Meditations And Meaning

Meditation on Dan Vogel's Response of May 15, 2020 Thank you, Dan, for your response. Below is a picture of your response, followed by my reply. First, I agree with you that Parrish and Williams usually were writing at the same time. But we need to account for the fact I drew attention to in my last meditation , that Williams did not write the word "was" and did not write the word "Egyptians," both of which Parrish did write, in the corresponding part of his text, and both of which Parrish had to cross out. Joseph Smith apparently dictated the words, then stopped and corrected them. I believe we agree up to that point. You propose that the reason Williams did not write down those words is that he may have been writing slower and thus he had fallen far enough behind that he did not get to that point until after the correction had been made and so he therefore knew not to write the words. However, the word "was" came just three syllables bef

I want to thank Dan Vogel for offering a few initial responses to some of my meditations about his "Truth of the Book of Abraham"  video series . Thanks in part to Dan's responses, I have made a few modifications to my post, " Meditions on Vogel ," with a link near the top of the post, where people can still access the original version. If I become aware of more responses from Dan, I will post them as well, accompanied by any commentary I may decide to offer. Meditation on Dan's First Responses Below are Dan's set of initial responses, followed by my replies.  (click image to enlarge) --- Vogel Begins: (click image to enlarge) The way Dan phrases this sounds like he's pointing to one observation I made, which I called a "clue," and he is suggesting I held up that one clue as something which, by itself, could overturn the Egyptological assessment of Joseph Smith's relationship with the Egyptian language. I

The Kinderhook Plates explanation put forth by Don Bradley and Mark Ashurst-McGee makes sense, although I believe they overlooked some profound implications, and their conclusion is premature.  I do not believe Joseph Smith attempted a translation of the Kinderhook Plates. We have very good reason to believe William Clayton took something Joseph Smith said about the papyri and extrapolated it to the KP, based on Joseph telling Clayton about a character which Joseph had derived from the papyri which was similar to a prominent character on a Kinderhook Plate.  We actually have Bradley and Ashurst-McGee showing us that the translation referred to by Clayton was derived from the papyri, but they stop short of realizing that this creates a dependence of Clayton’s journal, on the papyrus. The translation not only was derived from but is a correct description of the content of a piece from the papyri collection.  The first thing we should do is familiarize ourselves with their theory.  

As people engage in speculation and debate over the translation methods of Joseph Smith, one very important point seems to have been missed, which has the potential to change our whole outlook. We have an example of Joseph Smith translating an Egyptian name into English as a more technically accurate English version, but then later changing that more technically accurate word into a more modern equivalent that would have more meaning to the typical reader of ~1840. In other words, a clash arose between the importance of technical accuracy versus readability, and Joseph initially sided with technical accuracy, but then changed it later to apparently side with readability.  As others have already pointed out, the word “Zeptah” fits nicely with the word “Egyptus” in an ancient Egyptian setting. But, importantly, I would like to add that the word "Zeptah" gives us a very rare glimpse into Joseph Smith's translation methodology. It is a name found in early manuscripts of the

I've always thought it curious that the lacunae (that big torn area of the papyrus) in the vignette for facsimile 1 seems to snip out where the snout of Anubis is alleged to have been drawn. I  realize  the  existence of Anubis in the vignette is supposed to be one of the undisputed, untouchable assumptions. After all, the skin of the figure is black (at least on the upper body) and the clothing is similar to what Anubis might wear. But  I'm going to challenge that assumption. If the scribe who drew the vignette was adapting it to the Book of Abraham, a more fitting figure would be one that could represent the idolatrous pharaoh - and thus fill the role of the priest of "Elkenah" who was also the priest of pharaoh. Horus, the god most closely associated with pharaoh, would be the obvious choice. Joseph Smith already identifies Horus elsewhere in the vignette as the god of pharaoh. Indeed, Robert Ritner agrees that "Horus-Sobek was a god of Pharaoh." I