For How MANY ***YEARS*** Has Shulem Asked About Fac 3 Now???

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_Gadianton
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Re: For How MANY ***YEARS*** Has Shulem Asked About Fac 3 No

Post by _Gadianton »

Themis wrote:I don't really understand what you mean by use here. Are you suggesting the person who wrote the papyri had some hidden meaning hidden in a clear Egyptian funerary story? Maybe someone else can help me out.


This is based on some deep theories of realty that Clark is into that go well beyond ancient texts and translating them, but the pedestrian version is not that the original authors put some extra meaning into the text, but that some community at a later date had the scrap, and had a different level of understanding and purpose for it. Let me prime your intuition for accepting this as a not-so illogical proposition. If an alien visitor came to earth and saw a phone book, would it be wrong for thinking a phone book was for boosting the height of 4 year olds at the dinner table? If modern society ended, and thousands of years later our civilization were uncovered and the Mona Lisa was found, would their understanding of the Mona Lisa as iconic in some way of the final modern age be invalid? Would they need to recover the original thoughts and feelings of Da Vinci in order to understand the painting?

The mnemonic device theory is "getting warmer" in the direction Clark is going, but Clark's position is more general than that. I do wonder if Clark is being entirely consistent though. Think about this: We have a scrap of papyri that say, in the mnemonic theory, is anachronistic because we are missing this layer of reality -- community X that used the sensen text as part of their culture in this other way -- and now we have the Gold Plates. We really have no idea what the Gold Plates represent, abstracted from their interpretive community. Maybe the Gold plates were a mnemonic device? And how about the sword of laban and the U&T? Clark speaks as if their appearance in the box with the plates suggests historical reality, but they could have been props for some other reason and our instinct to interpret them as actual historical objects is as flawed as interpreting the sensen text per the narrow layer of reality we currently have access to.
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_Gadianton
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Re: For How MANY ***YEARS*** Has Shulem Asked About Fac 3 No

Post by _Gadianton »

Clark,

There's plenty to respond to in your post but I'd rather just focus on one thing for now. Fence Sitter quoted this:

from Fence Sitter's quote wrote:I went to the city of New York, and presented the characters which had been translated, with the translation thereof, to Professor Charles Anthon, a gentleman celebrated for his literary attainments. Professor Anthon stated that the translation was correct, more so than any he had before seen translated from the Egyptian


Dumb luck, wouldn't you say, that the characters Joseph Smith showed Anthon were "translated" by Smith exactly how a 19th century scholar translated them? Meaning: if the characters were funneled to Joseph Smith by divine providence from an interpretive context where they had been mnemonic devices, Anthon would not have detected that. He would have said Joseph Smith's interpretation was wrong. Alternatively, if Joseph Smith were "expanding", then we also would not expect he and Anthon to have the same output. Yes, I think it's obvious that the claimed process as you say was not an everyday translation, however, I think this Anthon episode (and others) make it clear that the output of Joseph Smith's process resulted in precisely what we'd get by a secular scholar, provided the scholar had the requisite education and honesty.
Lou Midgley 08/20/2020: "...meat wad," and "cockroach" are pithy descriptions of human beings used by gemli? They were not fashioned by Professor Peterson.

LM 11/23/2018: one can explain away the soul of human beings...as...a Meat Unit, to use Professor Peterson's clever derogatory description of gemli's ideology.
_ClarkGoble
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Re: For How MANY ***YEARS*** Has Shulem Asked About Fac 3 No

Post by _ClarkGoble »

Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:Isn't that the catalyst theory? I know Clark has been talking around it, but it seems to me that's exactly what he's driving at.


The catalyst theory, as I understand it, is that the mummies prompted a revelation about Abraham but that's unrelated to the papyri at all. I believe most proponents of the catalyst theory think the accounts about Abraham are accurate but completely reject anything about the papyri. The problem with that, as I believe was mentioned in one of the recent threads, is the apparent reference to the vignette in fac 1.

This theory which one might call the deconstructive or interrogative theory worries about 1st century syncretistic use of these texts.

Themis wrote:I don't really understand what you mean by use here. Are you suggesting the person who wrote the papyri had some hidden meaning hidden in a clear Egyptian funerary story? Maybe someone else can help me out.


I am anything but an expert on things Egyptian. I know a bit more about the Roman context though. So it's that broader context and not what the original scribe understood in the Egyptian context which is what's at issue. I emphasize use because while the papyri by and large appear standard funerary materials (as best I know - again I'm no expert in the least) the use of such texts and images in the broader non-egyptian context involves other religious and "magical" uses. Scribes were making tons of copies of these but we shouldn't assume all that matters is that context. The question then becomes what's the meaning in other contexts. I raised as an example the Isis cult in 1st century Rome but one could easily find other contexts.

As I said this is a broad claim, so there's lots of very different theories that would work with it.

Gadianton wrote:This is based on some deep theories of realty that Clark is into that go well beyond ancient texts and translating them,


I don't think I have any particularly deep theory of reality. I'm basically a pragmatist and an empiricist and largely a materialist. Pretty pedestrian in terms of ontology. The claims are much more about again fairly straightforward semiotics not metaphysics that I can see. (Beyond the fairly pedestrian claim that there's a God and he can communicate)

...but the pedestrian version is not that the original authors put some extra meaning into the text, but that some community at a later date had the scrap, and had a different level of understanding and purpose for it.


Not necessarily at a later time - especially since the scribes as I understand it were largely just making hundreds of copies of the same thing with minor variations. But yes, you have the general idea. It deals with the ability of a text to be quoted/used in a new context. Again this is pretty pedestrian. It happens all the time especially in the ancient world. Just look at how many New Testament quotations are acontextual to the original text in its original setting.

Let me prime your intuition for accepting this as a not-so illogical proposition. If an alien visitor came to earth and saw a phone book, would it be wrong for thinking a phone book was for boosting the height of 4 year olds at the dinner table? If modern society ended, and thousands of years later our civilization were uncovered and the Mona Lisa was found, would their understanding of the Mona Lisa as iconic in some way of the final modern age be invalid? Would they need to recover the original thoughts and feelings of Da Vinci in order to understand the painting?


I'm not sure that's a good example. A better one might be the famous novel A Canticle for Leibowitz although you could argue that Umberto Eco's sendup of religion and conspiracy theories Foucalt's Pendulum is the classic example of this. The reason your analogy doesn't really work is that we know Rome was "quoting" in unique ways Egyptian religion and culture. Much as you find folks in the Renaissance doing the same leading to Masonry. So the question of how something was used or understood outside of its original context is actually pretty common. Standard semiotics.

The mnemonic device theory is "getting warmer" in the direction Clark is going, but Clark's position is more general than that.


Is there a full mnemonic theory for the Book of Abraham? If there is could you point me the way? I'd be interested. I think that relative to the Book of Mormon John Tvendtes had a theory back in the 70's but he largely abandoned it. Relative to the Book of Mormon (not Book of Abraham) I actually think it's still an interesting theory. I know some have pushed an hieratic model for the plates, but even knowing as little as I do, that seems pretty implausible given the characters we've seen reproduced not to mention the length of the text. A more likely scenario is some combination of shorthand and abbreviation which in many ways resembles a mnemonic theory. However given we can read the Book of Abraham extant papyri I don't see how that's relevant there.

I do wonder if Clark is being entirely consistent though. Think about this: We have a scrap of papyri that say, in the mnemonic theory, is anachronistic because we are missing this layer of reality -- community X that used the sensen text as part of their culture in this other way -- and now we have the Gold Plates. We really have no idea what the Gold Plates represent, abstracted from their interpretive community. Maybe the Gold plates were a mnemonic device? And how about the sword of laban and the U&T? Clark speaks as if their appearance in the box with the plates suggests historical reality, but they could have been props for some other reason and our instinct to interpret them as actual historical objects is as flawed as interpreting the sensen text per the narrow layer of reality we currently have access to.


Certainly one could postulate such a theory and that's compatible with the theory I presented since it is so general. The question again then becomes why be deceptive in that fashion since Moroni does describe these other items. So far as I'm aware he said nothing about the mechanics of translation.
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Re: For How MANY ***YEARS*** Has Shulem Asked About Fac 3 No

Post by _Gadianton »

Clark wrote:The reason your analogy doesn't really work is that we know Rome was "quoting" in unique ways Egyptian religion and culture


Sure, but I wasn't looking for an exact analogy. I was trying to think of something that provided intuition for the familiar interpretation to be the re-contextualization, to break the habbit of thinking "author intent" is the real interpretation. I'm sure you can think of better examples though.


Clark wrote:Certainly one could postulate such a theory and that's compatible with the theory I presented since it is so general. The question again then becomes why be deceptive in that fashion since Moroni does describe these other items. So far as I'm aware he said nothing about the mechanics of translation.



A good question. Why be deceptive? To answer that question, though, I need to answer this question first: "Is there a full mnemonic theory for the Book of Abraham?" NO! That's the point. Tvedness is using the "middleware" framework to justify the Book of Abraham on account of a future theory.* How could you say that God allowing an object (the sensen text) to fall into hands of Joseph Smith for the purpose of teaching its meaning in terms of context 2, when everyone in that time period (even our time also, but especially back then) would have had their expectations bound to context 1, is anything but deceptive? Perhaps in fifty years, we'll unearth a library of documents that vindicate the senson text as a repurpsed Abraham tradition, but that revelation will come with a hell of a plot twist. For now, all I can say is that a similar plot twist may await for those who don't accept the Book of Mormon as fictional. The sword and U&T as props will make sense once we properly understand their context 2.

I like your theory Clark, and I wish you'd publish it. It might be one of the better things to come out of Mormon Studies. I'm telling you though, if it gains popularity, it will lay the groundwork for the fictional Book of Mormon movement among faithful Saints. I'm sure they can get there by other means but you might as well be the guy.


*that the expansion theory is really a expansion hypothesis and also the 15th century english idea.

ETA: A plot twist actually should be predictable based on clues within the text. We feel like the author is cheating if the information wasn't available to predict the twist. in the case of the repurposed sensen text, the discovery of context 2 in the future feels like author deception, because Joseph Smith, his followers, nor Anthon could ever have predicted that with the clues they had.
Lou Midgley 08/20/2020: "...meat wad," and "cockroach" are pithy descriptions of human beings used by gemli? They were not fashioned by Professor Peterson.

LM 11/23/2018: one can explain away the soul of human beings...as...a Meat Unit, to use Professor Peterson's clever derogatory description of gemli's ideology.
_Doctor CamNC4Me
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Re: For How MANY ***YEARS*** Has Shulem Asked About Fac 3 No

Post by _Doctor CamNC4Me »

Ok, I'm going to try to dumb this down so I can understand what's being said here. If anyone decides to respond to this post please keep it to the level of, say, a 4th grader.

Joseph Smith bought some mummies. The mummies had some papers, the pictures on which tells an Egyptian story of what happens to an Egyptian when he dies. It has all sorts of regular Egyptian stuff, and gods, and characters which only have to do with ancient Egyptians.

Joseph Smith didn't understand the pictures.

Joseph Smith told people God told him the pictures were about Abraham and a Bible story, and the pictures were written by Abraham himself!

There may or may not have been more papers with more pictures. Many Mormons believe these papers told the story you see in the Book of Abraham. No one knows why Egyptian mummies would have a story about Jews because that's just silly.

-------------- This is where I'm at, and now I'm trying to understand Clark's POV --------------

Clark is saying the pictures meant a lot of things to a lot of people, but he's not sure who, where, and when the papers were made.

Clark hasn't given us proof that Egyptian funeral papers that are tucked in with dead Egyptians mean anything other than the story of what happens to an Egyptian when he dies.

Some people think the papers are something called a mnemonic device. This is a mnemonic device:

Image

What that means is that each picture doesn't really tell the story of what happens to an Egyptian guy when he dies, but is symbol that can tell a whole story all by itself. This just seems like something someone would make up because Joseph Smith told a story about the funeral papers that wasn't true. Do you think Joseph Smith used the funeral papers as a mnemonic device, or do you think he just made up a silly story that doesn't fit with the papers?

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So. That's where I'm at. Please let me know where I'm off when I'm trying to follow Clark's line of thought, and if you choose to explain it to me please talk to me like I'm a child from the 4th grade. Thanks.

- Doc
In the face of madness, rationality has no power - Xiao Wang, US historiographer, 2287 AD.

Every record...falsified, every book rewritten...every statue...has been renamed or torn down, every date...altered...the process is continuing...minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Ideology is always right.
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Re: For How MANY ***YEARS*** Has Shulem Asked About Fac 3 No

Post by _Themis »

ClarkGoble wrote:I am anything but an expert on things Egyptian. I know a bit more about the Roman context though. So it's that broader context and not what the original scribe understood in the Egyptian context which is what's at issue. I emphasize use because while the papyri by and large appear standard funerary materials (as best I know - again I'm no expert in the least) the use of such texts and images in the broader non-egyptian context involves other religious and "magical" uses. Scribes were making tons of copies of these but we shouldn't assume all that matters is that context. The question then becomes what's the meaning in other contexts. I raised as an example the Isis cult in 1st century Rome but one could easily find other contexts.

As I said this is a broad claim, so there's lots of very different theories that would work with it.


I think I understand a little better what you are getting at, but don't see how it is relevant to the Book of Abraham or papyri. The original scribe/writer is the only scribe/writer, and you admit their work has nothing to do with Abraham but is just about a funerary story for the dead. I can understand Egyptian symbols and iconography being used for different purposes, but there should be evidence showing that. One big problem is that text is not going to somehow be completely changed to a new use and we have pages of the claimed source text of the Book of Abraham. Ignoring that giant problem to your theory, I can see using the pictures in fac 1 and 3 in different ways, but the the text in fac3 would reflect those changes, as should all that text we see with fac1 in the papyri. It's like arguing a different use of LOTR pictures in which we also had to change the entire meaning of all English words to back up that change in use.
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_grindael
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Re: For How MANY ***YEARS*** Has Shulem Asked About Fac 3 No

Post by _grindael »

It's all silly gobbledygook.

How could you say that God allowing an object (the sensen text) to fall into hands of Joseph Smith for the purpose of teaching its meaning in terms of context 2, when everyone in that time period (even our time also, but especially back then) would have had their expectations bound to context 1, is anything but deceptive?


Claiming to be able to read the mind of a God that cannot even be defined in any coherent way by Mormons is the height of ridiculousness.
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Re: For How MANY ***YEARS*** Has Shulem Asked About Fac 3 No

Post by _Philo Sofee »

grindael wrote:It's all silly gobbledygook.

How could you say that God allowing an object (the sensen text) to fall into hands of Joseph Smith for the purpose of teaching its meaning in terms of context 2, when everyone in that time period (even our time also, but especially back then) would have had their expectations bound to context 1, is anything but deceptive?


Claiming to be able to read the mind of a God that cannot even be defined in any coherent way by Mormons is the height of ridiculousness.


Hell their own prophets can't even get that! This is a stellar point Grindael... absolutely stellar. Sheer and utter desperation on their part. Robert Smith was right talking about the old Backyard Professor on the other board that he was in way over his head. He was, it's why he quit being an apologist. They rather appear to me to like being in over their heads! He meant it as a downplay, I take it as a complete compliment that I did something about it. The only logical and realistic thing.
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_ClarkGoble
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Re: For How MANY ***YEARS*** Has Shulem Asked About Fac 3 No

Post by _ClarkGoble »

grindael wrote:Claiming to be able to read the mind of a God that cannot even be defined in any coherent way by Mormons is the height of ridiculousness.


Who's claiming to be able to read God's mind? We can theorize of course, but it'd be silly to take such theories too seriously. Especially with no means to test them.

Themis wrote:The original scribe/writer is the only scribe/writer, and you admit their work has nothing to do with Abraham but is just about a funerary story for the dead.


My understanding is that the scribes just are making copies of stuff for money. They don't care too much about the content. Assuming that claims about the Hor papyri are correct (and I'm just not qualified to say much there) then this seems like a standard funerary script with some small variations. And again I don't know if the variations matter much at all - just not my skill set. I know some have claimed they do matter but I've not seen a good justification for that claim.

However by the same token not all scribes are just copying for Egyptian religious use. They're just copying and the use was in 1st century Roman control much broader than that. So my point is that the scribe is functioning akin to a photocopier but the use could vary quite a bit. Some might just use them for funerals. Others might use them more broadly in the rise of popular mystery religions.

Themis wrote:I can understand Egyptian symbols and iconography being used for different purposes, but there should be evidence showing that.


Are you speaking in general or of our papyri? For the former isn't there an abundance of literature on this? I mean this is an area scholars have been writing on a fair bit. For the latter, I'm not sure how we should expect evidence there. As I originally said near the beginning of the thread, the fact these were found at Thebes rather than a more Roman city is certainly an argument against a more syncretic use. But syncretic use is pretty ubiquitous at this time. Just like all things Egyptian were popular and used in crazy ways in Europe and especially England in the 17th through 19th centuries, you had a pretty similar thing in Rome. And just like you had pseudo-Egyptian rituals in England with masonry and related phenomena, you had nearly the same thing in Rome culminating in the hermetic tradition that became repopularized during the Renaissance.

Thebes wrote:One big problem is that text is not going to somehow be completely changed to a new use and we have pages of the claimed source text of the Book of Abraham. Ignoring that giant problem to your theory, I can see using the pictures in fac 1 and 3 in different ways, but the the text in fac3 would reflect those changes, as should all that text we see with fac1 in the papyri.


Why should we expect the text to change if they're just repurposing standard texts? Now it would be nice to have other texts giving context of course. But not necessarily. My understanding though is that many of the texts from the find are missing. (Which is not to make a missing text claim about the Hor papyri - just to note that many of the original texts from the find in Thebes are missing.

Again, please realize the claim of 1st century use is not speculative. It's amply documented. One can dispute how relevant it is for the Hor text. But I don't think you can dispute the syncretic use of these texts in the first century. Again most of the so-called magic use, invented ritual use in things like masonry, and the occult use all tend to be in the Roman era as well. Part of the reason Egypt was so fascinating in the 18th century was because of how Renaissance philosophers had set things up - especially with their use of the hermetic tradition.
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Re: For How MANY ***YEARS*** Has Shulem Asked About Fac 3 No

Post by _ClarkGoble »

Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:Clark is saying the pictures meant a lot of things to a lot of people, but he's not sure who, where, and when the papers were made.


I think that's actually fairly well known if we're speaking of our papyri. It's Thebes around the 1st century. I think one of two of the documents might be older, but that's the general time frame.

Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:Clark hasn't given us proof that Egyptian funeral papers that are tucked in with dead Egyptians mean anything other than the story of what happens to an Egyptian when he dies.


I can put something together for you. It'll take a few days. While not really the same as our texts, this thesis on Demotic texts, particularly chapter 1 and chapter 4 is relevant. The reason it's not completely relevant is that the thesis' focus is the Egyptian context with modifications not the syncretic context although that gets mentioned around 4.3.

My emphasis on use can be found in this quote. "What they have in common is that they were all intended for use by the deceased as a sort of passport to the afterlife. From this it would appear that, to the writers of such texts, their designation as letters for breathing depended not so much on their actual contents as on their intended function." (199)

Again my emphasis is the mystery religion use and non-funerary syncretic magic use which that thesis doesn't address. But I'm at work and I had that handy so I thought I'd use it to point out my main issue. Certainly there has been work on greek magical papyri in Thebes. But I'll also fully admit I'm largely ignorant of most of the work. I'm more familiar with work about Rome proper rather than what's going on in Egypt. So I'm trying to be careful and put forth just a general and cautious theory. My understanding is that relative to Thebian texts there's still an ongoing and heated debate over whether they should be understood in the Egyptian context or the Greek/Roman context even when Greek names are found.

My understanding is that one of the key texts is Frankfurter's Religion in Roman Egypt: Assimilation and Resistance.

Some people think the papers are something called a mnemonic device. This is a mnemonic device:

[...]

What that means is that each picture doesn't really tell the story of what happens to an Egyptian guy when he dies, but is symbol that can tell a whole story all by itself.


A mnemonic device can be more complicated than that. The classic example of mnemonic devices is the Art of Memory which allowed ancients without paper to memorize extremely long texts very accurately. As an aside, it's the Art of Memory in its Renaissance form, that becomes one of the main influences on the shape of Masonry as it gets speculative elements added to it in the 17th century.

A simple mnemonic method might just be some element of a phrase or even paragraph that make it easy to recall. Typically it requires familiarity by the author, which is why they can be problematic. However most shorthands often have symbols representing more complex text rather than just phoenetic or letter information. (Not all do of course)

This just seems like something someone would make up because Joseph Smith told a story about the funeral papers that wasn't true. Do you think Joseph Smith used the funeral papers as a mnemonic device, or do you think he just made up a silly story that doesn't fit with the papers?


I don't think Joseph indicated anything about mnemonic devices. As I said, I think it's a relevant question to the gold plates only because of the claims of compression. Such levels of compression suggest some lossy method of encoding. Mneomnic methods are the obvious ancient example of that. I have no reason to believe they're relevant for the Book of Abraham and believe I said that explicitly.
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