Just Reading wrote:
[
Yes Dubbs I have read about them, how else did I know about them

You never mentioned the Kirtland papers dumbass, you said it was Josephs "grammar and language" book, which it is not even in Joseph's handwriting, you didn't know that did you dumbass?

Dubbs wrote:
Nice copy and pasting bigdummy but Again answer the question.

One, you admit, did you not, that we only have 1/3 of all the papyrus,

So how do you know the very small sample we have is the one's Joseph translated from?

yes Dubbs in 1968, it was estimated that the fragments constituted roughly one-third of Joseph Smith's original collection of papyri...

Huh Dubbs are you blind:

Here's some due diligence for you to do bigdumbass. Read and comprehend if you can.


Some people feel that the Kirtland papers "prove" that Joseph's translation was a fraud. The Kirtland Egyptian Papers are a group of documents written by Warren Parrish, Oliver Cowdery, and William W. Phelps. Two documents in the set have Joseph's handwriting on them (but here there is no attempt at translating Egyptian into English). Some of the Kirtland papers contain the text of the published Book of Abraham with a column of Egyptian characters from the Sensen scroll on the left-hand side of the pages. The critics argue that these papers were working documents for the translation of the Book of Abraham, and that Joseph got the translation wrong. (The assumption seems to be made that these papers reflect the work of Joseph Smith, even though most were not written by him, since the men who wrote them served as scribes to Joseph at various times.) If these papers were used to do the translation, it could be construed as powerful evidence in favor of the critics, for the characters in the margin do come from the Book of Breathings, not from some other missing scroll, and the "translation" is obviously incorrect because we have many lines of text for single characters - and what kind of translation is that?
I think that the argument becomes weaker or even irrelevant in light of important evidence. First of all, I feel that the evidence discussed above shows that the Sensen scroll was NOT what Joseph Smith used to produce the translation of the Book of Abraham (though this can be debated). Apart from that issue, an examination of the Kirtland papers shows that they were not Joseph's tools in producing the Book of Abraham. For example, on March 9, 1842, as the Book of Abraham text was being prepared for publication, Joseph Smith made marks for revisions and corrections on his Book of Abraham manuscript (HC 4:518, 543-48). I presume that many other such marks were made during the translation and preparation of the text prior to March 9. None of the Book of Abraham manuscripts in the Kirtland Papers show such editorial marks [Gee, 1995b, p. 226], making it seem unlikely that any of the Kirtland Papers could have been Joseph's working papers for the translation.

Larson shows 4 pages of the papers (Book of Abraham manuscript 1) to suggest that Joseph Smith translated the Book of Abraham from the characters on the left, but Gee [Gee, 1992a, p. 113] points out that these pages are mostly in the handwriting of Warren Parrish (with a half page at the beginning by W. W. Phelps). More importantly, the Egyptian characters in the margins were obviously added AFTER the English text had been written down. Parrish's English text flows smoothly and continuously, as if written in one steady stream copied from an original document, while the characters at the side get cramped together as if someone were trying to fit them into space that had already been constrained by the English text. Parrish's English text shows no sign of being produced as a translation from material to the left. If the Egyptian had been written first, the English text would have been unevenly spaced to adjust to the spacing of the characters (and probably would have had numerous additions, corrections, etc.). It appears that some of Joseph's associates were examining relationships between Egyptian characters in the Book of Breathings and the Book of Abraham text - after the translation of that first part of the book had been completed.

Readers can see for themselves the evidence that the characters in the margins of the Book of Abraham manuscripts were added after the English text was already there. Six detailed photos are provided by John Gee in A Guide to the Joseph Smith Papyri [Gee, 2000, p. 22]. These high-quality photographs "show that the characters (1) were written in different ink than the English text ..., (2) do not line up with the English text ..., and (3) run over the margins ... and sometimes the English text.... This indicates that the Egyptian characters were added after the English text was written, perhaps to decorate the beginnings of paragraphs, although the reason for their inclusion was never explicitly stated" [Gee, 2000, p. 22].

In addition, the issue of length again becomes relevant. We know that Joseph had completed a translation of much more material than we now have in the Book of Abraham - and none of that additional material is found in the Kirtland papers. For example, Anson Call's Manuscript Journal (Summer, 1838; cited by Gee, 1992a, p. 111; also cited by Peterson, 1995, p. 140) records an incident in which Joseph and others spent an evening reading aloud from the translated Book of Abraham manuscript. They read on for two solid hours, apparently without finishing, while the small text now published requires only 30 minutes to read aloud. In addition, Joseph also noted that his translation provided extensive information on the "formation of the planetary system" and the system of astronomy [D.C. Jesse, 1984, pp. 60 and 105] - as the text of Abraham says is to be included later in the book (Abraham 1:31). The creation story and Facsimile 2 fall far short of this description. The Kirtland papers provide nothing on astronomical information.

Joseph had stated that he planned to publish more of the translation later. The crisis in Nauvoo and Joseph's martyrdom apparently disrupted these plans. (The scrolls were subsequently lost or destroyed, as far as we know, except for the fragments later found in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art.) But it is clear that Joseph had produced more than just the brief published text, yet that is all of the translation that we find in the Kirtland Papers.

Just Reading wrote:
Dubbs wrote:
Nice copy and pasting bigdummy but Again answer the question.

One, you admit, did you not, that we only have 1/3 of all the papyrus,

So how do you know the very small sample we have is the one's Joseph translated from?

yes Dubbs in 1968, it was estimated that the fragments constituted roughly one-third of Joseph Smith's original collection of papyri...

Huh Dubbs are you blind:





You idiot, you don't even understand my question, if the above picture is only 1/3, how do you know the other 2/3'rds (that we don't have) is not what Joseph translated from?

I know this is flying right over your head, your too dumb to get this complicated stuff.

The standard argument of the critics is that Joseph produced the Book of Abraham from a few characters on the Sensen scroll...To call the Book of Abraham a translation of the few glyphs in the margins hardly makes sense... If Joseph had indeed claimed to be translating entire paragraphs of complex English text from single Egyptian characters ("shorthand" hieratic script, not elaborate glyphs), his associates who worked with him during the days of translation should have been suspicious. One of the scribes assisting in the work, Warren Parrish, did later turn against Joseph and the Church. But mantioned nothing of it.

Here's your description of the papryus Joseph Translated from, tell me bigdumbass, does it match your pictures?? LOL


Further, a non-LDS visitor, William S. West (whose 1837 brochure about his visit to Nauvoo is cited by Peterson, 1995, p. 25) said that the scrolls had enough material to fill a book larger than the Bible, hardly consistent with the tiny set of fragments we now have. Joseph spent many days translating the Book of Abraham, and had enough text already translated (but not published) to require hours to read, in contrast to the 30 minutes now needed to read the published version of the Book of Abraham, as related by Anson Call in 1838 (cited by Peterson, 1995, p. 140).

According to Hugh Nibley, Preston Nibley in 1906 visited the Nauvoo House with Joseph F. Smith who recalled "the familiar sight of 'Uncle Joseph' kneeling on the floor of the front room with Egyptian manuscripts spread out all around him, weighted down by rocks and books, as with intense concentration he would study a line of characters, jotting down his impressions in a little notebook as he went" [Nibley, 1968-a, pp. 17-18]. The 12 fragments in the existing collection can be comfortably placed on an averaged size desk for study, as Peterson personally attests [Peterson, 1995, p. 156], and would not occupy a large floor area as described. Also, if the papyrus documents that Joseph was studying had all been mounted on glass or backing paper, they would not have to be weighted down with rocks (though it is possible the mounting occurred later).

Finally, the letter of Charlotte Haven, another non-LDS visitor. She said that Mother Smith "opened a long roll of manuscript that filled the length of the room, saying it was 'the writing of Abraham and Isaac.'" It was not a short, stubby little fragment or two, but a long roll . Joseph's translation came from at least one lengthy scroll.

Oliver Cowdery's description said that the document from which Joseph derived the Book of Abraham was "beautifully written" and "in perfect preservation" (Doctrinal History of the Church, Vol. 2, p. 348) - in contrast to the poorly preserved fragments that were falling apart and had to be mounted.


Do these look beutifully preserved to you dumbass?