Meditations on Dan Vogel's Responses
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.
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. If this was Dan's impression of my use of the word "clue," he misunderstood.
I went on to make a much more significant argument regarding W.W. Phelps' Egyptian transliterations, but Vogel has not yet had time to address that argument.
[Edit, 5/19/2020 - 5/20/2020 - Now, I'm not proposing Joseph Smith was fluent in the Egyptian language, just like I don't think Seers of old who saw our day, became fluent in English. But Joseph apparently did receive some understanding of Egyptian (from which, Joseph and/or his scribes may have also attempted to extrapolate and reverse-engineer the language more broadly, with mixed success). While translating through the Gift and Power of God, he may have had enhanced understanding which did not carry over outside the time spent in the sacred translation process.]
For the record, the observation of mine which Dan singled out, as though it constituted my entire argument, is that W.W. Phelps drew an Egyptian character which signifies "great," straight across from the word "great" in English. I went on to add that the English verse contains the most instances of the word "great" in all of scripture - i.e. the most out of 40,000 verses. It seems noteworthy to me, even though it is only one small, introductory piece of my argument. Significantly, the characters in Phelps' manuscript are by far the most significant in the Grammar, which may represent their attempt to extrapolate.
Let's compare my noteworthy observation with one of Dan's own observations:
"That the character representing the discovery of Egypt by a woman, while it was still underwater, appears in the Katumin passage in one of the Valuable Discovery notebooks, and is a feature of the scroll associated with Katumin's mother, is probably more than coincidence."
So, according to Dan, the fact that an Egyptian character appears in two separate places is "probably more than a coincidence." Yet, they are not lined up, they are not directly associated in any way, and there is nothing unlikely about the character appearing in both places. So, why would his observation be a clue, but my little clue somehow deserves derision? Can he lay out, in objective fashion, why his observation is a clue but mine is not?
To understand how problematic this is, imagine if I were to claim that Dan cherry-picked the character he refers to in that quote above, and I implied that his entire case was based on that one observation? Would that foster very fruitful discourse?
As for Egyptologists, they haven’t been aware of the arguments I made. Dan made an inadvertent slip by alluding to their past statements, because those were not about my observations.
Now, to reiterate, I did not claim that Joseph Smith could simply translate Egyptian.
Vogel continues:
I realize Dan has had a particular understanding of the Kirtland Egyptian Papers for a long time, and anyone in his situation might be reluctant to consider a new paradigm. But I would suggest he would do well to try to understand the new paradigm and grapple with its true substance, rather than continuing to portray it as a single word he says is cherry-picked.
Phelps is not giving us the "meaning" of characters. He is expounding and theorizing on the content of transliterations associated with the characters.
i.e. from the GAEL entries, for the second and third characters Phelps provided in his margin:
"A patriarch a rightful heir, a highpriest."
The associated transliterations are explained in my first meditation:
"A patriarch" = "iaw" = "oldest official"
"Rightful heir" = "iwa" = "inherit"
"High Priest" = Phelps' third character is taken from the name of a High Priest on the papyrus, Wsir-wr, and in the Alphabets this character was originally associated with the full Egyptian name, then later shortened to "wr." Wsir-wr is specifically mentioned on the papyrus in the context of his role as High Priest and father, from whom Hor inherited his priesthood. The parallels with Abraham, i.e. High Priest, father, inheritance and "great," are probably what made Joseph Smith stop and take notice of the character in the first place. These parallels are perhaps what spurred the transliteration project in Phelps' manuscript.
Also of interest, "wr" was the title for High Priests in Hermopolis.
Vogel continues:
I encourage Vogel to reassess his assumptions, because the GAEL does not actually call that an explanation. Let's not make the mistake Cowdery made when he claimed "The evidence is apparent upon the face." As I explained above, we have good reason to believe Phelps is not giving us the "meaning" of characters but is expounding and theorizing on the content of transliterations associated with the characters.
Vogel continues:
Dan seems to have overlooked that his claim regarding the "land of the Chaldeans" is not true of the most important Alphabet, the one containing Joseph Smith's own handwriting.
The fact that Joseph did not choose to put it in his Alphabet suggests the scribes may have jumped the gun without fully understanding.
Moreover, the reference to "land of the Chaldeans" in secondary sources must take a back seat to what actually happened in Phelps' manuscript. The character Egyptologists commonly transliterate as “i" is actually keyed to the English letter "i." An i for an i. And that "i" that it is keyed to is not included in the "land of the Chaldeans" reference in the lesser two of the three Alphabet documents. So, this is further evidence that the scribes did not initially understand.
Vogel continues:
Many things in life may seem this way, until one learns more about them. When Vogel has time to engage the actual substance of my arguments, it will be more meaningful than these bombastic statements he keeps making.
Vogel continues:
I discuss Dan's argument about English text supposedly being divided mid-sentence, in my Third Meditation. I stand by what I say there, although, of course, Dan is welcome to engage me on the substance of the arguments I provide there. As I write this, Dan has responded up to that precise point, then stopped. In his above statement, he doesn't acknowledge that I already responded to that argument. By now, presumably, he has read it.
Vogel Continues:
I don't find that hard, once we realize it is a matter of human behavior. Consider the various hobbies people have and activities they engage in. Some people like to do things for a challenge, or because they hope it will make them look good, or they feel their efforts can make a useful contribution.
People watch birds, solve puzzles, play sports, collect rocks, learn to speak Klingon, plank, paint graffiti, practice extreme ironing, crochet, etc. etc. etc.
What methods would they have used? Anything and everything from a combination of studying currently non-extant GAEL-related notes and papers and other non-extant Kirtland and Nauvoo resources, to folk magic, prayer, and so forth.
We could ask Dan's same questions about James Strang: "We know how Joseph Smith could do it, but by what process would Strang invent characters and what would be accomplished by so doing?"
For those who aren't familiar with Strang and his plates, see this link for an interesting analysis.
So, in the same climate where the Plates of Voree were produced, we might think twice before saying, "It’s hard to imagine someone other than JS providing the missing characters."
There are countless scenarios which may have played out. For instance, after Joseph Smith was martyred, someone could have drawn the characters in hopes of being able to claim they were a successor and could finish translating the Book of Abraham. Or, alternatively, someone could have knowingly drawn the wrong characters in order to test someone like Strang, who was claiming to be a Seer, in order to see if they could tell the difference - similar to how Martin Harris tested Joseph Smith by replacing the Seer stone with a similar-looking but ordinary stone. Or, a well-meaning person could have prayed to know about the characters, and believed they were receiving guidance on the matter. Or, someone could have studied non-extant Kirtland Egyptian Papers and thought they could reconstruct the missing characters. There are simply too many missing data points.
Finally, Dan again mentions paragraphs being divided in supposedly awkward places, which I address in the Third Meditation. I believe the paragraphing happened in the first two manuscripts, then the paragraphs were copied that way into the third manuscript. This argument of his seems to be his go-to, which makes it strange that he stopped responding right as he got to that point.
Vogel continues:
First, the twenty-five groupings was not a set number. The person doing this chose the groupings of characters. Their methods are limited only by their imagination and access to the documents.
Second, I'm not making any hard claims about what they were attempting to achieve. But it's plausible someone could have "tried their best" to construct characters. People do all sorts of things.
Third, Dan asks why they would copy it into all three manuscripts. But we could also ask, why would Joseph Smith want that to be done? We could invent reasons in both cases. In neither case is there a logical barrier to people doing it. People do all kinds of things. There are lots of different types of people, with different personalities and different ideas.
Fourth, Dan asks, "If Williams was not copying the characters into his manuscript, why did he not maintain a left margin to the end of his document?"
I would propose that when the manuscript was originally produced, Williams didn't know for sure whether a margin would prove useful. But by the time Williams revisited the manuscript at a later date, his manuscript had probably served its purpose and he then knew the margin wasn't needed.
He was also, no doubt, aware of his sub-conscious tendency to veer right, and when he opened the manuscript and saw this extreme example, he was probably kicking himself for creating such a ridiculously wide margin, and he realized that continuing to follow that margin was just adding insult to injury to himself, so he spited the margin.
The fact that he didn't notice he was creating a large dittograph may indicate his mind was on something else, and the size of this huge margin, which he had created previously, is a good candidate for what had him distracted.
No need for characters, and too few data points to know what happened.
Vogel continues:
Keep in mind, Dan's case requires definitive knowledge of what happened. He is not merely presenting a plausible scenario which involves Joseph Smith as the one behind the characters in the margins, but is attempting to deduce that it is true. What I'm doing is pointing out that he does not meet that burden, which means no one is obligated to accept any of the assertions that rely on those insufficiently supported premises.
Vogel continues:
First, I would invite Vogel to engage the facts I presented. His response does not directly address any of them.
Second, the appearance of Onitas in the Valuable Discovery notebook does not mean Joseph originally derived the name from there. In addition, the Valuable Discovery notebook is not straight-forward. There's more going on there than people might realize.
Third, Vogel does not explain how the name Onitas became associated with the male mummy. The male mummy is Hor. So, whatever Joseph Smith said about the male mummy, he was saying about Hor.
Fourth, since the name "Osiris" appears on all the papyri, the fact that it appears on the Amenhotep papyrus does not negate the significance of the context with which it appears on another papyrus.
Fifth, Oliver Cowdery and W.W. Phelps were the ones who created the notebooks on which characters were copied from the Amenhotep papyrus. Phelps even drew pictures. Although we might assume most of this was based on underlying information Joseph Smith had given them, and they were obviously excited, we have no evidence that Joseph Smith told them to make the notebooks. Are we to believe Joseph instructed them to draw the pictures, or is it more likely they were doing that, and some of the other things, at their own discretion? It could go either way, but we don't have enough information to say.
Sixth, the word "translation," to Joseph Smith and his scribes, did not have the straight-forward meaning people might assume today. Cowdery intentionally wrote the name Osiris backwards in Egyptian and expounded on the name of Osiris, in the Valuable Discovery notebook. The way we know the writing of the name of Osiris backwards was intentional is because on another page we can see the name Osiris in the context of the surrounding characters, and it was written forward. So, they intentionally drew it backwards. The characters written backwards may even be the only characters "translated," and the "translation" consisted of Cowdery expounding on the history of Onitas, who I argue is Osiris, and Katumin, who I argue is Khentimenty, which is a very early name for Osiris. The "translation" is symbolic in a lot of ways. The characters which were intentionally written backwards are "Osiris" and the divine determinative for Osiris, separated from each other. Other characters were moved out of order, but only the characters referring to "Osiris" were copied backwards. Does anyone have a good reason for why Cowdery would intentionally copy the name Osiris backwards and the divine determinative for Osiris, but not copy anything else backwards? Not merely transposed, but copied backwards. This seems to only support the idea of a connection between Osiris and Onitas.
Seventh, there is more going on than meets the eye, with the Valuable Discovery notebook. Oliver wrote out some Egyptian characters (Page 2, col. 2, left column, reading from right to left) and then wrote underneath them, "The above were taken from beneath the figures of two persons - one the appearance of a male, the other female." Then, to the right of the first characters, some more characters are drawn (col. 1). And below them is written: "The above was taken from beneath figures like the first, standing a little to the left, and a little below." The problem is that today we can identify where the characters in the left column came from - they are from the Book of the Dead chapter 45 and chapter 46. And there were indeed figures above the characters, but those figures would have been Anubis and a mummy (chapter 45) and underneath would have been a drawing of the owner of the papyrus. Not two figures and definitely not "figures like the first." (chapter 46).
Robert Ritner tries to explain this by saying Joseph probably misunderstood:
But are we to believe that Joseph Smith thought calling a jackal figure and a mummy simply a male and a female was a fair description? Why would Joseph take the time to point them out and describe them if he was just going to offer a misleading description?
Then, supposedly Joseph goes on to say that another set of characters was taken from "beneath figures like the first?" A second vignette of Anubis and a mummy? We know better. Something else is going on.
Vogel continues:
In case there is any misunderstanding, I do not believe the creation of the characters was intended, let alone integral, in the minds of those creating the English text.
I also am not claiming to know why the person(s) responsible drew the characters. My underlying point is that we actually don't know, and that Dan's arguments here are in a somewhat precarious position, because they are supposed to represent definitive knowledge of what happened.
Vogel continues:
No, that's actually easy to explain. The copyist would have only been covering the text while they were drawing. Then they would have probably re-positioned the papers in preparation for drawing the next characters, again covering the text. In this case, the plausible scenario I'm presenting would imply that the person who came along later, and drew characters in the margins, clumsily positioned the papers in this one instance, but once the English text was covered, the person didn't notice that they were drawing in the wrong spot, until the paper covering the text was removed.
Now, the right-handed copying situation which Dan mentions only addresses one of the ways a copyist may have positioned the papers. As I pointed out in my Third Meditation, the person drawing may have positioned the papers a variety of different ways, including upside-down. And, of course, they may have been left-handed.
The reason it matters is because, in his video, Dan called this "clear indication that sometimes characters were written in the margin before English text was added."
Vogel continues:
In the video Dan may have misspoken, however he said, "this implies the characters were written before the English text."
Vogel continues:
Dan makes a good point about the template idea. I didn't have a specific scenario in mind when I suggested that, but I was trying to place myself in the shoes of the copyist and what ideas they might have had. Of course, the copyist may have still had that idea in mind - or any of countless ideas in mind - and we should not assume that their process was streamlined in the most logical way. But Dan does make a good point.
In any event, the sets of characters are closely grouped in this situation, and the copyist may have wanted to "finish their plate," so to speak.
Vogel continues:
That's actually not what I said. Dan is actually agreeing with what I said.
Vogel continues:
Dan brought up, in an above response, the issue of Williams' margin disappearing at the bottom of the page.
For convenience, I'll repeat the answer I provided above:
When the manuscript was originally produced, Williams didn't know for sure whether a margin would prove useful. But by the time Williams revisited the manuscript at a later date, his manuscript had probably served its purpose and he then knew the margin wasn't needed.
He was also, no doubt, aware of his sub-conscious tendency to veer right, and when he saw this extreme example, he was probably kicking himself for creating such a ridiculously wide margin, and he realized that continuing to follow that margin was just adding insult to injury to himself, so he spited the margin.
The fact that he didn't notice he was creating a large dittograph indicates his mind was on something else, and the size of this huge margin, which he had created previously, is a good candidate for what had him distracted.
No need for characters, and too few data points to know definitively what happened.
Now, in regards to Vogel's statement: "Nor can he explain why Williams does the same thing on page 2 of his document."
[Edit, 5-12-2020, I had made an argument here regarding what I thought was a bracket on page 2 of Williams' manuscript. Vogel convinced me I was wrong, and I have removed the argument to avoid confusion. I stand by the remainder of my argument, which follows]
The claim that Williams did the same thing on page 2 relies on the premise that Williams started writing at the top of the page and worked his way down. However, we have reason to believe the sentence at the top of Williams' second page was added later, which would mean Williams did not do the same thing on page 2 that he did on page 4.
What I propose happened is that Williams left briefly and came back before the sentence was finished, and naturally waited for the next sentence before writing again (instead of writing mid-sentence), leaving room to later insert the part he missed.
The evidence is that there are significant differences in the Williams and Parrish versions of this text. As we can infer from these differences, shown below, only Parrish was writing while the words "was" and "Egyptians" were read or dictated. The was/is change precedes the "Egyptians" change by only a few words. If Williams had fallen behind by several syllables and was writing more slowly, the fact that Joseph stopped to correct the word "was" to "is" means Williams would have had time to catch up, and would have been at the same starting line as Parrish when they started writing "called by the [Egyptians]..." Now, since "called by the" has the same number of syllables as "Egyptians," and since Joseph Smith would have had a brief pause before he corrected "Egyptians," we would have to believe that for every syllable Williams copied, he got behind by approximately one syllable, in order to maintain that he was copying at the same time as Parrish and yet didn't write any of the word "Egyptians."
In addition, Joseph was probably dictating fairly slowly. All of this lends plausibility to the idea that the sentence at the top of page 2 of Williams' manuscript was added later, which means page 2 can't be used to discount my explanation for page 4.
Vogel continues:
So, like I said above, "his manuscript had probably served its purpose and he then knew the margin wasn't needed." It looks like Dan and I will agree on that, and it's good we can end for now on a point of agreement.
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.
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Vogel Begins:
Vogel Begins:
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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. If this was Dan's impression of my use of the word "clue," he misunderstood.
I went on to make a much more significant argument regarding W.W. Phelps' Egyptian transliterations, but Vogel has not yet had time to address that argument.
[Edit, 5/19/2020 - 5/20/2020 - Now, I'm not proposing Joseph Smith was fluent in the Egyptian language, just like I don't think Seers of old who saw our day, became fluent in English. But Joseph apparently did receive some understanding of Egyptian (from which, Joseph and/or his scribes may have also attempted to extrapolate and reverse-engineer the language more broadly, with mixed success). While translating through the Gift and Power of God, he may have had enhanced understanding which did not carry over outside the time spent in the sacred translation process.]
For the record, the observation of mine which Dan singled out, as though it constituted my entire argument, is that W.W. Phelps drew an Egyptian character which signifies "great," straight across from the word "great" in English. I went on to add that the English verse contains the most instances of the word "great" in all of scripture - i.e. the most out of 40,000 verses. It seems noteworthy to me, even though it is only one small, introductory piece of my argument. Significantly, the characters in Phelps' manuscript are by far the most significant in the Grammar, which may represent their attempt to extrapolate.
Let's compare my noteworthy observation with one of Dan's own observations:
"That the character representing the discovery of Egypt by a woman, while it was still underwater, appears in the Katumin passage in one of the Valuable Discovery notebooks, and is a feature of the scroll associated with Katumin's mother, is probably more than coincidence."
So, according to Dan, the fact that an Egyptian character appears in two separate places is "probably more than a coincidence." Yet, they are not lined up, they are not directly associated in any way, and there is nothing unlikely about the character appearing in both places. So, why would his observation be a clue, but my little clue somehow deserves derision? Can he lay out, in objective fashion, why his observation is a clue but mine is not?
To understand how problematic this is, imagine if I were to claim that Dan cherry-picked the character he refers to in that quote above, and I implied that his entire case was based on that one observation? Would that foster very fruitful discourse?
As for Egyptologists, they haven’t been aware of the arguments I made. Dan made an inadvertent slip by alluding to their past statements, because those were not about my observations.
Now, to reiterate, I did not claim that Joseph Smith could simply translate Egyptian.
Vogel continues:
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I realize Dan has had a particular understanding of the Kirtland Egyptian Papers for a long time, and anyone in his situation might be reluctant to consider a new paradigm. But I would suggest he would do well to try to understand the new paradigm and grapple with its true substance, rather than continuing to portray it as a single word he says is cherry-picked.
Phelps is not giving us the "meaning" of characters. He is expounding and theorizing on the content of transliterations associated with the characters.
i.e. from the GAEL entries, for the second and third characters Phelps provided in his margin:
"A patriarch a rightful heir, a highpriest."
The associated transliterations are explained in my first meditation:
"A patriarch" = "iaw" = "oldest official"
"Rightful heir" = "iwa" = "inherit"
"High Priest" = Phelps' third character is taken from the name of a High Priest on the papyrus, Wsir-wr, and in the Alphabets this character was originally associated with the full Egyptian name, then later shortened to "wr." Wsir-wr is specifically mentioned on the papyrus in the context of his role as High Priest and father, from whom Hor inherited his priesthood. The parallels with Abraham, i.e. High Priest, father, inheritance and "great," are probably what made Joseph Smith stop and take notice of the character in the first place. These parallels are perhaps what spurred the transliteration project in Phelps' manuscript.
Also of interest, "wr" was the title for High Priests in Hermopolis.
Vogel continues:
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I encourage Vogel to reassess his assumptions, because the GAEL does not actually call that an explanation. Let's not make the mistake Cowdery made when he claimed "The evidence is apparent upon the face." As I explained above, we have good reason to believe Phelps is not giving us the "meaning" of characters but is expounding and theorizing on the content of transliterations associated with the characters.
Vogel continues:
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Dan seems to have overlooked that his claim regarding the "land of the Chaldeans" is not true of the most important Alphabet, the one containing Joseph Smith's own handwriting.
The fact that Joseph did not choose to put it in his Alphabet suggests the scribes may have jumped the gun without fully understanding.
Moreover, the reference to "land of the Chaldeans" in secondary sources must take a back seat to what actually happened in Phelps' manuscript. The character Egyptologists commonly transliterate as “i" is actually keyed to the English letter "i." An i for an i. And that "i" that it is keyed to is not included in the "land of the Chaldeans" reference in the lesser two of the three Alphabet documents. So, this is further evidence that the scribes did not initially understand.
Vogel continues:
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Many things in life may seem this way, until one learns more about them. When Vogel has time to engage the actual substance of my arguments, it will be more meaningful than these bombastic statements he keeps making.
Vogel continues:
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I discuss Dan's argument about English text supposedly being divided mid-sentence, in my Third Meditation. I stand by what I say there, although, of course, Dan is welcome to engage me on the substance of the arguments I provide there. As I write this, Dan has responded up to that precise point, then stopped. In his above statement, he doesn't acknowledge that I already responded to that argument. By now, presumably, he has read it.
Vogel Continues:
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I don't find that hard, once we realize it is a matter of human behavior. Consider the various hobbies people have and activities they engage in. Some people like to do things for a challenge, or because they hope it will make them look good, or they feel their efforts can make a useful contribution.
People watch birds, solve puzzles, play sports, collect rocks, learn to speak Klingon, plank, paint graffiti, practice extreme ironing, crochet, etc. etc. etc.
What methods would they have used? Anything and everything from a combination of studying currently non-extant GAEL-related notes and papers and other non-extant Kirtland and Nauvoo resources, to folk magic, prayer, and so forth.
We could ask Dan's same questions about James Strang: "We know how Joseph Smith could do it, but by what process would Strang invent characters and what would be accomplished by so doing?"
For those who aren't familiar with Strang and his plates, see this link for an interesting analysis.
So, in the same climate where the Plates of Voree were produced, we might think twice before saying, "It’s hard to imagine someone other than JS providing the missing characters."
There are countless scenarios which may have played out. For instance, after Joseph Smith was martyred, someone could have drawn the characters in hopes of being able to claim they were a successor and could finish translating the Book of Abraham. Or, alternatively, someone could have knowingly drawn the wrong characters in order to test someone like Strang, who was claiming to be a Seer, in order to see if they could tell the difference - similar to how Martin Harris tested Joseph Smith by replacing the Seer stone with a similar-looking but ordinary stone. Or, a well-meaning person could have prayed to know about the characters, and believed they were receiving guidance on the matter. Or, someone could have studied non-extant Kirtland Egyptian Papers and thought they could reconstruct the missing characters. There are simply too many missing data points.
Finally, Dan again mentions paragraphs being divided in supposedly awkward places, which I address in the Third Meditation. I believe the paragraphing happened in the first two manuscripts, then the paragraphs were copied that way into the third manuscript. This argument of his seems to be his go-to, which makes it strange that he stopped responding right as he got to that point.
Vogel continues:
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First, the twenty-five groupings was not a set number. The person doing this chose the groupings of characters. Their methods are limited only by their imagination and access to the documents.
Second, I'm not making any hard claims about what they were attempting to achieve. But it's plausible someone could have "tried their best" to construct characters. People do all sorts of things.
Third, Dan asks why they would copy it into all three manuscripts. But we could also ask, why would Joseph Smith want that to be done? We could invent reasons in both cases. In neither case is there a logical barrier to people doing it. People do all kinds of things. There are lots of different types of people, with different personalities and different ideas.
Fourth, Dan asks, "If Williams was not copying the characters into his manuscript, why did he not maintain a left margin to the end of his document?"
I would propose that when the manuscript was originally produced, Williams didn't know for sure whether a margin would prove useful. But by the time Williams revisited the manuscript at a later date, his manuscript had probably served its purpose and he then knew the margin wasn't needed.
He was also, no doubt, aware of his sub-conscious tendency to veer right, and when he opened the manuscript and saw this extreme example, he was probably kicking himself for creating such a ridiculously wide margin, and he realized that continuing to follow that margin was just adding insult to injury to himself, so he spited the margin.
The fact that he didn't notice he was creating a large dittograph may indicate his mind was on something else, and the size of this huge margin, which he had created previously, is a good candidate for what had him distracted.
No need for characters, and too few data points to know what happened.
Vogel continues:
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Keep in mind, Dan's case requires definitive knowledge of what happened. He is not merely presenting a plausible scenario which involves Joseph Smith as the one behind the characters in the margins, but is attempting to deduce that it is true. What I'm doing is pointing out that he does not meet that burden, which means no one is obligated to accept any of the assertions that rely on those insufficiently supported premises.
Vogel continues:
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First, I would invite Vogel to engage the facts I presented. His response does not directly address any of them.
Second, the appearance of Onitas in the Valuable Discovery notebook does not mean Joseph originally derived the name from there. In addition, the Valuable Discovery notebook is not straight-forward. There's more going on there than people might realize.
Third, Vogel does not explain how the name Onitas became associated with the male mummy. The male mummy is Hor. So, whatever Joseph Smith said about the male mummy, he was saying about Hor.
Fourth, since the name "Osiris" appears on all the papyri, the fact that it appears on the Amenhotep papyrus does not negate the significance of the context with which it appears on another papyrus.
Fifth, Oliver Cowdery and W.W. Phelps were the ones who created the notebooks on which characters were copied from the Amenhotep papyrus. Phelps even drew pictures. Although we might assume most of this was based on underlying information Joseph Smith had given them, and they were obviously excited, we have no evidence that Joseph Smith told them to make the notebooks. Are we to believe Joseph instructed them to draw the pictures, or is it more likely they were doing that, and some of the other things, at their own discretion? It could go either way, but we don't have enough information to say.
Sixth, the word "translation," to Joseph Smith and his scribes, did not have the straight-forward meaning people might assume today. Cowdery intentionally wrote the name Osiris backwards in Egyptian and expounded on the name of Osiris, in the Valuable Discovery notebook. The way we know the writing of the name of Osiris backwards was intentional is because on another page we can see the name Osiris in the context of the surrounding characters, and it was written forward. So, they intentionally drew it backwards. The characters written backwards may even be the only characters "translated," and the "translation" consisted of Cowdery expounding on the history of Onitas, who I argue is Osiris, and Katumin, who I argue is Khentimenty, which is a very early name for Osiris. The "translation" is symbolic in a lot of ways. The characters which were intentionally written backwards are "Osiris" and the divine determinative for Osiris, separated from each other. Other characters were moved out of order, but only the characters referring to "Osiris" were copied backwards. Does anyone have a good reason for why Cowdery would intentionally copy the name Osiris backwards and the divine determinative for Osiris, but not copy anything else backwards? Not merely transposed, but copied backwards. This seems to only support the idea of a connection between Osiris and Onitas.
Seventh, there is more going on than meets the eye, with the Valuable Discovery notebook. Oliver wrote out some Egyptian characters (Page 2, col. 2, left column, reading from right to left) and then wrote underneath them, "The above were taken from beneath the figures of two persons - one the appearance of a male, the other female." Then, to the right of the first characters, some more characters are drawn (col. 1). And below them is written: "The above was taken from beneath figures like the first, standing a little to the left, and a little below." The problem is that today we can identify where the characters in the left column came from - they are from the Book of the Dead chapter 45 and chapter 46. And there were indeed figures above the characters, but those figures would have been Anubis and a mummy (chapter 45) and underneath would have been a drawing of the owner of the papyrus. Not two figures and definitely not "figures like the first." (chapter 46).
Robert Ritner tries to explain this by saying Joseph probably misunderstood:
But are we to believe that Joseph Smith thought calling a jackal figure and a mummy simply a male and a female was a fair description? Why would Joseph take the time to point them out and describe them if he was just going to offer a misleading description?
Then, supposedly Joseph goes on to say that another set of characters was taken from "beneath figures like the first?" A second vignette of Anubis and a mummy? We know better. Something else is going on.
Vogel continues:
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In case there is any misunderstanding, I do not believe the creation of the characters was intended, let alone integral, in the minds of those creating the English text.
I also am not claiming to know why the person(s) responsible drew the characters. My underlying point is that we actually don't know, and that Dan's arguments here are in a somewhat precarious position, because they are supposed to represent definitive knowledge of what happened.
Vogel continues:
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No, that's actually easy to explain. The copyist would have only been covering the text while they were drawing. Then they would have probably re-positioned the papers in preparation for drawing the next characters, again covering the text. In this case, the plausible scenario I'm presenting would imply that the person who came along later, and drew characters in the margins, clumsily positioned the papers in this one instance, but once the English text was covered, the person didn't notice that they were drawing in the wrong spot, until the paper covering the text was removed.
Now, the right-handed copying situation which Dan mentions only addresses one of the ways a copyist may have positioned the papers. As I pointed out in my Third Meditation, the person drawing may have positioned the papers a variety of different ways, including upside-down. And, of course, they may have been left-handed.
The reason it matters is because, in his video, Dan called this "clear indication that sometimes characters were written in the margin before English text was added."
Vogel continues:
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In the video Dan may have misspoken, however he said, "this implies the characters were written before the English text."
Vogel continues:
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Dan makes a good point about the template idea. I didn't have a specific scenario in mind when I suggested that, but I was trying to place myself in the shoes of the copyist and what ideas they might have had. Of course, the copyist may have still had that idea in mind - or any of countless ideas in mind - and we should not assume that their process was streamlined in the most logical way. But Dan does make a good point.
In any event, the sets of characters are closely grouped in this situation, and the copyist may have wanted to "finish their plate," so to speak.
Vogel continues:
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That's actually not what I said. Dan is actually agreeing with what I said.
Vogel continues:
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Dan brought up, in an above response, the issue of Williams' margin disappearing at the bottom of the page.
For convenience, I'll repeat the answer I provided above:
When the manuscript was originally produced, Williams didn't know for sure whether a margin would prove useful. But by the time Williams revisited the manuscript at a later date, his manuscript had probably served its purpose and he then knew the margin wasn't needed.
He was also, no doubt, aware of his sub-conscious tendency to veer right, and when he saw this extreme example, he was probably kicking himself for creating such a ridiculously wide margin, and he realized that continuing to follow that margin was just adding insult to injury to himself, so he spited the margin.
The fact that he didn't notice he was creating a large dittograph indicates his mind was on something else, and the size of this huge margin, which he had created previously, is a good candidate for what had him distracted.
No need for characters, and too few data points to know definitively what happened.
Now, in regards to Vogel's statement: "Nor can he explain why Williams does the same thing on page 2 of his document."
[Edit, 5-12-2020, I had made an argument here regarding what I thought was a bracket on page 2 of Williams' manuscript. Vogel convinced me I was wrong, and I have removed the argument to avoid confusion. I stand by the remainder of my argument, which follows]
The claim that Williams did the same thing on page 2 relies on the premise that Williams started writing at the top of the page and worked his way down. However, we have reason to believe the sentence at the top of Williams' second page was added later, which would mean Williams did not do the same thing on page 2 that he did on page 4.
What I propose happened is that Williams left briefly and came back before the sentence was finished, and naturally waited for the next sentence before writing again (instead of writing mid-sentence), leaving room to later insert the part he missed.
The evidence is that there are significant differences in the Williams and Parrish versions of this text. As we can infer from these differences, shown below, only Parrish was writing while the words "was" and "Egyptians" were read or dictated. The was/is change precedes the "Egyptians" change by only a few words. If Williams had fallen behind by several syllables and was writing more slowly, the fact that Joseph stopped to correct the word "was" to "is" means Williams would have had time to catch up, and would have been at the same starting line as Parrish when they started writing "called by the [Egyptians]..." Now, since "called by the" has the same number of syllables as "Egyptians," and since Joseph Smith would have had a brief pause before he corrected "Egyptians," we would have to believe that for every syllable Williams copied, he got behind by approximately one syllable, in order to maintain that he was copying at the same time as Parrish and yet didn't write any of the word "Egyptians."
In addition, Joseph was probably dictating fairly slowly. All of this lends plausibility to the idea that the sentence at the top of page 2 of Williams' manuscript was added later, which means page 2 can't be used to discount my explanation for page 4.
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Vogel continues:
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So, like I said above, "his manuscript had probably served its purpose and he then knew the margin wasn't needed." It looks like Dan and I will agree on that, and it's good we can end for now on a point of agreement.
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