How did Joseph Smith and his associates create a translation that shows knowledge of a grammar that presumes the existence of the translation? Given what we know of the documents and the timeline for the translation of the Book of Abraham, the only way to solve the chicken-and-egg problem is this:
The previous posts have put us in the vicinity of catalyst theories of revelation, but none of the formulations that I’ve seen are adequate for describing the Book of Abraham translation, and I think “catalyst” is the wrong chemical metaphor.
The GAEL provides for a mode of interpretation that finds expansive (but not unlimited) meaning in seemingly simple characters. Zakioan-hiash, as we have seen, is both a name, a word with a specific phonetic realization, and the equivalent of at least one sentence.
Two related features of the GAEL that have been the focus of the most controversy and puzzlement are how one character might represent much longer English texts, and the GAEL’s use of a five-fold system of degrees to expand a character’s potential meaning.
In his 2009 article, Chris Smith argued for the textual dependence of the Book of Abraham on the GAEL. While Dan Vogel’s recent book about the Book of Abraham and related apologetics strenuously objects to any suggestion that the GAEL was reverse engineered from the translation of Abraham, Vogel nevertheless entirely rejects the basis of Chris Smith’s argument.
With the preliminary deliberations out of the way, it’s time for a close look at the GAEL.
Before we get to the heart of my argument – which is coming up next in a long post with a detailed look at what’s in the GAEL – we need to look at what Joseph Smith and his associates would have known about Champollion and the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphics by 1835.
Scholars from seemingly every corner of Mormon Studies agree: While working on the Egyptian papyri, Joseph Smith and his associates were either unaware of Champollion’s recent work to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphics, or simply unaffected by the recent advances in Egyptology. Not only is this position untenable, it’s demonstrably incorrect.
Like most media outlets, Inside Higher Ed isn’t well equipped to report stories about BYU-Idaho – it doesn’t entirely understand that BYU and BYU-Idaho are two different schools, for example. But if I had to read between the lines and make an educated guess, this is what I think is happening.
On most cultural issues, the Church is situated somewhere between the center left and the center right.
Season 4 of Stranger Things took a detour inside an exotic world it had never explored before: a Latter-day Saint home in mid-80s Utah.
One nice thing about reading the Old Testament and the Book of Mormon together is that it lets us expand our mental geography of Zion into a full cartographic plane.
It’s going to be horrific.
Over at BCC, John S. has a post that is, overall, not very helpful.
The question “Did Samuel Lutz really write this” is ultimately not as useful as the question of how the prophecy of “Lutius Gratiano” came about, and what function it served for those who kept it in circulation.
With early efforts to locate the text in mind, we can now reconstruct the origin of the prophecy of “Lutius Gratiano.”
In the prophecy of “Lutius Gratiano,” we have the unusual opportunity to observe the formation and development of a prophecy in some detail.
Earlier scholarship has often understood the function of prophetic texts as providing information about the future.
For several years, my academic research has focused on late medieval and early modern prophecies.
It’s the ecclesiology, stupid.
The stakes in the 2024 election couldn’t be higher.
Orson Hyde asks people to read his book. Or else.
Orson Hyde might be protesting too much here.
For Hyde, Zion has been displaced, but not deferred.
But I’m still glad we don’t have one.
The experience of persecution in Missouri was not just recent history. For Hyde, it was the literal fulfillment of prophecy about the last days.
If you survey the damage left by Donald Trump and Covid-19 in our neighborhood of the American religious landscape, a sigh of relief is warranted.
Orson Hyde, socialist?
