The Book of Abraham Translation with Stephen O. Smoot
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- Опубліковано 21 жов 2024
- Welcome to the CES Letters, where we respond to the questions and concerns posed in the CES Letter. Today Stephen O. Smoot gives an overview on the questions and concerns of the Book of Abraham. We will dig deeper in future episodes.
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Thank you so much for interviewing Stephen Smoot! researching and studying brings more light to our minds; and it increases our testimony of truth.
I appreciate your encouragement to not dismiss something when somebody says it is wrong; but to continue reading and studying and praying and asking God what is true, and being honest about it.
What a clever sense of humor brother Smoot has When he said something like, at the risk of being modest please check out my book. Yes! I'm most certainly will check it out and will purchase it. I am not a scholar; I am a seeker of truth. So, I appreciate with all my heart Steven Smoot people like him who study in research and write. It sure does enrich my life.
It takes courage to leave the comment section open.
It is a very reasonable conclusion that the book of Abraham material shows that Joseph Smith was only pretending to translate things.
Just imagine for a moment that a similar thing was found for a founder of another religion. I know it’s hard if this is intertwined with your identity and life purpose, but it’s just very straight forward once you don’t arbitrarily use faith to makes excuses.
If all things were explained as noon day then we might as well throw faith out the window. I am really enjoying this channel. Please keep it going. I wish i could give more that one like.
Why is "faith" required when it comes to Joe translating the Book of Abraham? Either he could do it or he couldn't. Clearly he could not. The facsimiles are a trainwreck.
Great discussion
Stephen Smoot must have done a great job, you completely broke Kris Murphy. Congratulations!
47:26 Do you have any examples of egyptologists who were converted after reading the book of abraham? I would even love to see one non-lds egyptologist who doesn't find the book of abraham and your scholarship on it anything but absurd.
Creative reinterpretation of texts and symbols has always been part of religion. For example, the New Testament reinterprets the Old.
This may be controversial, but gaining a familiarity with Tarot cards has helped me accept the reinterpretations of the pictures. Tarot cards were developed in Renaissance Italy for the purpose of playing games, and people reinterpreted the pictures to form a symbolic system that is rich, meaningful, and useful.
I believe in a God who is a master of mythopoeia and can inspire prophets to reveal truths through creative reinterpretation when useful.
And I don't believe for a minute that Jeremy Runnells is a sincere seeker after truth. His claims of earnestly seeking for a year reek of emotional manipulation, as does his whole enterprise.
34:36 wow!
the dance that apologists have to do to try and explain how a prophet of God kinda sorta got a few things right (but was almost entirely wrong) with regards to the facsimiles is very impressive.
Bravo, Dr Smoot, bravo!
Quite the dance indeed. Even your description is giving him too much credit.
He didn't even claim that Joseph got a few things right. He stated that "there are a few places where Joseph's translation converged with Egyptological knowledge."
Good thing Smoot was not born in the 10th century, or some other time hundreds of years ago doing translation for some king. Glad he is with us today doing a good work. I have high expectations for him.
We may not have all the items Joseph had but what we do have had been proven incorrectly "translated".
😅😂"I stand on the shoulders of Giants."😅😂
-Stephen Smoot, ironically saying the same thing as Jeremy Runnell's. 🤦🤣
Abt. minute 28. What is the evidence that there is more papyrus than what we have now? It would have been nice to get more details. What in the BoA translation is found on the papyrus we have now? What is not? I didn't see the answer in the link you provided. This seems like it could be your strongest point!
Also, on the things JS got right about the facsimiles, it would have been nice to hear that instead of just that he got some of it right, that the interpretations converge. Also, what does not converge? How strong is the separation? This would also be really powerful if you could share it.
You got more specific with names, which was nice, so it seems you could have done it with other topics.
Also, criticizing CES letter as not up to date, or doesn't include a full treatise, seems similar to what I've heard from the church about taking time to release church records or your statement in the video that you don't have time to address all the issues fully. I think we should be a bit more generous to people that don't agree, especially when we have similar issues on our side.
Just a little suggestion, multiple times you walk us right up to the issue, set the stage, and then say, go look somewhere else for the answer. It would be nice to get the explanation here, rather than get told to read a book or long article. This is a video, we can see pictures, etc. so it seems a bit more work could really make this a helpful resource. I don't feel like I know really anything more after watching this video than I did before, only that some vague controversy exists.
Just to the point about there being more papyrus, the firsthand reports from when Joseph got the scrolls say that there were several scrolls, and that the longest one, when fully rolled out, was about 40 feet long. After Joseph’s death, the papyrus changed hands several times, eventually ending up at a museum in Chicago. The museum was destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire, and what we have today are the small fragments that survived the fire.
I would recommend the Church History Matters podcast, they did a 4 part series on the Book of Abraham that gets into those details you’re asking about.
I’d also recommend “Let’s Talk About the Book of Abraham” by Dr Kerry Muhlestein, it’s a fairly quick read but is very thorough
Maybe it is inspired, just leave it at that and with your hopes that more info will come.
Fact checking this video shows that you are the one wildly overstating your claims despite you repeatedly feeling the need to sat that about the CES Letter.
You listed zero direct attestations, several weak plausible attestations in this video. You have to stretch a long way to make those work.
Stick to faith to prove faithful claims, but not when there is evidence to the contrary.
I'll summarize this word salad, "We don't have all the answers as to how this was translated." No, you have the answer, you just don't like what it means for the authenticity of the writings.
The answer in a word is "fraud." Simple.
🙄Coauthored with John Gee & Kerry Muhlstein?🤦 Sorry buy that's a great way to lose anyone familiar with Robert K Ritner's (RIP) work and the interview he did with John Dehlin in July of 2020. Robert K Ritner, and Klaus Baer, are academically published in peer reviewed journals with international recognition. What of your BYU studies publications have faced academic peer review and acceptance outside of BYU studies? If Kerry Muhlstein is openly admitting his own research confirmation bias how is such a work to be considered academically valid. It sounds for more like a fallacious apologetic attempt to claim academic status that doesn't truly exist. The worst kind of appeal to authority... authority which ignores what's most damaging above all else. John Gee is a liar and he constantly hides feom his gross misrepresentation of Robert Ritner's thesis.
What’s with the sound quality when Stephen is speaking?
Would these findings stand up to the peer review process?
Yes. He has published a ton of articles on topics relating to the Book of Abraham in BYU Studies quarterly, Interpreter, the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies, and the Religious Educator, which are all peer-reviewed journals.
@@WooperSlim Bwahaha. Try publishing in non-apologetic publications. How about Smoot have a discussion with Dan Vogel.
Someday, Joseph will tell us his entire process relative to the Book of Abraham.
There's nothing to tell. It's a fraud.
instead of repeating your opinion that the book of abraham looks better with time. Why dont you present some of the findings that make it look better? Perhaps show some source material and quote some respected authorities on the subject?
For now, I can say that Egyptologists agree that the explication of the facsimilies is incorrect, that they are not what they are presented as being, that they are simply parts of the funerary texts from the book of the dead.
I just visited the British Museum in London, where you can see examples of funerary texts and vignettes that are SO similar, you would have a hard time spotting any difference from memory. Then side by side, its still not easy.
He keeps implying that the CES letter is dishonest because it takes "short scary" pieces of the gospel topics essay and doesn't use all the other parts of the essay...
Aren't you missing the point of the letter? He isn't interested in the 99 percent of the essay that is mental gymnastics to explain away the problem they are acknowledging.
Joseph claimed that he translated the papyri. The evidence shows he did not.
Everything else is irrelevant to his point in the letter. You can claim that he thought he was translating, but the scriptures say that he isn't a God of confusion.
As someone who really struggled with this issue and put a lot of time and effort into studying the findings of LDS scholars who came out on both sides of the argument, and scholars not affiliated with the church, this was a very disappointing podcast.
This felt a lot more like a very poor pitch for his books than an attempt to address any issues.
I understand that there is a time constraint and you can't summarize all of your life's work here, but you could at least present a few solid arguments, rather than just imply that solid arguments exist and to go buy your books.
This just felt incredibly pointless and disingenuous. You just attacked the CES letter for being a narrow view and stating that they didn't represent all of the context, but then provided no such context.
shame, shame, shame; you fail at intellectual honesty