Continuing from the last two
posts, in which was discussed how Joseph Smith obtained the mummies and papyri that
led to the Book of Abraham, we show and answer several criticisms that have
been raised about his translation of the papyri.
Abraham’s sacrifice being overseen by an angel, depicted in the form of
a bird, who steps in to save the future prophet; Right: Joseph translating the
hieroglyphics and the scribe writing down what was said
• Criticism: Transliterated
text from the recovered papyri and facsimiles published in the Book of Abraham
contain no direct references, either historical or textual, to Abraham. Rather,
they parallel other texts from the Egyptian Book
of the Dead as funery text, and Book
of Breathings.
Response:
First of all, both the Book of the Dead, and the Book of Breathings (also
known as the snsn text, or a breathing permit), are Egyptian texts aimed
at providing its owner with the knowledge, power, and transformation necessary
to achieve a desired station in the afterlife, and such books were commonly
buried with Egyptian mummies. The Book of
the Dead is a larger collection and more commonly used.
The text under study was originally owned by a man
named Hor (Horus)—a priest from an influential Theban family—in the first or second century B.C., and is contained
on three fragments of papyri designated as Joseph Smith as Papyri I, X, and XI,
as well as on several small fragments glued next to other portions of the
Joseph Smith Papyri. Recently, this Hor book has become known as the Book of Breathings Made by Isis,
which is the exact term used by the ancients.
While Books of Breathings have received
remarkably little academic attention, the Hor Book of Breathings has received
an incongruent amount of scrutiny and translations because of its unique place
in a modern-day religion. Since the modern discovery of the Joseph Smith
Papyri, the text has been translated by Richard A. Parker, Klaus Baer, Hugh W.
Nibley, Robert K. Ritner (twice), and Michael D. Rhodes. As Ritner noted,
Baer’s work has served as a basis for all subsequent translations. Yet Baer
himself affirmed that his translation was not a definitive edition but a
preliminary study.
As recently as the year 2000, Ritner
wrote that a full formal edition of the text had not been published.
Unfortunately, he declared this again in 2003, after an announcement of
Rhodes's publication had been made in a national meeting and after the
publication had actually appeared. The Hor Book of Breathings is
incontestably a full formal publication of the text, executed with a precision
and scope that rivals the formal edition of any ancient text. It is now the
standard publication of these fragments of the Joseph Smith Papyri.
In addition, as of 1998, there were
twenty-nine extant 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,
according to Marc Coenen, and a comparison of
the Book of Abraham facsimiles (of vignette, which is a short story that presents a
scene or tableau, a “story picture”) with these other documents indicates that
the Book of Abraham Facsimile No. 1 is unique in at least two ways: 1) it is
the only version of a Book of Breathings
Made by Isis, with this
particular image, and 2) the position of the legs of the reclining figure, with
one raised, is unique.
Finally, all this is significant
because even minor differences in the images or content of the missing portions
of the papyri could have an effect on interpretation of the images and text and
accuracy of Joseph Smith's explanations.
There is no question, however, that
different translations by experts in the field vary in content. As an example,
the very first line from Book of
Breathings Made by Isis, “ka mw.t=f “ was interpreted by
Baer as “bull
of his mother,” but was first recognized by Jan Quaegebeur as “prophet of Min
who massacres his enemies,” and also with Marc Coenen's: “Min who Massacres his
Enemies." Thus, the full reading accepted today is, “priest of Amon-Re, king
of the gods, priest of Min, who massacres his enemies.” The point is, even Egyptologists disagree with one another on their interpretations, as Klaus Baer did with Prof. Thausing, a professor of Egyptology at Vienna, claiming that "her views on Egyptian religion are not exactly in the mainstream of Egyptian thought." Thausing's views were used by Hugh Nibley in support of his interpretation of the Joseph Smith papyri.
• Criticism:
The papyri of Joseph Smith can reliably be dated to somewhere between 220 and
150 B.C. on the basis of the handwriting, the historical period in which the
religious writings on these papyri were in use in Egypt and the historical
references to at least one of the original owners of the papyri. They cannot
possibly date to the period of Abraham, which was about 1600 to 1800 years
earlier.
Response:
The statement in the
introduction to the book of Abraham, that it was “written by his own hand upon papyrus,” does not necessarily mean
that the papyrus Joseph Smith was translating was the original written by
Abraham. The term “by the hand of” can
simply mean that Abraham is the author of the book. As an example, in Hebrew,
the word beyad does not always mean “by the hand of,” but can mean “in the
hand, possession, power of,” or “by the agency of.” The word can simply designate
the agent of an action, generally rendered in English with the preposition by.
So while the papyri Joseph Smith had were written almost two thousand years
after Abraham, they nevertheless could have contained a copy of the writings of
Abraham, of which Abraham was the author.
• Criticism:
Modern Egyptologists maintain
that the facsimiles do not at all represent what Joseph Smith said they do. The
original of Facsimile 1 of the book of Abraham is found at the beginning of the
Hor Book of Breathings papyrus, and the hieroglyphic writing on it associates
the figure on the couch (figure 1)
with Hor, the owner of the
papyrus, who is portrayed as being resurrected by the god Anubis, who stands
over him. Above and to the right of Anubis, Hor's soul is represented as a
human-headed falcon.
Response: As has been shown earlier, Egyptologists do not always agree with one
another in their interpretations. Take, for instance, the bird, or falcon, in
the upper right hand corner of Facsimile 1.
Left: Image on the
papyrus, which some Egyptologists claims is a human-headed falcon which
represents Hor’s soul; Right: Drawing in the Book of Abraham, claiming the
image represents the Angel of the Lord
It is simply
a matter of interpretation. However, the real answer lies in the fact that
these “breathings” documents or texts found with mummies are those used for
safe passage into the afterlife. What may have happened to the one found in the
possession of the Hor mummy was that the maker (seller?), or Hor himself, took
the older, original illustrations done by Abraham and modified and adapted them
for use by Hor. Such duplication would not have been unknown, since the purpose
of the document to its new owner, in this case Hor, would not have mattered—it
was simply to assist the deceased in his passage into the afterlife.
In fact, the
powers contained in the Breathing Permit, including mobility, sight, speech,
hearing, and access to food offerings, are summarized in the term “snsn,” or “breathing,” which refers to the
Egyptian expression “t·w n onh,” that is, “breath of life,” the fundamental characteristic that
distinguishes the living. The title “so.t n snsn,” literally, “Document of (or ‘for’) Breathing” employs the term
for an official document or letter (so.t), so that these “books” serve as
formal “permits”—or perhaps more accurately “passports”—to the world of the gods. To be effective, they had to
accompany the corpse, and the directions for using the texts declare explicitly
that the document must be placed below the mummy’s crossed arms and wrapped
within the bandages.
What Joseph
Smith did in interpreting the facsimiles is similar to what he did with the
Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible—he gave the original meaning of the
Abraham illustrations, correcting the changes that had taken place over
nearly two millennia, which also holds true for facsimile 2.
In addition,
there are numerous examples of Egyptian papyri that have more than one text on
them, and thus there could have been a copy of the book of Abraham on the same
papyrus as the Hor Book of Breathings. All we have, and all that the
Egyptologists who have translated the fragments had, is a small part of the
original scrolls that broke off and were not sold by Combs to the museum which,
ultimately, were evidently destroyed in the Chicago fire.
(See the next post, “The
Book of Abraham and the Facsimile Image-Part IV” for more of the criticisms
about the Book of Abraham and our responses)
No comments:
Post a Comment