Based on an early Judaic adaptation of Facsimile 1, Joseph got it exactly right. Book of Abraham

[kirtland r.m.]

Just another P.O.G.P. tidbit.

Not only do we see, in the Book of Luke, a Jewish adaptation of an Egyptian judgment scene, but we also find some interesting parallels to Facsimile 1 from the Book of Abraham. In this vignette, Joseph identified the figure lying on the lion couch as Abraham. Egyptologists, however, identify the figure as Osiris.[6] Based on an early Judaic adaptation of Facsimile 1, Joseph got it exactly right.https://www.ldsscriptureteachings.org/2 ... on-theory/

[ransomme]

I like this examination of Joseph's work on Egyptian after he did the translations, "Joseph Smith is the Inspector Clouseau of Egyptology. He was clumsy and did everything wrong, but somehow he still managed to solve the case. His attempt at translation shouldn’t have worked, but it did."

https://thelunchisfree.com/2019/01/19/a ... -alphabet/

[MikeMaillet]

One of my daughters is an English teacher and she has a book of poetry by Chaucer, who lived in the 1300s. The book is barely readable because the language has changed that much. Please correct me if I'm wrong but I've always understood that the only connection we have to Egyptian hieroglyphics is the Rosetta Stone. If so, how is it that Egyptologists know so much about an ancient culture when the only key they have is a business contract etched on a rock?

Joseph Smith spoke with God and the Egyptologists are making up a lot of stuff. There's also the fact that the Book of Abraham agrees quite well with the Book of Enoch, a book that was unearthed after Joseph's death.

Mike Maillet
Ingleside, Ontario

[ransomme]

One of my daughters is an English teacher and she has a book of poetry by Chaucer, who lived in the 1300s. The book is barely readable because the language has changed that much. Please correct me if I'm wrong but I've always understood that the only connection we have to Egyptian hieroglyphics is the Rosetta Stone. If so, how is it that Egyptologists know so much about an ancient culture when the only key they have is a business contract etched on a rock?

Joseph Smith spoke with God and the Egyptologists are making up a lot of stuff. There's also the fact that the Book of Abraham agrees quite well with the Book of Enoch, a book that was unearthed after Joseph's death.

Mike Maillet
Ingleside, Ontario

Yes, the Rosetta Stone is what helped them crack the Egyptian language. But Coptic is what really pushed things ahead. Once they had a basis to work from then they can look at linguistics and make pretty good assumptions, track changes, etc.

But you do have a point. Joseph was a Seer and The Egyptologists do make up a lot of stuff and are very invested in the currently accepted interpretations within the field. They also would have no clue how other cultures interpreted Egyptian or used it for their own purposes.

By the way, I had to read Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in high school....hated it.

[MikeMaillet]

One of my daughters is an English teacher and she has a book of poetry by Chaucer, who lived in the 1300s. The book is barely readable because the language has changed that much. Please correct me if I'm wrong but I've always understood that the only connection we have to Egyptian hieroglyphics is the Rosetta Stone. If so, how is it that Egyptologists know so much about an ancient culture when the only key they have is a business contract etched on a rock?

Joseph Smith spoke with God and the Egyptologists are making up a lot of stuff. There's also the fact that the Book of Abraham agrees quite well with the Book of Enoch, a book that was unearthed after Joseph's death.

Mike Maillet
Ingleside, Ontario

Yes, the Rosetta Stone is what helped them crack the Egyptian language. But Coptic is what really pushed things ahead. Once they had a basis to work from then they can look at linguistics and make pretty good assumptions, track changes, etc.

But you do have a point. Joseph was a Seer and The Egyptologists do make up a lot of stuff and are very invested in the currently accepted interpretations within the field. They also would have no clue how other cultures interpreted Egyptian or used it for their own purposes.

By the way, I had to read Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in high school....hated it.

That was a great video; thanks!

I went to a French high school and I was blessed with having to go to two language classes; French and English. It's only in my mid-60s that I'm beginning to appreciate the subtleties and beauty of language. I had to read Romeo and Juliet in high school. I didn't like it then and it's still just an over-the-top soap opera to me.

Mike

[Cruiserdude]

I like this examination of Joseph's work on Egyptian after he did the translations, "Joseph Smith is the Inspector Clouseau of Egyptology. He was clumsy and did everything wrong, but somehow he still managed to solve the case. His attempt at translation shouldn’t have worked, but it did."

https://thelunchisfree.com/2019/01/19/a ... -alphabet/

I love this guy's stuff. I think you linked to another one of his about book of Abraham previously and his studies blew me away. Great great mind....and spirit(i better give credit where credit is due)

[kirtland r.m.]

How would ancient Jews have interpreted the Egyptian facsimiles?

Kerry Muhlestein,

Even though it is obvious to ask whether or not Joseph Smith’s explanations of the Facsimiles matches with those of Egyptologists, it is not necessarily the right question to ask. For example, as we compare Facsimile One, or any of the Facsimiles, with similar Egyptian vignettes, we may be barking up the wrong tree. What if Abraham’s descendants took Egyptian elements of culture and applied their own meanings to them? We know this happened.[2] For example, Jesus himself did this when he gave the parable of Lazarus and the rich man, which clearly draws from the Egyptian tale of Setne-Kamwas. The Apocalypse of Abraham and Testament of Abraham are two more examples of Semitic adaptations of Egyptian religious traditions. [3] Maybe we shouldn’t be looking at what Egyptians thought Facsimiles meant at all, but rather at how ancient Jews would have interpreted them. [4]

!' Kerry Muhlestein, "Interpreting the Abraham Facsimiles," Meridian Magazine (1 Sept. 2014)
2. See Kevin L. Barney, The Facsimiles and Semitic Adaptation of Existing Sources, in Astronomy, Papyrus, and Covenant, ed. John Gee and Brian M. Hauglid. (Provo, UT: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies and Brigham Young University, 2005),107–30. Also see Kerry Muhlestein, “The Religious and Cultural Background of Joseph Smith Papyrus One,” in The Journal of Book of Mormon and Other Restoration Scripture 22/1 (2013), 20-33.
3. See Barney, “Facsimiles and Semitic Adaptation”; Jared W. Ludlow, “Reinterpretation of the Judgment Scene in the Testament of Abraham” in Proceedings of the Evolving Egypt: Innovation, Appropriation and Reinterpretation, ed. John Gee and Kerry Muhlestein (Oxford: British Archaeological Reports, 2012), 99-104; and Jared W. Ludlow, Abraham Meets
Death: Narrative Humor in the Testament of Abraham (New York: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002).
$. Kerry Muhlestein, "Interpreting the Abraham Facsimiles," Meridian Magazine (1 Sept. 2014)

Abrahamic traditions
The stories and worldviews we find in the translated text of our Book of Abraham coincide nicely with what we find from ancient Abrahamic lore. Joseph Smith demonstrated extensive knowledge of these areas, which he then integrated into a theologically rich whole. He could only have received this information through revelation, since there were no resources available to him on this subject at the time. https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/evi ... e_Overview

Years ago, Dr. Nibley pointed out that the critics neglect the ancient Near Eastern Abrahamic traditions that support the story found in the Book of Abraham.[5] Ancient Abrahamic lore and Jewish traditions preserved in ancient texts, show some surprising parallels to what we find in the text of the Book of Abraham. Some of these parallels imply that Joseph (who likely could not have had access to many of these traditions) actually restored authentic ancient Abrahamic traditions. Some of these parallels include early Jewish traditions about Abraham's life—details not found in the Bible.[6] Two such ancient documents that show some surprising parallels to our Book of Abraham are the Apocalypse of Abraham[7][8] and the Testament of Abraham[9] (the Apocalypse of Abraham dates to about the same time as the Book of Abraham papyri). Hugh W. Nibley, "The Unknown Abraham," Improvement Era (January 1969), 26.
See Template:TraditionsAbraham0
For some of the parallels see Template:Nibley14
Template:APC

[ParticleMan]

Hugh Nibley lecture series:
One Eternal Round — Lesson 1 of 6

https://interpreterfoundation.org/nible ... -lesson-1/

[Mindfields]

Or Joseph made it all up. Finding a parallel or two while ignoring the mountain of evidence to the contrary is just silly.

[Niemand]

One of my daughters is an English teacher and she has a book of poetry by Chaucer, who lived in the 1300s. The book is barely readable because the language has changed that much. Please correct me if I'm wrong but I've always understood that the only connection we have to Egyptian hieroglyphics is the Rosetta Stone. If so, how is it that Egyptologists know so much about an ancient culture when the only key they have is a business contract etched on a rock?

Joseph Smith spoke with God and the Egyptologists are making up a lot of stuff. There's also the fact that the Book of Abraham agrees quite well with the Book of Enoch, a book that was unearthed after Joseph's death.

Mike Maillet
Ingleside, Ontario

I find a lot of Chaucer more readable because it has some similarities to the dialect where I grew up. Throw in a bit of German, and I probably have an advantage.

The first bit:

Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote,
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licóur
Of which vertú engendred is the flour;

Many folk still say "whan" for when here, and a shower is a "shoor" or "shooer". We call a flower a "flooer" or "floor", which is exactly how Chaucer writes it here. None of this is really obscure.

"Soote" for "sweet" is a bit more obscure - maybe the German "süß" helps here.

"Roote", "veyne", "licour", "vertu", "engendred" are all easily deciphered as root, vein, liquor (although I think it has a slightly different meaning), virtue and engendered.

There are several techniques that can be used, including context, related words in other languages, phonetic renditions of words in demotic etc and other things.

[Jamescm]

I like this examination of Joseph's work on Egyptian after he did the translations, "Joseph Smith is the Inspector Clouseau of Egyptology. He was clumsy and did everything wrong, but somehow he still managed to solve the case. His attempt at translation shouldn’t have worked, but it did."

https://thelunchisfree.com/2019/01/19/a ... -alphabet/

I believe that is likely the case, and is intentional. It's a big clue from the Lord stating: "Look, Joseph clearly wasn't some mastermind fraud trying to sell you crap. I, I AM, obviously took someone who couldn't manage any of this and made it work."

[kirtland r.m.]

The following information is written by Joseph Callender at Truth Will Prevail.
Abraham 3:2-10 is scientifically correct in terms of modern galactic astrophysics and General Relativity. Yet Einstein did not publish his seminal paper on General Relativity until 1915, 73 years after first publication of Abraham’s revelation. No one alive in Joseph Smith’s day could have known anything about Relativity’s predictions of black holes, Einstein-Rosen bridges (AKA wormholes), and the warping of time and space (time dilation), except by revelation. Yet there it is, in the first few verses of the chapter!
Here is a link to his post, interesting.https://www.truthwillprevail.xyz/2019/0 ... .html#more

[ParticleMan]

The following information is written by Joseph Callender at Truth Will Prevail.
Abraham 3:2-10 is scientifically correct in terms of modern galactic astrophysics and General Relativity.
. . .
Here is a link to his post, interesting.https://www.truthwillprevail.xyz/2019/0 ... .html#more

The post may have redeeming qualities (the link is currently broken). However, astronomical and experimental evidence increasinigly favors a plasma or electromagnetic cosmology, not Einistein mathemagic or any other hypothesis built on his houses of cards.

The messages of the Book of Abraham, as all scripture, concern theology, not any -ology of men, although some correlations may be found.

[NeveR]

Just another P.O.G.P. tidbit.

Not only do we see, in the Book of Luke, a Jewish adaptation of an Egyptian judgment scene, but we also find some interesting parallels to Facsimile 1 from the Book of Abraham. In this vignette, Joseph identified the figure lying on the lion couch as Abraham. Egyptologists, however, identify the figure as Osiris.[6] Based on an early Judaic adaptation of Facsimile 1, Joseph got it exactly right.https://www.ldsscriptureteachings.org/2 ... on-theory/

That reads like a muddled mess. The guy needs to decide whether Joseph translated it (in which case he just got it totally wrong) or was inspired by it (in which case the actual origin text is irrelevant.

I'm not happy with 'explanations' that require lacunae in order to work. "Yes the extant papyrus is just a standard funerary text and nothing to do with Abraham, but no one can prove there weren't other bits now missing that were about Abraham" is a terrible, intellectually barren piece of sophistry that no one should endorse.

There's zero evidence for such a claim. It merely exists to offer an off-ramp from rational conclusions.

If Joseph claimed that extant papyrus literally said the things he 'translated' then he was hopelessly, 100% WRONG.

But if the papyrus was just his "seer stone" - well that changes everything.

What we don't need is a muddled attempt at arguing both when they contradict each other

[cab]

Just another P.O.G.P. tidbit.

Not only do we see, in the Book of Luke, a Jewish adaptation of an Egyptian judgment scene, but we also find some interesting parallels to Facsimile 1 from the Book of Abraham. In this vignette, Joseph identified the figure lying on the lion couch as Abraham. Egyptologists, however, identify the figure as Osiris.[6] Based on an early Judaic adaptation of Facsimile 1, Joseph got it exactly right.https://www.ldsscriptureteachings.org/2 ... on-theory/

That reads like a muddled mess. The guy needs to decide whether Joseph translated it (in which case he just got it totally wrong) or was inspired by it (in which case the actual origin text is irrelevant.

I'm not happy with 'explanations' that require lacunae in order to work. "Yes the extant papyrus is just a standard funerary text and nothing to do with Abraham, but no one can prove there weren't other bits now missing that were about Abraham" is a terrible, intellectually barren piece of sophistry that no one should endorse.

There's zero evidence for such a claim. It merely exists to offer an off-ramp from rational conclusions.

If Joseph claimed that extant papyrus literally said the things he 'translated' then he was hopelessly, 100% WRONG.

But if the papyrus was just his "seer stone" - well that changes everything.

What we don't need is a muddled attempt at arguing both when they contradict each other

This is my problem with apologetics. Though well-intentioned, they are nonetheless masters at obfuscating inconvenient evidence. Their goal is not to seek truth at all costs, rather it is to push a narrative through pseudo-historical propaganda.

While I would love Love LOVE the OP to be true, I know I can’t trust the means they used to reach their conclusions.

[kirtland r.m.]

Just another P.O.G.P. tidbit.

Not only do we see, in the Book of Luke, a Jewish adaptation of an Egyptian judgment scene, but we also find some interesting parallels to Facsimile 1 from the Book of Abraham. In this vignette, Joseph identified the figure lying on the lion couch as Abraham. Egyptologists, however, identify the figure as Osiris.[6] Based on an early Judaic adaptation of Facsimile 1, Joseph got it exactly right.https://www.ldsscriptureteachings.org/2 ... on-theory/

That reads like a muddled mess. The guy needs to decide whether Joseph translated it (in which case he just got it totally wrong) or was inspired by it (in which case the actual origin text is irrelevant.

I'm not happy with 'explanations' that require lacunae in order to work. "Yes the extant papyrus is just a standard funerary text and nothing to do with Abraham, but no one can prove there weren't other bits now missing that were about Abraham" is a terrible, intellectually barren piece of sophistry that no one should endorse.

There's zero evidence for such a claim. It merely exists to offer an off-ramp from rational conclusions.

If Joseph claimed that extant papyrus literally said the things he 'translated' then he was hopelessly, 100% WRONG.

But if the papyrus was just his "seer stone" - well that changes everything.

What we don't need is a muddled attempt at arguing both when they contradict each other

You have a point there, when it comes to some opinions on this topic. However on this subject Joseph identified some information correctly and in a way that was not known to Egyptian experts(such as they were) in the day but vindicated later, This subject is very far even today from any form of an exact science. Secondly, it was a tiny fragment of what were multiple scrolls, making "but no one can prove there weren't other bits now missing" just a somewhat close shot at the truth. The was a boatload of missing information on those scrolls, and in fact, it is what we have today that is the small fragment. Descriptions of those who saw them tell us as much. Only bad or dishonest research ignore these facts.
I have tons, yes tons of evidence supporting the PO.G.P., and when I post some of them, no one takes them on directly, they are ignored by many, and sideways attacks are made at me on topics I do not even post about. You will continue to see a lot more on this and also the Book of Mormon translation coming in the months to come. In about seven months from now I plan to retire and I will have more time to pass on even more information That is sure to light up the boo birds.