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How can they say "the entire 'Joseph Smith Papyri'" when they don't have all of it and most likely most of what they do have isn't a part of the Book of Abraham?
hi Phoebe Ann!
it sounds like you're making a faith-based statement.
That's fine of course!
I've heard people say that they simply believe that the KJV is the absolute inspired word of God, word for word.
sometimes a person will choose to believe that the Earth is flat.
I think it is difficult to show that the documents that make up the Bible have been significantly altered.
this situation changes, though, if a person is highly motivated to believe they have been altered.
I think this is especially true for the New testament.
there are thousands of ancient Greek manuscripts available.
they agree for the vast majority of words.
doing some brief research on my phone, I found this quote and webpage which basically sums up the situation:
"For more than ninety-nine percent of the cases the original text can be reconstructed to a practical certainty."
Manuscript Evidence for the Bible's Reliability | Reasoning from the Scriptures Ministries
I don't understand.
anything written by Joseph Smith would long ago have passed into the public domain.
any particular edition (a book or a website) produced in the last 100 years could be copyrighted,
but the actual text of the translation could not be copyrighted.
I found these two links to digitized versions of the 1867 edition,
but they're very difficult to search, imo.
The Holy scriptures : Smith, Joseph, 1805-1844 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
The Holy Scriptures, tr. and cor. by the spirit of revelation : Smith, Joseph, 1805-1844 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
The 11 fragments have been translated, but much of the Papyri was burned up in the Chicago fire. It is likely Joseph Smith used one of the other scrolls for most of the Book of Abraham.The entire extant papyri known as the Joseph Smith Papyri has been translated, yes. The claims of the Mormon religion have nothing to do with the actual papyrological evidence.
The 11 fragments have been translated, but much of the Papyri was burned up in the Chicago fire. It is likely Joseph Smith used one of the other scrolls for most of the Book of Abraham.
It is very clear that the person on the table is not dead that is why it is not a common funerary scroll that was used. As far as time There are two important and peculiar aspects of ancient authorship which must be considered here. One is that according to Egyptian and Hebrew thinking would be that any copy of a book originally written by Abraham would be designated as the very work of his hand no matter how many reproductions were made. The other is that no matter who did the writing originally, it was Abraham who commissioned or directed the work and he would take credit for the actual writing. We don't have the original manuscript of the Bible yet we do know who wrote it.It really isn't likely, though. Because Egyptologists like Dr. Ritner know the provenance and content of the papyri (i.e., that it is not from Abraham's time, and that it is a common funerary scroll), they know what is reasonable to find with it and what is not reasonable to find with it. Mormon claims regarding what must've been found on the rest of the papyri are not reasonable at all, and are driven by religious rather than academic concerns.
Dr. Ritner deals with these kinds of claims himself below, beginning ~ 14:42:
The long and short of it is that there is absolutely no reason to expect much more -- or significantly different -- material than what is already found on the Joseph Smith Papyri as it is known to Egyptologists, and when what is claimed about the content of the text can be checked against what is actually found on the Papyri, it is wrong in basically every way that something can be wrong.
Just face it: There's no historical validity to the Book of Abraham. It is not what the Mormon religion says it is. Period. End of story.
It is very clear that the person on the table is not dead that is why it is not a common funerary scroll that was used.
As far as time There are two important and peculiar aspects of ancient authorship which must be considered here. One is that according to Egyptian and Hebrew thinking
any copy of a book originally written by Abraham would be designated as the very work of his hand no matter how many reproductions were made.
The other is that no matter who did the writing originally, it was Abraham who commissioned or directed the work and he would take credit for the actual writing.
We don't have the original manuscript of the Bible yet we do know who wrote it.
sure, thanks for asking!I'm very confused by your response to 1 Nephi 13:29. Could you please explain?
I believe you responded with the quote of 1 Nephi 13:29.my impression from the bits and pieces I've read from Mormon sources about the JST is that he started it because he believed the Bible had been significantly corrupted.
I think this is a difficult case to make, especially for the New testament documents.
you're welcome!I have a copy of the Holy Scriptures, Inspired Version(c. 1944, 13th printing), purchased by my husband in an LDS bookstore in 1970. There was no JST available. When he asked why the LDS don't use it, the answer he received was that the RLDS were an apostate group and the LDS, therefore, could not be certain of its accuracy.
Thank you for this information.
The person on the table in the image you posted appears to have their eyes open, in my non-egyptologist opinion.How do you come to this conclusion? The person not looking dead to you means that non-LDS Egyptologists are all wrong?
Here's an image from an unrelated Egyptian funerary scroll (not the JS Papyri), for comparison:
That person doesn't 'look dead', either, yet it's the same general genre of writing as on the JS papyri. I don't see how this is evidence of anything. I'm not even an Egyptologist and I can still tell from the way actual Egyptologists talk about their profession that they do not base their conclusions on whether or not the figure who is laying down looks dead or alive. They base it on the actual text, which they can read, in addition to the surrounding scenes.
"Egyptian and Hebrew thinking"...what?
Are you pretending to know what ancient Egyptians and Hebrew thought, based on (presumably) what Mormonism says about those people? That's adorable. You're silly.
This would almost be a point if it weren't for the fact that the text itself doesn't say that. There's nothing on the papyri itself that says anything about Abraham one way or another. That's not its topic.
And if I were the queen of England, I would be living in a palace instead of a regular apartment. What's your point?
Again, this is just unrelated to the actual text of the papyri, so it's not really addressing the core complaint (that what JS came up with as the Book of Abraham bears no relation to the papyri, even though it is claimed in the book's introduction that it does).
What?
Do you know what the Bible is? There is no "original manuscript of the Bible", since the Bible is not one book. It is a collection of writings from various sources, assembled according to a given canon (not all Christians or all Jews share the same canon of their respective holy scriptures).
I can see that the person in your picture does NOT have one leg and both arms sticking up in the air. The one you pictured is in a sarcophagus. How is that the same? If you do not believe what I said about Egyptian and Hebrew thinking check it out for yourself, I did. So while it is true that the Papyri came from a latter period of time and was not the original papyri from Abraham it is still considered by him just as the copied manuscript from the writers of the Bible is considered their work. Do you believe the Bible is a fake because it is not written from the original manuscript which we do not have? Still you are missing the point. You believe that the 11 fragments of the papyri that was found in New York constituted the manuscript used to write the Book of Abraham. I believe that the original papyrus for most of the Book of Abraham was burned up in John H. Wood's museum in Chicago.How do you come to this conclusion? The person not looking dead to you means that non-LDS Egyptologists are all wrong?
Here's an image from an unrelated Egyptian funerary scroll (not the JS Papyri), for comparison:
That person doesn't 'look dead', either, yet it's the same general genre of writing as on the JS papyri. I don't see how this is evidence of anything. I'm not even an Egyptologist and I can still tell from the way actual Egyptologists talk about their profession that they do not base their conclusions on whether or not the figure who is laying down looks dead or alive. They base it on the actual text, which they can read, in addition to the surrounding scenes.
"Egyptian and Hebrew thinking"...what?
Are you pretending to know what ancient Egyptians and Hebrew thought, based on (presumably) what Mormonism says about those people? That's adorable. You're silly.
This would almost be a point if it weren't for the fact that the text itself doesn't say that. There's nothing on the papyri itself that says anything about Abraham one way or another. That's not its topic.
And if I were the queen of England, I would be living in a palace instead of a regular apartment. What's your point?
Again, this is just unrelated to the actual text of the papyri, so it's not really addressing the core complaint (that what JS came up with as the Book of Abraham bears no relation to the papyri, even though it is claimed in the book's introduction that it does).
What?
Do you know what the Bible is? There is no "original manuscript of the Bible", since the Bible is not one book. It is a collection of writings from various sources, assembled according to a given canon (not all Christians or all Jews share the same canon of their respective holy scriptures).
I can see that the person in your picture does NOT have one leg and both arms sticking up in the air. The one you pictured is in a sarcophagus. How is that the same? If you do not believe what I said about Egyptian and Hebrew thinking check it out for yourself, I did. So while it is true that the Papyri came from a latter period of time and was not the original papyri from Abraham it is still considered by him just as the copied manuscript from the writers of the Bible is considered their work. Do you believe the Bible is a fake because it is not written from the original manuscript which we do not have? Still you are missing the point. You believe that the 11 fragments of the papyri that was found in New York constituted the manuscript used to write the Book of Abraham. I believe that the original papyrus for most of the Book of Abraham was burned up in John H. Wood's museum in Chicago.
I was not talking about the bed. I was talking about what is on the bed.That is not a sarcophagus---it is an Egyptian bed.
I was not talking about the bed. I was talking about what is on the bed.
The one you pictured is in a sarcophagus.
They were going to sacrifice Abraham to the gods.Just going by this
The one you pictured is a sarcophagus. And, no one has yet explained to me why any Egyptian was trying to kill Moses---with a knife. I don't remember what the book says and have no wish to read it again.
They were going to sacrifice Abraham to the gods.
I can see that the person in your picture does NOT have one leg and both arms sticking up in the air.
The one you pictured is in a sarcophagus. How is that the same?
If you do not believe what I said about Egyptian and Hebrew thinking check it out for yourself, I did.
So while it is true that the Papyri came from a latter period of time and was not the original papyri from Abraham it is still considered by him just as the copied manuscript from the writers of the Bible is considered their work.
Do you believe the Bible is a fake because it is not written from the original manuscript which we do not have?
Still you are missing the point.
You believe that the 11 fragments of the papyri that was found in New York constituted the manuscript used to write the Book of Abraham. I believe that the original papyrus for most of the Book of Abraham was burned up in John H. Wood's museum in Chicago.
sure, thanks for asking!
I had written
I believe you responded with the quote of 1 Nephi 13:29.
it sounded to me that you were saying that, against good evidence, the ancient manuscripts used to translate the Bible into English had been significantly corrupted, because 1 Nephi 13:29 said that it had been.
what you say is a difficult case to make unless one simply chooses to believe it.
this is in part because of the thousands of ancient Greek manuscripts available for the New testament.
so, we can have a high degree of confidence that we know what Paul wrote to the church at Corinth.
one thing he wrote is:
1 Corinthians 15:1-4 Now I declare to you, brothers, the Good News
(good news means gospel)
which I preached to you, which also you received, in which you also stand, by which also you are saved, if you hold firmly the word which I preached to you—unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.
since Paul's written description of the Gospel is still available today, there is no need to restore it.
They were going to sacrifice Abraham to the gods.
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