interest in magic characters and Joseph Smith's talisman. The reader will notice that in the lower right hand corner of the transcript there appears a circular object which bears some resemblance to Joseph Smith's talisman. In both cases we have a circle drawn within another circle with characters running around the edge and within the center circle. While there does not appear to be as many characters on the talisman as on the transcript, a magic work known as The Sixth & Seventh Books of Moses contains 'over One Hundred and Twenty-Five Seals, Signs, Emblems, etc.' which have magical characters and discs which could furnish ideas for creating a document like the Anthon-Harris manuscript. Francis Barrett's book 'The Magus' also contains 'Misterious Characters' and material relating to magical circles. As Dr. Durham pointed out, Joseph Smith's magic talisman is shown in this book.

"Now, although we could make many parallels to magical characters, we do not feel that the case has been proven.


"'Will Nibley Translate It?'

"We have previously quoted Dr. Hugh Nibley as making this comment concerning the recently discovered vertical transcript: "Of course it's translatable" ('The Herald,' May 1, 1980). According to 'The Herald':

"'Nibley also said he counted at least two dozen out of 47 characters in the Demotic alphabet that could be given phonetic value:

"'This offers as good a test as we'll ever get. Nobody could have faked those characters. It would take 10 minutes to see that this is fake.'

For many years Dr. Nibley has maintained that the 'Reformed Egyptian' spoken of in the Book of Mormon was derived from the Egyptian script known as Demotic. Just why the Nephites would chose such a system of writing is certainly a mystery, for Nibley himself feels that Demotic was 'the most awkward, difficult, and impractical system of writing ever devised by man!' ('Lehi in the Desert' and the World of the Jaredites,' 1952, p. 16)

"For many years Mormon scholars have been trying desperately to link the horizontal 'Anthon Transcript' to the Egyptian language. Ariel Crowley, for instance, photographically compared characters from the Anthon Transcript with those found in 'Recognized Egyptian Works.' Although his parallels appear rather impressive at first glance, Wesley P. Walters has pointed out that they really do not amount to much:

"'The one serious attempt to find similarities with Egyptian characters (A. Crowley, "Improvement Era," February 1942, pp. 76 ff) had to hunt among scripts separated from each other by a thousand years and in some instances much later than the period from which the alleged "Reformed Egyptian" is supposed to date. In addition, Mr. Crowley sought correlations with the Sinai proto-Semetic script . . . rendering the entire attempt a linguist [ic] impossibility, a sort of alphabetic smorgasbord.' ('Joseph Smith Among The Egyptians,' p. 26, footnote).

"In the 'Improvement Era,' Oct. 1960, Stanley B. Kimball wrote the following:

""Several efforts have been made to demonstrate that the Book of Mormon characters are in fact Egyptian. Honorable as such attempts are and fascinating though they may be, the net result is generally a striking comparison of the similar characters and an ignoring of the dissimilar characters. By this very method it may be "proved" that we speak Russian in this country.'

"In 1971 Stanley B. Kimball prepared another article on the Anthon Transcript. At the end of this article he stated:

"'In conclusion, I am forced to say that the research done on the Anthon Transcript to date has accomplished little more than to define the problems connected with it. . . ' ('Newsletter and Proceedings of the Society for Early Historic Archaeology,' BYU, August 1971, p.4)

"Two Mormon scholars tried to make a translation of the Anthon Transcript in 1973, but the results proved to be disastrous. While one translator felt he found the word 'Mormon' in the first line, the other scholar believed it contained 'Zarahemla.' John Buerger tells about this matter in Appendix I of his unpublished paper, 'A Preliminary Approach To Linguistic Aspects Of The Anthon Transcript.'

"Edward H. Ashment, who has studied Egyptology at the University of Chicago and is now working with the Translation Department of the LDS Church, has been much more cautious with regard to the Anthon Transcript. He worked on it with the noted Egyptologist George Hughes, of the University of Chicago, but was unable to come up with anything concrete.

"Dr. Hugh Nibley now claims that the transcript preserved by David Whitmer looks like it was copied by a baby: 'The first was a sloppy transcript and badly copied, . . . In the earlier transcript, it was copied horizontally which would confuse anybody.' ('The Herald,' May 1, 1980). While Dr. Nibley maintains that the newly discovered document is 'translatable,' so far he has not provided any evidence to verify this statement.

"If the vertical transcript could be translated, we really wonder what Mormon scholars would do should the results turn out to be a copy of a pagan document. As we pointed out earlier, this very thing happened with regard to Joseph Smith's 'Book of Abraham.' Mormon apologists, however, would not accept this devastating evidence and came up with all kinds of excuses as to why Joseph Smith's translation did not agree with that given by Egyptologists. At one time Dr. Nibley even supported the fantastic idea that the papyrus had a secret message unknown to Egyptologists. In more recent studies Nibley has come up with other explanations which are just as far-fetched. The Mormon scholar Dr. Henry Eyring went so far as to say:

"'. . . [T]he essential ingredient in the "Book of Abraham" is whatever the Prophet was inspired to write down. . . . it wouldn't make a bit of difference to me if the scholars, studying the scrolls that led the Prophet to think about the problem of Abraham and write about it--it wouldn't make a bit of difference to me if they discovered that it was a bill of lading for wheat in the Lower Nile ('Book of Abraham Symposium,' the Salt Lake Institute of Religion, April 3, 1970, p. 3).

"John L. Speer, a reporter for the 'Provo Herald,' asked Dr. Nibley what would happen if the transcript which was supposed to have been copied from the gold plates turned out to be something other than the 'Book of Mormon':

"'What if, when it is translated, it turns out to be just an Egyptian shopping list?'

"Countered Nibley, 'Then the question still remains—where did Joseph Smith get it? Demotic Egyptian wasn't discovered until the 1850s and there was no grammar until the 20th century.' ('The Herald,' May 1, 1980).

"It would appear from this that Nibley would maintain faith in Joseph Smith even if the document contained nothing about the 'Book of Mormon.' The statement that 'Demotic Egyptian wasn't discovered until the 1850s' is so far from the truth that we wonder if Nibley has been misquoted. The Rosetta Stone, for instance, was discovered before Joseph Smith was even born. In his monumental work, 'Egyptian Grammar,' p. 12, Sir Alan Gardiner gives this information:

"'Such a clue was at last provided when some French soldiers, working on the foundations of a fortress at Rosetta, came across a trilingual inscription in Greek, demotic, and hieroglyphic (1799) . . . scholars first directed their attention towards the demotic section.'

"Stanley B. Kimball says that '[m]any books had been published by 1828 containing facsimiles of Egyptian characters, . . .' ('Improvement Era,' February .1957, p. 106; see also, 'BYU Studies,' Spring 1970, p. 335).

"In our book 'Archaeology and the Book of Mormon,' we suggested that it was possible that Joseph Smith copied his characters from some book available at that time. Even if this were the case, however, the characters might still be impossible to read. Those who have studied our work, 'Mormonism--Shadow or Reality?,' know that when Joseph Smith made copies of the characters from the Egyptian papyrus he obtained in 1835, the reproductions were so badly done that they were hardly recognizable.

"We must remember, too, about Joseph Smith's method of working with ancient documents. Take, for instance, Facsimile No. 2 of his 'Book of Abraham,' which is published in the 'Pearl of Great Price.' In 'Mormonism--Shadow or Reality?,' pp. 337-341, we photographically demonstrate that while Facsimile No. 2 is published as one circular disc, it is in reality a combination of three documents. The first document was an Egyptian hypocephalus. This is a magical disc which was placed under the head of the mummy. Because it was damaged portions were missing. Joseph Smith proceeded to fill in these areas with material from two other documents—i.e., the 'Book of Breathings' and the 'Book of the Dead.' Hieroglyphic characters were mixed with hieratic, and as if this was not bad enough, portions of the script were actually inserted upside down and backwards to the rest of the writing! Joseph Smith's methods with regard to the 'Book of Abraham' make us very cautious about accepting his 'Book of Mormon' characters at face value. It could very well be that the newly discovered transcript is a composite of several documents. It is true that some of the characters look like Egyptian, but it is also true that they bear a resemblance to magic characters and an even stronger resemblance to the English alphabet. It should also be kept in mind that while the English alphabet is composed of only 26 letters, the Egyptian language has hundreds of characters from which one could draw parallels.

"Stanley B. Kimball is one of the best authorities on the Anthon Transcript--i.e., the horizontal copy. Writing in 'Brigham Young University Studies,' Spring 1970, p. 350, he cautions:

"'. . . [S]uggestions and attempts have been made to indicate and prove that the characters are some form of Egyptian, Meso-American, or even Phoenician. The strongest argument that can be made for the ingenious and pioneering efforts of those who favor Egyptian origin of the characters is the definite resemblance of the RLDS transcript characters to Egyptian characters. But this does not prove that the transcript is authentic, that the characters make connected thought, or are Egyptian. (Indeed, twelve, almost half of our English-Latin characters, appear in the Cyrillic alphabet, but this fact never has given and never will give anyone insight whatsoever into or understanding of Russian, Serbian, or Bulgarian.) Also it must be pointed out that there are so many variant, hieratic, and demotic characters that the affinity of many other writing systems with Egyptian could probably be proved.'

"'If the case for the transcript characters being Egyptian in origin appears less than absolute, it is, nonetheless, infinitely stronger than any of the other arguments.'

"We would suspect that if any part of the newly discovered document is genuine it would be the circular object in the lower right hand corner. We have previously pointed out that in form it is somewhat like Joseph Smith's own magic talisman, but the reader will also notice that it bears some resemblance to Facsimile No. 2 in the Book of Abraham (see the 'Pearl of Great Price'). As we have already stated, this is a magic disk known as a hypocephalus. The Mormon scholar Michael Dennis Rhodes confirms this when he writes the following:

"'The text of the hypocephalus itself seems to be an address to Osiris, the god of the Dead, on behalf of the deceased, Sheshonk.' ('Brigham Young University Studies,' Spring 1977, pa. 274).

"All of the photographs of hypocephali we have examined have a good deal of their area devoted to drawings, but Claudia Veteto says that '[t]he last stage in the development of the hypocephalus, the Roman epoch, is characterized by the lack of any one scene on the disk, the field being occupied almost entirely by inscriptions.' ('Newsletter and Proceedings of the S.E.H.A.,' May 1, 1967, p. 6). More study in this area might be worth-while.

"In any case, Edward Ashment, the Mormon scholar who worked with George Hughes in an unsuccessful attempt to translate the horizontal transcript, feels that Hugh Nibley jumped the gun when he stated that the newly discovered vertical transcript could be translated. The 'Provo Herald' reported:

"'Will the translation of the new "Anthon Transcript" meet with the same fate as the translation of the Joseph Smith Papyri?

"'Jerald Tanner, author of "Shadows or Reality? ["Mormonism--Shadow or Reality?"], an expose on early Mormonism believes it will. . . .

"'Tanner maintains that there is no connection between the Book of Abraham in the "Pearl of Great Price" and the Joseph Smith papyri from which the book is supposedly translated.

"'Hugh W. Nibley, agrees with Tanner that, on the surface, there is no relationship between the two. However he holds to the theory that the Joseph Smith papyri is a prompt sheet where each word is a clue to what is written in the original "Book of Abraham."

"'Edward H. Ashment, LDS Church Supervisor of Scripture Translation Research, disagrees with both men.

"'I would tend to be more cautious than Nibley and I certainly don't hold to Tanner's views.' he said.

"'The important thing to realize when discussing both the Anthon transcript and the Joseph Smith Papyri is that Smith was not necessarily interested in historical accuracy as much as he was in getting what the Lord wanted him to get.

"'We cannot judge Joseph Smith's work from the viewpoint of twentieth century theory and methodology.'"

"'Ashment warned also against making rash statements or drawing early conclusions that could trap the Church into an embarrassing position.

"'"What if the transcript is a translation of Mormon's abridgement of the Book of Lehi (the 116 lost pages)?

"'"We've got to slow down and take it easy. We can't have contradictions. There are people like Tanner and 'Former Mormons for Jesus' in California who are just waiting to catch us slipping up."

"'Ashment said that Tanner had called him recently to verify Hugh Nibley's assessment that the Anthon transcript could be translated.

"'"I told him I wasn't as convinced as Nibley although I did discuss the characters with Dr. George A. Hughes of the University of Chicago. We agreed that there are some characters that look like demotic Egyptian."

"'"The Herald" called Hugh Nibley to see if he was still confident about his earlier assessments.

"'"I still say just what I said before. It can be translated. I will take a couple of years to complete though. These things take time". ('The Herald,' May 12, 1980).

"It would now appear that Dr. Hugh Nibley is going into the same type of stall that he used with regard to the 'Book of Abraham' papyrus. In 1968 we were told that Dr. Nibley was going to unfold 'the meaning of the hieroglyphics and illustrations on these valuable manuscripts' ('Improvement Era,' January 1968, p. 40-H). Twelve years have now past and he has still not translated the hieroglyphic writing which is found on the important fragment of papyrus printed as Facsimile No. 1 in the Book of Abraham. Other Egyptologists were able to translate all of the Joseph Smith Papyri in just a short time.

"In the case of the recently found transcript which is purported to contain 'Book of Mormon' characters, Hugh Nibley immediately asserted that 'Of course its translatable.' He claimed, in fact, that he had counted at least two dozen out of 47 characters in the Demotic alphabet that could be given a phonetic value. We would expect, then, that a translation might come forth at any time. Dr. Nibley now tells us, however, that it 'will take a couple of years' to complete the translation. It would appear to us that Hugh Nibley has made a claim that he cannot back up and that he is now stalling for time.

"Klaus Baer, Professor of Egyptology at the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute, was one of 'Hugh Nibley's primary tutors in the art of reading Egyptian characters.' ('Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought,' Autumn 1968, p. 109). Although Professor Baer is a good friend to Dr. Nibley, he does not share his views with regard to the recently-discovered transcript:

"'What is it? Probably not Egyptian, even if here and there signs appear that could be interpreted as more or less awkwardly copied hieroglyphs or hieratic signs. . . . I suspect that one would have about the same batting average in comparing this with Chinese or Japanese or other systems that arrange signs in columns.' (letter dated May 10, 1980).

"In a recent television interview the Mormon Egyptologist Edward H. Ashment said that the document 'doesn't come very close to being readable as demotic.' He went on to say that 'it's in a script that is entirely unique and it has no relationship, to my knowledge again, of Egyptian or to any American script.'

"'I NEFI'

"As we were about to go to press with this issue of the 'Messenger,' a very sensational story came to our attention. It was claimed that a non-Mormon scholar had translated the transcript and had found the name 'Nefi' in the text. We decided that we would have to delay publication in order to check this matter out. We discovered that the scholar was Barry Fell, and after a great deal of trouble we were finally able to locate and converse with him on the telephone. He confirmed that he had made a translation which contains the name "Nefi." This, of course, reminds one of 'Nephi'--the first writer mentioned in the 'Book of Mormon.'

"Mr. Fell claimed that he had originally been asked by a Mormon man if he could decipher the horizontal version of the 'Anthon Transcript.' He felt that it was a very poor copy and was unable to translate it. When the newspaper published a picture of the recently-discovered document, he examined it and immediately recognized that it contained scripts which he had encountered in North Africa. After translating the first four lines, he sent his work to the Mormon Church for publication. When we asked about obtaining a copy, Mr. Fell indicated that he was giving the Mormon Church first chance to purchase his work. Later, however, Mr. Fell became somewhat disturbed that the Church had not responded and began to release some of his material. We have been able to examine his translation of the first four lines plus a letter to Ali-Akbar Habeb Bushiri, dated May 27, 1980, which contains additional information.

"Mr. Fell's translation is remarkable in that it sounds very much like the first chapter of the 'Book of Mormon.' For instance, in the first line he translates: '. . . I, Nefi, a son born of sagacious parents, . . .' This, of course, sounds like the first eight words of the Book of Mormon: 'I, Nephi, having been born of goodly parents, . . .' (I Nephi 1:1) In line three Fell finds the words, 'My father, Lehi, was of Salem, . . .' This is similar to I Nephi 1:4: '. . . [M]y father, Lehi, having dwelt at Jerusalem. . .' Mr. Fell claims that line two contains the words 'Zedekiah' and 'Judah.' These two names are also found in I Nephi 1:4.

"While at first glance a person would be led to believe that Barry Fell has proven the 'Book of Mormon' to be authentic, a closer examination reveals just the opposite. To begin with, Fell does not read the text as 'Reformed Egyptian,' but rather as an 'Arabic text' (Letter dated May 27, 1980). He claims the first line is 'in Maghrabi script' and that lines 2-4 contain a text 'enciphered in the Belinos alphabet' which he has 'identified as cipher number 19 in in the book of ancient alphabets prepared by Ahmed bin Abu-Bekr bin Washish, a Nabataean scholar who in A.H. 241 presented his work to the Egyptian Caliph Abdul Malik bin Manwan.'

"Notice the date given by Fell is not 241 A.D., but rather 241 A.H. In his book 'Arabic Coins And How To Read Them,' p. 7, Richard Plant informs us that '[d]ates are nearly always "Anno Hegirae" . . . A.H. rather than A.D. The Hegira was the "Flight," Mohammed's flight from Mecca on 16th July 622 A.D.' This would mean that the text could not have been written before the ninth century A.D. Barry Fell's interpretation, therefore, not only would give the wrong language but also a date centuries too late to fit Joseph Smith's story of the 'Book of Mormon.' Fell makes the matter even more difficult for the Mormons to accept, however, when he claims that the circular object in Joseph Smith's document is 'what purports to be a gold dirhem issued by the Al-Muwahid, or "Almohad" . . . Dynasty in Andalusia . . . in Libyan (Numidian) script.' This would tend to date Joseph Smith's 'Caractors' to the 12th or 13th century A.D.! Barry Fell, then, would have us believe that instead of making a copy of 'Reformed Egyptian' from gold plates, Joseph Smith copied a gold coin and characters from an old Arabic manuscript known as the 'apocryphal book of Nefi.'

"Mr. Fell's thesis would lead a person to conclude that Joseph Smith saw a book or manuscript which contained a copy of a page from the 'book of Nefi' together with a translation in English, and that this became the basis for his 'Book of Mormon.' While we would really like to accept Barry Fell's work, we feel that there are a number of things that cast considerable doubt upon it.

"To begin with, Mr. Fell's translation requires that the text of the manuscript be read sideways--i.e., according to his theory, the left side of the manuscript should be the top and the text reads from right to left. Since Joseph Smith copied some Egyptian characters upside down in his 'Book of Abraham,' we could probably accept this idea without too much trouble. From that point, however, Mr. Fell's work becomes more difficult to accept. Instead of working from just one language he claims that there are five different forms of writing on the document--i.e., 'Maghrabi,' cipher number 19, Hebrew (one word), Egyptian (one word) and Numidian. While it could be true that there is more than one script involved, this claim could also be used to produce an inaccurate translation. If the script did not read as the translator wanted at some point, then it could be claimed that this portion was written in another language. Because Mr. Fell works from several different scripts and uses 'cipher,' we feel that it makes his 'translation' very questionable. His rendition of the very first character which appears on the transcript gives an interesting example of his questionable methods of operation. This character, which looks like a small bowl in a larger one, is supposed to be the n in 'Nefi.' We find this same character written seven times in the first four lines. Below is a photograph of the way it appears each time together with Mr. Fell's transliteration and translation of the word in which it appears.

http://www.utlm.org/images/newsletters/43mrfelltransliterationp9.gif

"The reader will notice that in the first three examples Fell transliterates the character as n, but in example number four he has moved into 'the Belinos alphabet' and transliterates it as y. (This character is separated by a break in the paper in the fourth example, but it is obvious that it is the same character.) In the fifth example Fell renders the same character as two letters, u and d. In the sixth example he transliterates it as f, and in the seventh it makes two letters, w and m. It would appear, then, that Mr. Fell can make almost anything he wants out of the same character. An examination of our examples shows that Fell uses the same character in making the names 'Nefi,' 'Zedekiah' and "Judah." (As we have already indicated, the names "Zedekiah" and 'Judah' appear in the 'Book of Mormon,' I Nephi 1:4). It is obvious, then, that much of Fell's case is based only on his wishful-thinking with regard to one character. The reader will also notice that the second and third characters (f and i) which Fell uses in making 'Nefi' are almost completely different in examples one and two.

"Because Mr. Fell claimed that those who knew how to read Arabic would support his translation of the first line, we decided to consult someone who was qualified to pass judgment. We were referred to Adel Allouche of the Department of Middle East Studies at the University of Utah. Mr. Allouche, who teaches Arabic and reads both ancient and modern script, examined photographs of Joseph Smith's 'Caractors' to see if Mr. Fell's thesis is correct. He consulted others at the University concerning this matter, and after carefully comparing the characters with many ancient scripts came to the conclusion that it was no known form of Arabic nor any other language that he was aware of. He felt, in fact, that Barry Fell's translation was only a work of the imagination.

"Mr. Fell's statement that he found 'cipher number 19' in the book of ancient alphabets prepared by Ahmed bin Abu-Bekr bin Washish has been questioned by at least one scholar who is critical of his work. David Persuitte, however, has obtained access to a copy of this book and has made photocopies. It was printed in London in 1806 under the title, 'Ancient Alphabets and Hieroglyphic Characters Explained, With An Account of the Egyptian Priests, Their Classes, Initiation, and Sacrifices.' It not only has Ahmad Bin Abubekr Bin Wahshish's work in the Arabic language, but also a translation into English by Joseph Hammer. We feel that this book furnishes devastating evidence against Fell's work. The 'alphabet of Belinos, the philosopher' (the alphabet which Fell claims is used in three lines of Joseph Smith's translation) appears on page 23 of the Arabic section. As the reader can see in the photograph below, it bears little resemblance to the writing found in the recently-discovered transcript (under each character is its equivalent in the Arabic script).

http://www.utlm.org/images/newsletters/43belinosalphabetp9.gif

"While Barry Fell seems to be completely wrong in his identification of the script, it is interesting to note that according to the Translators Preface, this book contains 'eighty alphabets.' In looking over the other alphabets we find some interesting parallels to Joseph Smith's 'Caractors,' and we feel that more time should be spent in examining this matter. This is the type of book that would have really appealed to people like Joseph Smith who were involved with talismans, magic and money-digging. Pages 6 and 7, for instance, contain this information about some of the scripts:

"'Section XI. The alphabet of Costoodjis . . . He wrote in this alphabet, three hundred and sixty books on divinity, talismans, astrology, magic, influence of planets and fixed stars, and on the conjuration of spirits, . . .

"'Section XII. The alphabet of Hermes Abootat . . . He constructed in upper Egypt treasure chambers, and set up stones containing magic inscriptions, . . .

"'Section XIII. The alphabet of Colphotorios . . . He was deeply learned in the knowledge of spirits and cabalistic spells, in talismans, astrological aspects, and in the magic and black art. . . .

""Section XIV. The alphabet of Syourianos . . . He wrote in this alphabet on astronomy, and the secrets of the stars; on talismans, and their qualities; on magic alarm-posts; on the effects of planet-rings; and on the invocation and conjuration of spirits.

"'Section XV. The alphabet of Philaos . . . He invented miraculous fuminations, marvellous compounds, talismans, and astrological tables ('Ancient Alphabets and Hieroglyphic Characters Explained . . .' , 1806, pages 6-7).

"Although Mr. Fell is certainly incorrect about the Belinos script, his work has brought an interesting old book to light. When speaking of Mr. Fell's work, we should probably mention the fact that he has stirred up a great deal of controversy with the publication of the book, America B.C. in 1976, and this year he has come out with a new volume entitled 'Saga America.' His work is of special interest to the Mormons because of his attempt to prove contacts between the Old World and America in ancient times. In his new book 'Saga America,' p. 83, he even includes a photograph of Professor Paul Cheesman of the Church's Brigham Young University. 'Newsweek,' May 26, 1975, stated that while 'Fell has his defenders,' his 'translations bring snorts from some critics. . . . "He is doing too much cross-country running," argues Frank M. Cross, professor of Semitic languages at Harvard.' Ives Goddard and William W. Fitzhugh of the Department of Anthropology at the Smithsonian Institution wrote a criticism which was published in 'Biblical Archeologist, September,' 1978, pp. 85-88, which contains the following:

"'The Department of Anthropology of the Smithsonian Institution occasionally receives inquiries regarding the book America B.C. . . . The statement below has been prepared to explain briefly why Smithsonian specialists in linguistics and New World prehistory consider the conclusions reached in this book to be incorrect.'

"'None of the inscriptions mentioned in America B.C. can be accepted as genuine ancient inscriptions carved in the New World. Some appear to be accidental or random markings, while others have been created by hoaxers. . . .

"'No prehistoric loanwords of Old World origin have been found in any North American Indian language. The contention is made in America B.C. that there are words of Egyptian, Semitic, Celtic, and Norse origin in certain Indian languages of the Algonquian family, but the alleged evidence is seriously flawed. The discussion does not distinguish clearly among the separate Algonquian languages; ignores basic facts of Algonquian grammar, linguistic history, and etymology; makes many errors on specific facts; miscopies and misinterprets words [or impossible fragments of words] and their translations; and shows no awareness of the basic scientific linguistic procedures that have been used by specialists for over a hundred years to study the history of languages. . . . The claim is made in America B.C. that songs in the Pima dialect of Papago, a language of the Uto-Aztecan family spoken in southern Arizona, can be read using a "Semitic" dictionary. But the analysis that is presented (p. 172) is not consistent with the grammars of either Papago or any Semitic language: the Papago words have been arbitrarily divided or rearranged; the free translation given in the source used has been ignored; and some of the phonetic symbols in the original publication have been misinterpreted. . . .

""In sum, it must be said that the discussions in America B.C. show no knowledge of the correct grammatical analysis of the American Indian languages considered. There is no understanding of the grammars of the Algonquian languages, Pima, or Zuni, and no conception of the existence of strict rules governing the permissible order and shape of elements in those languages. To Smithsonian linguists, the arguments presented in America B.C. are therefore of no value.'

"Mr. Fell's work on Joseph Smith's 'Caractors' leads us to believe that he first read the 'Book of Mormon' and then tried to slant his translation in that direction. He wanted the Mormon Church leaders to print it and was disappointed in their lack of response. We have been told that Mr. Fell finally submitted his work to 'BYU Studies' but those in charge decided it should not be printed. The thing we cannot understand is why Fell did not try to derive the text from Egyptian since it is claimed that he has a working knowledge of 'Egyptian hieroglyphics' (see 'Saga America,' Forward). This would certainly have been more enticing to the Mormons. In claiming that the text is from Arabic and Libyan writings dating from the ninth to the thirteenth century A.D., Mr. Fell will, no doubt, alienate his Mormon friends. While we would like to accept his thesis, we feel that his work on the first four lines is completely unconvincing.

"'MICMAC?'

"Some scholars have noticed a resemblance between some of Joseph Smith's 'Caractors' and a script used by the Micmac Indians. In his book America B. C., Barry Fell published photographs of Micmac and related it to the Egyptian language:

"'The Micmac language has evidently acquired much of its technical and astronomical vocabulary from ancient Egyptian, . . . ' (p. 278).

"Ives Goddard and William W. Fitzhugh criticized Mr. Fell for this conjecture:

"'The claim is made in "America B.C." that the so-called hieroglyphics of the Micmac Indians are derived from Egyptian hieroglyphics. However, general resemblances between some individual signs, some of which have been misinterpreted or misdrawn (pp. 254-58), do not prove a relationship between the two writing systems, because there is no explanation of their very different structures. The Micmac writing system is a purely mnemonic system used to aid in the reciting of Christian prayers; it cannot be used to write new messages. It was developed by Roman Catholic missionaries inspired by the use of pictographic mnemonics among the Indians, but its principles have never been explicated in detail. . . ('Biblical Archeologist,' September 1978, p. 86)

"In his latest book, 'Saga America,' p. 223, Fell seems to have changed his opinion somewhat:

"'In America B.C. the hieroglyphic system of writing used by the Micmac Indians of Nova Scotia was attributed to influence from Egypt, and the similarity of the signs to hieratic letters was illustrated in tables. . . . this was taken as evidence of an ancient contact with Egyptian writers of the ancestors of the Micmacs of modern times. More recent studies have led to the conclusion that the Micmac contact was not so much with ancient Egyptian writers directly, as rather with eastern Libyans, from the border of Egypt and Libya: . . . Thus Micmac script is probably to be attributed to east Libyan influence.'

"'In "Saga America," pp. 224-225, Barry Fell has reproduced two pages of 'a handwritten copy of portions of the hieroglyphic version of the Catholic mass, translated by the Abbe Maillard in the eighteenth century.'

"After making a superficial examination of Micmac characters, we were not too impressed with the idea that they are related to Joseph Smith's work. Even if a case could be made, however, it would not provide evidence for the authenticity of the Book of Mormon. Despite Barry Fell's attempts to show that Micmac was an ancient written language, the evidence stems to show just the opposite. Garrick Mallery claimed that what has been 'erroneously' called 'Micmac hieroglyphics . . . do not partake of the nature of hieroglyphics, and their origin is not Micmac.' ('Picture Writing of the American Indians,' p. 666)

"If any connection between Micmac and Joseph Smith's work could be established, it would lead us to suspect that Smith had access to a copy of a Christian text produced in the 18th or 19th century A.D. It is possible, of course, that Joseph Smith could have acquired a sample of this writing. Wesley P. Walters has pointed out that Smith's uncle, Jason Mack, lived in "New Brunswick" (Joseph Smith's History by His Mother, page 52), and, according to Mallery, 'the northern part of New Brunswick' was occupied by Micmacs. We tend to doubt, however, that there is any connection between the two scripts.

"'IMPORTANCE OF CIRCLE'

"We are inclined to believe that the circular object in Joseph Smith's transcript could hold the key to its origin. We feel that this would be an excellent area of research for those interested in the origin of Mormonism. We are especially suspicious of the disk because Joseph Smith never published it. In the case of the 'Book of Abraham' and the 'Kinderhook plates' he proudly published facsimiles for the world to see. Why was he ashamed of the Book of Mormon disk? Was he afraid that its publication would give something away? It is true that he did allow Harris to take it to Anthon in February 1828, but after that incident he seems to have suppressed it. (The reader will remember that Anthon later suggested that it might be an altered copy of something that had been published.)

"A second copy of the 'Caractors' was produced which does not contain the disk. Although the characters were copied from the circular object (see especially the last two lines in the photograph which appears on page one), they appear in straight horizontal lines. 'Book of Mormon' witness David Whitmer came on the scene a year after Harris took the transcript to Anthon. From his statement we are led to believe that he was never shown the document containing the disk. He claimed, in fact, that the horizontal transcript was "the original paper . . . Martin Harris took to Professor Anthon, . . ." ('An Address To All Believers In Christ,' p. 11)

"The fact that the Mormon Church never published the vertical transcript and that not even one handwritten copy of this important document is known to exist seems to show there was something about it. Joseph Smith did not want to make public. Because many people will now have access to photographs of it, we feel that it is possible that someone will find similar characters or the circular object in a book published before Joseph Smith brought forth the 'Book of Mormon.'

"At the present time we are preparing a more detailed report on the whole matter. We will show, for instance, that on the horizontal transcript the characters are copied backwards to the normal direction of Hebrew or Egyptian writing. This would seem to indicate that Joseph Smith had no knowledge of ancient languages. We hope to have this preliminary report prepared within a month or two. It will contain any important new developments that come to light."

("Joseph Smith's 'Caractors" Found!: Important Discovery Puts President Kimball on the Spot," by Jerald and Sandra Tanner, "Salt Lake City Messenger," No. 43, July 1980, at: http://www.utlm.org/newsletters/no43.htm)




--EXHIBIT D: How LDS Apostles Tried to Con-vince Me of the Book of Abraham's "Translation"

In September 1993, I twice met privately (at my personal request and through the assistance of my father, Mark A. Benson--R.I.P.--who helped arrange the encounters), with Mormon apostles Neal A. Maxwell and Dallin H. Oaks in the offices of the LDS Church Administration Office building in Salt Lake City, Utah.

There (among other vain attempts at defending the Mormon Church) Maxwell and Oaks made a futile effort to legitimize the alleged "translation" of Joseph Smith's scriptural hoax--otherwise known as the Book of Abraham. (Before commencing this impossible task, Maxwell and Oaks were apparently worried that I might be taping our conversations and, in fact, asked me if that was the case. I wasn't but I took notes during our discussions and when back home in Arizona recorded my personal recollections on a tape recorder while still fresh in my mind).

Maxwell was much more energetic than Oaks in their jointly-unsuccessful exercise in defending the Book of Abraham.

Maxwell first appealed to other LDS scripture--in this case, the Doctrine and Covenants, Section 7--to argue that the Book of Abraham was translated by Smith in "catalystic fashion." Maxwell told me that Smith had in a vision seen parchments from the writings of John the Revelator. Maxwell also told me that Smith may have had revealed to him Egyptian parchments which he did not touch, physically hold or from which he did not directly translate. In other words, Maxwell said, Smith may have been "accessing" ancient parchments that were not actually with him. Instead, Maxwell proposed, he may have had revealed to him "in some kind of vision" the source from which he then translated the Book of Abraham.

Enter Oaks--who admitted that he personally did not know how Smith translated the Book of Abraham. He did say, however, that Maxwell's explanation seemed persuasive.

Oaks did, however, say that he was familiar with the "Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar" (which Smith was magically constructing). I responded by going into brief detail about how Smith, or his scribes, would copy an Egyptian hieroglyph from the parchment into a left-hand column, then apparently from that single hieroglyph, produce a whole series of words and paragraphs. I further noted that the words and dictionary which Smith attached to the facsimiles had absolutely no relationship with the content of the papyri--as indicated and translated by such noted and reputable Egyptologists as Klaus Bauer of the University of Chicago and others.

At this point, Oaks said, "Well, there are some things I just don't understand and just don't know." But he said he was willing to put such matters on the shelf "until further knowledge comes." Oaks asserted that the jury was still out on the Book of Abraham and that we should "wait and see." Oaks admitted that "the scholars" (meaning critics of the BOok of Abraham) seemed to have evidence "in their favor," but that he himself had a "personal witness" that the Book of Abraham was true. Oaks concluded by saying that he did not let evidence "weighted against Joseph Smith on this" persuade him that the Book of Abraham is not true.

Maxwell was more positive, more hopeful--and more naive.

While acknowledging that Smith's former scribe Warren Parrish and Mormon hymn composer W. W. Phelps (of 'The Spirit of God Like a Fire is Burning' fame) were at one point about ready to leave the LDS Church, Maxwell told me, 'Don't pounce on Joseph Smith.' Maxwell said that the work of Parrish and Phelps on the Book of Abraham manuscript helped bolster the argument that the Egyptian funerary texts were not the actual parchments used by Smith in his translation of the Book of Abraham--or, for that matter, that Smith was even the author of the four extant manuscripts of the Book of Abraham.

In support of that position, Maxwell handed me a FARMS review, written by Michael D. Rhodes, of Charles M. Larson's book, '. . . By His Own Hand upon Papyrus: A New Look at the Joseph Smith Papyri' (Grand Rapids: Institute for Religious Research, 1992, p. 240 pp., illustrated).

On closer examination of the paper on which Rhodes' review was photocopied, I determined that the review, in fact, had originated with FARMS. It was printed on fax paper bearing the acronym "F.A.R.M.S," along with the "FAX" date of '09/09/93.' It also bore a dispatch time of "1:55" and a BYU-area phone number of "378 3724."

FARMS, at Maxwell's request, was riding to the rescue in his effort to help sell the Book of Abraham during our discussions.

Maxwell had highlighted in yellow the following excerpt from Rhodes' article (broken out below in paragraphs for easier reading):

"First of all, none of these manuscripts of the [B]ook of Abraham is in Joseph Smith's handwriting. They are mostly in the handwriting of William W. Phelps, with a few short sections written by Warren Parrish. Nowhere in the documents is Joseph Smith designated as the author.

"Moreover, the Egyptian characters in the left-hand margin were clearly written in after the English text had been written. These cannot be the working papers of a translation process. Instead, Phelps and Parrish seemed to have copied down the text of the [B]ook of Abraham and were then attempting to correlate that translation with some of the scrolls in the Church's possession.

"These documents are most likely that preliminary stage of investigation and exploration the Lord prescribed in DandC 9:8 to 'study it out in your mind.' The Lord expects us to first do all we can to understand something (and in the process discover our own limitations) before we seek for direct revelation from him. This is what Phelps and Parrish were apparently doing, although their efforts were short-lived and unsuccessful.

"In fact these same men shortly after this began to turn away from the Prophet Joseph and fell into apostasy. If they had been parties to some fraudulent process of producing the [B]ook of Abraham, they would surely have denounced Joseph Smith for this, but they never did."

Rhodes' apologetics were apparently good enough for Maxwell, since he heaped glowing praise on FARMS, telling me, "We're grateful for FARMS because they protect us on the flank." In fact, Maxwell confided to me that FARMS had been given the express mission of not allowing the Mormon Church to become outflanked. In relaying to me his sincere gratitude to FARMS, it was obvious what Maxwell meant: FARMS' job was to prevent the Mormon Church from being defeated through end-arounds by its critics and, in that quest, was keeping the Mormon apostles themselves from finding themselves outflanked and outgunned.

Oaks was somewhat less enthusiastic about FARMS.

Oaks told me that FARMS sometimes gets "hyperactive" in its efforts to prove the truth of Mormon scripture. He said he becomes concerned when FARMS "stops making shields and starts turning out swords" because, he said, "you cannot prove [Mormon scripture] out of the realm of faith." Oaks said that accepting the truth of LDS holy writ was ultimately a matter of faith.

In the end, however, it was Maxwell who--in reacting to criticism of the Book of Abraham's authenticity--sweepingly declared, "We will not twist or oscillate every time we come across new evidence. The Church is not a jerkwater organization."

Earth to Maxwell: The Mormon Church is not only jerkwater, it's in way over its head.

**********


--CONCLUSION: The book is closed on the Book of Abra-sham, as well as on the Book of Moron.

(I would like to thank the various faltering Mormon apostles, profesional Egyptologists and truth-speaking scholars who helped contribute to this report).



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 08/11/2015 12:50AM by steve benson.

"The church is not a jerkwater organization"....

hahhahahahhahahahahhahhaha, thats the best laugh I've had all

day.

Thanks !!!!!!!!!!!!

When I was young, I liked to read about ancient Egypt and mummies and pyramids and stuff. I stumbled across the thing about the four canopic jars that organs were put in during the mummification process. (Because organs are very wet, and the body needs to completely dry out to mummify well.)

But then I was sort of like, "But wait! The Book of Abraham calls those things idols, not canopic jars."

One of my early shelf items.

Found this on the way to a fresh conspiracy theory...

http://mormonscripturestudies.com/bomor/twm/lamgen.asp

It has nothing to do with the Chinese gold dump.

So where's your evidence Steve?

JK.

Ever so good to see you're on the case.

Don't ever change, my man.

:o)

Give Brother Joseph a break! Sure he was no Egypytologist but he didn't need to be one. He had a direct line to Elohim, Jesus and the entire cast of the Bible.They surely would have given him a hand!

Years ago I was renewing my teaching certificate, and I took an Egyptology class from a really sharp lady who griped that she had professional troubles living in Utah because of its association with BYU and its pseudo-scholarship on that subject. She made what I recognized was a cryptic reference to the Book of Abraham and then cut herself off, saying "This is Utah; I better not."

There were BYU students in the class as well; it was offered as both an undergrad and grad level class through Continuing Education. I queried her via e-mail later that week, and she confirmed my guess...

This classic video was widely distributed in Utah through IRR, and what I love about it is watching pre-eminent Efyptologist Robert Ritner struggle to keep a straight face while discussing the subject.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcyzkd_m6KE

Years ago when the video first came out, a group of us attending an early screening of the video in Utah County, and the Zoobies were out in force.

One of them offered up a flier quoting an apologist who hollered that it should've "been beyond the dignity of such distinguished scholars to attack the sacred beliefs of a religion."

He then grumbled, in all seriousness, that the video was very one-sided, and as an analogy asked the question, "When you think of physics, you think of Einstein, right? And when you think of languages, you think of Nibley, right?"

His Hugh-ness was still alive at that time...

And of course, there is RFM friend Charles Larson's "By His Own Hand Upon Papyrus." Larson was fired from a public school teaching job in Happy Valley for his authorship and later won a judgment vindicating him.

https://www.amazon.com/His-Own-Hand-Upon-Papyrus/dp/0962096326