One of the apologetic arguments currently being thrown around to support the claim that the Book of Abraham is a real translation...is the proposition that we don't have all of the papyri that was used to translate the BoA. That the part of the papyri that it did come from is missing and that the papyri referred to as the "Scroll of Hôr" was much longer than what we have... that the BoA actually came from this missing part.

New research has now been presented that cast doubt on that argument being a possibility. Thought you RFMers might like to know about it.


In the winter 2010 issue of Dialogue, Andrew W. Cook and Christopher C. Smith make a very convincing argument that the original papyri from which the Book of Abraham was inspired was significantly smaller than the length necessary to contain all of the content found in the Book of Abraham.


LDS Egyptian scholar and apologist John Gee has asserted that in order to contain all of the content found in the Book of Abraham, the original papyri must be missing up to 1250.5 centimeters (41 Feet) from the interior end of the scroll of Hôr, the papyri from which the Book of Abraham was allegedly translated. Cook and Smith’s analysis puts Gee claim into serious doubt ...showing that the original papyri could not have been longer than 150 centimeters (5 feet).




Why is the total length of the papyri important? When Smith produced his translation he would assign whole sentences, and sometimes paragraphs to a single Egyptian character taken from the papyri. How do we know this…because his scribes wrote out the translations first showing the Egyptian symbol followed by the English translation. Using this model, Gee extrapolated that the original papyri was missing 41 feet in oder for there to be enough charactors to produce the Book of Abraham. We now know that there was not enough papyri to produce the Book of Abraham...at least not from the papyri...leaving only the papyri acting as a muse for inspiration.

In any case I'll let you draw your own conclusions. Just thought you’d like to know.



Cheers,
Cr@ig



You can read the entire article here.





https://dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/The-Original-Length-of-the-Scroll-of-Hor.pdf



An interesting sidenote in the article was the story of Joseph pointing to a particular Egyptian charactor on the papyri claiming that it was the signature of Abraham. Again I'm not going to make any conclusions...just present the facts.

I personally do not care about the scroll lengths etc. Its all fluff. Just take the hypocephallus and the other illustrations and compare an Egyptologist's translation vs Smith's and that is all that is necessary to show he was a charlatan.

Gwylym Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I personally do not care about the scroll lengths
> etc. Its all fluff. Just take the hypocephallus
> and the other illustrations and compare an
> Egyptologist's translation vs Smith's and that is
> all that is necessary to show he was a charlatan.


Well I'm glad that that works for you Gwylyn, but for many still under the spell of LD$inc, any new information that cheaps away at the support beams of apologetic arguments will further help those still holding on to all hope that it is somehow real.

I get real tired of TBM's and the lengths they go to in holding onto their beliefs despite one thing after another showing it is shite.

How much is enough? Smith couldn't reliably translate the characters on the images. No archaeological or linguistic evidence for the BoM exists. Studying Hebrew and Greek shows that the Mormon church is a poor knock-off of Christianity which is a poor knock-off of Judaism. Cridle's study shows that there are correlations between "modern" authors and the BoM. And the list goes on.

Seriously. I ask myself this too. How much is enough? But I guess it really isn't about the evidence. The evidence is overwhelming that JS was a total fraud. It all comes down to when a TBM stops shutting their eyes and covering their ears and shaking their head like a petulant child refusing to hear or see what is right in front of them.

His translations of the illustrations are wrong. What else does anyone need to know? They could argue all day about whether or not we have the correct papyri, and would probably prefer to do that INSTEAD of discussing the accuracy of the translation.

JS personally inspected the woodcuts of the facsimiles the night before they were published in the Times and Seasons (Nauvoo Newspaper), and specifically claimed responsibility for their accuracy in his journal.

He was either a liar or delusional. Either way, he was not a prophet.

Smith was probably confident that no one would ever know what the symbols and drawings really meant.

Vive Le Champollion!


and ditto for the Mayans too

So while members are wishing each other Merry Smithmas, we should wish each other Cheery Champollion day!

They are currently buried outside somewhere in my garage, but I can't find them because it's such a mess out there.

Did God spirit away the missing parts?

How convenient. Requires no proof and makes an appeal to authority that no TBM will question - God. If God made he decision, we don't need to question it. Next.

That's about the level of analysis my TBM relatives give questions about their religion.

both of history and of the workings of the apologetic mind.

Good to see you here, Cr@ig.

Golden Bible - god took it back because if you could see it, come on where is the mystery in that?

The 1250.5 centimeters (41 Feet) papyri - is also missing because god took it back because if you could see it, come on where is the mystery in that?

116 pages of the first BOM - is also missing because god can find car keys but is unable to locate his most true and perfect .....pages?


Spaldings Manuscript lost - is also missing because it would would make all the above null and void

Oh heavenly father were the hell are my car keys?



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/03/2010 11:10PM by balard123.

Their made up story must be true since you cannot disprove it.