Talk:Book of Abraham/Archive 2

Edits to External Links
Just so everyone is clear on what edits I made in this session, I wanted to describe them all. Most of the changes had to do with the "External Links" section, which seemed very disorganized and unclear. This is the detailed list of what I did:
 * Combined the two "external links" sections into one.
 * Took out link to http://www.isitso.org/guide/papyri.html because that page seems to be little more than a sales letter for Larson's "By His Own Hand" and therefore doesn't provide any real value for the Wikipedia visitor.
 * Replaced link to http://www.buchabraham.mormonismus-online.de/index.htm?slcmsgn82.htm with the actual newsletter that it reproduced (http://www.utlm.org/newsletters/no82.htm)
 * Removed link to http://www.bibleman.net/Joseph_Smith_inventing_book_of_Abraham.htm because the page no longer exists.
 * Collapsed two Book of Abraham Project site links into a single link.
 * Removed link to http://www.foxgrape.com/deveria.htm as the site is no longer available.
 * Removed link to http://mormonwiki.org/Book_of_Abraham as the article is essentially an incomplete polemic version of what is in the Wikipedia article.
 * Removed link to http://nowscape.com/mormon/kolob-defined3.htm because it doesn't add anything of value to the reader. (The page says "This translation was shamelessly pilfered from 'By His Own Hand Upon Papyrus.' Pick one up for a friend!) -Awyatt, 26 April 2006

Most, all, how many
Besides the above, I also added the word "Most" to the caption under the image at the top of the article. I did this because it is my understanding that not all Egyptologists agree with the assessment. See, for example, works by Gee and Rhoades, both from BYU. -Awyatt, 26 April 2006

Rhoades has written that the Book of Abraham is "Divinely Inspired Scripture". This suggests that his opinion is not particularly based in Egyptology. Have we actually identified any non-Mormon Egyptologists who hold that Facsimile No. 1 depicts human sacrifice? I suspect we have not. - Nunh-huh 21:10, 26 April 2006 (UTC)


 * I am unfamiliar with more than a half-dozen egyptologists that have even treated the primary documents in research. It is a mistake to say "the majority of," or "all," as most egyptologiest are not even familiar iwth the documents, let alone have attempted to interpret. As far as I know, only Baer, Parker, and Wilson are the only true non-Mormon egyptologists who have commented on the matter, and although they agreed on multiple things, they disagreed on many others. Three or four is a far cry from most or majority. Of the research I've read disagreements range from Osiris/bird to embalment/resurrection/sacrifice, which undermines the statement to begin with. What other works about these have been done by what other egyptologists? I'd love to study them if available. Or if push comes to shove we could be cite specific research and say, "Egyptologists Parker and Wilson believed that..." Perhaps that's the direction we should go? -Visorstuff 21:45, 26 April 2006 (UTC)


 * How about an exhaustive list of Egyptologists who confirmed Smith's translation? That would be more informative, and shorter. - Nunh-huh 21:47, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

HAHA! I like your style. Point taken. What do you think we should do then about the terminology? We only have three non-LDS egyptologists (one mormon one who hasn't commented on it publicly), a handful of archaeologsts and other academicians (almost all Mormon) and a bunch of hobbyists such as the Larsons. Should we be more specific or more general? Incidentally, the image of the hypocephalus, which does have some support for, doesn't share the same terminology as the others. -Visorstuff 22:38, 26 April 2006 (UTC)


 * My feeling (for what it is worth) is that you should not use absolute terminology if you can identify even one Egyptologist who doesn't fit the characterization, regardless of the religious affiliation of that Egyptologist. Rhodes is not an Egyptologist (my bad; see his vita here), but Gee is. There may be others; I don't know. But showing just one, to be precise, takes the terminology out of the realm of absolutes and makes it more precise to say "most." -Awyatt 26 April 2006


 * actually, no, it doesn't. "Most" to mean "one" is deceptive and misleading. The facts seem to be that no Egyptologist supports Smith's interpretation on the basis of his knowledge of Egyptology. What, precisely, has Gee said, and has he argued on a religious basis or a scientific one? The fact, if it is one, that one person voices an opinion different from all other opinions on the subject should not be overemphasized by making it seem that the disagreement is more significant than it is. And that's what "many" would do. - Nunh-huh 00:38, 27 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Whether an Egyptologist (Gee) makes his interpretation based on religious conviction or his knowledge of Egyptian is besides the point. Either way, the blanket statement "Egyptologists interpret this as an enbalming procedure" is demonstrably untrue. Please note that I am not arguing that "most" is the best qualifier in this instance. In fact, both "almost all" or "the vast majority of" (as the caption is stated when I wrote this) would be equally acceptable in my eyes; they remove the absolute phraseology that was previously used and make the caption more correct. -Awyatt, 27 April 2006
 * "With one identified (and Mormon) exception" would be a better qualifier if there is one identified Egyptologist who demurs from the otherwise unanimous view, though either of your two qualifiers is better than "many", which is deceptive. In fact, if most of a field hold a viewpoint, it is fair to say that that field holds that view: Scientists find HIV causes AIDS (even though individual scientists may demur); Doctors treat a ruptured appendix with an appendectomy (even if one of them may opt for Bach's flower remedies instead. So "Egyptologists interpret this as an enbalming procedure" is in fact not disproven by cherry-picking a dissenter, as it is not equivalent to "Without exception, Egyptologists interpret this as an enbalming procedure"- Nunh-huh 16:07, 27 April 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree with Nunh-huh's argument here (using the HIV/AIDS analogy). It does not make sense to put "overwhelming majority" or "99% of" or whatever on a point like this. Standard college textbooks on ancient Egyptian history shows this as an enbalming procedure. Pictures and explanations of this are in tourism brochures. If one accepts one or two dissenters within a field is enough to trigger these adjectives, I suspect an overwhelming majority of editors would have to republish an overwhelming majority of books. RelHistBuff 15:01, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Would you consider Ritner as a "dissenter"? In his article on the BoA fascimiles from the Oriental Institute web site he refers to it as having a re-animation motif, not about embalming. DWmFrancis (talk) 16:46, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

The primary issue here, does not seem to be the number of egyptologists who hold an opposing view compared with those who agree, rather that there haven't been that many genuine egyptologists who have studied it at all. I would be much more comfortable citing the findings of specific scientists or theologians, rather than escribing universals of any kind to a very niche study done by so very few people. Most is indeed misleading. Frankly, anything is misleading, except that this is what Researcher X has said. --Grimcleaver —Preceding unsigned comment added by Grimcleaver (talk • contribs) 21:59, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Qwasty's changes
So which of Qwasty's changes are objected to; i.e. are verifiably incorrect? Aren't most of the changes just mainstream Egyptological views? --Michael C. Price talk 12:00, 19 June 2006 (UTC)


 * I don't object to any of Qwasty's changes. In fact, it would be great to put in some of the changes. However, Qwasty tended to use language to push a POV rather than staying NPOV. Rather than editing the additions, I thought it would be better to discuss the changes here, then implement later.


 * For example, in the intro section, "Egyptologists invariably say that the..." sounds like WP:WEASEL words. Better to state a quote or give a reference.


 * Another sentence, "The fact that Smith's copies (as published in the Book of Abraham) are exact matches is meticulously ignored." Firstly, the "meticuously ignored" is a strong POV which should be neutralized. Also, I believe Qwasty is referring to the facsimiles. But the only facsimile that is in the original papyrus is facsimile 1. So in fact the statement is not quite true.


 * The sentence "Smith mistakenly identifies a female figure (figure 4, facsimile 3) as a male prince" needs additional info. I, myself, recognize the figure as female as well, but that only comes from my own knowledge. We need a quote or reference, otherwise it seems like the sentence is pushing a POV.
 * I think it's the feather on her head that convinces Egyptologist that she is Maàt. --Michael C. Price talk 23:22, 19 June 2006 (UTC)


 * RelHistBuff 13:04, 19 June 2006 (UTC)


 * No problem with making it NPOV, but the "facts" seem OK. Getting cites for them would take awhile.  I suggest making it NPOV and then sticking  all over them (and perhaps elsewhere).  BTW I recognise the female figure as Maat, female Egyptian goddess of truth, justice and order, but I'm just an amateur as well.  --Michael C. Price talk 13:47, 19 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Sounds like a good idea. If you would like to go ahead and put back the changes in a NPOV way that will be fine. I have already started some digging and found some sources and then I can complete the job. RelHistBuff 15:01, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
 * OK, I'm done. I may have missed some stuff, though. --Michael C. Price talk 16:27, 19 June 2006 (UTC)


 * OK, thanks. The changes will probably be spread out over the week. RelHistBuff 20:47, 19 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Good work. I'm puzzled, though, why did you delete
 * * None of Joseph's fascimile translations, are in fact, correctly translated according to mainstream, non-LDS Egyptologists.
 * Isn't it accepted by mainstream, non-LDS Egyptologists that JS's translation of the facsimile hieroglyphs are incorrect? --Michael C. Price talk 22:24, 19 June 2006 (UTC)


 * It is redundant with the second bullet point: "Joseph Smith’s translation of facsimiles, which are included in the Book of Abraham, do not bear any similarity to modern Egyptologist’s understanding of these figures". I may need to add another subsection of text anyway, looking at the non-LDS source I found (an article from an University of Chicago Egyptologist). Then I will add some of the needed citations. Hopefully this will be a lot better article in the end. RelHistBuff 22:40, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Let me clarify on this as well - only a few egyptologists have attempted to translate or interpret them (see archived and above discussions). The current popular "translation" circulated on the internet was done by Charles Larson, himself no more than a history buff (at best). Since only two or three non-Mormon egyptologists have gone on record discussing if it is correct or not, I agree it should be left out. That said, most egyptologist don't spend their time with petty, "is this real or not" squabbles. In fact, as discussed above your osiris explanation on the article page is in dispute among the various translators of the document, whether egyptologists or not. you may want to read this already hashed out argument above when discussing Klaus Baer versus Larson's work. Talk:Book_of_Abraham -Visorstuff 22:57, 19 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Interpreting them is one matter, but translating them should be straightforward. Hieroglyphic dictonaries are available (I have some to hand) -- there should a consensus on the translation "out there".  --Michael C. Price talk 23:18, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

You would think that - but there are not a lot of actual glyphs on the facsimiles to translate (and what is is listed above) - I still need to scan in my copies of the church archive photos and post them here. And you are dealing with two differing "layering" theories of glyph writing that Baer outlines. Posting one glyph at the begininning of a sentence can completely change the translation. Many of those deciding glyphs are missing from the papyri. Larsons - the most available "translation," is a mess. Parkers is better. Baer's (suprisingly the least referred to) is the most accurate, followed by Tvedtnes's. Nibley's later translations are also desent, but his early ones show many of hte same errors as Larsons and Parkers - this is one reason why the Tanner's don't go down this path, as noted above - the various translators interpret figures and meanings with the glyphs so differently. For example, the numbers section of they hypocephalus are really numbers acording to Baer and Tvedtnes. Larson of course doesn't attempt to discuss that issue as it doesn't support his thesis, but parker disagrees with the findings. And because no two exact copies of these docuemnts exist (as part of the book of breathings, they were highly individualized for the specific deseased person), you can't (as larson tries to) compare the documents to similar ones. It is interesting that the only impartial egyptologist that continued any study of the book of abraham, Baeuer, is the least referenced, but the most accurate. We should try to reference his work as much as possible, due to his credentials and as a non-Mormon egyptologist who actually studied the issue. Incidentally, the person sitting on the throne is probably the deceased - in this case Sen-Sen, whereas Larson points to it as being a woman, the text alludes to it being a young man. Just an interesting tidbit, as we'll probably never know much more about the accompanying text.

On another note, I really think that this entire talk page is very interesting - and very educational. I wonder if there are anyway to incorporate sections of it into the article. I know I sound like an apologist in some sections (which was not my intent), but I tried to stick to what is actually known about the book of abraham papyrus rather than what is passed along sloppy scholarship and folklore. thoughts? I'm glad to see interest in the article again. -Visorstuff 23:51, 19 June 2006 (UTC)


 * One final thing - I've added in some sources that were requested during the cite requests - need to have them formatted, but tried to at least correlate where they go. -Visorstuff 23:57, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Book of Jasher
Concerning the parallels with the Book of Jasher and Apocalypse of Abraham, the citations I was wondering about is whether there are sources of the statements of the existence of the parallels (not just the reference of the text). If there are no citations, then it would look as if an observation was made and hence it looks like original research. Or are the parallels considered to be undisputed? I don't know this area too well. RelHistBuff 21:27, 20 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Its been written about by folks from non-Mormons Baer and Parker to Mormons Nibley and Lindsay, and even both Larsons. I thought it was pretty common knowledge for those who studied this issue, but then my "common knowledge" probably is in from academic circles rather than the general casual reader. I beleive that Book of Abraham Clearinghouse references these parallels as apologetic views (may be another critical site, as I couldn't see it today) and has been written about in sunstone, dialogue and others. Its been used by critics to support the idea of joseph smith somehow coming into contact with Gnostic or Kabbalistics legends which influenced the Book of Abraham, and apologists use it to demonstrate that these documents which were not generally available until 50-100 years after Smiths death to show that he was a prophet. I see them as striking parallels, but don't think it proves anything. Just interesting, especially when discussing what Smith "guessed" or "translated" right and definitely needs to be pointed out. Plus a google search for "jasher and "book of abraham"" results in about 1500 pro and con links discussing this one issue. So my circle is definitely not the only one who see's this as interesting. Study of the BOA has been a bit of a hobby of mine, but so have many other things, so I reserve judgement on drawing conclusions as to what the similarities mean. Just my 2 cents. -Visorstuff 01:14, 21 June 2006 (UTC)


 * For the sake of avoiding problems, could you cite the Sunstone or Dialogue reference and put it in the footnotes? Otherwise it looks like original research. RelHistBuff 07:55, 21 June 2006 (UTC)


 * The info is in the further reading section. To be honest, creating citations in the format used in this page is not my forte - I struggle with it. But will find page numbers when I can. -Visorstuff 22:52, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Citations needed
I noticed that two additional citations are needed in the items under the defense of the authenticity of the Book of Abraham (in the "Criticism and response" section). While most of the items are easy to understand, those two statements are not clear. For these, a reference should be cited. Readers who are interested could look up the sources to get more information. RelHistBuff 09:57, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Egyptologists' translations of the scroll and facsimiles
Over the past few days, I have made several major additions including three different Egyptologists' translations of the scroll and facsimiles. I have also added citations of missing sources using the ref tag method of putting footnotes together at the bottom. The update today includes a more recent paper by Ritner as a source. I had initially used Rhodes' translation for facsimile 3, but I replaced it now with Ritner's. The main reason is that Rhodes is not really an Egyptologist. But even so he is noted that his translation is consistent with Ritner's. There are, in fact, more published translations by others that support the Egyptologists, but I think the references that are there are enough. As the translations of the scroll and facsimiles are now included, I believe the article covers the subject of the Book of Abraham better than previously. Comments and suggestions for improvement are welcome! RelHistBuff 09:57, 23 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Very valuable additions. I've also added a bit more commentary to the Egyptologist's explanation, re the sons of horus, canopic jars, Maat.    --Michael C. Price talk 10:05, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

I just added some content on the role of the editors of the journal, Dialogue. It was due to their efforts that the papyri was translated by Egyptologists. RelHistBuff 09:16, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Over the past few days, I made many changes as one can see in the history. It was mostly to improve the quality. I merged redundant information, moved some paragraphs and images to relevant sections, added blockquote formatting to some text, and added a few more citations. RelHistBuff 08:29, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Chart of Egyptologist vs Joseph translations
I think this article could use a chart of Egyptologist vs Joseph translations to clearly illustrate the stark differece between joseph's version, and the egyptologist's version. Qwasty 05:17, 20 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I think the differences are pretty clear already. :-)  --Michael C. Price talk 06:39, 20 July 2006 (UTC)


 * You know, I think for some people it will never be clear enough. I'm always amazed at people who claim they don't have enough time to read an excerpt from an article like this...They spend hours each day reading their scriptures though! Qwasty 09:38, 20 July 2006 (UTC)


 * You're absolutely right that it will never clear to some people. But for the open-minded the information is there.  That's all we can do.  --Michael C. Price talk 09:46, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Cited source - LDS Egyptologist
I have put back the footnote of Thompson's article that ties the recovered papyrus to the Book of Abraham. It is relevant and important to this article and it is a cited source.RelHistBuff 15:21, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Criticism & Response section is unfair and biased.
Critics always get the last word. In the Critics' section, their assertions stand alone. In the Response section, apologists sections are often instantly rebuffed with critics remarks. I have tried to clean up both sections, letting critics assertions and apologist assertions stand on their own merits. But two have quickly removed my changes. I then need to know what is considered acceptable by others. Which of these is it?


 * 1) Critics will always get the last word, and any attempt to change this will be removed.
 * 2) Apologist responses can be added after every critics argument to keep it balanced.


 * Perhaps the title of the section was misleading. If there is a response with a cited source from an apologist to a critics item then go ahead and put that in. That is the point of Thompson's response to the apologist's item. The citation of one of the response to the other apologist's item is still missing so I will put a "citation needed" on that. RelHistBuff 07:31, 31 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I have done as you suggested, and added a couple of the most commonly heard apologist responses to a couple of critics points. Overall, this makes me think this section would be better off changed it into a table format titled "Book of Abraham Issues", where each row covers a particular issue, and the left column would contain critics arguments while the right column would contain the apologists responses.  It might clean that section up a little more so you don't get these constant battles where one side always tries to get the last word in. 24.10.152.241 06:34, 3 August 2006 (UTC)


 * The formatting could be better, but for the moment there are not many counter-responses. The key to keeping this at a higher quality level is to allow only one level of counter-response for each side and to require citations. --RelHistBuff 20:47, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Is there a better way to address inconsistency of the age of the papyri? Referring to Abraham’s lifetime seems to add more problems that it solves. I suppose the point is the contradiction with the timeline of the biblical narrative. Can this be made without having to turn Abraham into a once living historical figure? 201.17.80.149 01:21, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

This last comment raises an interesting point. If Abraham is not in fact a "once living historical figure" what validity is there to ANY reference to him anywhere? If there never was an Abraham most of the discussion and argument is about historical fiction at best and lies at the worst. Is it even possible to objectively discuss a book about someone who never existed? DWmFrancis (talk) 16:57, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

More citations
Recently I have been adding missing citations, at least in the subject areas that I am aware. While looking for citations for the apologist's point concerning Smith translating from another scroll that is missing, I noticed that the first two items in the listing of apologists' arguments to be effectively the same. The first stated that he did not use the remaining papyrus and the second stated that he used other papyri. Hence, I combined the two, covering both items with one citation (Gee and Rhodes). I removed the uncited critics response for Smith's unusual translations of the facsimiles as I could not find the source for the moment. Once I find it, I will place it back. --RelHistBuff 19:04, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
 * While you are on the topic of two points being essentially the same, I noticed another still remaining. They are these:
 * Within a series of documents written by Joseph Smith's scribes, the "Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar", also known as the "Kirtland Egyptian Papers", some manuscripts support the notion that the Book of Abraham was wrongly translated from extant papyrus.[38]
 * Critics note that the existence of the “Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar” shows that Smith did attempt a direct translation.
 * These are both discussing the exact same thing. Only one should remain.  However, since they were both referenced and both fit well in the section they are included, I didn't yet fix this problem.  Any suggestions on what should remain? 24.10.152.241 06:38, 3 August 2006 (UTC)


 * In fact I already noticed two items in the critics section. I reduced them to one noting the two different titles. I more-or-less used your text. In your examples above, however, the first item is the newly merged critics item and the other is a response to an apologist item. Although they both mention the Alphabet and Grammar documents, the footnotes are different. The first is a reference to the documents themselves (showing the wrong translation). The second is a reference to an argument that the existence of the documents proves another point (the argument being made by the author, Milan D. Smith, Jr.). Hence the second footnote refers to the Dialogue article. --RelHistBuff 21:02, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Incorrect removal of entry
MichaelCPrice removed one of my referenced points for incorrect reasons. I originally posted:

while other translations agree with modern Egyptologists' translations. (For example, Joseph Smith correctly identified the four Sons of Horus as "this earth in its four quarters".)

MichaelCPrice removed this saying "The only connection between "the four Sons of Horus" and "this earth in its four quarters" is the word "four": hardly a "correct" translation)"

This is flat out incorrect to say the only link is with the word "four". Below are some references to help explain the original position.

"In the pyramid texts we find a group of four gods with whom the deceased in closely connected in the "other world": these are the four "children of Horus" . . . originally they represented the four pillars which supported the sky, or Horus. Each was supposed to be the lord of one of the quarters of the world, and finally became the god of one of the cardinal points." E. Wallis Budge, The Egyptian Book of the Dead, (New York: Dover, 1967, originally published 1895). pp. cxxiv-cxxv]

"These jars were under the protection of Isis, Nephthys, Neith, and Serqet, and represented the south, north, east, and west respectively" [Budge, 1904, 1:210].

Wilkinson's glossary entry for the Sons of Horus explains that they "were four genii or minor deities connected with the cardinal points and which guarded the viscera of the deceased. Originally human-headed, they were regularly portrayed with the heads of different creatures: Imsety, human-headed (south); Duamutef, jackal-headed (east); Hapy, ape-headed (north); Qebesenuef, falcon-headed (west)" [Richard W. Wilkinson's Symbol and Magic in Egyptian Art [Wilkinson, 1994] p. 213] "Frequently the number [four] appears to connote totality and completeness and is tied to the four cardinal points...The four cardinal points are certainly an ancient concept.... Usually ... the four areas represent the four quarters of the earth alone. This is the case in most religious rituals which find representational expressions"  [Wilkinson, 1994, pp. 133-134, emphasis mine]

"These four standing, mummy-like figures are the four Sons of Horus.70 They were the gods of the four quarters of the earth and later came to be regarded as presiding over the four cardinal points.71 They also were guardians of the viscera of the dead, and their images were carved on the four canopic jars into which the internal organs of the dead were placed.72" See http://home.comcast.net/~michael.rhodes/JosephSmithHypocephalus.pdf for the references to these.

Because of this, I have restored and cleaned up my original entry. (unsigned post)

Please sign your posts.

Sorry, the phrase "this earth in its four quarters" does not appear in Josepth Smith's "translation" of facsimile 1. It appears in facsmilie 2. Wrong facsimile. Bad luck, but nice try. --Michael C. Price talk 18:58, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
 * MichaelCPrice, I never said they phrase appears in facsimile 1. Further, my original reference to the argument discusses only facsimile 2.  I don't see why you imply I said this has to do with facsimile 1.  Also, MichaelCPrice, drop the mean-spirited condescension please.   It does no good around here.
 * Next, the four Sons of Horus appear both on fascimile 1 and fascimile 2. In facsimile 1, they are canopic jars, and Joseph Smith translates them as representations of four specific gods.  In facsimile 2, they are mummy like figures, and Joseph Smith translates that as "this earth in its four quarters".    (Further note, I should get a login, but for now, my signed posts will consist of my home IP and my work IP address  :)  166.70.155.27 22:04, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree that to put the quote from Rhodes' article as a parenthetical element would have been misleading because his explanation of the four sons of Horus as the four quarters is not related to the canopic jars. However, what I have done is to add an explanation and place this element into the footnotes. This agrees with the article style. I have done the same for all of the other citations, i.e., noting a sentence and then putting longer explanations into the footnotes. This should be acceptable to all. --RelHistBuff 19:26, 3 August 2006 (UTC)


 * OK --Michael C. Price talk 19:31, 3 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I also corrected the other entry to fit with what the original article said, i.e., the author did not say "many". Actually the author made the quote referring to John Gee's work and Gee noted six papyri plus some others. --RelHistBuff 19:58, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Good Article candidacy
This article has gone through the peer review process, although there were not many human reviewers (there was one software filter pass). No comments were made (maybe that is good?). As the bulk of the article has been relatively stable, I would like to submit this as a Good Article candidate. This will require that missing citations to be completed. Could anyone with knowledge in these areas please add the missing citations to the text? I will let the article stand as is for a few days and if the sources cannot be found, the text will be deleted, at least during the candidacy process. The text can be brought back at any time by anyone who found the sources. --RelHistBuff 21:47, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Heh, as I'm still somewhat a Wikipedia newbie, what constitutes a "Good Article"? There are still many finer points in this article I could nit-pick, but I don't have any big issues with the overall layout.  Is Good Article status just that the major structure is stable and references are completed? Or does it mean something else? 166.70.155.27 22:28, 3 August 2006 (UTC)


 * See WP:GA. If you have comments, please note it here. Clearly if there are problems that need to be resolved, then let's get them resolved. --RelHistBuff 23:12, 3 August 2006 (UTC)


 * The uncited statements have been removed until the original sources can be found. To retrieve the text, the old version of the article can be found here . --RelHistBuff 11:04, 7 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Hi! I'm a Good Article reviewer. I commend you on a very good job at maintaining NPOV on a very controversial topic. I'm also impressed with the inline citations. For me to promote it, however, I'd like to have the lead expanded a little (one to two paragraphs more) along the lines of WP:LEAD.


 * Not related to the GA issue: I've noticed that book titles are not consistently italicized. This would help to make the article look better. I'd suggest using tags, which allow web search engines to know that the italicized portion is a title and thus improve the indexing of the page. As you move towards FA status, I would also suggest spinning a lot of the detail off into subarticles and move to summary style here.


 * Anyway, I'll put the nom on hold to allow the change in the lead. --CTS Wyneken (talk) 18:27, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. I made a first attempt to expand the lead section, dividing it into three paragraphs which follows the story in the article and adding some text. During the next few days I will expand it some more. Your comment on italics triggered me to check the Manual of Style. Surprisingly, it seems that titles of scripture are not supposed to be italicized nor placed in quotes! I will eventually change that in this article (as well as others I work on). The cite tag unfortunately renders italicized characters as well. I will check if the cite tag has attributes that can change the style. RelHistBuff 09:08, 11 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks! I'll have to take a look. I tend to live in Chicago Manual of Style! In any case, I think if its consistant no one will quibble. --CTS Wyneken (talk) 00:20, 12 August 2006 (UTC)


 * OK, there are now three paragraphs that I believe can stand alone by itself. I have also removed italics from all titles of scripture (Book of Abraham and Pearl of Great Price). I made sure the titles of books in the footnotes are italicized though. RelHistBuff 17:21, 13 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Nicely done! I've promoted it. --CTS Wyneken (talk) 00:57, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

over-PC?
Let's not be over-politically correct here. This books is quite clearly not a translation of the original Egyptian manuscripts. Even the Mormon arguments in favour of it are extremely tentative and quite clearly clutching at straws. Let's just be frank and grown up about it.


 * I agree completely. I have added the single word "purportedly" to the sentence "The text is derived..." in the opening paragraph.  Since the main-stream, Non-Mormon view of the text is that it is not related to any known Egyptian originals, this word reflects the status of the text as controversial and this status is already reflected in the rest of the article.  --152.2.88.26 17:48, 20 March 2007 (UTC)JVincentToups

The Mormons aren't the only ones who are clutching at straws here. The Tanner's "translation" argument is purely semantic, hanging on the meaning of the word translation. So long as one prohibits revelation as a method of translation and Smith has no academic skill at Egyptian, there is only one "rational" explanation - he made it all up. The problem is that the other explaination is equally valid, if there is a God that Smith was capable of communicating with.

There a parallel problem with regards to the question of whether Abraham is a historical figure or not. Since the majority of the known texts that deal with Abraham are "religious" in nature, whether cannonized or apocryphal, and are therefore suspect to non-believers, it is difficult to discuss Abraham in a secular context. However, Smith does provide an opportunity to compare his story of the life of Abraham, as presented in the BoA, with that of the other authors from Christian, Jewish and Moslem traditions - yet that has not been addressed in this article. DWmFrancis (talk) 18:06, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:PearlOfGreatPrice1888.jpg
Image:PearlOfGreatPrice1888.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images uploaded after 4 May, 2006, and lacking such an explanation will be deleted one week after they have been uploaded, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.BetacommandBot 06:46, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

In the United States, "Fair use" is defined in Section 107 of Title 17 of the U.S. Code. The US Copyright Office has an explanation of Fair Use posted on it's web site. it states:

"Section 107 contains a list of the various purposes for which the reproduction of a particular work may be considered “fair,” such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Section 107 also sets out four factors to be considered in determining whether or not a particular use is fair.


 * 1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;


 * 2. the nature of the copyrighted work;


 * 3. amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and


 * 4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

The distinction between “fair use” and infringement may be unclear and not easily defined. There is no specific number of words, lines, or notes that may safely be taken without permission. Acknowledging the source of the copyrighted material does not substitute for obtaining permission.

The 1961 Report of the Register of Copyrights on the General Revision of the U.S. Copyright Law cites examples of activities that courts have regarded as fair use: “quotation of excerpts in a review or criticism for purposes of illustration or comment; quotation of short passages in a scholarly or technical work, for illustration or clarification of the author's observations; use in a parody of some of the content of the work parodied; summary of an address or article, with brief quotations, in a news report; reproduction by a library of a portion of a work to replace part of a damaged copy; reproduction by a teacher or student of a small part of a work to illustrate a lesson; reproduction of a work in legislative or judicial proceedings or reports; incidental and fortuitous reproduction, in a newsreel or broadcast, of a work located in the scene of an event being reported.”

Copyright protects the particular way an author has expressed himself; it does not extend to any ideas, systems, or factual information conveyed in the work.

The safest course is always to get permission from the copyright owner before using copyrighted material. The Copyright Office cannot give this permission.

When it is impracticable to obtain permission, use of copyrighted material should be avoided unless the doctrine of “fair use” would clearly apply to the situation. The Copyright Office can neither determine if a certain use may be considered “fair” nor advise on possible copyright violations. If there is any doubt, it is advisable to consult an attorney."

Given the not-for-profit and "scholarly" character of Wikipedia and the article on the BoA, I'd say the use of images of the facsimilies and excerpts from the text - as well as quotations from other sources, would probably qualify as fair use.

The article would also benefit from unambiguous attribution of sources.

"Modern pseudepigrapha" is NPOV-vio
The articles for Book of Mormon, Book of Abraham, and Book of Moses have been edited a few times to put them in the Category:Modern pseudepigrapha, and the article Modern pseudepigrapha has been edited to include them (with the all-too-appropriate edit note, "removing NPOV", rather than "removing NPOV violation"). These edits are equivalent to a factual determination that the books were originally written in modern times, which is the equivalent of making the assertion that a church that accepts it is false - or, the equivalent of starting the article on The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints with the assertion, "This is a false church". Neither statement would conform to a NPOV. - Reaverdrop ( talk / nl ) 17:49, 20 September 2007 (UTC)


 * I agree with your assessment. I checked these three articles and these pages are no longer in this category.  Someone removed this category, but I didn't check who.  &mdash; Val42 17:39, 21 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Reply at User_talk:Val42 regarding the ongoing reverts by our NPOV-vio crusader - Reaverdrop ( talk / nl ) 18:27, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Strangite Position?
Perhaps we could add a one sentence reference to the Strangite position. 66.191.19.217 00:18, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

recent astroturfing
With the recent anonymous revisions, the article now emphasizes the Mormon viewpoint nearly to the exclusion of all others. The article is no longer even close to a neutral point of view, as it minimizes the opinions of real Egyptologists in favor of religious apologetics. - Juden 05:19, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

This raises an interesting and very valid question; What qualifies as "neutral"? A point for point argument of the alternatives? Is neutrality even possible unless the scope of the material is limited to specific subjects? For example, If all known declarations by Joseph Smith only suggest that he felt the BoA was "...translated by the Gift and Power of God" how could an athiest or agnsotic possibly be "neutral" about the source of the BoA text?

In order for this article to be anything but another venue to argue the character and nature of Joseph Smith, it would have to be completely vetted of any "opinion" whatsoever and focus entirely on the content of the BoA. Perhaps a seperate article on the facsimiles themselves would be beneficial, then the text could be critically evaluated on its own. A fair and accurate comparison of the text of the Book of Abraham to current other texts would be a welcome replacement, IMHO. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.214.163.49 (talk) 19:11, 21 November 2007 (UTC)


 * The only valid question your continued efforts to eliminate various points of view from the article, and to discuss the Book of Abraham only from the most sympathetic viewpoint raises is: how long will it be tolerated? You clearly have no interest in allowing all significant points of view to be expressed, as Wikipedia's NPOV policy requires. - Juden (talk) 19:40, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Jurden: You claim that the ONLY valid question regarding my edits to the Book of Abraham article is how long they will be tolerated. I admit that I am a relative newcomer here and could use some help with regards to the proper method of adding footnotes, sources, etc., however objectivity and neutrality implies putting only the pertinent facts on the table and letting them speak for themselves. The article as written is hopelessly bogged down in a straw man argument concerning Joseph Smith. If the article was objective, it would have a form like the Wiki articles on the Bhagavad Gita or the Torah or the Bardo Thodol and stick to what the text has to say for itself. Let's not kid ourselves - objectivity would demand the whole critic - response section to be parsed out into an article on criticism of the Book of Abraham. I'd be pleased to take on that task - although I suspect you'd call my objectivity into question. —Preceding unsigned comment added by DWmFrancis (talk • contribs) 20:58, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
 * While you are the world's expert on your own personal definition of "objective", you should familiarize yourself with the actual NPOV policy that is the operative definition of objectivity here. It does not match your personal definition. It can hardly be argued that an article on the Book of Abraham should not discuss its origins. As regards your changes, I would say that changing criticisms of the book's origins into Mormon apologia is a peculiar mechanism for obtaining "objectivity" by any definition. - Juden (talk) 21:26, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Agreed - I have reviewed the Wiki article on NPOV and taken their advice to "boldly" edit in order to achieve it. Shall we collaborate on a seperate article on critical review of the BoA? —Preceding unsigned comment added by DWmFrancis (talk • contribs) 21:58, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
 * You appear to have misunderstood what you have read, if you believe that the NPOV policy suggests that removing critical opinion from articles is appropriate. And no, I won't collaborate on your effort to create a POV-fork of the article. - Juden (talk) 23:11, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

The criteria for whether this article conforms to the NPOV criteria set forth by Wikipedia is that it passes their scrutiny. I would submit that that is the goal to move towards. —Preceding unsigned comment added by DWmFrancis (talk • contribs) 21:47, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

I have started a new article called Criticism of the Book of Abraham. In so doing I have no intention of suppressing any of the evidence or opinions, pro or con, of the Book of Abraham. I do feel that the BoA deserves the same treatment as other religious texts that do not have an NPOV warning, such as the Koran or Bardo Thodol. —Preceding unsigned comment added by DWmFrancis (talk • contribs) 17:52, 24 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Yes, and it's now the subject of proposed deletion, for how long remains to be seen. Andrewa (talk) 15:47, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Interpretations of the facsimiles
I've compromised, and added "most" to the Egyptologist who support these interpretations. The fact remains, though, that every single Egyptologist who've examined the papyri say the same thing. Calling that "some" is simply unacceptable. Ratatosk Jones (talk) 07:24, 25 November 2007 (UTC)


 * If the point is that few Egyptologists have actually examined the facsimiles, then we can amend the statement to say that the ones who have examined them are the ones that disagree with Smith's interpretations. But using qualifiers like "some" or "a few" or even "several" creates the illusion that there are far more agreeing Egyptologists than there actually are. Ratatosk Jones (talk) 20:33, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

I think you've hit the nail on the head here. The wording of the article could leave the impression that all non LDS Egyptologists have an opinion about this when the evidence seems to indicate that only a few have even been involved on either side of the issue. It is interesting to note that in terms of the actual translation of the characters from the remaining papyri there is no serious disagreement regarding what they say - even between LDS and non LDS Egyptologists and linguists. The disagreement is concerning what the images and text meant to Joseph Smith.DWmFrancis (talk) 14:36, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Requested move
I've just created the proposed move discussion section, since none existed.

I oppose the proposed move. Subject of article warrants an article; no reason a "criticisms of" section shouldn't exist within the more general article. Snocrates 11:12, 26 November 2007 (UTC)


 * I agree. This article is more comparable to the Book of Daniel, where the scholarly view is presented alongside the religious. Egyptologist analysis of the source material is not only appropriate but necessary in this article. Ratatosk Jones (talk) 19:42, 26 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Oppose the move. What a mess, but there's no justification for renaming this article. It's a good topic, and while the article is problematic for a number of reasons, moving it would not help. Andrewa (talk) 15:27, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Fair enough - I'll retract the proposal. Again, the intention is simply to re-work the article until a the Neutral Point of View flag can be removed. My edits are intended to untangle the current presentation, (it is a mess!) add pertinent historical references and balance the evidence. I also appreciate the help and forbearance of the group as I learn the finer points of how to edit wiki articles.DWmFrancis (talk) 13:54, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

What happened? Lets fix this article
WOW guys - I saw this article a couple of months ago (maybe a year?), and it is totally different now. What happened? It was a fantastic article, simple and to the point, and now it is a complete mess - bearing hardly any resemblance to what it was. It definitely has a pro LDS bent to it now, where as before it was quite neutral. This article demonstrates the worst in wikipedia. Why don't we revert this article back a couple of months and start over? Descartes1979 (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 20:27, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
 * It certainly has degenerated. Even now it's continuing to devolve under the ministrations of at least one editor who thinks the article is "non-neutral" because it allows even a minimum expression of non-Mormon viewpoints. - Juden (talk) 03:20, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

OK - I tried to clean this article up a bit, but it needs a lot more work. For one thing, I think we need to take out the images of the facsimilis since they are probably copyrighted by the LDS church. We could summarize what is in them, and how Joseph Smith interpreted them - I don't think we need to spell out every single figure. Also the criticism and response section looks like it was written by a 2nd grader, it could be organized and worded much better. Descartes1979 (talk)
 * It's hard to imagine any basis on which the church (or anyone) could claim copyright on the facsimilies. To the extent that their creator was a long-dead Egyptian, there's no copyright involved. And they were published in the U.S. before 1923, which places them squarely in the public domain. - Juden (talk) 14:16, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

I agree that the article needs a lot of work, but disagree with the assertion that it is worse than it was. What has been added are historically accurate and verifiable references that expand and clarify the background and content of the book and the history of the papyri and statements from supporters that counterpoint and respond to the statements of the critics. Some folks may have a problem with the idea that there might be equally valid and opposing points of view to express about the BoA and the Papyri, but that's what NPOV is about - airing both sides of the story accurately and resulting in a neutral perspective. *The article needs to be fixed to get the NPOV warning flag removed.* The BoA is religious text just like the Tibetian Book of the Dead or the Popol Vuh - and there are Wiki articles on them that don't have    a NPOV warning, there is no reason why that can't happen here as well - unless there are some here who don't want the article to have a neutral point of view. —Preceding unsigned comment added by DWmFrancis (talk • contribs) 13:38, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
 * No, you misunderstand the NPOV policy if you think that opposing sides that are not equally valid should be presented as equally valid. In this article we have the scholarly viewpoint and the theological viewpoint, yet the theological one is being falsely depicted as scholarly. And you are rewriting critical viewpoints in supporters terms. That approach certainly isn't going to get the warning flag removed. - Juden (talk) 14:22, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

One more thing - I haven't intentionally removed any critical material from the article, in fact I've added some. I have moved things around to disentangle the criticism and responses from the history and content of the text. In some cases I've even reworded critical statements to make them clearer, stronger and more effective. If the consensus is to make this article into the encyclopedic reference to the controversy about the Book of Abraham, got for it. I think that the facts of the matter are sufficient to address the truth about the subject. My core position is that the proof is in the pudding. Getting the article reworked so that it gets the NPOV warning lifted is my goal. —Preceding unsigned comment added by DWmFrancis (talk • contribs) 13:53, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
 * We look forward to you becoming part of the solution, then. Changes like this one do not inspire confidence. - Juden (talk) 14:22, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

DWmFrancis - your edits are causing this article to suffer. You are making it harder to get rid of the NPOV tag. Perhaps you can explain some of your edits? Otherwise, I will revert them because you seem to be taking a very pro-LDS perspective. Descartes1979 (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 19:47, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Use of the word "Widely"
The fact of the matter is, that every single non-LDS Egyptologist that has examined the facsimiles disagrees completely with Joseph Smith's interpretation. As such, I think it is factually accurate to say that the Egyptologists interpretations are "widely accepted" and "widely regarded". Please note that I used the phrase "by non-LDS scholars" - so it doesn't detract from the fact that LDS scholars accept Joseph Smith's interpretation. Remember that the BOA is the subject of intense criticism as we state in the header of this article - we have to validate that statement. I guess what I am saying is that I stand by my use of the word "widely" - and I would challenge anyone to show me some evidence of a non-LDS scholar or Egyptologist that disagrees with the interpretations given.Descartes1979 (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 19:59, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

I think the problem with "widely" is that it falls into the category of what WIKI calls "weasle words" because it's not specific enough. In the article's footnotes *several* Egyptologists are quoted - so "several" would be the largest quantity we could accurately claim. Anything else is an extrapolation. (Now, they may be widely dispersed around the globe, but that is not the meaning that is being suggested here.) You could accurately say something like; "the majority of several Egyptologists that have examined the fragments disagree with Joseph Smith's interpretation..." and be accurate and neutral.

Interestingly enough, there is little or no disagreement between the LDS and non LDS Egyptologists regarding the transliteration of the text or even who/what the figures represented to the majority of Egyptians - which is what modern Egyptologists are trying to do - explain what these images meant to those for who they were created. Rhodes, Nibley, Gee and others have agreed with the transliteration of the Egyptian text provided by Baer and others. The core issue here is Joseph Smith's "interpretation" of the images and text. He looked at them and saw Abraham and idolatrous Egyptian gods and priests and that is exactly what he said. If you want to critique that - go for it.


 * Gotta sign your statements dude. Some interesting points though - I can see how "widely" might be considered a weasel word.  How can we make it more specific?  I still disagree with you though, there really are no non-LDS scholars who agree with Smith.  I am curious about your explanation about the disagreement though - so you are saying that even LDS scholars agree that Smith was wrong in his interpretation?Descartes1979 09:09, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Descartes; Thanks for the reminder on the signature. (I'm still getting up to speed on the details here.) With regard to your questions and comments:

On getting NPOV - I read the Wiki article on NPOV and the Perfect Article example. It appears to me to say that in order for an article to qualify as having an NPOV it has to be accurate and factual and represent the majority and minority views proportionately. So, in the case of the BoA article, here are some suggestions as to how to get there;

1) Stick to the facts. For example; If Josiah Quincy quotes Joseph Smith as saying the papyri were written by Abraham - say that Josiah Quincy said it - not that Joseph Smith himself said it.

2) Quantify. If seven Egyptologists were asked to review the fragments say that. If three of them were LDS and four were not, say that.  If all seven of them agree on the translation of the text say that. We have to limit ourselves to the facts and statistics.

3) Get as close to original sources as possible. Are you quoting Baer or are you quoting someone else quoting Baer/Nibley/your uncle Fred.

Somewhere further up the line here someone made a comment about scientific vs. religious points of view.  That's an excellent point - and actually illustrates the problem. A neutral point of view would have to be neutral even on *that* matter - that is; A  neutral point of view would not weigh "scientific" evidence above "religious" evidence just by virtue of the *nature* of the evidence.

Regarding my opinion on the matter of the Book of Abraham more generally; When you stick to the who, what, why, when and where of this, I think there are primarily two sets of issues. The first is the nature of the facsimiles themselves - what were they and what do they actually say (provenance and transliteration). The second is interpretation.

From what I've read, there is broad agreement on the first. They are authentic fragments of materials that were buried with mummies in Egypt and date to around 0 AD +/- a century or so. The transliteration of the text fits well with what is contained in other documents of this type - which I think are called coffin texts, to differentiate them from the ones that were carved on the walls of the tombs in earlier dynasties. The study of these materials is a fascinating glimpse into the religious psyche of Egypt. Their acceptance of symbolism and allegory in their written records is amazing. For comparison, imagine if we used "smilies" as our primary method of writing. In our day that isn't necessary because we are a mostly a literate society. But imagine a newspaper that used cartoon strips as it's primary method of expression. Room for interpretation? I'd think so.

So, for me, the real question surrounds Joseph Smith's interpretation of the figures. He couldn't read Egyptian and had no background in Egyptian religious beliefs - so he couldn't put on his "scientific hat", look at Facsimile No. 3 and say; "Oh, yeah, that's someone wearing an atef crown which was worn for certain religious rituals!" Rather, he does what he claims to be good at - which is receiving "revelation"- or making up wild outrageous stories - depending on your Point Of View - and has the audacity make exactly - and precisely - that claim.

By the way, a note to the curious reader - IF you follow the reference links you'll find some information on the atef crown that might be enlightening. It turns out that even today the meaning of the word atef is disputed. It may mean "his might" or "his terror", (power) but scholars are not even sure of that. Further, it was associated with not only Osiris, but Heryshef and could also be worn by Horus (uh... who's Book of Breathings was this?) AND Re and there was even more than one type of atef crown. So, simple statements like "The deceased is brought before Osiris..." may or may not tell the whole story. Is the seated figure actually Osiris (a "mythical" Egyptian god.) or is it someone *representing* Osiris, or someone having the characteristics of Osiris? It starts to remind me of some Peanuts cartoon strips; Here is the World War One Flying Ace, heading out on patrol..." and we see in the panels Snoopy (Mythical Dog) sitting on his doghouse wearing goggles and a scarf (symbols of independance and honor?). Are we going to miss the point of the story because Snoopy is a cartoon character?

Unfortunately, what many folks seem to miss is that this really IS an area where we CAN objectively "grade" Joseph Smith's homework. For example, he made a specific statement about the crown; that it represented the "Priesthood as emblematical of the Presidency in Heaven..." Now compare the core elements of that with what modern Egyptologists say about the atef crown - that it was worn for religious rituals (priesthood) and the word atef may mean "his might" or "his terror" (supremely powerful) and *maybe* Joseph Smith ought to at least get a B+ on his answer to that question, rather than an F. DWmFrancis 16:40, 1 December 2007 (UTC)


 * You seem to feel that it is "DWmFrancis"'s job to "objectively 'grade' Joseph Smith." And using such sources of information as a tourism website. It isn't. That particular bit of original research isn't of any value to the reader, any more than any Wikipedian's evaluation would be. What we do is report what real Egyptologists had to say about Smith's interpretations. For example,

"Dr. Archibald Sayce noted, 'It is difficult to deal seriously with Joseph Smith's impudent fraud....Smith has turned the Goddess [Isis] into a king and Osiris into Abraham.' James H. Breasted, Ph.D. wrote, 'To sum up, then, these three fac-similies of Egyptian documents in the 'Pearl of Great Price' depict the most common objects in the mortuary religion of Egypt. Joseph Smith's interpretations of them as part of a unique revelation through Abraham, therefore, very clearly demonstrates that he was totally unacquainted with the significance of these documents and absolutely ignorant of the simplest facts of Egyptian Writing and civilization.' Dr. Arthur C. Mace, assistant curator of the Department of Egyptian Art of the Metropolitan Museum of Art wrote, 'The 'Book of Abraham,' it is hardly necessary to say, is a pure fabrication....Joseph Smith's interpretation of these cuts is a farrago of nonsense from beginning to end.' Samuel Alfred Brown Mercer, Ph. D., of the Western Theological Seminary, and author of an Egyptian grammar, stated, '[Smith] knew neither the Egyptian language nor the meaning of the most commonplace Egyptian figures....the explanatory notes to his fac-similes cannot be taken seriously by any scholar, as they seem to be undoubtedly the work of pure imagination'." - Juden 19:38, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Jurden - I hope your grasp of the subject is deeper than your ability to read footnotes. If you'd scrolled past the top of the page you'd have seen that the references cited concerning Egyptian Headdresses are quite authoritative;


 * Ancient Gods Speak, The: A Guide to Egyptian Religion	 Redford, Donald B.	 2002	 Oxford University Press	 ISBN 0-19-515401-0


 * Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt, The	Wilkinson, Richard H.	 2003	 Thames & Hudson, LTD	 ISBN 0-500-05120-8


 * Dictionary of Ancient Egypt, The	 Shaw, Ian; Nicholson, Paul	 1995	 Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers	 ISBN 0-8109-3225-3


 * Dictionary of Egyptian Gods and Goddesses, A	 Hart, George	 1986	 Routledge	 ISBN 0-415-05909-7


 * Egyptian Treasures from the Egyptian Museum in Cairo	Tiradritti, Francesco, Editor	 1999	 Harry N. Abrams, Inc.	 ISBN 0-8109-3276-8


 * Life of the Ancient Egyptians	Strouhal, Eugen	 1992	 University of Oklahoma Press	 ISBN 0-8061-2475-x


 * Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt, The	Redford, Donald B. (Editor)	 2001	 American University in Cairo Press, The	 ISBN 977 424 581 4

I have no question that the "real" Egyptologists you will choose to quote will think Joseph Smith was a fraud and that Mormons are gullible fools if they believe him. The question is, does that represent a Neutral Point of View? It is not my job to grade Joseph Smith - you have taken that on yourself. I stated that the opportunity here is to grade Joseph Smith's homework - namely his interpretations of the facsimiles and the text of the Book of Abraham against current knowledge - as in the example I gave. You insist on measuring Joseph Smith's ability to read and transliterate Egyptian text and images on their face - which he clearly could not do. Although I might add that from the demonstrated ability of reliable non-LDS sources, I'm not sure modern Egyptologists get much closer to the mark than Joseph Smith did. If you've read even part of text of the Book of Breathings it should be obvious that this is very obscure and symbolic stuff.

Now, shall we get back to getting that NPOV flag lifted? DWmFrancis 00:16, 2 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Who is this "we" you speak of? You have been moving the article further and further from NPOV since you began editing it. You are wrong, we are not here to "grade" anything, we are here to REPORT the opinions of Egyptologists, not formulate our own opinions - as you seem so resolute in doing. - Juden 00:37, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Juden - If you go look at the article's history you'll see that the NPOV flag has been set for the last three years - possibly since it was created. It would seem whoever has been maintaining it thus far has been unsuccessful in getting the NPOV flag removed. Maybe it's time to let some others take a shot at it.

I also note that you state that you are here to report the opinions of Egyptologists, yet the references included up to this point have included statements by many non-Egyptologists. Are we to exclude the statements by historians and the persons directly involved at the time it things happened? I also note that the subject of the article is religious in nature - are we also to disallow information that is not "scientific"? If the purpose of the article is to report on a religious matter where are the experts in that subject allowed to contribute? You seem to be saying that a neutral point of view is only possible if the views expressed are critical and scientific.

I have not expressed any of my opinions in the article itself - I expressed those here in response to a question. What I have done in the article is add attributed material by individuals who have studied or had first hand knowledge of the matter and published statements about it. Neither have I added any material regarding Joseph Smith's accuracy in explaining what he saw in the facsimiles - although I did suggest early on that the whole criticism and response section be moved to its own article so as to avoid confusion regarding what this article is really about.

BTW - I have taken the liberty of adding the Egyptologist's opinions about Joseph Smith's skills at reading and translating Egyptian which you quoted over to the section on translation. I wasn't able to pull the references over. Would you be willing to do that?DWmFrancis 06:34, 2 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Sorry DWmFrancis - I find your rant above to be filled with original research that is quite off point. That is out of the scope of this article - Juden is absolutely right - we are not grading Joseph Smith, we are reporting as to what real Egyptologists think.  We all should know by now that the Book of Abraham has been the subject of an extreme amount of amateur scholarship on both sides of the controversy - and much of it is garbage.  As you said DW - lets stick to the facts: The facts are that Joseph Smith himself said he was "translating" - that it was written by Abraham - and that all non-Mormon scholars that have looked at the work disagree with his interpretation, (and by your admission, all Mormon scholars as well, but I can't personally speak to that).  Additionally, I seem to remember reading an article citing evidence that the church leadership was adamant in accepting the BOA at face value, and only after the extant papyri were found have apologists been trying to say that the translation wasn't literal.  I will hunt for that reference, and perhaps that will satisfy you DW.

Back to the facsimiles, and your original research above - sure there are one or two figures out of 50 that he got a B+ on - but to emphasize that would be way out of proportion with what scholars say - that the whole work is so far off that they use the words "fraud" (see cites by Juden above) - and would amount to a gross violation of NPOV, not to mention original research. Forgive me - but to add my own bit of original research here - it is much more likely that Joseph Smith had a couple of really good guesses (crown = authority is not a hard one in my mind), and he totally bunked the rest of it.Descartes1979 06:37, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Descartes - I actually agree with your key argument here, (surprise!) but, are you sure he only got one or two correct? How many elements of the three facsimiles did Joseph Smith explain? I count at least 30. In addition, there are about 40 unique elements in the text of the Book of Abraham that only have parallels in extra-biblical traditions. So, there are at least 70 things about the Book of Abraham text and the facsimiles that Joseph Smith can be evaluated on.

I'm not looking to emphasize one or two things where Joseph Smith got close and then spread that out over the whole corpus of the book. Frankly, there are some areas I think he may have missed the mark, for example; the Jewish and Moslem traditions about Abraham being sacrificed mostly say Abraham was thrown into a furnace. Facsimile No. 1 does not depict any thing like a furnace. BUT if we take those 70 things and ask - objectively - how close did Joseph Smith get to current expert understanding - which actually is a harder curve to grade on, since 150 years of research has been done since he turned in his answers - the chances of his just being a good guesser are seriously reduced.

Also, if you take a look at the credentials of the doctors that Juden quoted you'll note that they are not all "neutral" or even experts in Egyptian.

Believe it or not, I really don't care as much about whether any one else thinks Joseph Smith was a fraud or the Book of Abraham is a joke as I care that the discussion of it be fair, accurate and balanced. It's way too easy to just quote some "experts" who say Joseph Smith was a fraud because he couldn't read or transliterate Egyptian the way they can. Of course Joseph Smith couldn't read Egyptian  - in 1841 hardly anyone could. BUT Joseph Smith didn't claim to be able to read Egyptian. He claimed to be a prophet of God and the evidence suggests that revelation was the method he used to produce the text of the Book of Abraham.

Go have a look at the Wiki Article on the Qur'an. Is there any critical commentary on the method used to produce it? Does it have an NPOV flag? Why does an article on "the real word of Allah, revealed to Muhammad (a prophet) by Gabriel (an angel) over a period of 23 years" qualify as NPOV when an article about Joseph Smith (a prophet) who is revealed a story about Abraham does not? The exercise is left to the reader.... DWmFrancis 15:16, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

One more thing - None of the things I've said so far are original to me - everything I've brought up thus far has been suggested previously by others and published - I haven't been footnoting my comments here since they aren't in the text of the article, but I'd be glad to give references. I not sure I agree with the notion that everything has to have been said by someone else and derivative to be authoritative. We've got eyes and brains and hopefully know how to use them. DWmFrancis 15:29, 2 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Couple of thoughts - (1) you keep saying that Joseph Smith never claimed to be able to read Egyptian, when there are mulitiple instances where he said he was translating the papyri - and there is even a document where he spelled out the translation character by character. I understand that apologists think that there is another explanation, but to me, and most people those explanations are rather ridiculous.  (2)I am baffled that you think he got 60 - 70 things right about the Book of Abraham.  The extant papyri was translated and has absolutely nothing to do with the BOA.  Now if you are talking about his ideas about Abraham, then sure he may have gotten a few things right - but when we are talking about the papyri and the facsimiles, he got almost nothing right.  (3) You said "I not sure I agree with the notion that everything has to have been said by someone else and derivative to be authoritative. We've got eyes and brains and hopefully know how to use them." - The way I understand Wikipedia policy, we can't do this because it is Original Research.  I don't think you understand this policy - check out this link: [] If we start to draw our own conclusions, inevitably someone will ask for a reference which we won't be able to provide.


 * Now I do believe that if some other experts that you have cited make some interesting arguments about the BOA, then those should be included, but the weight of evidence and research has shown that Smith's translation is not correct, and as such the article should reflect that.Descartes1979 18:18, 2 December 2007 (UTC)


 * DWmFrancis said, "'Juden - If you go look at the article's history you'll see that the NPOV flag has been set for the last three years - possibly since it was created.'" I am sorry, but that is wrong. The NPOV tag was set only a few weeks ago because anonymous editors had radically changed the article. I worked on the article adding the translations and citations from Dialogue and other journals trying to keep a careful balance on a controversial subject. It reached its final form in August 2006 when it got GA status and it stayed that way under editors' (pro-LDS and non-LDS) watchlists for over a year. Then anonymous editors started to hack it just a few weeks ago. I am sorry to see it in a edit war now, but that is the weakness of Wikipedia. --RelHistBuff 00:05, 3 December 2007 (UTC)


 * RelHistBuff, it would be helpful if you could devote some time to the article. Controversial articles attract those with strong opinions on both sides of the controversy. It does not take long for an article to be destroyed by either side once they get a wild hair about "proclaiming the truth". The anti-Mormons who have been recently "inspired" by their Christ-like minister or a recent devotion to show the Mormon demons the evil of their false religion or LDS who are ignorant of history and want only a vanilla story to be told are both the type of editors that are not needed or wanted on Wikipedia.
 * I find the current article to be a desecration of the purpose of what a critical article is supposed to be and completely dissimilar to other similar articles on Wikipedia. This is decidedly a problem with a few new editors who at best have knowledge of a few anti-Mormon websites and are only good at cut and paste. There is nothing academic about the article now and it has become an echo of the old "Controversies about the LDS church article" that was deleted by the Wikipedia community months ago. I suspect as this continues it will end up being deleted also. We then will lose what was a great article committed to an academic, critical view of Mormonism instead of a stupid repeat of an Evangelical soapbox. Stupid is as stupid does!
 * I will be in Europe for the next few weeks and will not be available, I hope you will consider mediating this very distasteful devolution of the article. --Storm Rider (talk) 07:09, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I will also be travelling and in any case, I am mainly a researcher/content-provider and mediation is not one of my strong points. I would recommend to the current editors to go back to the version before the anonymous IPs hit the article. See the Nov 6 version before the anonymous IPs hit on Nov 12. Then proceed forward from that, but discuss and hash out differences in the talk page before editing the article, i.e., slow evolution, not edit war. Cited items should not removed unless there is a significant consensus. If new items are added, then citations should be provided simultaneously. --RelHistBuff 09:59, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Revert to Nov 6 version?
The discussion regarding reverting to the Nov 6 version seemed to stagnate, but I didn't see any objections. In the wiki spirit of being bold, I went ahead and reverted it. If you disagree, please discuss your thoughts.Descartes1979 01:57, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Primary, Secondary and Tertiary Sources
DWmFrancis 15:31, 3 December 2007 (UTC)I think one of the main problems we could fix is the sourcing. There are so many nested references here it's amazing. (The Josiah Quincy citation is a perfect example.) Shall we make an effort to clean up that mess?

Message from my talk page
DWmFrancis left a message on my talk page. I moved it here as it specifically concerns the article and I will respond here. --RelHistBuff (talk) 09:25, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

-- Start message --

DWmFrancis 15:26, 4 December 2007 (UTC)I agree - in general nicely done, but I think the article still needs work beyond the spelling and grammar. My primary concern is that the views of both sides of the issue regarding the BoAs "accuracy" and authenticity taint the core article's objectivity. The Book of Abraham is a sacred text to the Latter-Day Saints, in the same way the Koran is to Moselms. Yet, the Latter-Day Saint view of the work is never given a clear airing. Further, statements are attributed to Joseph Smith which are not correct. For example; the Wiki article starts out;

"According to Joseph Smith, Jr., the movement's founder, the text is a partial translation of the words of Abraham, in his own hand, written on a set of Egyptian papyri purchased by the religion in 1835 from a traveling mummy show, although subsequent examination of those papyri has called that claim into question."

The wording is inaccurate and confusing. Which claim was called into question? That the text is (1) a partial translation? (2) That it was a translation of the words of Abraham? (3) IN his own hand (rather than BY his own hand), (4) written while Abraham was in Egypt? (5) that it was called the Book of Abraham? or (6) that it was written upon papyrus?

For reference; the preface to the Book of Abraham as first published in the Times and Seasons was: "A TRANSLATION Of some ancient Records that have fallen into our hands, from the Catecombs [Catacombs] of Egypt, purporting to be the writings of Abraham, while he was in Egypt, called the BOOK OF ABRAHAM, written by his own hand, upon papyrus."

By the way, there is a fairly concise statement about the Book of Abraham in an LDS authorized publication; the Church's student manual for Religion 341-42 "Church History in the Fullness of Times". on pages 257-258. If you compare that with the statement in the Wiki article I think you'll see what I am referring to.

My point here is not that you have to agree with the LDS perspective, but the Wiki article must express the LDS view (and the opposing views) accurately.

I also think the article also gets hopelessly bogged down in the nested references. There are very few primary sources on the subject, probably only a handful. Statements by Joseph Smith - preferably in his own handwriting - would be best. After that, things that were recorded in the journals by his personal scribes. Then statements by those who were closest to him and had first hand exposure to the documents and their "translation" from their own journals, Oliver Cowdery for example. Then the commentary of those further from the source. By the time you get to someone who wrote a book in 1968 who gave a talk at a Dialog seminar who quotes another author who quoted someone who visited Joseph Smith in 1842, well... the trail is pretty convoluted by then.

There are objective facts behind this story and they can be told in a fair and neutral manner, but the spaghetti needs to be straightened and cleaned first.

What do you think? I'm suggesting a good vetting of the sources - possibly organizing them into sections based on the Wiki guidelines of Primary, Secondary and Tertiary, then a clear separation of any judgmental commentary into a section specifically on criticism. Also the criticism section is very disorganized. I also think it would be good to organize the references by date with the newer material closer to the top. A lot of good professional research has been done on this subject in the last 40 years but some of it is very outdated.DWmFrancis 15:26, 4 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Firstly, the "partial" adjective was edited in by someone in the past, not me. Putting in the quote from Times and Seasons is fine as long as it is cited.
 * Secondly, I believe both sides has been fairly represented. The article has been edited by a number of LDS and non-LDS editors since it reached GA status. It may need further tweaking, but it seems largely fine. The only weak section is the second section "Content...". Perhaps that could be strengthened.
 * Thirdly, I do not believe there is a "spaghetti" concerning the use of the sources. The sources that were used conform to our policies as given in our sources policy. All sources used are solid scholarly secondary sources. See in the References section where only journals and books are listed. No tertiary sources (i.e., encyclopedia articles or introductory textbooks) are used. Primary sources such as original letters and handwritten documents are supposed to be used carefully (see our policy on this). References should be alphabetically ordered by author name as is the convention according to the our manual of style.
 * Fourthly, the "Criticism and response" section was purposely kept concise in order to avoid undue edit warring. It is a summary of the arguments made on both sides with one-level of response each to provide a careful balance. Edit warring was also avoided because all statements were required to be cited. If you would like to make a separate, more detailed article on the controversies surrounding the BoA, then go ahead. But this article should keep the short summary as it is the linchpin that keeps POV battles from breaking out. --RelHistBuff (talk) 10:13, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

"Translation" vs. "Explanation"
DWmFrancis (talk) 06:31, 10 December 2007 (UTC) I think it's best to stick to the actual wording of the documents themselves. The description of the facsimiles is referred to as an "explanation" and the narrative as a "translation".


 * Good point - however, what about Joseph's repeated statements that they were translations? "Explanation" is a very ambiguous term, and the way you used the word in the article seems to minimize Joseph Smith's claim that they are really "interpretations" of what the figures mean.  Descartes1979 (talk) 17:55, 12 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Can you distinguish between the meaning of 'translation' and 'explanation'? It seems to be a rather moot point to me. --Salimfadhley (talk) 22:31, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

DWmFrancis (talk) 15:10, 14 December 2007 (UTC) Good question; It appears from the published text associated with the facsimiles that the word used in relation to them was "explanation" and the word used in connection with the text of the story was "translation". If there is a statement from Joseph Smith that says he translated the facsimiles and explained the text, then let's change the wording and add the reference.

Amlified Debate?
The prhase "As such, their discovery amplified the long standing dispute concerning the authenticity of the Book of Abraham." implies that recent modern translations of the original Papyrus amplified both sides of the debate, when surely it would be more correct to say that these translations "cast further doubt" on Smith's interpretation? I think the statement in the article is an example of false neutrality. --Salimfadhley (talk) 22:27, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree 100%. I actually think there is a lot of editing lately with the attempt to water down the facts of this article so it reads more apologetically.  This happened a few months ago, and resulted in reverting to an earlier version to get back to a good simplified version.  --Descartes1979 (talk) 01:54, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Cast further doubt by whom? There is a distinct difference between belief/faith and proving history like the fact that George Washington was the first president of the United States. These types of fact are not even in the same realm of thought.
 * Are you saying that it increased the doubt of other religions?; or maybe you are talking about just atheists? In religion you have adherents and those who are not adherents. It seems pretty silly to want to state the obvious..that those who don't belong to a specific relgion don't beieve in thta same religion. Do you really think that Jains, or Hindu, or any other nonChristian religion think Mary was a virgin or the Jesus was the Christ? Please explain yourself, because I am not seeing what point you are making. --Storm Rider (talk) 02:41, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
 * I think s/he meant it increased the chances that Smith's translation was illegitimate in the eyes of someone who looks at the situation as a hypothetical objective observer from the outside. I don't want to put words in his/her mouth, but I don't think religion entered into the equation at all. There are some people who try to assess these things "scientifically" or outside of any religious belief. It's not that they are necessarily atheists, it's just that in assessing claims they don't rely on their personal religious beliefs. Snocrates 03:38, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
 * At the end of the day, the facts of the matter are (in my own words, and IMO) - that the contemporary translation and interpretation of the discovered papyri "casts further doubt" that Joseph Smith's interpretation was correct, since non-LDS AND LDS scholars agree that the papyri have little to do with Abraham. The fragments didn't give any leverage to Mormon apologists, because they are quite condemning, and as such, it is less of a debate.  That is what Salimfadhley is saying Storm Rider - I think it was pretty clear.  (I also don't want to put words into your mouth Salimfadhley, let me know if I am incorrect).  --Descartes1979 (talk) 04:59, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Fragments
Ok Descartes, you seem committed to making the case that the fragments were complete. There is no evidence that they were complete documents. The language you want inflates their importance and completeness. Were they fragments or not? The way the article is written is that these fragments, verified by all scholars, were part of the original documents available to Joseph Smith. Thus we know that they are "at least" part of the originals; they are not all of the originals. Further, no one has verified that these documents were anything but "owned" at one time by Joseph Smith. Further, the evidence is clear based upon the article that these are only a part of documents in his possession. The language I proposed states the clearly and without judgment or POV whereas you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Storm Rider (talk • contribs) 02:47, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
 * I thought Descartes' edit was preferable, because he attached no further words when discussing the fragments. If we say "only fragments" and things like that it assumes and emphasizes that there were more, but we simply don't know whether or not there were. If we just leave it at "fragments", although it may imply there are more, it doesn't emphatically suggest that, as Storm Rider's edits did. Snocrates 03:34, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Storm Rider, I am not making the case that the fragments were complete - in fact I think most of us agree that the fragments are incomplete, as do the scholars that have studied the issue - but how incomplete? That is disputed.  When you use the word "only" in front of fragments, it deliberately minimizes the importance of the fragments, when in fact, they are very important.  Thing is, if you leave off "only" everyone comes away with the same message - that there are fragments - and we avoid a subtle creep towards POV.--Descartes1979 (talk) 04:52, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
 * The critics take that the fragments reviewed verify that they have nothing to do with what Joseph Smith said they did without any clarification that the "fragments" may have nothing to do with what Smith used for the translation. What we know is that 1) fragments were found, 2) there is no clear statement that indicates that these fragments were the same documents Smith used for his translation 3) the fragments found have been translated by several people, 4) there is no or very little similarity between those fragments and the book of Abraham, 5) the article is written in such a way as to draw the conclusion for the reader that the Book of Abraham could not have been translated from ancient papyri. This is the same synthesis that anti-Mormon literature makes. The intent of my language is to draw the fallacies in the gross assumptions being made.
 * Maybe I am wrong. Has anyone stated that the fragments translated were the exact papyri that Joseph used for translation? If not, why is this significant fact highlighted? --Storm Rider (talk) 20:41, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Not that I know of, but I think the assumption probably comes in because the papyri that were found tend to meet the contemporary descriptions of the papyri Smith had quite well. Some Mormon scholars have disputed whether the descriptions and current ones do match up, but other writers, including some Mormons (e.g. Ferguson) have found these arguments not very convincing. Snocrates 21:34, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
 * I am aware that the fragments have been verified to have belonged to Smith, but I have not heard anyone state that these are exact documents that Smith stated he translated as the Book of Abraham. Am I missing something?
 * As an aside, there are only scholars in the world. To qualify a scholar as either Mormon or non-Mormon seems like an attempt to diminish their respective accomplishments as a scholar. We have dealt this this topic over on Jesus and Christianity several times. I do think we need to make clear when someone is acting as an apologist, rather than a scholar. --Storm Rider (talk) 21:47, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
 * All scholars bring certain biases and predilections to their work. To argue that the fact that a scholar is an active Latter Day Saint has no bearing on the reliability of their work on the Book of Abraham is turning a blind eye to the seemingly obvious. There is no "bright line" we can draw separating when a scholar is acting as a "scholar" and when they are acting as an "apologist". Nibley is a classic example — yes, he was a scholar, and a very gifted one at that, but I also don't doubt that most other scholars would view most of his work as certainly infused with a healthy does of "apologistics". These ideas I present are certainly not WP:OR; other scholars make mention of other scholars' religious affiliation quite commonly when discussing their work on religious texts. Snocrates 21:56, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
 * We are drifting from the topic, but personally I find Nibley to have been brilliant, but he could also be a bit imprecise. I certainly agree that he put in a healthy dose of apologetics in his work, but often he was attempting to "find" support for LDS doctrine in the ancient. Now do you have any comments on the first paragraph of my comments above? --Storm Rider (talk) 22:03, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
 * No, I was going to let others comment. I'm not sure if scholars operate using the degree of certainty you may be searching for. It's impossible to say with 100% certainty what happened in the past, and good scholars and historians usually recognise that. But we can make pretty good guesses, estimates, and assumptions, which is what scientists and historians are in the business of doing. As I said, I wanted to let others comment on this since I don't have sources at my fingertips at this moment. Snocrates 22:10, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
 * I think you are definately wrong on points 2 and 3 StormRider. There is quite a bit of good evidence that they are the same fragments he used - 3 points come to mind off the top of my head - they were pasted to drawings of the kirtland temple, emma gave an affidavit that joseph owned them - the characters match those found in the Kirtland papers next to what many people believe to be his translated text, character by character - and Oliver Cowdery described some of the vignettes in one of his letters which match the fragments - and the recovered facsimile 1 has been conclusively shown as originally adjoining one of the fragments.  That is pretty clear evidence that they were the same fragments.  Now I understand that some of this is disputed by Mormon apologists, but even they split amongst themselves on this because the evidence is pretty clear.  Do you have any specific POV problems with the article that you can point out?  I would be happy to work together to come to a consensus - but lets try to avoid an edit war.--Descartes1979 (talk) 22:22, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
 * I guess that was more like 5 points, not three :)--Descartes1979 (talk) 22:23, 15 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Descartes1979, there is more evidence that there is overlap in what we have the papyrus as to what smith translated and included - that the text portions are definitely not the same based on Smith's description of it on such things as the ink-color (red versus black) referred to in earlier versions of this talk page as well as at one point in the article, let alone the human-snake pictures and more. Since the papyrus we have fits in a shoe box, and Smith's was more than six full scrolls, i think we are safe in saying that a lot of what smith had is missing. As a side note, I really need to find my copies of the papyrus photos to show what we do have.


 * For example, in Zondhoven, Annual Egyptological Bibliography 1977, 180-81, a non-LDS egyptologist writes "the Pap. Joseph Smith XI and X containing the Book of Breathings were wrongly identified by others with Joseph Smith's book of Abraham." I believe Larson addresses this under his treatment of the "Missing Black and Red Scroll" Theory (pp. 129-34) in his book. He seems to be the only source that refutes this theory - I've never seen any other person, let alone a scholar who has studied this topic suggest otherwise. -Visorstuff (talk) 19:47, 17 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Interesting quote - I am interested as to why Zondhoven thinks they have been wrongly identified. Based on the 5 points I gave above, it seems pretty clear that the fragments represent at least a portion of the Book of Abraham.  Particularly the Kirtland Egyptian Papers where the characters are translated, and match characters on the papyri.  It seems to me, and to a lot of scholars, that this nearly iron clad proof that the fragments contain at least a portion of the BOA.--Descartes1979 (talk) 20:35, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

By "a lot of scholars" I believe you mean "Charles Larson." He is the only one I know of that has disagreed with the assumption that the LDS church doesn't have the full BOA. If you know of others, i'm interested. Of course this is treated here and here.

One of the best contemporary descriptions of the papyrus is found by oliver cowdery here and another found here. THere are many more, that describe the scrolls rolled out all over the floor of SMith's various homes, in addition to the two "books." What we do have does not match the various descriptions given in any case, but reflects a portion of what is given. Anyone who has spent much time looking at the research photographs will easily see this. And the color of the ink in relation to the book of abraham itself in the descriptions given does not match up at all.

Let me address each of your points individually:

1 - they were pasted to drawings of the kirtland temple, emma gave an affidavit that joseph owned them
 * The descriptions of the scrolls are two fold. one that there were mutiple scrolls. two that there were two "books" measuring 4 inches long and a foot long. what we have is a foot tall by multiple feet long. Then there is the ink issue mentioned above. Of course there were probably many pages preseved on important papers that smith owned, but many were undoubtedly lost before they were donated to the museum in the early 1900s.

2- the characters match those found in the Kirtland papers next to what many people believe to be his translated text, character by character -
 * the logic you give is that since smith copied certain characters, they must have only appeared in one place on the scrolls. this is faulty logic, and is the equiveelnt of saying that the words "Tom Sawyer" only appears on the title page of twain's work. For example, there is at least one snake-human image that was contained within the scrolls, and there could be as many as four based on the descirptions we have.

3- Oliver Cowdery described some of the vignettes in one of his letters which match the fragments -
 * No they don't. Linked to above. there is no red rubrics on these samples. See for example here. Nor do the descriptions of the book of joseph.

4 - and the recovered facsimile 1 has been conclusively shown as originally adjoining one of the fragments.
 * let me share a quote: "it is critical to note that Facsimile 1 is NOT the ordinary mummified figure that one sees in the Book of Breathings. The Book of Breathings typically depicts a person who is dead and wrapped in cloth, which would be totally unrelated to the Book of Abraham. But Facsimile 1 has a person who is clearly alive, with one leg up in a way that precisely puts the person in the position shown in the hieroglyph denoting prayer." The image does not match the themes of books of breathings. It is likely a christian-coptic perversion of a well-understood theme rather than a typical book of the dead. If this is the case, those who buried Sensen, or whoever was the deceased with this particular book of the dead could have taken a familiar scene to them and inserted it in to signify something else. In any case, it shows a mixture of a few religions that does not match up to the dynasties versions of the books of the dead. Also remember that there would have been four books of the dead in the papyrus that Smith had - he bought 4 mummies and their papyrus, each of which would have had their own book of the dead and hypocephalus. What we have as the facsimiles are portions of one of them. -Visorstuff (talk) 01:51, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

OK a couple thoughts - First, I am not arguing that the LDS church has all of the BOA papyrus, and nor does Charles Larson. It is quite clear for example that facsimile 2 and 3 are missing. Second, as far as "a lot of scholars" considering the Joseph Smith papyri to be part of the original BOA, I think that I can back that up, and will look through my books and sources to get back to you on that - although I admit it is a little bit of a blanket statement, and I don't know if my set of sources is a good representation of what "most" or "a lot of scholars " think.

Now some responses to the 5 points above- --Descartes1979 (talk) 07:35, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
 * 1 & 3 - I am going through your links, but much of this I have seen before. I have to disagree with you on the rubrics and the vignettes.  Joseph Smith papyri IV, V, VI, and VIII clearly have the red writing that you say is not present.  And to quote Oliver Cowdery: "Upon the subject of the Egyptian records, or rather the writings of Abraham and Joseph, and may I say a few words. This record is beautifully written in papyrus with black, and a small part, red ink or paint, in perfect preservation." (emphasis added).  Cowdery also described some vignettes from the Book of Joseph - particularly the walking serpent, the three headed god, and Enoch's pillar - which are all found in Joseph Smith papyri V, and VI.  Again - I am going to read through those links you gave to make sure I am not missing anything, but I am surprised to hear you say that the papyri don't match Cowdery's descriptions, because they clearly do - at least to me they do, and Larson for that matter.
 * 2 - I will concede that there may have been other scrolls that have the same images and text. I need to go back to my copy of Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar, and compare the characters to the papyri fragments.  I think we can agree that the more characters that are found in the fragments, the greater the probability that they were part of the original BOA.  If only two or three characters are there - as you suggest with your "Tom Sawyer" example, then it is less likely.  However, if most of the characters are there, and are ordered the same, then it makes a stronger case I think.  More on this later when I can research more.
 * 4 - I think what you are trying to say is that the vignette is not the source of facsimile 1. From what I have read, LDS and Non-LDS scholars agree that it is.  I will concede your point that it may not be from the Book of the Dead, and if your quote is from a good source, then we should put that in the article.


 * Hi descartes1979. Please don't think i'm playing apologist by my commments - i have a very different view on this topic than most, due to my experience with it - particularly as my father was very involved in the photography and research of the papyrus when it was discovered (ie he took the photos you are using). I've spent time in this arena - you are typically looking as secondary sources. Let me work backward on your comments above. #4: I am not saying that at all. It definitely appars to be part of what you said. However, it is not typical for what it should be, and the images contained in it are not what one would expect in such. 2: again, this is circumstantial, and you'll find the same in other places in existing text. Remember, the doucments were funerary texts, which would contain at least three copies of instructions, A full scroll, a book, and a hypocephalus. Each would contain tailored instructions, passwords and greetings to pass by the gods in the underworld. The hypocephalus was put under the head as to help them remember these instructions. In any case, you should find multiple recurrences of text. 1&3 (and my talk page): the photo you uploaded shows black text that has gotten wet and or faded (and strangely blurred) (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/19/Joseph_Smith_Papyrus_IV.jpg). It is not red. Trust me on this one having seen the original photos . I find it interesting that other papyrus, such as the farm/nile scene never gets discussed. But they do not match all of the descriptions, Olivers included (I provided his as merely one of many descriptions), and we don't find each color on any one fragment.


 * Again, i'm not playing apologist, but i am i'm saying that Larson's research should not be relied on as heavily as you seem to rely on it, as the research is amateurish and does not address real issues, it addresses emotion and whether or not smith was a translator - which is merely one small facet of the Book of Abraham. Larson is not an student of egyptology, and makes known his purpose of writing and complete POV in the book. Others such as parker and baer, would be better to cite as they address real issues with the papyrus. Using Larson like we do here is like citing the godmakers as a true representation of Mormonism - it was written with the intent to decieve and dissuade others, and does not seek to conceal this fact. Baer's and others work was written to address real issues and examine the fragments from an academic viewpoint. I'd encourage you to read the three non-LDS egyptologist initial work on the Papyrus work first and then go back to your four points above and see if you still disagree with me. I tend to trust them due to their credentials moreso than larson and his lack of them. -Visorstuff (talk) 20:11, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

I am having a hard time believing you Visorstuff. Here is a closer shot of the rubrics in Joseph Smith Papyrus IV. These are clearly red writing, and not "black text that has gotten wet and or faded". --Descartes1979 (talk) 23:14, 18 January 2008 (UTC)



By the way, I agree with you that we should cite Baer and others to make the article more solid.--Descartes1979 (talk) 23:18, 18 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Well i guess we'll disagree - although you know well that this is well cited. I'll see if I can dig up the better photos, although they've been filed away for years. You may want to read these sources too - particularly as they relate to JS Nos. X and XI:


 * John Gee, "Some Puzzles from the Joseph Smith Papyri," 2007 FAIR Apologetics Conference (Sandy, Utah).
 * John Gee, A Guide to the Joseph Smith Papyri, 23.
 * Hugh Nibley, "Phase I," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 3:2 (Summer 1968): 101.
 * Hugh Nibley, "New Look at the Pearl of Great Price," Improvement Era (March 1968): 17–18. (https://deseretbook.com/register/index?return_url=%2fgospelink%2flogin%2f824E1B682B31C3C43E6F007BB9DC93BB05541BF6%3f)
 * Hugh Nibley, "Judging and Prejudging the Book of Abraham," Nibley archive, 1979, 6-7 (http://farms.byu.edu/display.php?table=transcripts&id=48)
 * http://www.jefflindsay.com/LDSFAQ/FQ_Abraham.shtml
 * http://www.fairlds.org/FAIR_Conferences/2004_ABCs_of_the_Book_of_Abraham.html


 * Becuase we dispute this, how do you want to handle for the article? -Visorstuff (talk) 16:42, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Lets continue this dialog for a little longer Visorstuff, if you don't mind. I just looked at Jeff Lindsay's article, and he freely admits that fragment IV and V have rubrics on them - perhaps you can point me to something specific in this article that says there are no rubrics. (Still looking through the other articles) BTW - let me make sure I am clear - I understand that Joseph Smith Papyri I, X, and XI (considered source of BOA) have no rubrics. The photos are quite clear that all of the characters are black. But the fragments for the Book of Joseph clearly have rubrics on them, as shown in the image above.--Descartes1979 (talk) 17:47, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Just looked at the FAIR article, noting this:

"Q: Do you believe that Oliver's description of the papyrus containing rubrics included the papyrus the Book of Abraham came from?

BARNEY: This is referring to a letter that Oliver Cowdery wrote in which he described the- well, there's some question about what he was describing. But, whatever he described was written in black ink and a portion in red. And those red portions are called rubrics and now some of the Book of the Dead manuscripts have rubrics. The Sensen papyrus has no trace of rubrics."

I think this is a very clear statement of the facts - the Book of the Dead manuscripts have rubrics (including Joseph Smith IV, V, VI, VII, and VIII), and the Sensen papyus (Joseph Smith I, X, and XI) do not.--Descartes1979 (talk) 17:51, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

I just finished reading the Nibley Article "Phase One" that you mentioned, and I don't see anything in there about rubrics, so I am not sure what you are referring to in this article. --Descartes1979 (talk) 19:14, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

What we agree on
Lets reboot this discussion - after going back through this thread, I think we actually agree on a lot of stuff, and maybe are misunderstanding each other. This is what I am saying:
 * 1 - Oliver Cowdery described the papyrus, which included both the BOA and the Book of Joseph as containing rubrics.
 * 2 - The Sensen papyrus fragments, which are thought by some to be at least partially the source of the BOA (Joseph Smith I, X, and XI) have no rubrics on them.
 * 3 - The Book of Joseph fragments (Joseph Smith IV, V, VI, VII, VIII) have rubrics on them.

Would you agree with these three statements Visorstuff? --Descartes1979 (talk) 19:29, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Purported changes to the facsimiles, and other problems
After noting some of the discussion over the last few days I have come to realize there are a few things missing from this article, such as (but not limited to) Oliver Cowdery's statements that describe the papyri, which lend further support that the recovered fragments were part of the original BOA. It is also not very clear what the controversy really is regarding the purported changes to the facsimiles. I will attempt to make a few changes over the next few days to fix this problem. If anyone disagrees with my changes, please feel free to revert my edits, and discuss here.--Descartes1979 (talk) 05:24, 16 January 2008 (UTC) Examination of the rediscovered fragments revealed differences between the originals and the facsimiles, which sparked further debate regarding when material was lost or added and by whom. There is controversy and speculation concerning this image, as a portion of the original papyrus is missing, particularly the head of the standing figure, the object in his hand and the position of the arms and hands of the reclining figure. Also, the position of the standing figure relative to the reclining figure is different than in the original. 
 * I made a bunch of edits this evening, including two new sections regarding the controversy of the reconstruction of facsimiles 1 and 3. I just added an outline for now, and I will add the references tomorrow or the next day.  Please don't remove those sections until I get a chance to put in the references.--Descartes1979 (talk) 07:31, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
 * I also removed these sentences, but plan to put them back when I can figure out where they fit best:

Kirtland Egyptian Papers
I couldn't readily find an article on the Wikipedia about the Kirtland Egyptian Papers, and Smith's Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar - I wonder if we should start that article as an offshoot of this one - or create a new section here describing them.--Descartes1979 (talk) 07:29, 16 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Smith's Egyptian claims might be relevant to the article on Reformed Egyptian. --Salimfadhley (talk) 15:17, 16 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Interestingly, (according to everything I have read), the Reformed Egyptian of the Book of Mormon is unrelated with the Egyptian hieroglyphics and facsimiles of the Book of Abraham. Remember that Reformed Egyptian characters from the Anthon script have no relation to known Egyptian hieroglyphics, and one Egyptologist described them as nothing more than "doodlings".  The Kirtland Egyptian Papers are related exclusively with the Book of Abraham papyri, and the analysis and translation of real characters taken from the Joseph Smith papyri.  As such, I don't think the two articles are really related. --Descartes1979 (talk) 16:22, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Book of Joseph Section?
Should we also include a section on the Book of Joseph? Since they are part of the papyri, but were never translated, they have unique relevance with the BOA, but perhaps it should get its own article...--Descartes1979 (talk) 07:33, 16 January 2008 (UTC)


 * We could, this article is the most appropriate place to do so - it does not justify its own article. -Visorstuff (talk) 20:36, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Arrangement of Images
I am having trouble arranging the images in a good presentable way. Can any of you guys take a look? --Descartes1979 (talk) 17:50, 17 January 2008 (UTC)


 * I'll take a look later on - i do have one concern - the article in its current form is leading the reader to conclusions.


 * For example, the discssion of facsimile 1 basically states that smith's translation has nothing to do with the original, which is not accurate. Even Baer and the other egyptologists claimed he got some things right, although his was not an accurate translation by their statndards. This is problematic because of the paragraph placing, the paragraph preceding the section on facsimile 1 states that this specimin is different and distintive than most (the why is is treated by Rhodes and others), but is in a completely different paragraph than talks about what the fascimile says. Plus, there is no correlating of the canopic jars to the "gods of horus" which in the article says "sons of horus." the research by larson was sloppy and recent over-reliance on him is unwise to future generations.


 * And hten there is the translation - whereas similar specimin are typically resurrection scenes, this one is not. This is a death scene according to Baer's translation - which is very significant. the man seems to be killed or mummified for burial in the name of the four prophets [gods] of horus (translated "sons") as discussed above.


 * Another example comes right after not in thy hypocephalus section where the article states, "Smith's explanation differs from the standard interpretation. He stated that the central figure in this Hypocephalus represents "Kolob." Yet we know that the central figure in the hypocephalus was always an astronomical figure - at least the last two conferences that addressed egyptian hypocephali stated as much - and one as early as the 1890s. Remember, no two hypocephali are the same (nor are any two book of breathings), so the comparison to "the norm" or to others as this article currently does makes the authors look amatuerish (no offense is intended) and uneducated on the topic of hypocephali.


 * The final point i address above - we only have a small portion of the fragments. And parker and Baer, although they disagree with most of MSith's research, do support some things he states - especially when it comes to the similarites to this and masonic/temple ceremonies - which we don't even discuss in the current article (funnily enough larson didnt want to address in his work). in any case, we should include it as well. But whatever we do, we should not lead the reader as the article does now.


 * On another vein, the addition of lacuna is a good one, and we should discuss the woodcutters, etchers and scribes that had access to the original, as smith ddidn't do any copying according to any contemporary accounts as the article erroenously states. a better discussion on that may help show the five different versions of the facsimiles that we have - and we should include images to each, imho. it is a good point that should be expanded upon.


 * hope this helps, let's just be more careful about leading the reader, regardless of what our own opinions are. -Visorstuff (talk) 20:35, 17 January 2008 (UTC)


 * I welcome any additions and revisions - my edits of late have been focused on trying to fill out the content, and although I have tried to be NPOV, we all inevitably have our own POV, and hope that you can help me remove anything that you feel is inappropriate. If you have any citations that help clarify anything, please add them. --Descartes1979 (talk) 20:40, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Misidentified facsimile
It's facsimile 2 that was padded with hieratic letters from the Book of Breathings, and was found in an incomplete state among the Kirtland Egyptian papers (as can be seen in the pictures in this article). However, the final paragraph here says it was facsimile 3. I changed it, but Visorstuff reverted without an explanation. Is this situation true for facsimile 3 as well as 2, or is there another explanation? Ratatosk Jones (talk) 21:34, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
 * You are right RatatoskJones - this should be referring to facsimile 2 not 3. I reverted back to your version. --Descartes1979 (talk) 23:08, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
 * My apologies for quickly reverting without reading as fully as i should have. -Visorstuff (talk) 16:43, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Joseph Smith Papyri - split into its own article?
Right now Joseph Smith Papyri redirects to this article - I wonder if we should split it out into its own article. It might help with the organization issues that this article has. The more I read this article, the more it still feels a little clunky. The new could be really straight forward with descriptions of the original papyri, and then info about the fragments that were found, including the images. This might be useful for some of the Egyptology pages to refer to as well. The controversy sections and translation could remain here in the main Book of Abraham article. Thoughts? --Descartes1979 (talk) 04:56, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
 * I went ahead and started on the new article. I admit it is possible at the end of the day that it will be merged back here, but worst case scenario, it will help us organize the facts I think, and best case - we will have another good article on the topic. --Descartes1979 (talk) 23:57, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Proposed Restructuring
I think that the article needs some restructuring to help with some of the organizational problems. I think the article will flow better and make more sense if we segregate out the controversy portions and tighten them up a bit. I propose the following:


 * Summary
 * Content
 * Text
 * Facsimiles (only passing reference to controversy here - focus on Smith's interpretation)
 * Origin
 * The Joseph Smith Papyri (include early descriptions), and the loss of them (again, only passing reference here to the controversy)
 * The Book of Joseph
 * Kirtland Egyptian Papers (Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar, and BOA manuscripts) (again only passing reference to controversy here - focusing on the origin of the BOA)
 * Rediscovery of the Joseph Smith Papyri fragments
 * Analysis of the papyri
 * Controversy and Response
 * Lacuna and alleged false reconstruction
 * Differences between Joseph Smith's alleged translation
 * Apologist responses
 * Interpretations and contributions to Mormonism

Unless anyone disagrees, I will work on this starting this Saturday. --Descartes1979 (talk) 05:37, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Well after taking another look, I am going to swap Origin and Content from my original proposal, and move the rediscovery below the content section. After doing that, I realized that that was the original order - LOL. Guess I have been just a little over zealous. However, there is some restructuring that still needs to happen with the criticism section...--Descartes1979 (talk) 06:28, 31 January 2008 (UTC)


 * I think we should add three sub-sections to the criticism section - I think that will make the article flow better:

--Descartes1979 (talk) 05:05, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Early criticism of the facsimilies (beginning with Deveria, and then around the turn of the century)
 * Criticism as a result of the rediscovered papyrus (citing Larson, Baer, Dialogue, and Ritner)

Section removed, lets discuss and put it in the right place...
I pulled this section out - I would like to discuss and make sure I am clear what the point is of these statements, because it doesn't seem to fit in the article well in any particular place. --Descartes1979 (talk) 05:50, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
 * As of 1998, there were twenty-nine known examples of the Book of Breathings Made by Isis, of which the Joseph Smith papyri is an example. Of those twenty nine, eighteen have vignettes associated with them. A comparison of the Book of Abraham vignettes with these other documents indicates that while there are many similarities, the Book of Abraham Fasimile No. 1 is unique in at least two ways; It is the only version of a Book of Breathings Made by Isis with this particular vignette. Further, the position of the limbs of the reclining figure is also unique.

Hi Guys! As the author of this material I'd be delighted ot discuss it's inclusion or deletion. 65.214.163.49 (talk) 19:38, 21 April 2008 (UTC)


 * There are two problems I see with this section: 1) The differences that are pointed between the Joseph Smith Papyri and other vignettes (positioning of arms etc.) are exactly the portions that were missing from the originals - so you can't say that they were actually part of the papyri, they were filled in by someone. Take a close look at the original photographs, which show that those portions were penciled in by someone on the backing to which the papyri were pasted.  2) This sections strays a little bit from the focus of the article - these comments are more appropriate in the Joseph Smith Papyri article, where the vignettes and the text of the papyri is discussed.  IMO, as far as this article is concerned, discussion of the papyri should focus on the controversy related to the currently accepted Book of Abraham.  However, if you disagree, try working your comments back into the article somewhere and lets see if it is relevant.  --Descartes1979 (talk) 19:55, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Descartes - You must be assuming that Marc Coenen was looking at the figures as they appear in the Pearl of Great Price, as opposed to the photographic images of the remaining fragments. Your argument seems to be that the position of the limbs (legs) is not relevant because they were in a missing/restored portion. *That is incorrect.* The portion of the image containing the legs was not damaged. Coenen is participating in an effort to collect images of all known examples Book of Breathings texts, of which the JSP is an example. I suspect the real "problem" here is that the argument that Joseph Smith was wrong hinges in part on Facsimile No. 1 from the PGP being incorrectly restored. In order to know if it was incorrectly restored it would have to be compared to other known examples of BoD documents - exactly what Coenen was doing - and he, a non-LDS Egyptologist, said the JSP Facsimile No. 1 image (not the image from the PGP) was unique in at least two respects. I am putting the citation back and will continue to do so. This is the right place. DWmFrancis (talk) 23:03, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Paragraph removed without discussion
I reverted your edit Descartes requesting no hasty deletions without discussing it first, but I see that you chose to not discuss anything and deleted it again. I am neutral at the moment because I don't know enough about the following deleted material,
 * " Another religion called Order of Nazorean Essenes also believes in Kolob because they have their own Hypocephalus. Here is a comparison of the 2nd facsimile of Abraham and their Hypocephalus. "

You stated that this came up already, but I could not find it by doing a simple page search for Essenes. Had you already discussed on this page or another page? Was any type of concensus reached; where? The group is foreign to me and their use of similar items as a "perfected" hypocephalus. My only objective is not to make this decision to delete, unilaterally, but by concensus. --Storm Rider (talk) 16:36, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I will have to go back and check, but I do distinctly remember going over this claim before. If you look at their main website, it becomes pretty clear that this sect borrows a variety of doctrines from other religions, and the Latter Day Saint movement in particular - The hypocephalus interpretation was taken almost line by line from the Pearl of Great Price, with a few other things added in.  Check out their wikipedia article: Sons Aumen Israel, and their main website: http://essenes.net/.  Strictly speaking, they could be considered an offshoot of the LDS church, as they were founded in Utah, and borrow heavily from Mormonism for their doctrines.  To me, all of this is pretty tangential in nature, and doesn't have any real relevance to the Book of Abraham.  --Descartes1979 (talk) 18:01, 25 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Descartes, we may very well be on the same side at the end of the day, I am just wanting to take a little time before making a decision the topic does not belong here or anywhere else.
 * My rather brief review of the group would make me think this group has a melange of ideas that has coalescec into a single belief system. As I said I am unfamiliar with them and it may have no value here, but I would much rather make that as a group rather than alone. Too often we get carried away with our own ideas; always better to review with others so that newer editors do not feel their edits do not have a chance or they do not learn what is required for productive edits. Does this make sense? BTW, I do recall a sons aumen discussion, but I only searched here for Essenes. --Storm Rider (talk) 19:57, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Call for reassessment of good article standing
The neutrality of this article is questionable and therefore it is not a good candidate for good article standing. Specifically, the article concentrates heavily on the criticisms of the text and its translation with very little unbias information about the Mormon perspective of the writing.Caldwemj (talk) 20:12, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

I have flagged this article as original research, synthesis, and NPOV. I believe that it is clearly flawed in all three areas. You will note, however, that I have not made any changes to the substance of the article. I will make these changes as the discussion progresses. Although this article contains excellent information, significant changes must be made to fit Wikipedia's policies. I will detail the necessary changes as I progress through the article. Timmyboy22 (talk) 07:40, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Synthesis
"although he was the editor of Times and Seasons, the periodical in which the facsimiles first appeared, and as such would have approved any images that were included." - This is your own conclusion. Besides being unacceptable under Wikipedia guidelines, it is a deeply flawed conclusion. Attributing every newspaper article's content to the main editor is deeply troubling. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Timmyboy22 (talk • contribs) 07:46, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I believe that statement was originally sourced to a critic - one of the Tanners or Gary Charles Larson - I will look it up, and readd the cite. --Descartes1979 (talk) 23:27, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

"Some of these justifications are not found in any of the other canonized scriptures of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints." - I have no idea why you included this statement. This is a clear NPOV violation, original research, and synthesis. Besides all that, it is blatantly untrue. All of the doctrines you mentioned can be found in the Bible, Book of Mormon, and Doctrine & Covenants. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Timmyboy22 (talk • contribs) 07:51, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Although I agree that statement is a little too broad, I am not sure it is so clear. I can't think of an example in the Bible or BOM where the plurality of gods is discussed.  D&C has it if I remember, although I suspect the revelations came after the BOA was translated - that is my own bit of origial research for you :).  The prefix "some" in the sentence that you quoted is quite ambiguous.  If we keep the sentence, what really needs to happen is the justifications need to be listed (as cited by apologists and critics to stay away from OR), showing which ones are not included in the other standard works.  All of this, of course, may be a bit tangential.  --Descartes1979 (talk) 23:27, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Definitely tangential. However, it is relevant.  Priesthood, exaltation, and pre-moral existence are clearly present throughout the Old Testament, New Testament, Book of Mormon, and Doctrine and Covenants.  Plurality is a little harder to find, but definitely there (Psalms 82:1, for example).  As a believer, I think that Joseph Smith and other church members may not have recognized some of these principles quite as well until after Abraham.  Once these were recognized, it was much easier to tie the scriptures in the other "standard works" together to understand it all.  I would say that is the reason we are given prophets, but that's definitely even more tangential :-).  I'm going to pull this one out. Timmyboy22 (talk) 06:55, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

I removed the Original Research banner while I look for the sources, although I am leaving the synthesis tag. You can tag specific statements that you believe are Original Research with the tag - and we can work together to fix them. However, I believe quite strongly that original research is few and far between in this article. Your statements above are the only examples that I can see easily, and they are relatively minor. --Descartes1979 (talk) 02:11, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Since the statement above was removed from the article, I removed the synthesis banner. --Descartes1979 (talk) 23:47, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Rewrite
I'm considering rewriting the article for readability. I would maintain the content and layout. As I mentioned above, I think the article contains significant excellent information. However, the article uses the passive voice and sometimes awkward constructions. I think I would like to go through sentence by sentence and rewrite it. In the process, I would definitely try to move the POV more towards the middle. What do you think? Once again, I don't plan any content changes. I just plan grammar and POV changes. Timmyboy22 (talk) 07:04, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

I strongly support the suggestion of a rewrite towards neutrality. For reference, you might have a look at the Wiki article on the Q'ran. Although some editors here assert their neutrality I think the evidence shows a consistent effort to bury supportive ("appologist") evidence in the references and include critical material in the body of the article. The most recent example of this was the deletion of the material about Facsimile 1 being unique among the 30 odd known examples of this type of Book of Breathings. The editor deleted it because he didn't know where it fit in the article. That information is directly relevant to the interpretation of the image. If Fac No. 1 is just another of dozens of such images and is just like the rest, then any deviation in Joseph Smith's explanation is significant. However, if Facsimile No. 1 is unique - as stated by a non-Mormon - then inferring that Smith's interpretation is wrong because he didn't say what modern Egyptologists said about a different scene - one with different thematic elements - is applying false logic. DWmFrancis (talk) 14:33, 22 April 2008 (UTC)


 * DWmFrancis - I was the one that removed those statements, and support putting them back in, as shown above, IF we can find the right place for them. The problem with the statements is that the differences between JS Papyri and other similar vignettes is that the differences are with sections that were restored from lacunae in the original papyri.  How can you say they are legitimate differences, when those sections were incorrectly restored by JS or one of his contemporaries?  Let me give you an example - the god Anubis in facsimile 1 has a human head.  This is completely different from all other similar vignettes where Anubis has a jackal's head.  The issue here isn't that the vignettes are different - the issue is that someone incorrectly filled in a portion of the vignette that was missing.  In the end, we can say that it is different, but to be fair we have to clarify that those sections were missing from the original papyri, and were restored by someone else.  (This also includes the part of the papyri showing the arrangement of the arms of the figure lying down.) --Descartes1979 (talk) 20:26, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Descartes - I had no doubt that you were the one who removed the material, you are above all things consistent in your approach, which is to maximize the exposure of the critical evidence and minimize the supportive. (With regard to your latest edit, you have done it again.)

My latest edit specifically referred to the position of the *legs* of the reclining figure - an area which has not been modified or affected by your precious lacuna. You take this as an opportunity to delete the information that a non-LDS Egyptologist has stated that the image from the JSP is unique among the 29 known examples. (Although Nibley addressed this years ago, but since he's LDS and not an Egyptologist he's apparently not a credible source.)

Take a look at the photographic images of the fragments which are posted in the article. You can see for yourself what the differences are between them and the ones in the LDS BoA. In your blind bias you totally ignore other significant difference between the originals and the images published in all the editions in the Pearl of Great Price. For example' on the original papyri the legs of the reclining figure are shown in front of the standing figure, while Ruben Hedlock (or whoever did the woodcut) placed them behind the standing figure. Why don't you jump on that as yet another example of how Joseph Smith didn't get it right?

Your posturing as an unbiased editor of this material is an obvious ruse and continues to be the cause of this article's NPOV status being flagged. If you can't muster the integrity to neutralize your work then back off and let others do the job. DWmFrancis (talk) 14:39, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Unverifiable
This article also contains significant swaths of uncited material. I am tempted to pull it all out until you can provide the cites. Some paragraphs have zero cites. I am going to tag this as well. None of these tags should be removed without reason. Timmyboy22 (talk) 07:55, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I did a quick look, and I don't see "significant swaths" of uncited material. Please add  tags to statements that need cites and I will be willing to help you get any cites you need.  I have a lot of the referenced sources here at home. --Descartes1979 (talk) 23:18, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I did a closer look, and now I disagree with you completely. The vast majority of the statements in this article are sourced.  I removed the tag, and would ask that you add cite request tags to specific statements that you feel need to be cited.  There are a couple, but not nearly enough to warrant an unverifiable banner.  --Descartes1979 (talk) 02:02, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
 * When adding tags to articles you must be very specific on the talk page as to the motivations for the tag. This means you must direct other editors as to how to correct the problems in the article and specific areas to improve. If such an explanation is not added to the discussion page the tag is not valid and appropriately removed.
 * In this situation, it appears Timmy that your concerns are about specific sentences. Could you please just tag those sentences as requested by Descartes? Let's shy away from reverting each other's edits; doing so will prevent the petty edit wars that are typical on wikipedia. Cheers. --Storm Rider (talk) 02:11, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I tagged a bunch of spots in the article - there are now 13 in all. Please take a look at them and see if I overlooked anything. Timmyboy22 (talk) 07:00, 9 April 2008 (UTC

I was also amazed at the number of uncited statements that have crept in, as well as the the deletion of some cited references. Seriously folks, if this article is ever going to get the NPOV warning lifted stuff like this has got to stop.DWmFrancis (talk) 18:21, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Comon you guys - read the article all the way through. The unsourced statements are few and far between, with most of them being about the Community of Christ, which is hardly a core issue to the article.  Regardless, I will work on getting cites for them. --Descartes1979 (talk) 19:57, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

What is this article really?
I've spent the better part of four hours going over this article with particular attention to tracking down the sources and it appears that the majority of the material is culled from anti-Mormon publications and web sites. I won't even pretend to speak for the rest of the contributors here, but to my way of thinking the real title of this article should be Criticism of the Book of Abraham and Joseph Smith Papyri. It is in no way an accurate discussion of the Book of Abraham text or content. It's obvious intent is to assert that the BoA story is pure fiction - the imagination of Joseph Smith. It also falls far short of the standard Wikipedia sets for objectivity or neutrality. One of the most active contributors is also an active contributor to the Wiki article on Criticism of Mormonism, so his bias is pretty clear.

I fail to see how the Book of Abraham falls into a different category of religious texts than the Qur'an or even the Egyptian Book of the Dead, which seem to get fair enough treatment on Wiki, without attacking their authors as ignorant fools.

If this article is going to be more than a veiled attack on Joseph Smith, it's going to have to concentrate on relevant information on the Book of Abraham itself. DWmFrancis (talk) 04:39, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Often it is easy to see the perspective of editors, but the best editors strive for neutrality. Religious topics are particularly difficult because adherents will often accept little, if any, criticism. On the other hand, those who are not adherents or those who are aggressively critical will accept almost no positive information. This is the extreme view and generally editors simple have perspectives and demand that their position be noted. Thankfully, LDS topics seem to attract both extremists and the middle of the road editors. In reality, I expect that both are needed for the process to work. Nothing is static, but the ebb and flow of editing keeps it interesting. Regardless, let's not begin to question the motives of other editors.
 * I would suggest that continue with your process and attempt to produce an article about the Book of Abraham. Primarily, it is a book of faith and must be treated as such. The majority of the article should answer the typical questions of what, when, where, why, and how. It should then be followed by a criticism section. Everything should be concise and supported by reputable references. Have you considered creating a draft article and then when close to being finished invite editors to review it? The objective would then be to transfer it over wholesale. I find that process to save time, keep the excited contrary voices to a minimum, but produce a cooperatively edited article in the end.--Storm Rider (talk) 05:30, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree with StormRider. This article does have a critical bent, but it is well sourced.  To get to NPOV, I would like to see better rebuttals to the criticisms, and a larger section on the content of the text.  And DWM, you can name me if you like, I am the so-called "biased" editor that you name, and I will admit I have a critical POV on this issue.  I don't have any problem with more sympathetic and apologetic information being added, but what I can't stand is when facts get suppressed, which is why I reverted some of your edits, which I explained in detail on your talk page.  I also think that this article gets a little to nit picky on the details of the contents of the papyri, which is one reason why I created the Joseph Smith Papyri article, so maybe we can shift that information there, and focus on the core issues.  Right now the reader will get drowned by the nitty gritty of Egyptology, which should be summarized I think.  In the way of a restructuring proposal, in my mind the perfect article goes like this:


 * 1) Summary (this is pretty good the way it is)
 * 2) Content (expand)
 * 3) Contributions to Mormonism (expand)
 * 4) Controversy/Criticism (condense a little from what it is, but don't censor)
 * 5) Apologetic Perspectives (add more material)
 * --Descartes1979 (talk) 05:46, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Descartes, et al. - I would be delighted to see this article reworked into something(s) that objectively discuss; (1) The Book of Abraham itself as a religious text, in the same vein as the Qu'ran or another text is discussed. This could include contributions to LDS doctrine and theology, etc.

(2) The Joseph Smith Papyri specifically, what are they, what is their "story", what do the say or infer about Egyptian religious belief and worship? How might that that tie into or contradict Mormon belief and theology and Smith's development of it?

(3)Joseph Smith's method of "translation" - how he got from possesion of the papyri to publishing the BoA story as told in the Pearl of Great Price.

I really do mean the full range of issues, from the idea that they are entirely the product of his imagination to the idea that he produced the text and explanation of the vignettes by inspiration from God. Along the way that should provide plenty of opportunities for discussion of the Kirtland Egyptian Papers, other's involvement, possible other sources like apocrypha, other authors, etc.

If we could put the quotes in the body of the article, rather than burying them in the footnotes or references, I think it would make the article much easier to read and go a long way towards clarifying the issues. For example, if you want to use Josiah Quincy's statement that Joseph Smith said they were the writings of Abraham in his own hand and couple that with current dating of the papyri as first centuruy A.D. as proof that Joseph Smith was wrong about either the age of the papyri or their actual writer, by all means do that. For example, you could word it similar to this:

It is highly unlikely that the papyri were personally penned by Abraham, as Josiah Quincy reported that Joseph Smith said, because modern Egyptologists, (Ritner, whoever) have dated them to the first century AD.

If you are worried about getting caught in the "origional research" trap, find quotes from the Tanners or someone else to support your point(s).

I really don't care what conclusion anyone comes to regarding this subject - as long as they have been presented with relevant and accurate information in a well organized manner and know the source(s) of it. DWmFrancis (talk) 22:30, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Church Historian's Fragment
I have replaced the section on the Church Historian's Fragment. My primary reason for doing this was when I obtained a copy of the article from the February 1968 issue of the Improvement Era and checked page 40H for a statement that the fragment had been suppressed, IT WAS NOT THERE.

Page 40H contains an image of the fragment and the text I quoted and nothing more. The previous premise of the entire section was that there was some sort of delay in disclosure or suppression of the fragment going on and *that is patently false.* The fragment was stored with the Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar and had been since at least 1908, perhaps since 1855 and the LDS Church published that fact contemporaneously with the initial publishing of the photographs of the rest of the fragments. DWmFrancis (talk) 00:45, 26 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Good job fleshing that out that false source DWm. --Descartes1979 (talk) 20:29, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Differences between Facsimile 1 and other vignettes - paragraph added
OK, so this paragraph was added back to the article, and I am not sure I get why it is important:

"As of 1998, there were twenty-nine known examples of the Book of Breathings Made by Isis, of which the Joseph Smith papyri fragment is an example. Of those twenty nine, eighteen have vignettes associated with them. A comparison of the Book of Abraham facsimiles with these other documents indicates that the Book of Abraham Fasimile No. 1 is unique in at least two ways; It is the only version of a Book of Breathings Made by Isis with this particular image and the position of the legs of the reclining figure, with one raised, is also unique. This is significant because even minor differences in the images or content of the missing portions of the papyri could have a effect on interpretation of the images and text and accuracy of Smith's explanations."

Notice that I added the clarifyme tags to pinpoint the problem areas. Currently it states: "This is significant because even minor differences in the images or content of the missing portions of the papyri could have a effect on interpretation of the images and text and accuracy of Smith's explanations" -- that is well and good, but if we know what the differences are, and we are not saying what the affect is on the interpretation, then why are we saying any of this at all? If the minor differences have not affect on the interpretation, then the whole paragraph strays from the topic of the article because it is irrelevant, and should be merged to Joseph Smith Papyri IMO. Please comment. --Descartes1979 (talk) 20:33, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Gladly - The "problem" is that interpretation of the images depends on having an image to interpret. Nibley, Ritner and others have pointed out that the existing papyi are incomplete and that the filled in areas (lacunae) contain images which may or may not have been correctly "restored"- assuming that they were already missing at the time the papyri came into the possession of Joseph Smith. Critics take the position that Smith restored them incorrectly and then go on to criticize his incorrect explanations. For example in an article published in the Journal of Near Eastern Studies published in 2003, Ritner states: "The latter scene may also include a depiction of the risen ba-spirit, the human-headed bird that represents the soul of the deceased individual. Since the fate of the ba-spirit is the focus of the document, this depiction is logical and is found on the Joseph Smith example." In the footnote he continues, saying that the image was "Wrongly restored with a bird’s head and identified... as “The Angel of the Lord.” then closes with "This is true only if Joseph Smith’s “Lord” was Osiris." There are much deeper theological issues here which Nibley at least tries to point toward in "The Message of the Joseph Smith Papyri", but Ritner et al, completely ignore; namely, if you go back far enough does it turn out that the messenger hawk of the Egyptians is a parallel but corrupted image of the Hebrew Ruach Elohim, or that Osiris is a parallel image of YHWH, the Lord God of Israel? And by the way, this is not original research on my part. I just don't have the references handy.

You have to give credit to Ritner for using the word MAY. He realizes that part of the image is missing and the interpretation depends on what was there originally. Ritner restores it with a human head because there are other examples of that in other copies of the Book of Breathings and his knowledge of Egyptian funerary practices. However, an editorial note to an article entitled "The Facsimiles of the Book of Abraham" published by the Neal A. Maxwell Institute points out that objections to the idea of the hawk as a messenger, (an "Angel of the Lord") as depicted in Facsimile No. 1, (but missing in the papyri in their current condition) were overturned when an article appeared in the Zeitschrift far Aegyptische Sprache on the subject of the Hawk as a Messenger in Egyptian Tradition appeared. That at least opens up the possibility that in this particular "unique" vignette (Coenen) the image had a hawk head and not a human one as Ritner suggests.

A key question in the argument about whether Joseph Smith even remotely got it right is what he was looking at when he gave his explanations? If the lacunae were already missing, then one has to determine the basis of the "restorations" and who did them. If they were lost after Joseph initially unwrapped the papyri, and he represented them accurately in the woodcuts, based on his personal knowledge from having been the first to unrolled them, there is less reason to doubt that the Facsimiles in the BoA are faithful replicas of the originals. Coenen's observation that the vignette that was associated with the JSP BoB is unique among the 29 known examples takes on more weight in this context.

This type of straw man/bait and switch reasoning is rampant in discussions of the BoA. (Fortunately there are secondary sources to bring to bear on the subject.) We need to be careful in our contributions that we don't cross things up even further. The recent edit that referenced a non-existent statement by Jay Todd is another example. DWmFrancis (talk) 22:13, 27 April 2008 (UTC)


 * OK I think this whole discussion is diverting the attention from the real issue. For the sake of argument, lets omit all of the discussion about the lacuna - if you look at the portions of the vignettes that no one disputes, then it is clear that in every aspect, Joseph Smith did get them all wrong (yes even the four cardinal points - see Thompson's article in Dialogue).  Just because minor details of the vignettes are a little dissimilar from other examples doesn't mean that the vignette was completely different.  Well, at least that is what Egyptologists and critics argue, and with good reason.  Apologists and the faithful have to argue that the vignette must be different because it is the only case by which they can still hang their hat on the interpretation by Joseph Smith.  I also think you are grossly mischaractarizing the argument as a "bait/switch" or a "strawman".  --Descartes1979 (talk) 22:17, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

More thoughts on your response: --Descartes1979 (talk) 22:32, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
 * 1) You talk about how some apologists are arguing that the vignettes were created to parallel common Egyptian documents, but in reality symbolize something else. Forgive me for being a skeptic, but doesn't this just sound like some pretty twisted logic?  I believe you that Mormon scholars at FARMS have probably written a paper on it - it never ceases to amaze me the tenuous parallels and research they come up with - but I digress.  This theory warrants being included, but we need to simplify to make it easy to understand.  As the article reads, it is confusing because we just launch into a discussion about how the vignette *might be different from other similar vignettes - but we don't talk about why that is relevant to the discussion.  By the way - I find it interesting that you quoted Ritner in your comments where he states "This is true only if Joseph Smith’s “Lord” was Osiris."  I need to go back and read his article, but I highly suspect that was a tongue in cheek reference, because obviously Smith's god was not Osiris.
 * 2) In your second paragraph you postulated that Smith's restorations were faithful to the original images. Again, as a skeptic, this seems utterly preposterous.  Isn't it condemning that even before the papyri were recovered that the Egyptologists such as Deveria noted that there were likely lacuna in those exact spots because of the obviously erroneous restorations?  IMO that counter argument must be included with any discussion or postulation that the facsimiles are indeed faithful representations of the original.  Sidenote - what about the penciled in restorations on the backing to which the vignette was pasted?  Is that also not evidence that the lacunae existed since the time they were purchased by Smith?
 * 3) You said "This type of straw man/bait and switch reasoning is rampant in discussions of the BoA." - perhaps you can clarify what argument you think is a straw man or bait switch - because I don't see one.

Descartes -

With regard to the discussion being a diversion of the real issue; that depends on your idea of what the real issue is. It appears to me that the real issue is that Joseph Smith produced a story about Abraham and explanations of the vignettes from the papyri, and the story and explanation do or don't contain factually accurate information. For others, like yourself, the issue seems to be that if there are any errors or inaccuracies in Smith's Abraham story or his explanations of the vigettes, then he was a fraud and Mormonism can be discredited and ignored. Frankly, if someone feels that way I say fine, then ignore the Mormons and their view of God and the universe and get on with your own life.

What I think is really unfortunate is that the core message of the Abraham story and Mormonism; that we are all involved in an eternal cycle of creation and growth, the literal offspring of God, co-eternal with Him, intelligent, capable of developing all the same traits and characteristics that He has, gets totally lost in the argument.

I think much of the blame for this actually falls on the shoulders of some of the Latter-Day Saints. Over the years there has been a tendency in some circles to dilute the more remarkable parts of the Joseph Smith story in an effort to make it more palatable or credible. Other Christian denominations have done the same thing, watering down parts of the story about Jesus, for example; changing the resurrection from being an actual physical overcoming of death to some sort of metaphor or allegory and making Jesus a radical, a prophet or a great teacher rather than the literal son of God. We humans like our fantastic stories to be amazing and imaginary it seems.

By the way, your comment about Ritner being tounge in cheek is interesting. In "Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life - Egyptian Religion", Sir Wallace Budge, "late keeper of the Egyptian & Assyrian Antiquities in the British Museum", stated:

"A study of the Egyptian religious texts will convince the reader that the Egyptians believed in One God, who was self-existent, immortal, invisible, eternal, omniscient, almighty, and inscrutable; the maker of the heavens, earth, and underworld, the creator of the sky and the sea, men and women, animals and birds, fish and creeping things, trees and plants and the incorporeal beings who were messengers that filled his wish and word." (pg. 17)

and

"The Egyptians... believed that Osiris was of divine origin, that he suffered death and mutilation at the hands of the powers of evil, that after a great struggle with these powers he rose again, that he became henceforth the king of the underworld and judge of the dead, and that because he had conquered death the righteous also might conquer death..." (pg. 61)

These statements are significant because, if Sir Wallace was correct, there are some strong parallels between the core elements of the Egyptian religious pantheon and cosmology and that of both modern and ancient Christian and Hebrew beliefs. This becomes particularly important in the context of the Book of Abraham material. If the Hebrew and Egyptian religious ideas come from an even earlier common source, there should be parallels. Further, the LDS position that a knowledge of Christ pre-dates the Christian era and was known as far back as Adam and Eve, would find support in an ancient religion, like Egyptian, having strong thematic parallels. This was what Nibley was arguing in The Message of the Joseph Smith Papyri - although somewhat obscurely. DWmFrancis (talk) 13:27, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

"What I think is really unfortunate is that the core message of the Abraham story and Mormonism; that we are all involved in an eternal cycle of creation and growth, the literal offspring of God, co-eternal with Him, intelligent, capable of developing all the same traits and characteristics that He has, gets totally lost in the argument."

The *really* unfortunate thing is that Smith was offering a phony 'translation' of Egyptian papyri as proof of the reality of the doctrines you mention. After being burned in the Kinderhook Plates hoax, he picked a document of known authenticity, written in a language no one then knew how to read. He probably figured the fraud could not be disproven this time, as the documents and language were both provably real and the language was a lost one; just right for unprovable claims.

Bad luck for him, someone figured out how to translate the lost language later and he was shown up yet again as a fraudster. Sometimes, you just can't win for losing... 65.89.68.24 05:41, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

On the contrary, knowledgeable Egypologist's opinions concerning ancient Egyptian religious beliefs (eg; Budge) show that there are significant similarities between the traits and characteristics of Ra and Elohim, Osiris and Christ. One of the unique aspects of LDS doctrine is it's insistence that "the gospel of Jesus Christ" was known before the Christian era - back to Adam - and that knowledge of it was passed from generation to generation, including a branching off into Egypt. Budge clearly states that the Egyptian ideas about Osiris seem to even predate their own culture. If that was true one would expect to see parallel ideas expressed in Egyptian religious texts and modern religious doctrine - whether you agree with them or not.

Smith made some specific statements regarding the symbolic meaning of the images in the facsimiles which can be compared to their Egyptian counterparts. Simply stating that a figure is a Hawk or Cow, and stating the name of the god that image was associated with, without also knowing what that meant to an ancient Egyptian, fails to answer the underlying question.

One of the requirements for being able to objectively compare two things is accurate knowledge of both. In this case, that means a comprehensive knowledge of both ancient Egyptian Religious beliefs and LDS doctrines - which I suspect few contributors to this article have. DWmFrancis (talk) 15:52, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

Merging portions into other articles
I agree that much of the material in this article could be merged into other articles, like one on the Joseph Smith Papyri. As I stated earlier, in it's current form, the BoA article is mostly a collection of criticisms of the Book of Abraham from sources critical to the LDS view, rather than a discussion of the Book of Abraham itself. Again, I refer interested readers to the articles on the Qu'ran and other religious texts that discuss their subject without deteriorating into a criticism of their sources or authors. I will take a look at the JSP article and suggest material to move. The sections of the papyri's history would certainly be applicable. DWmFrancis (talk) 14:06, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Explanation of the facsimiles
Descartes added a tabulated section comparing the statements of Joseph Smith with those of Deveria which appears to have been modeled after the material on Walter Martin's critical, anti-Mormon, web site. Although interesting, the quotes were obviously selected to cast Joseph Smith's statements in the worst possible light. Budge and others gave detailed and neutral POV explanations of the meanings of these figures which have been referenced by Nibley, Shirts and Rhodes. I will be expanding this section as time permits. DWmFrancis (talk) 14:26, 15 June 2008 (UTC)
 * You assume too much DWmFrancis - I pulled the quotes directly from The Rocky Mountain Saints: A Full and Complete History of the Mormons - though critical of Mormonisn, it includes the first impartial assessment of the facsimiles by the Theodule Deveria, an Egyptologist who had no stake in Mormonism, and was approached independently to assess the facsimiles. I have no problem adding other information on these tables, as the opinions of Egyptologists all agree (thought there may be some differences as understanding of the field of Egyptology has progressed since the publication of Deveria's comments).  I don't even know who Walter Martin is.  --Descartes1979 (talk) 17:36, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Not assuming, just observing. There is a very similar table at http://www.waltermartin.com/abraham.html#abrah. It appears Martin was referring to Devaria as well. As to impartial assessments, I'm not sure that's possible except from a purely agnostic Egyptologist. Joseph Smith's effect on the religious can be very polarizing. At any rate, added material on other's explanations of the figures would be welcome, as it would illustrate the degree of depth of analysis. My only regret is that I can't "read" Egyptian myself. I probably need to buy a copy of Budge's Dictionary. DWmFrancis (talk) 19:52, 16 June 2008 (UTC)