Friday, November 4, 2016

Brigham Young in the office (leaders at work)


Brigham Young's office style


"The stream of visitors poured steadily through the outer office and trickled in orderly sequence into his own office, hour after hour. No one was ever denied admittance. His two counsellors, various members of the Twelve who were at home, sat with him and gave opinions or help in the various matters presented for the Leader's decision.

He was exceedingly quick at reaching the core of any matter brought to his attention, and was sometimes impatient with the circumlocution or hesitancy of his callers, especially so if guile were used in leading up to the point of issue. At such times he would interrupt a caller or a council meeting, would state the issue and answer yes or no, quietly and decisively. He was never ambiguous or involved in answer or statement, nor did he waste time or words. The kindly tone, the sympathetic glance, softened the rigour of the denial, added joy to the affirmative yes. He used to say that he knew when men wanted him to say yes and he usually gratified that desire," The Life Story of Brigham Young by Susa Young Gates (his daughter), 1939, 337-338.

Thursday, October 27, 2016

Doctrine and Covenants 59: Oblations and Sacraments on the Lord's Day

My father would often speak about how present generations likely do not understand the wording used in the Doctrine and Covenants in the same way our forbears did. He did not. So just how much of the 19th century wording escapes us today? Twenty-five percent? Forty?

I've often also noted how many college students struggle in coming to grips with 19th century American usage--a single paragraph can overwhelm, even one word throw them off the tracks. I'm therefore humbly grateful for exposure to such usage through much reading and reflection at a very young age. That reading included the seven volume History of the Church, which, in its turn, contains the sections of the Doctrine and Covenants.

Yet there are many things in the Doctrine and Covenants, both in language and doctrine, which I don't even pretend to understand. There may be some Saints who understand all these words, phrases, and nuances, but I'm not one of them.

I've never understood why the Doctrine and Covenants speaks of paying and offering our devotions, oblations, and sacraments--and note the troubling plural--on the Lord's day. Why sacraments, instead of the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper?

"Pay thy devotions" seems straightforward enough--but read the very next verse. "Pay thy devotions," in this case, apparently means "Make vows to God," "Vouch and commit to a more saintly life."

Why oblations?

Today, after a simple dictionary search--something we all resist because of an ingrained superiority to such things--I see an answer.

Laying aside what oblations may mean broadly, or what the word may generally connote, the denotation we should be looking for in Doctrine and Covenants 59, appears in Merriam-Websters as Oblations (specifically capitalized): the act of offering the eucharistic elements to God."

Now that's so simple and so clear that I'm stunned I never knew it before. It's common knowledge which I haven't had any share in whatsoever.

So should I be embarrassed or just grateful to learn technical English usage? Gratitude best fits the subject.

The early Saints, at the time the revelation was received, would have taken the phrase "oblations and sacraments," "or Oblations and Sacraments," as being specifically the "offering [of] the eucharistic elements--note the plural--to God." Our Latter-day Saint Sunday School and Institute Manuals veer off in every direction--to every connotative nuance--and miss the simplicity of the specific Oblations in question.

We ought to weigh both the denotative and the connotative in reading Scripture. And we can take an occasional peek at etymology. (Oblation, as the principal parts of the Latin verb, from which the word derives, show: offero, offere, obtuli, oblatus, signifies an offering.)

Yet it's wonderful to realize a simple truth: We do not understand the meaning of the words and phrases in the Doctrine and Covenants in the purity with which the early Saints would have understood them.

Clarity comes for me a word at a time: the phrase "oblations and sacraments" ought to be capitalized "Oblations and Sacraments," and it ought, first, to be understood as a precise, technical term (however poetic) for the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, the elements of which we offer up to God. That's the key: the elements of which we offer up to God.

There may be many ordinances in the Gospel we preach, thus many sacraments, but Oblations and Sacraments speaks to the Eucharist. And this last term? Latter-day Saints don't use it in its English form, but nothing stops any Latter-day Saint from picking up a Greek Testament or asking Greek brothers and sisters about it. The simplicity of the language of the Gospels in Greek recalls the purity and the simplicity of Spanish for English speakers. Get the knack of it, and you breeze right through. Never let anyone tell you that it is difficult or for the "scholarly" alone. The Prophet Joseph studied his Greek Testament and pondered long over the meaning of words and phrases. We can do the same--one word at a time.

Meanwhile, let's not neglect our lessons in Nineteenth Century American and British English nor put aside the tomes of the Oxford English Dictionary. There are many plain and simple words yet to learn.


Tuesday, October 18, 2016

Why Is It There? Book of Abraham Facsimile 1 and the Opening Vignette of the Joseph Smith Book of Breathings

The Joseph Smith Book of Breathings opens with a vignette representing Osiris on a lion-couch.

The Book of Abraham opens with a vignette, in facsimile, representing Abraham upon an altar.

The vignette is one and the same--and it's been a delight to visit the Church History Library of late, where the vignette is on display.

(For a digitized copy, see: http://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/egyptian-papyri/1.)


Both the Abraham narrative and an accompanying Explanation for Facsimile 1 set forth why the vignette opens the Patriarch's account. But what is the explanation for its appearance at the beginning of the Book of Breathings?


I

To look at the papyrus is a breathtaking thing: the figure on the altar stirring to life as he greets the manifestation of the reviving soul in the form of a descending falcon (see Klaus Baer, "The Book of Abraham Papyrus," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, 1968, 3/3, 118). And just to the right of the figure, following the priestly titles of a certain Hor of Thebes, we find, boldly writ, the blessing: "May his soul [his ba] live in their midst!" (see Michael Rhodes, The Hor Book of Breathings: A Translation and Commentary).

According to Professor Klaus Baer:

"Lines 1-5 give the titles, name, and parentage of the man for whose benefit the Breathing Permit was written:

. . . the prophet of Amonrasonter, prophet[?] of Min Bull-of-his-Mother [now read by Marc Coenen as Min-Who-Massacres-His-Enemies], prophet[?] of Khons the Governor. . . Hor, justified, son of the holder of the same titles, master of secrets, and purifier of the gods Osorwer, justified[?]. . . Tikhebyt, justified. May your ba live among them, and may you be buried in the West. . ." (Klaus Baer, "The Book of Abraham Papyrus," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, 1968, 3/3, 116-117).

Baer queries in a footnote to the words "among them": "Hor's parents?"

Somehow the expression embraces both parentage and the rich endowment of priestly offices and blessings therewith associated.

'nx b3.k m-hnw.w

May thy ba-soul live therein!

That is, "is the midst of these blessings and offices and authorities."


To see the scene in person, and all together, is to capture both words and vignette as a single whole. It is to grasp the point of the vignette as thematic title of the Breathings Text that follows. It strikes me like a bolt of lightning:

That his soul may live!

And is this not the very title of the book that follows such preliminaries?

The Book of Breathings made by Isis, so that her brother, Osiris, may live!


As Hugh Nibley tells us in One Eternal Round, that title bears astonishing likeness to the instructions revealed to Abraham for his wife Sarai, as they enter Egypt, words found both in Genesis 12:11-13 and in Book of Abraham 2:23-25:


And it came to pass when I was come near to enter into Egypt, the Lord said unto me. . .see that ye do on this wise:

Let her say unto the Egyptians, she is thy sister, and thy soul shall live.

And it came to pass that I, Abraham, told Sarai, my wife, all that the Lord had said unto me--Therefore say unto them, I pray thee, thou art my sister, that it may be well with me for thy sake, and my soul shall live because of thee (Abraham 2:23-25).


The story of Osiris and Isis and that of Abraham and Sarah thus come together on a single papyrus. They come together in the scene of the figure stirring at the appearance of his soul, at the moment in which his soul in truth may live.

Abraham's first rescue on the altar, after the manner of the Egyptians, only foreshadows the rescue, just as marvelous, at his first entrance into Egypt with Sarai: trial follows trial, deliverance after deliverance. And the opening vignette, as title-piece, patterns the whole. Deliverance does come, and as Hugh Nibley notes, the three vignettes of the Book of Abraham show the journey from altar to vision to throne. And as Hugh Nibley was at pains to show, in a lengthy volume of commentary, the Book of Breathings constitutes an Egyptian Endowment of Power. The deceased attains to the glory of the sun, the moon, and the stars.

Who is there that would not seek the blessings of Abraham? Who would not wish to win the glory of Abraham?

There is a likeness here to the glory of Osiris. There is a likeness to the glory sought by the Theban priesthood--and by the priest named Hor (after the son of Osiris).

May his soul live.

Count the times the word soul or living soul or spirit appears in the wee 14 page Book of Abraham--it's a surprising thing, this doctrine of the soul.

Since we've cited Hugh Nibley a couple of times, it's essential to recall several finely crafted pieces he wrote 50 years ago in which he argued that Egyptian vignettes need have nothing to do, or nothing much to do, with accompanying text--a very strange phenomenon. Everything he says is correct--with one exception: as we build on the totality of Professor Nibley's work, it becomes clear that the Book of Breathings vignette makes a fine title piece for the surrounding writing, both for the introductory sentences and for the Breathings text that follows.

"But it's referenced in the Gospel Topics essay on the Book of Abraham!"


"Some have assumed that the hieroglyphs adjacent to and surrounding facsimile 1 must be a source for the text of the book of Abraham. But this claim rests on the assumption that a vignette and its adjacent text must be associated in meaning. In fact, it was not uncommon for ancient Egyptian vignettes to be placed some some distance from their associated commentary."


No matter. Things advance over half-a-century. And there certainly be other things in "Translation and Historicity of the Book of Abraham" that will require modification by 2076. That's how it ought to be. Indeed, there are items in that thoughtful piece, both things Egyptian and things English, that ought to be modified today. Our times are so busy, late and soon: if we don't get to it, posterity will.

The Book of Abraham is not going anywhere--except to the billions of his posterity throughout the world. Billions will hold in their hands Abraham's witness of the Lord Jesus Christ--including his witness of the Plan encompassing both Creation and Resurrection.


II

And what of the notion of sacrifice, the priest who attempts "to offer up" the figure on the altar--if that's what's going on?

The introductory words also address the matter--for a single vignette can handle a variety of ideas and scenarios grasped by the Egyptian mind. Like poetry, these vignettes come packed.

Among the inherited priestly offices held by Horos (or Hor), says Marc Coenen, is the obscure Prophet of Min who massacres his enemies. Min, in this case, appears in the likeness of divine Horus, who avenges the death of his father, Osiris. A surprising bronze statue shows us how the Prophet of Min who massacres his enemies is to be represented, and the clothing matches that worn by the Anubis figure in our vignette.

(For references see http://valsederholm.blogspot.com/2011/12/what-hugh-nibley-meant_08.html.)

Min is, naturally, also Resheph-Min, Resheph being the corresponding Canaanite divinity. It is the priest of a god at once Egyptian and Canaanite, and at once Min, Resheph, and Horus, that come together in the office held by Horos, according to Professor Coenen. What Coenen does not notice is that the clothing of the Anubis figure on our vignette matches that found on the bronze statue of slaughtering Resheph-Min, who is "dressed in a short kilt, held up by two bands that cross over the breast and back."

When Marc Coenen's astonishing articles first appeared, articles which also transformed our understanding of the dating of the papyri and the genealogy of this particular priestly family, I wondered what Latter-day Saints would make of the idea of Min who massacres his enemies in light of our own Facsimile 1. Following on Coenen's work, BYU professor John Gee has not only noted the significance of this priestly office of Resheph-Min for Book of Abraham studies, but has further identified the office of Amonrasonter as part of a ceremonial complex of symbolic slaughter of the Enemy. Yet given the fragmented nature of our vignette--the fragment we have shows no knife--tying such offices with the vignette remains, perforce, a delicate matter. Yet there is the matter of the ritual clothing of the would-be knife-holding figure.

Nonetheless, if we take the vignette as bearing no relationship to the surrounding text, a misplacement--What a misplacement! The matter, as Brother Joseph might say, is as plain as a pikestaff!

Speaking of pikestaffs, it's worth noting how the later Egyptian word for the pole-axe that smites the Osirian Enemy and also for the corresponding verb of smiting itself are both djedi. That the word further alludes to the Osirian djed-pillar, the symbol of the resurrection of Osiris and the subsequent permanence of his dynasty is plain. What the irony expresses is that Osiris must violently die to live. No wonder the Egyptians sometimes (both apotropaically and in symbolic reversal of roles) call Osiris himself, the Enemy of Osiris. Who is the Enemy? We have met the enemy and it is us! Nibley would call this a game of substitution, the substitute sacrifice. And note, in Abraham's narrative it is tellingly the standing figure, the priest, who must die, while Osiris or Abraham is delivered from the gates of hell.

But how can the Egyptians represent avenging Min, the knife-wielding slaughterer of the Enemy, with the figure of Anubis, the mummifier? Aren't they distinct divinities playing far-different roles? That's what the handbooks say. . .

The role of Anubis is to prepare the body for the moment of resurrection. Hold on: Isn't it to prepare the body for burial? To transform the corpse into a perfect body--for that's what a "mummy" is meant to be--is to bring about its perfected state in resurrection. Mummification therefore spells triumph over Death as the Enemy. And even the act of violently opening the body for mummification becomes, then--and most ironically--the act of triumph over death. In every ceremonial performance associated with this god, even when he tears the Osirian corpse with sharpest claws, Anubis massacres the Enemy of Osiris. The act of tearing and cutting finds conceptual "reversal" as an act of binding, binding up, and healing. In like manner, for the Egyptians, "to wrap" (wt) is also--and always--to kill (mwt).

The Ancient Egyptians followed a multivalued logic, says Erik Hornung. Throw away Plutarch and handbooks and bookstore encyclopedias, and the idea that x=y and only y, because distinctions, roles, and correspondences get to be a very delicate matter. Consider the following lines from the New Kingdom Book of the Night: "You are the rebels that made a wrapping, made a wrapping Father Osiris. Accordingly, Father Osiris commanded that I [Horus Mekhenty Irty] should smite this your enemy" (The Book of the Night).

What!?

There is clearly a lot going on in these texts and vignettes--but it's clear that the vignette we call Facsimile 1 is exactly where it needs to be.

It's the title piece of the whole--and it both opens the narrative and shows its victorious culmination in eternity.

There is danger, there is death--but that his soul may live, his sister and wife comes to the rescue in the image of the descending falcon.

The scene, which also signals the union of Isis and Osiris, thus also teaches us that Osiris' soul shall continue to live through his royal posterity, even Horus, king of Egypt (Baer, 118-119). In like manner, Abraham writes for the benefit of his posterity who shall come. We recall that these scenes represent the mere opening of the Patriarch's career--the promise of posterity lies ahead: his son Isaac.


III

And how does the fragment we possess of the Book of Abraham end?

The presentation of Eve to Adam.

We go with Abraham and Osiris from altar to Throne.

Moving from vignette to vignette, we keep the story of the soul and of its eternal identity and worth. The doctrine thus also appears in hieroglyphs on the panels of the hypocephalus, Book of Abraham Facsimile 2: "Cause that his soul may live!"--an expression, if we evoke the setting of "the Holy Temple of God," wherein God's Plan is set forth, that Joseph Smith apparently considers beyond the willingness of "the world," that is, the worldly, to receive (see Explanation, figure 8). Look at the world's doers and shakers today. Which of them, in many lands and climes, might you consider a candidate for reflection on the eternal life of the soul? Many of them seem far too busy cheapening even the landscape of this life: accusation, invective "something too round," "hard speeches," and demeaning talk prevail. Isn't that simply what Joseph Smith had in mind here?

There may be more to it--but "that's more than we know," or "more than we should seek after" "at the present time," "for we know enough" to "hold to thy way."

The teaching also appears on the hypocephalus rim of the hypocephalus, as we follow the eternal round, the plan or pathway of the enlivened deceased from the tomb-shrine of the Celestial Iunu-Heliopolis, into the solar course, and thence on till he arrives at the final temple-shrine, the shrine of the prince, in the Celestial Heliopolis.

If you could hie to Heliopolis.



Sunday, October 16, 2016

How Was The Book of Abraham Transmitted? Just What We Need to Know.

The Book of Abraham is good enough to set forth the nature of its own transmission into our "own hands." And that transmission has absolutely nothing to do with either later Jewish redactors, as some vaguely posit, or with the grab-bag syncretism of Greek, Hebrew, and Egyptian religions that prevailed in Greco-Roman Egypt--not a jot. Neither do any of the Explanations of the three Book of Abraham facsimiles, despite references to the Hebrew language, show the least trace of later Jewish interpretation of any Egyptian vignettes or ideas. 

Yes, the Prophet Joseph Smith is showing us a moment of convergence, a sharing of ideas, between Abraham and the Egyptians of his day--ideas that do persist in the priestly circles down to Ptolemaic times. Yet what's been called iconotropy (coined by Robert Graves for the "turning," or "misrepresentation," of icons, figures, symbols), and applied to the Explanations, makes for a Bridge Too Far. Iconotropy will not be found in Erik Hornung's classic, Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt: the One and the Many. 

So let's not make things up.



The record of the Father of the Faithful, "preserved in [our] own hands," is "of ancient date" and its transmission follows the pattern Abraham himself plainly teaches, a pattern of preserving and of keeping records in responsible "hands," from "the patriarchs" "even unto this day." Now that the kept, preserved, and pure record has, as the Prophet Joseph expresses, "fallen into our hands," the question remains for each of us What shall we do with it?

Ask Abraham. He exulted in Scripture: "The records have come into my hands, which I hold unto this present time" (Abraham 1:28).

The words ring with pure immediacy, and should we suddenly sense that "this present time" reaches Abraham's treasures even into our hands, we sense truly. We are to do the works of Abraham, which includes both receiving and reading the words of Abraham in the very manner in which he once received and read the words of his own fathers (see Doctrine and Covenants 132).

"But the records of the fathers, even the patriarchs, concerning the right of Priesthood, the Lord my God preserved in mine own hands; therefore a knowledge of the beginning of the creation, and also of the planets, and of the stars, as they were made known unto the fathers, have I kept even unto this day, and I shall endeavor to write some of these things upon this record, for the benefit of my posterity that shall come after me" (Abraham 1:31).

In these words we find:

1. A plurality of records--who can say how many?--safely transmitted through the numerous generations. These include records about "the right of Priesthood," "the beginning of the creation," and "a knowledge of the planets, and of the stars." It's a very particular, specific, and peculiar set--a prize of a library--and Abraham knew it. And the subject headings recall specific titles found in the Egyptian House of Life, the ancient repository of knowledge of the stars and the structure of the cosmos.

2. A purpose: "I shall endeavor to write some of these things upon this record, for the benefit of my posterity." The promised benefit to "my posterity" has special reference to Abraham's seed in the Latter-days. We are the seed of Abraham (Doctrine and Covenants 84).

3. A method: Abraham's own record upon papyrus--"this record"--combines knowledge taken directly from the patriarchal records with the further light and knowledge of Heaven, including his own independent revelation through the medium of the Urim and Thummim. Inspired writing thus requires both the study of earlier inspired writings and an independent revelation to boot--as Joseph Smith says. Note the fluidity of the process.

Abraham, in a single but neglected verse, thus teaches us just what we need to know about the transmission of the Word. The verse, at once, gives a genuine thumbnail sketch of the conservative, even rarefied, world of the Ancient Egyptian priests and scribes, "who sought diligently" to record and to transmit, without error, "the rights of the priesthood" and "a knowledge" of the workings of the sidereal heavens and the nature of the "heavenly places." For instance, the priestly centerplace of Heliopolis, prominent in the Egyptian Scriptures, is, according to Dietrich Raue, such a "heavenly place"; it is this very celestial Heliopolis that figures so repeatedly on Abraham Facsimile 2, and in particular, at the apex of the rim.

"If you could hie to Heliopolis."

However conservative, the Egyptian tradition is yet also fully participatory and additive: all seek to participate in the blessings of the fathers, including the blessings of adding to the store of knowledge, "seeking to possess a greater knowledge" (Abraham 1:2). There are always records in the plural, and there is always fluidity in the transmission--new light, new knowledge, comes with the old, never overthrowing, but rather expanding upon those pure sources. 



Did Abraham's fathers write? Abraham, no matter what dates we assign him, late or soon, lived in a world that had already known writing of every genre, on a variety of media, and in various scripts, for at least a millennium and a half. Translation was everywhere; so was code-switching. 

Even so, did not only (or mainly) the priestly and scribal elites write records? 

Since the Book of Abraham describes both Abraham and his posterity, as also his ancient fathers, as priests and rulers (patriarchs), why should we be startled to find a copy of his account, written in Egypt and in hieratic, in intentional proximity to records kept by an elite Theban priestly family (certain scraps of which are now housed in the Church History Library)? And yet it is marvelously startling!

The Theban priesthood in Ptolemaic times included direct line descendants from the royalty and high officials of Abraham's day--they were "priests forever," after the order of the ancient fathers, "seeking earnestly to imitate that order established by the fathers," as so inimitably expressed by Abraham himself (1:26). He explains it all (doesn't he?) for "the benefit of my posterity." Abraham, who certainly holds the keys of his book, wishes us to understand a few of these points with clarity. We owe it to him and to the Prophet Joseph to put aside vague ideas.


We now know both the family lineage and the high offices held by the fathers and sons of Hor, the owner of the Joseph Smith Book of Breathings, for Professor Marc Coenen has reconstructed six generations of this priestly family. Six generations! Mathematical models that show our own descent from Old Kingdom pyramid builders would clearly also insist that modern Middle Easterners, Africans, and Europeans can all claim as ancestral the same priestly family tree! And again, Father Abraham himself is good enough to provide us with the pattern of how the ancients transmitted the genealogies and associated priestly documents: copies, abridgments, and all (Abraham 1:31). 

And the Book of Abraham is such a priestly copy--written by the hands of sober Egyptian priests--not fanciful Jewish redactors--upon papyrus. Moreover, such a pattern, and such a Theban priesthood, could not be any further from the milieu of the Greek Magical Papyri, that is, the syncretistic spells combining Hebrew, Greek, and Egyptian names (often purposely unintelligible), the amulets, and so forth, in intricate amalgamation. And, by the way, the Egyptian hypocephalus (Facsimile 2 of the Book of Abraham) is neither a "funeral amulet" nor a funerary amulet; neither does it belong to the Greek Magical Papyri. (Don't forget the celestial Heliopolis.)

The Book of Abraham is about "greater knowledge" shared in purity, not about that which glories in obscurity or in the unintelligible for its own sake; it has nothing to do with that which glories in control or manipulation or subjugation; it is about Priesthood and Creation and Stars and Souls--and God. Read it. Intelligence is the (Abrahamic) word to keep in mind. Sober is the word to keep in mind. Take the Book of Breathings. What does it have to do with the hodge-podge of syncretism prevailing in Greco-Roman Egypt? what does it have to do with manipulation? Not a thing. 

Because Jewish colonists had by Roman times already lived several hundreds of years in Egypt, where the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures was also effected, such later manuals of magic unsurprisingly, here and there, include the name of Abraham. What has that to do with the rarefied, kept, sealed book of Abraham on papyrus hid away in the Egyptian priestly family collections? Not a sober thing. That the Jewish apocalyptic tradition also includes a Book of Abraham, for which Egyptian themes have also been noted (Nibley, Abraham in Egypt), should not surprise us. Just consider the history of the Bible--hold the breath long enough to consider the historicity, if you please: Abraham in Egypt; Joseph in Egypt; Israel in Egypt; Moses in Egypt. 

There was an early split in the keeping of the record. Egypt kept her copy of the Abraham and Joseph Record--in its purity. Moses obtained his own version, copy, or abridgment, which he, in his turn, also abridged. And Latter-day Saint Scripture, and especially the restored Book of Moses, yet boldly upholds Mosaic authorship for the Pentateuch--and ever shall. That claim belongs to our irrevocable Canon. The Church prints hundreds of copies of the Pearl of Great Price everyday, and there are no limits set for its worldwide distribution (now in 57 languages). Numbers 33:2 convincingly sums up the matter: "And Moses wrote" (Vayyikhtob Moshe).

There was a split in the conveyance of Abraham's and Joseph's records early on: We thus have Genesis, the Apocalypse of Abraham, even the Genesis Apocryphon, and so on and on--but we also have this purest of documents, the pure voice of "I, Abraham," direct from the catacombs of Egypt. Vayyikhtob Avraham.

These records of Abraham and Joseph, along with documents of priestly initiation were passed down, either as one set or as associated documents, from fathers of both royal and priestly blood to their priestly heirs in Ptolemaic Thebes. The Egyptians had extensive libraries--in the restrictive, even prohibitive, House of Life, priests collected the books of ceremony, cosmology, and initiation--though every indication suggests the much of the Joseph Smith papyri were also family lineage documents. 


These last records constituted the very authority that confirmed priests like Hor (the principal actor or initiand of the Joseph Smith Book of Breathings) and his father, Osoroeris, in their offices. Hor, a priest of the Ptolemaic Period, aspires to possess the "greater [and thus ever more ancient ceremonial] knowledge," even as Abraham, looking back to his fathers, himself once sought, and even as Pharaoh, through Abraham, sought. Thus we see "the claim of both the King and the Patriarch to exclusive possession of and access to certain written records that went back to the beginning of time and confirmed his particular claim to legitimacy of priesthood and kingship" (Hugh Nibley, Abraham in Egypt, 92ff.). "The most important of such documents were those containing the royal genealogy, and it was to preserve them that the House of Life was built" (Nibley, An Approach to the Book of Abraham, 382). To the discerning reader the Book of Abraham narrates not only the stunning travels of the patriarch, it also reveals, with laser-like precision, just how we are to understand the various remnants of papyri, Abrahamic or not, that have fallen into "our own hands" today. 



Such a thumbnail sketch showing how the Ancient Egyptians (and others of the Ancients) transmitted sacred records, whether of Abraham or of Osoroeris, again leaves no room for any theory that posits later Jewish redactors, in Egypt or Antarctica, for Abraham's book. Neither is there any link between Abraham's record and the bizarre syncretism that brings together bits and pieces of Greek, Egyptian, and Hebrew tradition in order to frame words of manipulative power--what Mormon calls "magics." But what of the lion couch scene and the accompanying spell that includes Abraham's name? What of the magical name sequence elsewhere that sports both Abraham and the pupil of the Wedjat-eye? Are these meaningful links? or verifiable semiotic traces between Abraham in Egypt and the kept Egyptian tradition? They are not. Or, even should there appear a trace, does that trace signify that the Greek Magical Papyri and the Book of Abraham ought to be read together?

No. As Brother Edward H. Ashment has long since shown, there is no basis for connecting the two. To build a bridge between Abraham and the Greek Magical Papyri is to build a Bridge to Nowhere. 



The marvelous records of priestly authority and Divine marvels were "sealed up" or "kept" "to come forth in their purity," as Nephi says. The first person narrator of the Book of Abraham speaks to his posterity today with a purity and a clarity, an intelligence and a directness, that can only come from a diligently preserved ancient writing. Copies there may have been, copies framed in intent of exactitude, but the book betrays not a hint of any loose or corruptible pattern of transmission. 

Abraham advances the culturally specific details of how it was done right in Chapter One. He claims to belong to a linked tradition of writers who record "the right of Priesthood" for specific "ruling fathers," or "patriarchs"--and for very blessed posterity. And as Hugh Nibley notes, ancient writings on the creation and astronomy belong only to the very elect. 

No wonder doors flew open for Abraham wherever he went: with his books and charts, he was the custodian of a remarkable body of knowledge, the very secrets of the universe. Abraham the reader, the learned, precedes Abraham the writer. And given the sort of introductory remarks given by Abraham in Chapter One, the telling details of which point to its genuine antiquity, we must insist that Abraham wrote. Here are culturally specific details of which Genesis affords us not a word. Joseph Smith hits the nail on the head here. This is the most authentic of all verses here--but, then, Abraham packs in a whole array of stunners in his brief 16 pages. Count them. No other record from Egypt carries such a burden of authenticity nor of the genuine.

There are many Abraham's, no doubt. Joseph Smith really gave us two Books of Abraham: that of the Pearl of Great Price and that of the New Translation of the Bible, where new Abraham pages nearly match our 16 in number. We overlook this second Abraham. Then there is the Abraham of the Book of Mormon, as well as the surprising Abraham of the Doctrine and Covenants. 

The Abraham of Genesis is ever active, on the move, stirring and forging ahead. He is also reflective and questioning. The Abraham of the Egyptian record is all that, yet he is clearly more deeply reflective than active, part of an elitist tradition. His literacy and intelligence explain to his hosts something of the miracles which surround him and buoy him up, even the Divine Spirit in which he lives and moves and has his being. At a loss to capture him fully, the once-and-fleeting kings capture him in part.

Abraham is like a flask of myrrh--and so his book.

It's earthshaking to see Abraham as a writer. Of course he was--and specifics appear on every hand in the 14 wee pages--he is, in breathtakingly condensed fashion, historian, astronomer, prophet, and a bit of a narrative geographer. He wakens the sympathy of his readers from the very first verse--and from the first chilling episode--then he sweeps us up in one of the most expansive visions ever captured in words. And off he goes: adding to, redacting, abridging sources, perhaps even translating--for every reader will see he is working in several languages, interpreting words and explaining ideas along the way. At very least, the record shows him to be trilingual. Yes, Abraham comes to us at full tilt: we have to stretch our minds to the utmost since every word counts and entices, as he juggles languages and cosmogonies and analogies back and forth with the thriftiest of economy. Fourteen Pages, and setting aside the three facsimiles, a mere Eleven Pages. Eleven Pages! Here is Abraham.

If the Prophet Joseph had given us even the fifteenth page, we could not then have handled it. We couldn't handle it even now. We can't bear the sweeping power of it. We resort to magical thinking and mumble an incantation or two about how we know all there is to know about Egypt and the Bible; we repeat, in knee-jerk reaction, that Abraham never existed at all.

We cannot bear the intelligence and the vision of it all. We stop reading, stop reflecting, stop pleading, stop living up to our own dreams of victory. We pour heart and soul into fighting a "book" of 14 pages. We listen to the drum roll of Internet voices--then surrender into empty agnosticism our own freedom to pursue the things Abraham pursued: greater knowledge, happiness, peace, rest.

Some boldly state that the Book of Abraham has fallen.
They forget that Abraham himself has risen.

He lives on. 
He names us his seed.
He calls us to read with reflection.

Here is Abraham.  






Tuesday, August 2, 2016

Two Bridges: A Cautionary Note about Today's Book of Mormon Scholarship

My purpose is to cheer on the promising buds of gospel scholarship.

As a Latter-day Saint who prizes thoughtful writing on the Book of Mormon and on the Pearl of Great Price, I will henceforth keep in mind a cautionary note, what I shall call the Two Bridges.

The first bridge is The Bridge to Nowhere. The second evokes strategy--even The Bridge Too Far.

We may, at times, meet sloppy prose, slippery logic, weak argument, incoherent transitions, and bizarre claims. Most serious is the lack of judicious discrimination in handling evidence.

Here juts The Bridge to Nowhere. . .

And on every hand we find intricacy, detail, baroque piles, with multitudinous accompanying signs posted on interminable byways and winding paths: The Highway to Faith Just Ahead. One More Bridge

Before us lies. . . The Bridge Too Far.

Let's cut through the tangle!

Keeping well in mind that the Lord asks our patience and our faith, He never requires A Bridge Too Far. Faith sufficient to study and to ponder, and then to plant the seed of belief in the Christian witness of the Book of Mormon is the "invitation" sent out "to all men" (see Alma 5:33; Alma 32). That testimony comprises not only doctrine but historical narrative as well; for, like the Bible, the Book of Mormon has its own assumptions about itself. So much for fears that faithful and studious Latter-day Saints may not measure up to the latest fad in Biblical studies! Those who fearlessly take up the Bible on its own terms will both see through the faddish and walk understandingly on the "old paths" (Jeremiah 6:16).

In our very desire to support and supplement and invite faith in the word of God, and to stave off the singularly odd and repetitive attacks of the critic, might we sometimes nevertheless devise linguistic models, ethnological constructs, or geographic certainties of such complicated skein that all ultimately culminates in A Bridge too Far? 

Or might our piles and pyramids of learning by which we say we see, in occasional contradistinction to King Benjamin's tower even distort doctrinal horizons? Sometimes, with Alma, we feel to say: "Ye cannot suppose that this is what it meaneth" (Alma 40:17); or "it mattereth not" (40:5, 8). There are vital reasons why scriptural scholarship, in which history and doctrine are inseparably tied together, is the most difficult scholarship of all.

Of what, then, may sound Book of Mormon scholarship consist? And what's the point of such Scriptural endeavor anyhow? It should--and in sobriety of word and argument--invite what Hugh Nibley calls a second look. It ought not provide the artillery for public rows. Enough of these interminable online rows about Scripture!

Hugh Nibley, in a footnote buried somewhere or other, speaks of "the peculiar and the specific." Evidence ideally ought to be "both peculiar and specific": that is the high standard Nibley strove for. Did he sometimes reach it? It's clear he thought he occasionally did. And so can we.

Proof, that is to say, "being convinced of a thing," lies within, a subjective choice ever. While the peculiar and the specific do not spell proof, that telling combination is an utterly different thing than the tenuous and the speculative. All Scriptural scholarship among the Latter-day Saints hovers somewhere between one or the other pole; I do not say it hovers safely. And if what goes into publication tends to the tenuous and speculative, so be it. Presses must roll--and posthaste! But when a correspondence simply must be pointed out, when it shines so bright as Israel's tents or the stars in the belt of Orion, the student will come to know what is nebulous and what is not.

Monday, July 18, 2016

Two Bridges (First Draft)

My purpose is to cheer on the promising buds of gospel scholarship.

As a Latter-day Saint who prizes thoughtful writing on the Book of Mormon and on the Pearl of Great Price, I will henceforth keep in mind a cautionary note, what I shall call the Two Bridges.

The first bridge is The Bridge to Nowhere. The second evokes strategy--even The Bridge Too Far.

We may, at times, meet sloppy prose, slippery logic, weak argument, incoherent transitions, and bizarre claims about the meaning of the word plausible (it does not connote the flimsiest thread binds Iron Truth), or of the role of authority (a scholar slept Here--disturb not!). Of these faults, the most serious is the lack of judicious discrimination in handling sources.

Here juts The Bridge to Nowhere. . .

Elsewhere, we find intricacy, detail, baroque piles, with multitudinous accompanying signs posted on interminable byways and winding paths: The Highway to Faith Just Ahead. One More Bridge. Watch for Ice.

Before us lies. . . The Bridge Too Far.


These Two Bridges, never fully distinct, may even converge into but One Bridge: the Bridge to Bird Island--that sandbar on Utah Lake on whose north shore Zarahemla once proudly rose (or was it the east shore and the Hill Cumorah?). And what is true of our work on the Book of Mormon may equally apply to work on Abraham or Deuteronomy or Paul.


Keeping well in mind that the Lord asks our patience and our faith, He never requires A Bridge Too Far. Faith sufficient to study, ponder, and plant the seed of belief in the testimony of the Book of Mormon is the "invitation" sent out "to all men" (see Alma 5:33; Alma 32). That testimony comprises not only doctrine but historical narrative as well; for, like the Bible, the Book of Mormon has its own assumptions about itself.

I speak of the work of independent students, what Elder Oaks calls "alternative voices," not of the publications in official Church organs. Who can but admire the careful and thoughtful work the Church sponsors on the Doctrine and Covenants and Church History? (Hint: it's small on speculation.) Faithful Latter-day Saints stand for the truth of the Book of Mormon's doctrine and storyline, but must they further vouch for any particular take, or even consensus, on geology, geography, ethnology, genetics, numerology, law, literary and lit-crit studies, linguistics, source criticism, or on what constitutes a festival or a temple text?

"Of course not," we say, "no one ever suggested any such thing!" Then why do we sometimes push our readings and interpretations to the degree we do? "Well, maybe we get a bit carried away in love and zeal and ice skates. It's like Pokemon Go: it's an exercise; it's fun; we battle monsters! Enemies we hunt up online surround us as we play! The pressure is constant!" Then let's be direct about it--lest we wind up saying to our readers: You really can't understand the book aright until you throw off encrusted tradition and read it with new eyes, that is, with our eyes--and here's the latest scholarship for you to master. Which is the same thing as saying: You jolly well must accept Zarahemla in Alaska, if you really wish to explain both the Mayans and the Mulekites, so well as the absence of snow and jungles in the Book of Mormon.

It's nobody's authorial intent to so present the Case of the Book of Mormon--but what of the reader? What of the reader, fed on the seeds so liberally spread on Bird Island, who comes to believe he or she must answer all the thorny historical and scientific questions anyone could possibly ask of the Book of Mormon, and so resorts to any possible answer, however far-fetched? What of the reader (or author) who has no reason to suppose that what is being promoted as the "latest scholarship" is founded in a decades-ago exploded secondary source? No matter how pleasing the sound, everything must be tested.

Alas! the method and the manner of Bird Island. How many years will it take to root out such a deep disregard for philology? Twenty? Thirty? Could we root it out all at once! Root, hog, or die!

In our very desire to support and supplement and invite faith in the word of God, and to stave off the singularly odd and repetitive attacks of the critic, might we sometimes nevertheless devise linguistic models, ethnological constructs, or geographic certainties of such complicated skein--that all ultimately culminates in A Bridge too Far? Is our immune system in overdrive? The cleverest-seeming scholarship may, at last, serve up many a dish for the gullible. (Look up the dictionary meaning of the word sophisticated.)

Lehi in Arabia? Great. Lehi in South Arabia? Yeah. Lehi's shrine in . . ?

Lehi in America? Fine. Lehi in Mesoamerica? Okay. Lehi in that particular cenote? You jump in first.

Bunyan's Christian, that simple Bible-reading pilgrim, pauses in front of our pyramidal learning, takes in the algae-clogged sandbar, and scratches his head: "Another Slough of Despond, is't not?"

Or might our piles and pyramids of learning by which we say we see, in occasional contradistinction to King Benjamin's tower even distort doctrinal horizons? Sometimes, with Alma, we feel to say: "Ye cannot suppose that this is what it meaneth" (Alma 40:17); or "it mattereth not" (40:5, 8). There are vital reasons why scriptural scholarship, in which history and doctrine are inseparably tied together, is the most difficult scholarship of all.


Besides, the road to faith need not stretch beyond the few and evil days of our mortal probation. Brigham Young read the Book of Mormon closely and prayerfully for two, not twenty, years before seeking baptism. If he had waited twenty years, he would have missed leading the Pioneer Trail. The pageant must go on; the dispensation of the fulness of times unroll. Wagons Ho!


It's time to drop some things cold; it's time to take responsibility for what we publish.


Shall we sing loud just because we find ourselves off-key? What to do? Kicked out of the pulpit; tuned up; then kicked back in--the Brigham Young solution? So very much of what finds publication in Book of Mormon studies over the span of the decades parallels the precarious situation of one or another of these Two Bridges.


Of what, then, may sound Book of Mormon scholarship consist? Of silly Ph.D's? Of startling originality for its own sake? And what's the point of such Scriptural endeavor anyhow? It should--and in sobriety of word and argument--invite what Hugh Nibley calls a second look. It ought not provide the artillery for public rows. Enough already of these interminable online rows about Scripture!

Hugh Nibley, in a footnote buried somewhere or other, speaks of "the peculiar and the specific." Evidence ideally ought to be "both peculiar and specific": that is the high standard Nibley strove for. Did he sometimes reach it? It's clear he thought he occasionally did. And so can we.

Proof, that is to say, "being convinced of a thing," lies within, a subjective choice ever. While the peculiar and the specific do not spell proof, that telling combination is an utterly different thing than the tenuous and the speculative. All Scriptural scholarship among the Latter-day Saints hovers somewhere between one or the other pole; I do not say it hovers safely. And if what goes into publication tends to be both tenuous and speculative (or even jejune and incomprehensible), so be it. Presses must roll--and posthaste! But when a correspondence simply must be pointed out, when it shines so bright as the three stars in the belt of Orion, the student will come to know what is nebulous and what is not.





Notes
Hugh Nibley, "Bird Island."


Thursday, June 16, 2016

Book of Mormon Ammon and Ramesses the Great : Hero or Zero?

When the triumphant but amazed servants of King Lamoni streamed back into the palace, bearing the hewn arms of their enemies, the king had them "stand forth and testify" about what they had witnessed. The servants gushed out the tale of how the mysterious newcomer Ammon (in reality the Nephite prince) had single-handedly slain and driven away a force of rebels, "not few in number," with sling and with sword. Lamoni "was astonished exceedingly, and said: Surely, this is more than a man. Behold, is not this the Great Spirit?"

"And they answered the king, and said: Whether he be the Great Spirit or a man, we know not, but this much we do know, that he cannot be slain. . . because of his expertness and great strength.

"And now, O king, we do not believe that a man has such great power, for we know he cannot be slain.

"And now, when the king heard these words, he said unto them: Now I know that it is the Great Spirit.


It all sounds like the stuff of legend: exaggerated? an embarrassment? Heroes embarrass us today: sum total zero.


Yet consider how Ramesses the Great, the friend of the high god Amun, presents himself through the "words" of his enemies, after boldly driving his chariot like great Montu--god of war--none with him, through the enemy host:

He is no mere man, he that is among us!--
it's Seth, great of power, Baal in person!
Not the acts of a mere man are the things that he does,
that belong to one utterly unique!--
one who defeats myriads, no troops with him, no chariotry.


Note how the Pharaoh personifies several gods of war: Montu, Seth, Baal. Montu, Amun: it all has the Book of Mormon flavor. No mere echoes: We hear Ammon; we hear Manti!


Indeed the "traditional image of the king" appears in the following words:

He who shoots the arrow like Sekhmet
to fell thousands of those who mistake his power


(Jan Assmann, The Mind of Egypt, 261).

************************************************
A little more:


Mighty Prince Ammon and the Trophy Presentations at the Palace of King Khyan (Archaeological Discovery in Egypt Sheds Light on the Book of Mormon)

In what surely is one of the most dramatic moments in a book replete with dramatic moments, Book of Mormon prince and missionary Ammon withstands a band of plunderers with sword and sling (Alma 17:37-9): http://www.lds.org/scriptures/bofm/alma/17?lang=eng

37 But behold, every man that lifted his club to smite Ammon, he smote off their arms with his sword; for he did withstand their blows by smiting their arms with the edge of his sword, insomuch that they began to be astonished, and began to flee before him; yea, and they were not few in number; and he caused them to flee by the strength of his arm.

38 Now six of them had fallen by the sling, but he slew none save it were their leader with his sword; and he smote off as many of their arms as were lifted against him, and they were not a few.

39 And when he had driven them afar off, he returned and they watered their flocks and returned them to the pasture of the king, and then went in unto the king, bearing the arms which had been smitten off by the sword of Ammon, of those who sought to slay him; and they were carried in unto the king for a testimony of the things which they had done."

It is a marvelous story--but can there yet remain a "testimony of the things" which Ammon once did? A newly announced archaeological discovery in Hyksos Egypt--the first of its kind--recalls the presentation of the enemies' right arms to the Ishmaelite king, Lamoni, and bespeaks the earnest ritual nature of such trophy presentations:


http://www.auaris.at/downloads/TD__Report_2011_ASAE.pdf

For a prior look at the same Book of Mormon episode in light of Ancient Near Eastern texts and iconography (but not archaeology), see John Welch and John Lundquist, "Ammon and Cutting Off the Arms of Enemies":

http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/publications/books/?bookid=71&chapid=817

Hugh Nibley, in his Book of Mormon classes, would also comment on "the Sebus sport", the Waters of Sebus being the setting for Ammon's feat: "The games of chivalry were just as rough and deadly as the Sebus sport, and far more ancient. Sinuhe is a thousand years older than Achilles or David, and monuments from prehistoric Egypt show the first 'pharaohs' bashing the heads of rival rulers with the ceremonial mace. The famous scenes of the battles of Megiddo and Carchemish display the piles of severed hands and arms brought as trophies to the king. That's how you would prove that you had slain them; you would bring the right arms to the king and pile them up. This is Bible stuff, too, as well as Babylonian, and the Egyptians were in it, too. At Carchemish and Megiddo the king sat there with big piles of arms in front of him. Well, Ammon brought piles of arms to show his prowess to King Lamoni" (Teachings of the Book of Mormon, Lecture 51: Alma 17-19).


At Carchemish and Megiddo the trophies were laid before the king right on the spot--on the battlefront. But the evidence of sixteen hands found in four burial pits near the palace of the Hyksos Pharaoh Khyan at Avaris even more closely recalls the statement in Alma about how the servants of the king carried the arms "in unto the king," that is, into his palace. "Two of the pits," we read, "[are] located in front of what is believed to be a throne room" (livescience.com).

Arma virumque cano--valorous deeds and glorious feats of arms are the province of the king, and the hands buried in front of Khyan's throne room serve as a lasting testimony of that fact.


Copyright 2012 by Val Sederholm




Tally

There are times we should pause to take tally.

For Book of Mormon Prophet Alma, that time came at the end of the fifteenth year of the reign of the judges:

"And from the first year to the fifteenth has brought to pass the destruction of many thousand lives; yea, it has brought to pass an awful scene of bloodshed."

Fifteen years.

Our Millennium opened with celebration--and with boundless hope. It was the Year 2000! In like manner, the Nephites opened a new system of government, a free government by the voice of the people--not by kings--with joy and a sense of promise.

We now approach the fifteenth anniversary of the terror attack of September 11, 2001.

Is it time to take tally?




Saturday, June 11, 2016

Beauty and Compelling Awkwardness in Book of Mormon Narrative

All readers of the Book of Mormon mark both the strange and compelling beauty of its language and its frequent awkwardness--a jarring contrast. And often enough that frequently contrasting awkwardness becomes for the devoted reader something he begins to expect, even a compelling, and oddly satisfying, awkwardness. Yet one doubts a conscious attempt at the awkward on the part of the Nephite writers, a conscious shaping in wabi-sabi, unglazed and artfully natural. Where we find the awkward, the people of Zarahemla just wrote that way--and that's that. Too bad for them. 

It's tough to decide whether the awkward or the poetic and flowing came more naturally to the Nephite writers. They had their moments anyhow.


Consider Alma's catalog of the cities of the converted Lamanites (Alma 23). It's not the Iliad--and yet. . . 


Now, these are they who were converted unto the Lord: 


The people of the Lamanites who were in the land of Ishmael; 


And also of the people of the Lamanites who were in the land of Middoni; 


And also of the people of the Lamanites who were in the city of Nephi;



So far, so good. The catalog proceeds in a stately rhythm, a biblical rhythm, but nothing rises beyond dictionary entry. 


Then, as poetic coda:


And also of the people of the Lamanites who were in the land of Shilom, and who were in the land of Shemlon, and in the city of Lemuel, and in the city of Shimnilom. 


And these were the names of the cities of the Lamanites which were converted unto the Lord.


Shimmering verse 12 alone packs in 6 l's, 6 m's, 3 n's, and 3 sh's. For those who may savor consonantal above secret combinations, Shilom finds subtle reversal in Shemlon, only to shift back in Lemuel, and all building up to startling Shimnilom. 


There's really nothing to say about such loveliness. Read the verses aloud, two or three times. The stolid rhythmic lines end with a touch of playfulness just shy of rococo. 


A few verses to come, and we delight in the elaborated name of Anti-Nephi-Lehi. More likely, we shudder, or even laugh, at it. Or what to say about the stunning, and stunningly ambiguous, eruption of geography in the previous chapter? Such moments are all little literary delights, flow or none, that leave the reader longing for more--and sooner or later, more comes. These pepperings, more to be savored than comprehended, remind us that the book has us, however pedestrian the language may at times be. 

Much is made of Book of Mormon geography. Oh, good luck with that. The book has you by the tail; not t'other way round. It has you running circles round the head of the river Sidon by the borders of Manti. It's all a tour-de-force of non-specific specificity, and one senses Alma's delight in putting the reader over the border and into the wilderness, little strips of which run every which way. 
And you wish to lead tours?  

Don't get lost in the jungle.


It is wordplay, to be sure; yet again, far too much is made of wordplay in the Book of Mormon, and frankly, I just don't see it in so many, many of the places others point at. I don't see it in the name of Nephi; I don't see it in the name of Benjamin--neither on the left hand nor on the right. I don't even see traces of it, etymological or otherwise. I'll skip that tour too.


We can't just make things up.


Neither were the Nephites gauche--confused maybe, but not gauche.

How about this phrasing? Now it came to pass that after Alma had received his message from the angel of the Lord. . . (Alma 8:18)? In Hebrew (and, likely, in Nephite), the words "message" and "angel" (or "messenger") come from the same root. A play on words? No--just linguistic compactness.


And that compactness, and so much else in the language of the Book of Mormon: the rhythm, the anaphoric cadences, the quotations from the prophets, the jewel-like prayers and hymns (these often belonging to the older strata of the plates), the inverted patterns and chiasms, even the occasional play on words--not to mention the pathos and immediacy of every single narrator--all speak beauty to the reader. The most beautiful verses of all nevertheless belong more to the realm of the spiritual than the literary. We know that. And we can't explain it.


There yet riots throughout--and more especially in the long narrative sweep from Alma on--an awkward and bedizening tangle of undergrowth: behold, or, and it came. . . Behold, and it came to pass that the people of Lamoni, or, the people of his kingdom. And the point? Behold, though too much with us, does signify: it signals a heightened intensity, the moment of surprise. Look at Helaman's letters to Moroni: though really pouring things on, he knows how to use the intensifier as correctly as any biblical writer. And it's beautiful in a biblical kind of way; and to the reader of Egyptian or of Hebrew it may even be very lovely. But we must look askance at it. We simply must.


And then there are Alma's incessant, and for the most part, never truly clarifying, phrases beginning with or. They shoot out of the undergrowth like ankle-seeking tendrils. And yet even these add a certain spell-binding ingredient--a search for heightened expression and exactitude, even in cases where no ambiguity is at hand. Or, especially in cases. . .


It's intriguing to see these or's as the translator's attempt to clear things up as he runs along. And, by the way, Joseph Smith is the translator. (Someone has a different idea?) Or, perhaps Mormon put them in: Alma's text may have seemed vague, non-specific, all the way through. But read Alma again: the or's, or Hebraic ki's or whatever they are, never cease roiling the sea of narrative, and it's clear the tick is built into the original text. It's part of the idiom; yet it's something no English speaker would have ever invented: with such constant, and unnecessary, interruption, such clarity by entanglement, you can never hope for literary beauty in English. And it's hard to believe the usage struck the Nephites as beautiful either. 

And yet, once the reader comes to expect the fracturing moments of amplification and clarification, what is awkward comes instead to charm. Frustration finally turns to truth, as we merge from fractured phrase to hypercorrection. What's the truth? It is that Moroni, Helaman, Alma, Ammon, all burden their crystalline, even scrubbed, narratives with or's quite purposefully. The rhetoric loops into a rococo search for specificity. Round and round the shell of narrative curves--the or-phrases conspiring with what is also a constant need to summarize what has just been plainly stated--and for what? Just to tell us it "was that same Zeezrom" who we met moments before in Ammonihah? Alma, who perfectly knows that the reader hasn't quite forgotten anyone bearing the name of Zeezrom, much less a principal and dramatic character, seems unhappy with even the slightest hint of a loose end. It is a peculiarity, a peculiarity for sewing up everything, and it is idiom, and. . . well. . . the Nephites can keep it. And I think we love it.






Thursday, May 12, 2016

Figures 19-21, Book of Abraham Facsimile 2: A New Reading

The Church Historian's copy of Book of Abraham Facsimile 2 (the Egyptian hypocephalus) often brings things into greater clarity--and that is certainly the case with the hieroglyphs found in the panels numbered 21, 20, and 19.

Michael Rhodes transcribes and translates: jw wnn=k m nTr pf Ddw.j, "You shall ever be as that God, the Busirian" (Hugh Nibley and Michael Rhodes, One Eternal Round, 345; Ddw.j = Wb. V, 630, 7). There is nothing wrong with the translation, but the reading pf [that], while something like a pf on Hedlock's woodcut of Facsimile 2, does not match what is found on the Church Historian's copy. 

Robert Ritner, Professor at Chicago's Oriental Institute, suggests: "(1) iw wnn=k (2) m nTr iwty(?) (3) xsf(?) D.t(?), "You are (2) even as the god who is not(?) (3) repelled(?) forever(?)," Robert Ritner, The Joseph Smith Egyptian Papyri, 269-270; or see 269 n 29, for "a less likely interpretation" that "requires emendation: iw b3=k [n]nk=k, "You have your ba-spirit. . ." or iw wn n=k [b3=k], with the same meaning." He notes that "the signs for line 2 (end) and 3 are uncertain," 269.

The present writer sees: jw wnn=k m nTr b3 Dd.t (or, jw wnn=k m nTr [pf] b3 Dd.t): "You shall forever be even as that god who is the Ba of Mendes" (or, "you shall continue in existence forever in the form of [that] god, the Ba of Mendes"). The Ba of Mendes, while sometimes simply the b3 Dd.t, is more commonly known as the B3-nb-Dd.t, the Ba, Lord of Dd.t, but we also find b3 'np.t, the Ba (of) Anepat, or even Dd.t.j, the Mendesian. I'm taking the lower signs found on the Church Historian's copy of fig. 20 to be traces of the head of a horned animal (two protuberances rise from the "head"); two downward curving lines trace the animal's neck or lower body. On similar hypocephalus panels more than one hieroglyph writes ba: reclining rams, ram's heads, and ba-birds can all work the trick, and brought together in various assortment make up the eight ba's of the greatest god. Comparing what appears on other hypocephali to the traces on the Church Historian copy reveals the traces to be the hieroglyph of a ram's head, Gardiner sign-list F8 (Edinburgh hypocephalus, Cairo SR 10691, etc.).

While Rhodes is not wrong in reading the "Busirian," that is, the "one of Busiris," it would be just as correct to read the hieroglyphs as written on the Historian's Copy, D-d-t (not D-d-w or D-d-w-j), as referring to the "Mendesian," the "one of Mendes," the Delta home of the Ram who became both Re and Osiris. The original spelling for the place names is: Dd.w (the Greek name for which is Busiris) and Dd.t (Gr. Mendes, from Pr-b3-nb-Dd.t, House of the Ba [or Ram], Lord of Djedet). Yet the spelling is often entirely confused by the New Kingdom, leaving the student to guess which place is meant (Wb. V, 630, 6). The earliest settlers of Mendes called the place 'Anepat (Place of Greenness), for "Green pastures and meadows stretched to the west and south" (Donald B. Redford, City of the Ram-Man: The Story of Ancient Mendes [Princeton, 2010], 2). 'Anepat was later called Djedet, after the place of burial near the shrine of the Ram. 

Hugh Nibley's and Michael Rhodes's One Eternal Round has much to say on the significance of green and the symbolism of green gems in the story of the hypocephalus. The Mendesian ram itself was white, and according to the third century BC Mendes Stela, the local inhabitants first discovered the white ram in the verdant western meadows at the First Time (see Donald Redford, City of the Ram-Man). The contrast of brilliant greens and whites strikes the imagination, these also being "the canonical colors of the Egyptian temple" (Hugh Nibley, The Message of the Joseph Smith Papyri: An Egyptian Endowment). Green is famously the color of Osiris, while white not only registers dawn (Eg. HD and HD.t) but also suggests that totality of universal color and ineffable beauty locked in the iris and thus in the pupil-and-iris imagery of the Transcendent Hidden Amun who hides in his wedjat-eye, imagery best expressed by the shape and symbolism of the hypocephalus (see Daniel Klotz, Adoration of the Ram, 168-169).

Again, the same hieroglyphs were used interchangeably for both Mendes and Busiris by the New Kingdom--and meaningfully so! The Ashmolean hypocephalus of Tashenhapy (Ashmolean 88), on the panel just below the central four-headed ram (Kolob), gives us the label "Osiris nb Dd.t." And, here, given the name of Osiris, we first read "Lord of Busiris," though, given the fourfold ram, we must also keep Mendes well in sight. Busiris is the place, but Mendes is the place too. A window to understanding starts to open.

Busiris is indeed the place, "but," as the Prophet Joseph would say, "in this case, in relation to this subject the Egyptians meant it [the hieroglyph] to signify" Mendes and its Ram or Ba (one word in Egyptian: ba). After all, Osiris, here, simply replaces Ba in the formula, Ba/Osiris-nb-Dd.t. Such interlocking associations bespeak mystery and, indeed, "the concept of the four-headed ram, the four divine essences united in one, is perhaps the most recondite of the doctrines centering on Ba-neb-djed [the Lord of Mendes]" and "is certainly already present in the late New Kingdom" (Daniel Klotz, Adoration of the Ram, 223). The Mendesian Ram, with his four faces, is the United Ba of Re and Osiris, the very being pictured in the center of all hypocephali (so Nibley and Rhodes, One Eternal Round, 261; Daniel Klotz, Adoration of the Ram, 98ff., 168-9).

And it's just possible to open the window a bit more, for the clearly penned hieroglyphs D-d-t in the Hedlock copy also point to Heliopolis, a place name found repeatedly, as jwnw (Pillar), on Facsimile 2. Consider D + d + t + the determinative sign of land: "Name der Nekropolis von Heliopolis" (Woerterbuch V, 630, 10). What the correspondence in naming signifies is best expressed by Professor Donald Redford: "As protector of his people in death the [Mendesian] Ram becomes in truth the Lord of the Abiding Place, Neb Djedet. . . There were Abiding Places [Dd.t] also at 'Pillar City' [Heliopolis]. . . and at 'Aneza [Busiris], the Pasturage, one day's journey to the southwest. All three cities enjoyed the link of name derived from the same root and indicative of similar function; but it was with 'Aneza that 'Anepat [Mendes] had the closest association" (D. Redford, City of the Ram-Man, 29). The "Abiding Place" is the Axis Mundi, the Pillar and Tree and Backbone of the world. It is the Place of Permanence, of the Enduring. And it is noteworthy that the tree may be planted in more than one locale.

The four-headed Mendesian Ram thus is not only linked with, he even becomes the Heliopolitan Ba and the Osiris of Busiris in the form of the United Ba (b3 dmD), the Secret Ba, or Ram (b3 St3w), even the Transcendent Amun-Re (so Klotz) and also Re-Osiris (so Klotz again). In the Coffin Texts (VI 404) the United Ba of Mendes takes the form of two fledglings, imagery that also recalls Facsimile 2, figure 4: ship-with-fledgling. (And fledgling is the label often accompanying that figure.) What appears on the Joseph Smith hypocephalus, panels 19-21, thus thematically matches that found in the similar panels: the fullness of the number of the ba's of the Ba of Ba's, the Ram of Rams. And both figures 1 and 2 on Facsimile 2 carry the legend name of that (greatest) god, a label that despite its open-endedness places focus on the transcendent importance of the Name of the greatest god of all gods. The lazy, at such an impasse, will stretch for the latest encyclopedia on Egyptology with its standard lists of gods (as also found in primary school textbooks). But it takes more effort than consultation of handbooks to "hie to Kolob." Klotz struggles for the best way to render the divine name: the Cosmic Deity, the Cosmic Shu-Amun, the Transcendent Amun (Adoration of the Ram, 183).

"A universal purview," says Professor Redford, "attaches itself to the Ram of Mendes. He becomes the Father of the Gods, the Ram of Rams, the King of the Gods, the Manifestation (bai) of every god, the Heir of Tatenen (the primordial earth-god), the Unique God with overwhelming awfulness" (Redford, City of the Ram-Man, 134). His being is "unrestricted in the universe" (Ibid). He is earth, water, heat, air: "Besides his essence as the earth, he is also water 'who comes as the inundation that he may bring life to the Two Lands.' As the Living One of Re he becomes the source of living heat 'that brightens heaven and earth with his rays'; as the air 'he is breath for all people' " (Ibid). As the quadripartite Ram, he is "identified as the great creator, the 'Complete One' ('Itm)," or Atum, even " 'He Who Rises on the Horizon with Four Faces' " (Ibid., 135). Professor Redford concludes by setting forth the Ram of Mendes as the manifestation "of the union of dynamic solar power (Re) with latent fertility (Osiris);" by further noting "the addition of the embodiment of national existence, Amun-Re [as state god]," we end up, he says, with "a primordial deity of unequaled antiquity and immanence" (Ibid., 135-6). 

In light of all that antiquity and immanence, dynamism and transcendence, what a surprise to read the assurance on the Book of Abraham hypocephalus: "You shall forever be as that Ram: the Ba of Mendes." That's a blessing reserved for kings in time and eternity. It's the blessing of "a universal purview," a blessing of cosmic fatherhood and kingship, of a limitless glory "unrestricted in the universe." And is that not "the dispensation of the gospel of Abraham" (Doctrine and Covenants 110)? Every page in the restored Book of Abraham speaks to that blessing.

In the second theophany of the Book of Abraham (2:6-13), the Creator of the Universe, and thus of the universal elements, reveals his Name as follows:

"I am the Lord thy God; I dwell in heaven; the earth is my footstool; I stretch my hand over the sea, and it obeys my voice; I cause the wind and the fire to be my chariot; I say to the mountains--Depart hence--and behold, they are taken away by a whirlwind, in an instant, suddenly. My name is Jehovah, and I know the end from the beginning.

And I will make of thee a great nation. . . and in thee (that is, in thy Priesthood) and in thy seed (that is, thy Priesthood). . . shall all the families of the earth be blessed." 

When we receive the Covenant, we are numbered among that seed and that Priesthood.

If the theme of the Book of Abraham is the patriarchal line of Priesthood authority, with its supernal power to bless, should we be surprised to learn that the four-headed ram on the hypocephalus is the symbol par excellence of patriarchy? In the Coffin Texts the Creator tells Pharaoh (a name comprehending both the first king and every individual king thereafter): "I changed myself into the Ram Lord of Djedet [Mendes], I copulated with thy noble mother in order to procreate thy physical being" (Redford, City of the Ram-Man, 133, who cites KRI II, 263:5-11; Urk IV, 224:17). The Mendesian Ram, enduring image of fruitfulness and potency, so begets every king of Egypt. And, according to the Mendes Stela, the four faces represent the Ba's of Re, Osiris, Shu, Geb, and "these happen to be the male progenitors of the Heliopolitan cosmogony (Re-Atum begat Shu, Shu begat [we're being very biblical here] Geb, Geb begat Osiris)" (Klotz, Adoration of the Ram, 99). All this recalls David Klotz's further observation that the god is not only heavenly and transcendent, but also composed of the four elements of the earth, even "mineralized." These four elements match the symbolism of the four sons of Horus depicted on the lower panel of the hypocephalus, which four the Prophet Joseph associates with "the earth in its four quarters" (Fac. 2, fig. 6, explanation). Thus we see on the hypocephali the four sons of Horus, the four faces of the Transcendent Amun-Re, the two-faced Amun-Shu, and the 8 ba's.

Hugh Nibley has much to say both about these sons of Horus and about the odd way in which figure 1 is depicted as sitting directly on the earth (One Eternal Round, 241, 299ff.). Taking a cue from a 19th century student of the hypocephalus, Theodule Deveria (1831-1871), who called our figure 1, "the spirit of the four elements," Nibley reminds us that the canopic figures (the four sons) represent "the bringing together of the elements of the earth" (One Eternal Round, 299). They also recall the Jewish tradition about the creation of Adam out of the four basic elements taken from the corners of the world: fire, air, earth, water (One Eternal Round, 301). So too, Klotz, citing yet another 19th century student, Heinrich Karl Brugsch (1827-1894), tells how the four heads of the ram not only signal the patriarchal line of descent for the god-kings, Egypt's earliest dynasts, but also represent fire (Re), wind (Shu), earth (Geb), and water (Osiris) (Adoration, 99). 

The line of descent comes down from heaven to earth, from Re to Osiris, the father of Horus, who is the earthly Pharaoh in all his generations. The Royal Right of Priesthood, says Abraham, "came down from the fathers, from the beginning of time, yea, even from the beginning, or before the foundation of the earth, down to the present time, even the right of the firstborn, or the first man, who is Adam, or first father, through the fathers unto me" (Abraham 1:3). How strange that in a turn of a page or two away from this peculiar statement, we meet the Egyptian hypocephalus with its quadrifrons Ram. Another page or two, and we find Abraham's account of the Creation of that "first father." Here is no mere once-over of KJV Genesis.

Passing strange--but stranger still, we recognize that if Hugh Nibley hadn't come along, we would yet be sitting in our chariots--like Candace's eunuch--and saying as we gape at the facsimiles, "How can I [understand], except some man should guide me?" And yet we disdain that Brother Nibley should "come up, and sit with [us]." (See Acts 8).

And it's marvelous how Nibley sees a connection to all these things not only in Jewish tradition but in Greek myth. The Greeks know a Pharaoh Busiris with a powerful brother (a double or twin) named Antaeus, "who could not be separated from the earth" from whence he drew his strength (One Eternal Round, 241). The Antaeus theme evokes the Dd-pillar of Osiris, the Abiding Place, while Busiris naturally recalls the wording on our hypocephalus--but what about Mendes? The Great Amun Hymn from Hibis Temple (col. 26) describes the four-headed ram of Mendes as being composed of the four divinities of Anpet or 'Anepat, the first name of Mendes (Adoration, 110ff.). In light of Antaeus being the brother of Busiris, the phonological correspondence of 'Anepat and Antaeus may be significant. Mendes and Busiris are the Osirian Twin Cities.

The line of patriarchal authority does not end with Osiris. Osiris is the father of Horus, who embodies all future kings. A new morning--a "first creation" to quote Joseph Smith--is always at hand: "The association with the Mendesian Ram (= Re-Osiris) also connects the four-headed deity with the newly reborn solar deity in the morning," that is, "He Who Rises on the Horizon with Four Faces" (Adoration, 168; see also One Eternal Round, 261). 

Note how the central figure on the hypocephalus holds to no single correspondence: the ram suggests a multiplicity and fluidity of roles, even as he signifies various moments in time and makes manifests in a variety of related places on earth and in the heavenly firmament. The Four-faced Amun Ram holds to the center of all things, the Place of Permanence, the peg upon which all things hang, yet we can never pin him down. The Egyptian vision of reality is a broad vision. The ability to hold the center, while shifting from earth to heaven or from ceremonial center to center, in one eternal round, perhaps explains why Egypt endured, even as other ritual and political centers collapsed. In Egypt we find both Circle and Square: the solar and vertical 3 and the terrestrial or spatial 4 of the hypocephalus.


It's not just sunrise that we're talking about here. "The sun," says Thoreau, "is but a morning star"--and here we confront the super sun of all suns, the star of stars, or Ba of ba's. This is Kolob; or to use the Egyptian phrase: "that Lord Re of all other Re's (r' pw nb r'.w nb = Heinrich Brugsch, Thesaurus inscriptionum aegyptiaerum [Leipzig, 1883], 1:78f.). 

Forget cosmology. We scan the skies for Kolob and make our declarations and denunciations. Forget the idea of a special cosmology known only to the Saints; the Egyptian casements open onto a multiverse. 

Abraham understood the Egyptian savants and they understood Abraham. We are invited to take a glimpse, but all we sophisticates can say in response is "weird," "bizarre," "typical 19th century speculation," "a peculiar, though derivative, cosmology," "embarrassing," "Copernican(!)," "failed scripture," "irretrievably lost." If the Prophet had turned the key and opened the leaf just one inch-chink of bandwidth more--and he said flatly that he had no "right" to do so "at the present time"--our eyes would have been sealed forever. Because he, sparing us, did not, in "due time" we may all yet adjust to the Light.