Introduction and Episode Overview

Part 1 of 3 · Ep. 1339

Robert Ritner [00:00:00] 1, 2, 3.

John Dehlin [00:00:16] Huge thank you to Bruce MacArthur for making today's episode possible. Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, John delinquent. It is July 30, 2020. I apologize for the hyperbole, but I do believe that we have one of the most important episodes that we'll ever have on Mormon Stories podcast. This will stand shoulder to shoulder with the Michael Koh interview, with the Tom Phillips interview, with the Bart Ehrman interview, and with our top interviews, it'll be an immediate top five, I'm guessing. I am here today with Dr. Robert Ritner, who is a world famous Egyptologist. That's what I'll call him. We'll have him tell you his official title in just a second. We have covered Book of Mormon scripture historicity a lot in the past on Mormon Stories podcast. We've covered Book of Mormon, Book of Abraham. Recently we covered the Joseph Smith translation. You know, we've had Brett Metcalf on to talk about Book of Abraham, we've had David Bachavoy, we've had Dan Vogel. But what we've never had is a legit, never Mormon world class Egyptologist to talk to us about the Book of Abraham. And just like we had the amazing Dr. Michael Cohen who was the Yale Mesoamerican anthropologist or archaeologist to give us an outsider's view of Book of Mormon historicity, we have brought Dr. Robert Ritner on to give us an outsider's view of Book of Abraham, Book of Abraham historicity or authenticity, and to talk about the apologetics that have surrounded the Book of Abraham, from Hugh Nibley to Daniel Peterson to John Gee to Kerry Muhlstein and the like. So it is going to be an epic multi hour Mormon Stories podcast interview. And there's more, as Ron Popeil used to say. We have with us rfm, Radio Free Mormon, part of the Bill Real Mormon Discussions network of podcasts. Because RFM is a brilliant analyst and amateur historian of the Book of Abraham. So rfm, thank you for joining us today.

RFM [00:02:30] I'm so excited to be here. John, this is going to be a great podcast. Thank you for inviting me. It may even be up there with your Radio Free Mormon interview from last November.

John Dehlin [00:02:39] Yes, and you guys should check that out. The RFM interview was epic as well. But, but rfm, seriously, we're so glad to have you shout out to Bill Riehl for all his good work too.

RFM [00:02:50] Well, thank you. I'll pass that along.

Welcoming Dr. Ritner and Announcements

John Dehlin [00:02:53] Before we begin Our interview with Dr. Ritner we are going to be making a very important announcement at the beginning and at the end of every episode interview that we do. You'll hear just today as Dr. Ritner talks about his story that he comes to Egyptology with just a pure love of Egyptology. And what you'll find is that his desire and his pursuing of Egyptology came at probably a significant financial sacrifice on his part, even though he's at a world class institution, maybe the world class institution for Egyptology. But having said that, he also comes at his interest in the Book of Abraham from a similarly, I'll just say altruistic standpoint in that he'll tell us later that his work on the Book of Abraham, the total amount of money he's made from all of his work, which includes books and articles, a book and articles on the Book of Abraham, the total amount that he's received in terms of finances is less than what he has been paid for one presentation. So it is out of a pure love for Egyptology and for history and for accuracy and honesty that he comes to this discussion. Having said all that, it is also true that Dr. Ritner is experiencing a health condition. He is in need of a kidney donor. And so as we begin and end each of our episodes, we are going to let people know of that with his permission, because what RFM and I hope to achieve, and I brought RFM on not only for his expertise, but also we hope that people far and wide share not only this interview, but also the notification that we are in search of a kidney donor for Dr. Ritner because we would love to prolong Dr. Ritner's life so that he can do his amazing work. We will be letting everybody know that the way to contact Dr. Ritner is through his contact, Dana McLean at the Northwestern Medical Transplant Coordinator. Phone number isXXX-XXX-XXXX. And if any of you want to help save Dr. Ritner's life and his ongoing research, we are going to just make that appeal over and over again. And without any further ado, Dr. Robert Wittner, thank you so much for joining us today on Mormon Stories Podcast and on Radio Free Mormon.

Robert Ritner [00:05:15] My pleasure.

John Dehlin [00:05:16] John, anything you want to correct about that introduction or add to?

Robert Ritner [00:05:26] No, you referred to my title. Would you like me to give it to you?

John Dehlin [00:05:30] Yeah, yeah. Tell us your title and your kind of. Yeah. Your credentials as it relates to.

Robert Ritner [00:05:36] My official title is the Roe professor of Egyptology at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.

John Dehlin [00:05:44] Okay. And your education, background

Robert Ritner [00:05:50] I got my PhD from the University of Chicago and I got my BA in Psychology from Rice University in Houston.

John Dehlin [00:06:00] Go Houston. Yes, fellow Houstonian. Also, just so people know, sometimes we tend to think, oh, elite universities are Harvard, Yale, Stanford, you know, and I, and I understand that you were teaching at Yale at some point and then you transferred to Chicago. Tell us why Chicago is a really important institution for Egyptology. Just for those who don't know.

Robert Ritner [00:06:24] Well, the University of Chicago is where Egyptology began in the Western Hemisphere. When the university was being assembled, they actually hired James Henry Breasted and sent him to Germany to learn Egyptology, which was really a European phenomenon only. And so he came back and brought the field to Chicago. So every program in the United States is ultimately an offshoot of the Chicago program. You're either a student of a Chicago professor or the student of a student of a Chicago professor. So when I was at Yale, for example, I was a colleague of Michael Koh. I went there from teaching at Chicago as a grad student, went to Yale, and when my professor retired, I was lured back. And I was happy to come back because it's the premier institution. Yale is a good university, but Chicago for my field is better. We have a higher concentration of Egyptologists than anywhere else. We have three Egyptologists plus an Egyptian archaeologist. And no other. No other university in the Western hemisphere has that. And that's, that's rare even in Europe. So we are at the center. And I now hold the first ever chair in Egyptology. It was just created in September and I was the first awardee of it. So that's a great honor because he was arrested, did not have a chair in Egyptology. So it's a great to have.

John Dehlin [00:08:14] Yes. And it's also probably worth noting as we will get to talking about John Gee, that John Gee at one point was a student of yours. True.

Robert Ritner [00:08:24] He was at Yale. Yes.

John Dehlin [00:08:26] Okay. And just out of curiosity, what's the, what's the elite or preeminent university in Europe or elsewhere for the study of Egyptology? Maybe even in Egypt itself?

Robert Ritner [00:08:42] Well, there are a number of choices in Europe. The people associated with the British Museum are major scholars. Oxford, Cambridge, and by the way, professors currently at Oxford and Cambridge. Actually, the Oxford one just, just retired. But they're both our Chicago students.

John Dehlin [00:09:08] That's awesome.

Robert Ritner [00:09:10] One of my students is now at Cambridge. One of my colleague students who was ahead of me, her student just retired from Oxford. So we've done well.

John Dehlin [00:09:24] Excellent.

Robert Ritner [00:09:25] But they're also the ecopatique in Paris, the Louvre, the Sorbonne, In Paris, Heidelberg, in Germany, et cetera. There are numerous institutions. It's far more widespread in Europe than it is here. Okay, it's a boutique field.

John Dehlin [00:09:47] What's that? Say that again.

Robert Ritner [00:09:48] It's a boutique field. There are very few people that can go into it. There are relatively few jobs, and it doesn't pay well. So it's an academic career.

John Dehlin [00:10:00] Well, let's get into that. So let's talk a bit about your background growing up in Houston and what got you ultimately interested in Egyptology.

Dr. Ritner's Background and Path to Egyptology

Robert Ritner [00:10:12] I had an outstanding second grade teacher, and we would do modules and geographic locations and societies. We had Japanese tea parties, we had Hawaiian luau. I tasted poi for the one and only time when I was in second grade. And we did a section on Egypt, making pyramids, cardboard pyramids. And it was the pyramids that stuck. Most kids go through a stage of dinosaurs and then move on to something else, often dinosaurs, to mummies, to something more mature and more lucrative. And I got stuck at the mummy stage. So by the time I was in junior high, I had read every single book on Egypt that was in the Houston Public Library. It wasn't a huge amount, but it was maybe 50 books. So I was fully prepared to ask deep and penetrating historical questions of my junior high school world history teacher. And when I did, she was flabbergasted, had no clue what I was asking about.

John Dehlin [00:11:33] What was that question you asked her? I remember you mentioning this.

Robert Ritner [00:11:37] I desperately wanted to know whether the body In Kings Valley 55 was the tomb of Akhenaten, whether we had identified him as Akhenaten or not. We still don't know that, by the way. And she didn't know who on earth I was talking about. It was an extreme disappointment because I just knew that this advanced teacher would have all the answers to the question. So that led me on what has become a lifetime of questions about things like who's buried in what tomb.

John Dehlin [00:12:17] So maybe a tad bit precocious as a junior high student.

Robert Ritner [00:12:22] I was probably horribly obnoxious. Yeah,

John Dehlin [00:12:28] you broke up a bit. Repeat that, Robert, if you. Dr. Ritner, if you don't mind.

Robert Ritner [00:12:31] I said I was probably horribly obnoxious. I would go on to be the head of the debate team in high school and then in acting in college, in addition to my degrees. So I have no trouble standing on a stage and being forceful. I don't get embarrassed.

John Dehlin [00:12:50] I have to ask this. I grew up loving Abbott and Costello and Dracula and Frankenstein and Werewolf. Do you remember watching the Mummy movie or any of the Mummy movies that came out.

Robert Ritner [00:13:05] Two of the major reasons why I'm in Egyptology is Boris Karloff's the Mummy, and which I've actually published about, by the way, because it's. The plot is actually drawn from an ancient story and H. Rider Haggard's Cleopatra. And I was. I was a child in 1963 when the Liz Taylor Cleopatra came out. I was not allowed to see that. It was too racy. But I was absolutely overwhelmed by all the publicity and all things Egyptian. There was also a wonderful movie theater in Houston, the Metropolitan Movie Theater downtown, which was all in Egyptian design with sphinxes and Egyptian tile on the floor and wall paintings, etc. It was the most fantastic place. So I think I was drawn initially to Egypt by the exoticism, but then once I began to read about the culture, it's just so absolutely fascinating and so very different and insightful. And although it's early, it's not primitive. And that's what I try to teach in my Egyptian religion classes, because religion is what I basically do. That's what I was hired to do.

John Dehlin [00:14:32] Religion.

Robert Ritner [00:14:33] Egyptian religion specifically. So I publish religious texts, which, of course is why then I was asked specifically to look at the Joseph Smith Papyrus, because it's a religious text. I have colleagues that work on legal texts and other kinds of texts, but I work on the religious text specifically, and I teach classes on Egyptian religion. You know, 20 lectures explaining all the various nuances of whether the Egyptians are polytheistic, how they relate to the idea of deity, what are the multiple creation myths, what are the concepts of the various different gods, how do you pray to them, how do you sacrifice to them? What are the burial rituals? What are the reports, requirements for burial? What are the papyri that go with burial? What are the other objects, like the Canopic jars? What are the elements of embalming? Why would you have jars that are next to the bed? What do they contain? Why would they even be there? I also work in ancient Egyptian medicine, so I can explain the embalming from a medical point of view. So that's what I do.

John Dehlin [00:15:50] Got it.

RFM [00:15:51] Dr. Ritner, can I break in here for a second? If you're done with the background? John, you said you were asked to look at the Joseph Smith Papyrus. Who asked you and what happened there?

John Dehlin [00:16:02] Rfm. I'm totally sorry. This is going to sound really rude. I had one quick question about his background before we jump into that, and I just don't want to be totally out of sequence. Is that okay? Yes, but that's a super important question, Robert. I think it's important, and I alluded to this in our intro, that your life wasn't necessarily setting you up to become an academic. Do you mind sharing with us how your life was being set up a bit about your parents and their occupation and kind of what decisions you had to make in terms of career that may or may not have been maybe what your parents were shooting for and what might have been financially advantageous for you?

Robert Ritner [00:16:44] Well, parents generally want their children to do something successful. But my father owned a major sheet metal company in Houston that put in all the ductwork for air conditioning and all the major high rises in what is now the major cities in the United States. And I was the eldest son and I was fully expected to take over that company. And I did not want to do that because I don't want. I did not want to be an engineer and spend all of my time dealing with numbers. I'm much more interested in humanistic issues, which is why I went into. I already knew when I was in junior high devouring every book in the Houston Library that Egyptologies claim what I wanted to be. And so I didn't even get a chance to pick out my own university. I was told by my father I was going to Rice because he went to Rice and because that was where I would get the best engineering degree. And so I became an immediate disappointment when I got there and took a psychology degree instead. And I did that on purpose because psychology had the least number of required courses and you could do a psychological interpretation of almost anything. So I took a whole series of medieval courses which I could then do a psychological interpretation of and Jungian psychology which actually used Egyptian ideas and made reference to Egyptian texts. So long story short, I was able to shift my medieval work to do Coptic things. And by the time I was a senior undergraduate I already had an article in print on the influence of Coptic Egyptian monks on medieval Ireland. And that allowed me to get into the University of Chicago pretty much against my parents will and go on to do Egyptology. I had to be self supporting because they weren't going to pay for it. And fortunately for me, I had a younger brother and he took over the family business. So that got me off the hook. But my parents were not accepting of my profession until 1975 I think it was, when there was the large Tutankhamun exhibit here and there were lines around the block at the Field Museum and I was able to walk them all the way ahead of the line and write in and give them a private tour. And then it became okay, that's awesome.

John Dehlin [00:19:43] I love that story. Before we jump to RFM's question, just one more quick question. Tell us about your training in the field of Egyptology. Just a brief kind of overview like who'd you study with and kind of what were the main things you did a thesis or dissertation on and anything that we should know about your training that could tie into Mormonism later. That will lead us to RFM's great question about how you first got introduced to became aware of the Book of Abraham.

Robert Ritner [00:20:23] Well, Egyptology at the University of Chicago was. It's changing now because the university is forcing us to push people out faster for economic reasons. But when I was going through there, the program, it was a four year program because you walk in, no one has hieroglyphs. It's not like you've learned hieroglyphs in high school. That's not taught. So you come in knowing absolutely nothing. And it takes two full years to learn. Even the basic stages of Middle Egyptian, which is just one of the multiple language phases of Egyptian that you need to know to be an Egyptian. You need to know Old Egyptian, Middle Egyptian, Late Egyptian, Demotic and Coptic. All of those, they have different grammar, different vocabulary choices and in some cases, and there are multiple scripts. So there is hieroglyphs which are like printing. There is hieratic, which is like our longhand, a cursive. And there's demotic, which is like shorthand. My specialty is actually demotic. That's from the Ptolemaic period, the time from Alexander the Great up until the Roman conquest. That's the time period in which, by the way, Joseph Smith papyrus was written.

John Dehlin [00:21:44] Tell us the years, tell us the years of kind of, you know, Egyptian kind of.

Robert Ritner [00:21:51] You're talking about 332 to 30 BC.

John Dehlin [00:21:56] So about. Did you say 300 BC?

Robert Ritner [00:21:59] 332 to 30 BC okay. And the Joseph Smith is somewhere around 100 BC somewhere fully in there. We keep arguing about exactly when it might be. Originally people were basing the date on that papyrus on the shape of. Because handwriting changes, handwriting school change over time. So you can judge a date by the way that people write their squiggles. If you try to read your aunt's handwritten postcards, you'll notice that older people have a different handwriting style than. Well, modern people don't have any handwriting style at all because they don't know how to do longhand. But that's used for dating. However, with that set of documents. There are also personal names that are in the text and that from genealogies that we can reconstruct from other documents belonging to them. Michael Kunin was able to show what their proper date range is. So we have a better date now. It was originally thought it was Roman date, but we now know it's Ptolemaic.

John Dehlin [00:23:07] So you're saying the approximate years somewhere around 100 BC of the papyra that Joseph acquired?

Robert Ritner [00:23:16] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:23:17] Okay, excellent.

Robert Ritner [00:23:20] Okay, so you get four years of classes that include multiple languages. You also have to learn history, art, culture, religion. I can tell you about what sandal styles are. I can tell you about the food techniques of ancient Egyptians. I can tell you all about their prayers. I can tell you about their economics. I've actually done mathematics in Egyptian. I had to learn how to do fractions. The Egyptians only use unit fractions except for 2/3 fractions, 5, 6. So every time you make a fraction you have to break it down into unit fractions which is pretty cumbersome. So it's really remarkable they were able to build pyramids with such accuracy because which they could do. And we have their surviving mathematical homework exercises, we have their school exercises, we know how they taught language. We have from Egypt almost everything you could imagine. So we have their literary tales and I've published those. I've done translations of Egyptian literature in a collection for Yale University when I was there. I've done translations of religious texts that are relevant to the Bible in a series called Context of Scripture where we actually lined up items that were biblical passages with something that was comparable or relevant in all the ancient Near Eastern languages. And I did a large chunk of the Egyptian ones in three volumes.

John Dehlin [00:25:04] Tell us any big name, you know, pillars in the field that were part of your training that you want to mention that are worth mentioning.

Robert Ritner [00:25:12] Well, my primary teacher was Klaus Baer and I actually became his replacement when Klaus became ill. He had a, he had a stroke. I was his hand picked successor as a graduate student to take over his courses and he was the, he was to have been the chief reader of my dissertation, but he didn't survive. And so Ed Winty, who was our specialist in Egyptian religion and a logical person also to work on with me, he was my chief reader for my

John Dehlin [00:25:50] dissertation and I'm guessing I know Klaus Baer will come into the Book of Abraham story later as we talk about it.

Robert Ritner [00:25:58] Well, that's the answer to RFM's question. It's because I had been the student of and successor of Klaus Baer and worked in religious texts. That's why I was. Someone reached out to me.

John Dehlin [00:26:13] So, rfm, please jump in with any follow up to the question you had for Robert.

RFM [00:26:18] Okay. And actually, because I've already heard the first part of his answer, which dates to 2002, I think that in order to keep this chronological, we should probably go back to perhaps Mormonism's most famous pupil of yours, Dr. Ritner, whose name is John Gee. He is known far and wide among many, if not most Mormons as the foremost Egyptologist who writes and presents frequently in defense of the authenticity of the book of the Mormon scripture called the Book of Abraham. And I understand that he was a student of yours at Yale, is that correct?

Robert Ritner [00:26:58] Well, the latter statement is true. He was a student of mine at Yale. I would not say he's the foremost person who comments on Book of Abraham.

RFM [00:27:12] Oh, I was just trying to say

Robert Ritner [00:27:13] within Mormon circles, from a Mormon perspective. Well, then I think Harry Muhlstein would have something to say about it.

John Dehlin [00:27:20] And we will talk in depth about Guy and Muhlstein later. So what I want to jump to now is doing a jump back into kind of early 19th century Egyptian slash US history and start talking kind of a bit about the chronology of the Book of Abraham, which predates the Book of Abraham. So, Dr. Ritner, if we could begin, tell us about the state of Egyptology in, let's just say the 1810s and 1820s. I've heard words like Egyptology mania or Egyptomania talk about, like what was going on in the field of archaeology, anthropology, Egyptology, and what would have led to some mummies and some scrolls showing up in Kirtland, Ohio in 1835.

History of Modern Egyptology

Robert Ritner [00:28:12] Okay, well, Egyptology, actually modern Egyptology, begins with the Napoleonic conquest of Egypt, the invasion of Egypt, because Napoleon brought not merely soldiers when he entered Egypt, but also a whole series of soldiers, scholars, usually referred to by the French term the savants. And these scholars were brought in to take records and make drawings of everything they could find in Egypt because it was an exotic country and Napoleon was fully intent on making it a French colony. And so these scholars recorded animal life, plant life, and for Egyptology's sake, they recorded every square inch of every major temple they could find. Some of those no longer exist. So this, this was. This then resulted in a multi volume set of books called the Description of, which are absolutely critical for us even to this day, because it records the state of monuments that are much more pristine than they are now. So that didn't take A while. That took a while for the book to actually appear. But what did immediately start appearing were things that the army was finding antiquities which the French were loading up and bringing back to France. But since they were at war at that point with England and Wellington, the major French ship was seized, was destroyed off the coast of Alexandria. Aboukir Frank Goddio has found the wreckage of the French fleet just recently in the waters there in the Mediterranean. But before it sank, the British unloaded for themselves all the major finds that the French were taking back from Egypt and they brought them back to Britain. That included a major stone that a French soldier had found reused in a fort and at the fort of Rosetta that now exists in the British Museum. But before it had been spirited away, copies were made, it was inked, and so impressions were made, and some of those made it back to France. And so you had British scholars, Thomas Young, and you had French scholar Francois Champollion studying these inscriptions. And Champollion was the one who in 1820s was able to make the first elements of decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs, because Napoleon was conquest of Egypt. Suddenly Egyptian themed items became all the rage in Paris. So there was even an elaborate sevura porcelain service that was created for the imperial court. And everyone was making neo Egyptian ideas. And Egyptian elements were also being inspired from. Had been picked up during the French Revolution as being something that was anti Christian. So they went to the Isis cult and there were fountains of Isis that were built in Paris with water spilling, squirting out of the breasts of the goddess. So there was the theme that Egypt was the new revolutionary sort of society that would start a new beginning. And that was true everywhere because of all the sudden influx of new Egyptian antiquities coming out of Egypt and now suddenly the first ability to begin to read it. So everyone was fascinated by that. But of course, the knowledge of being able to read in the 1820s in Paris would not have been available to anyone in the United States, and certainly not in the heart of the country. So anyone discussing Egyptian hieroglyphs in Kirtland, Ohio, or Chicago or even New York would know nothing, absolutely nothing about this.

John Dehlin [00:33:07] Got it? How would someone like a Michael Chandler, you know, I know that he acquired the, the mummies and the, and the papyru from, from someone else.

Robert Ritner [00:33:17] Well, let me, let me back up and give you the story you actually asked for. So Antonio Lebola was an agent for the French, who. He was an Italian soldier, but he was an agent for the French French for finding these antiquities. That were being brought back for the market in France. And roughly somewhere around 1820, he was on an excavation in the vicinity of Thebes. We don't know exactly where it was, either Thebes or nearby Thebes. And he seems to have acquired 11 mummies, which were then shipped back to Italy. He died in 1830, I believe. And then his heirs, in order to make money off of these mummies, because mummies were now being traded as objects for decoration, they were being ground up for medicine. There were so many cat mummies that were being brought up that they were used to fuel the trains in England in lieu of coal. And so they were. They were then shipped off to New York to find a buyer. And they ended up in the hands of a traveling salesman with Michael Chandler, who then exhibited them and marketed them. The mummies came also. Some of them would have papyri, the book of some of the dead, funerary papyri that were wrapped up with the mummy. And these mummies will slowly dwindle down in number as he traveled from New York to Philadelphia, New Orleans, and ultimately to Kirtland. And he was selling bits and pieces of them here and there. So there were four left when he got to Kirtland. And he was advertising them by claiming that in order to sell them, that these date from the time of the prophets. These go all the way back to biblical times. And here you can see the faces of Egyptians who will have talked to. To Joseph. No, this was his selling pitch because this ups the price, you know, and none of the mummies is ever going to be a, you know, a workman. You know, this is a pharaoh. This is the princess. This is. Because, of course, that also increases the value. And so, having told the assembled people of Ohio, as he had elsewhere, here are people who talk to Joseph, Then they look at him and say, oh, okay, they're linked to the patriarchs. And that is an interesting segue.

John Dehlin [00:36:25] So I guess there are these two things happening. There's just this fascination with all things Egyptian. Kind of like a pop culture almost phenomenon.

Robert Ritner [00:36:34] Absolutely, yes.

John Dehlin [00:36:35] And then there's all these people that care about the Bible. And if anyone's read the Old Testament, they would associate Moses, Abraham, and Joseph, meaning Joseph and the technicolor dreamcoat, Joseph, you know, one of the 12 sons of Jacob who became Israel. They would know those three names and they'd say, whoa, mummies in Egypt, that's Moses and Joseph and, you know, and Abraham. Right.

Robert Ritner [00:37:00] And that's all they would know.

John Dehlin [00:37:01] Yeah. About Egypt.

Robert Ritner [00:37:04] So, of course, so all I could actually tell you about Egypt is what you read in Genesis and Exodus, right?

John Dehlin [00:37:15] Yeah. Really quickly, I want to go just a tiny bit back to 1828, 9, 1830. One of the things that was really important about Joseph Smith, he starts out as a treasure digger with the Seer Stone, telling people he could find buried treasure by, I don't know, 1828. Let's just say that jig is up. He's, you know, he's in front of the court.

Robert Ritner [00:37:36] He's been torn and feathered. Yes.

John Dehlin [00:37:38] Yeah, lots of problems. He's run afoul of the law, but there's still a perception that he has these powers. Okay. When he comes up with the story for the Book of Mormon and the plates and Moroni and Nephi or whatever and the angels, he names Egyptian as the language that the golden plates were written on. And he doesn't just call it Egyptian. He calls it reformed Egyptian. Can you. Is there anything, any observation you have about, like, why he would have picked Egyptian as the language of the golden plates and if anything, like reformed Egyptian, if that has any meaning to you or if you even have any theories about, like, why he would have picked Egyptian as what was written on the plates or what that would have meant or if that would have even been possible, that Israelis, you know, people living in Jerusalem in 600 BC would be riding on golden plates in Egyptian.

Egyptian Language, the Book of Mormon, and Reformed Egyptian

Robert Ritner [00:38:38] Well, there's a long series of myths of Egyptians moving to the west or other peoples moving to the west. The Jews moving to the west, the lost tribes moving to the west. In my first article on Coptic influence on Ireland, I referred to a story that had been circulating in medieval Europe, that while the British were claiming in front of the papal court that they had priority on the British islands because they were descended from Brutus and wandering Trojans, the Scottish claimed that they were. Sorry, my dog is barking in the background.

John Dehlin [00:39:32] No problem. We're keeping it real

Robert Ritner [00:39:37] calm confinement. The Scottish position was that they were. Their nation was founded by traveling Egyptians who had fled west. And the Princess Scotia was the Egyptian queen who founded the Scottish throne. And that is where you got the name Scotland and this stone of Scone. So these wandering Egyptians created Scotland. So there was already in European notion, the idea of people coming from Turkey, people coming from Egypt and founding the civilizations farther to the west. It's a cultural link that gives them priority. So Egypt is a logical choice, because if you're going to go back, what is the earliest one you can get? Basically, Egypt is it. And in answer to your question, there is no such thing as reformed Egyptian. It's not a stage of any of the Egyptian languages. And I told you, though, we have multiple examples of them and that is not one of them. The final stage is Coptic, which is written with the Greek Alphabet and some signs for sounds the Greek doesn't have. I have seen the characters that are supposed to contain reformed Egyptian. They were even sent to me when I was a just starting my being a professor at Yale to see what my impression of them was. I think it was checking me out to see whether a good professor down the line for someone sent to me that is also foreshadowing. I don't know that to be true, but my response was, well, yes, some of these things look vaguely Egyptian. None of them are actual Egyptian. But the problem is when you have more than 5,000 hieroglyphic signs, more than 5,000, and you have cursive versions of that, which are reduced to squiggly lines that look sort of like Arabic or chicken scratches, and you can further reduce those into other little squiggles. For the demotic, which is like shorthand, it is almost impossible not to find a shape that can be said to look like some Egyptian sign. It's like finding images and clouds so I can throw sand on the floor and say, yep, that looks like the following word.

John Dehlin [00:42:26] Right, Right. Rfm. I want to tap on your expertise here as well in all your studies and in your just kind of best speculation, any idea why Joseph would have picked reformed Egyptian? As you know, the claim for the language in which the Book of Mormon golden plates were written.

RFM [00:42:48] Well, there's a couple of things. First off, I'm coming from my background as having been an avid apologist for the Book of Mormon and also, of course, the Book of Abraham some time ago. Two things. First off, Joseph Smith, through the Book of Mormon, identifies the characters on the plates as reformed Egyptian that originally they had written in Egyptian and a thousand years later, over the span of the Book of Mormon, that had been changed among them to a state that they called reformed Egyptian. Not that it was generally known as reformed Egyptian, but that's what the Nephites called it within the context of the Book of Mormon. So in that way, actually, from an apologetic point of view, I could see that as mirroring the development of the Egyptian language among the actual Egyptians from the hieroglyphs through, excuse me, the hieratic, the Demotic, perhaps even the Coptic, going from a much more complicated, difficult to render type of ideogram to things that are easier to draw, take less time, and are easier to do with the cursive. First off, what do you think about that, Dr. Ritner? Do you see any similarity between the way the Book of Mormon presents their changing of the script of Egypt that they claim to have had with the way things really happened among the Egyptians?

Robert Ritner [00:44:16] Well, the problem is the characters. As I recall them include some shapes that look like a capital C that look like printing, as well as more squiggled shapes, which is to say it mingles two different styles for Egyptian. And the Egyptians wouldn't have done that. They would have kept them separate. Either you're gonna have printing or you're gonna have longhand. But you wouldn't use one letter as one kind and another letter as another. So as a writing system, it is confused. It's not what one would actually kind would probably use. And none of those signs show a direct link from a development from what you would have before. I mean, it's like someone just free associated and. Okay, I'll just draw a series of squiggles starting from, I think upper left. It looks like a. If I think it's a C. If I remember, I haven't looked at this in more than five years. So. But it's like, okay, I'll start with something that's very simple and I will devolve it from that. And I could generate something like that too, but you wouldn't want to write with it. So this is something you could ask a specialist who works with thoughts of writing. But I teach writing all the time, and I think it would be. That wouldn't be a workable system.

RFM [00:45:52] Very good. The second part of my answer from John Dehlin is that even though I think that Egyptology has certainly.

Robert Ritner [00:45:58] Excuse me, can I jump back in one more thing?

RFM [00:46:00] Yeah.

Robert Ritner [00:46:01] I don't remember how many signs there were, but there seems to have been quite a lot of them. And the one thing that is happening in the Egyptian language is it's simplifying its script. So you go through these thousands in hieroglyphs and then by the time you reach Coptic, what they're doing is in order to write the Bible, they are now shifting to a purely phonetic writing. So you only have 20 something signs. So what they have done is simplifying. And so if they were going to go any farther, all they would do is further simplify. You wouldn't suddenly have more signs. And that's what they've got in the English Alphabet, wouldn't suddenly add extra letters because what will we use them for. So there is no reason why the script would actually be more complex after Coptic, after it had already shrunk down to its base number of limited signs. And there are in Coptic already sounds that were in the Greek which they adopted, which the Egyptians didn't even have. So there were some of these signs they didn't really use. So if anything, it would got. It would have gotten smaller. It certainly wouldn't gotten. Have gotten larger. So that's the answer to your question that absolutely wouldn't have been adopted because it's going in the wrong way. So there's your. There you go.

RFM [00:47:30] Okay, thank you. And the second part of my answer to what John Dehlin had asked is that I'm pretty sure that we're very clear that at least in Joseph Smith's mind, and it may have been in the larger community as well at the time that it was believed that Egyptian and Hebrew were related languages and that they were similar in some way. I think that today we understand they're very different kinds of languages with not really any connection between the two. But back.

Robert Ritner [00:47:55] No, actually they are.

RFM [00:47:57] They are.

Robert Ritner [00:47:58] They are related. Yes. Yeah. Egyptian and Hebrew are cousins. Egyptian is not Semitic, but it's called part of the Hamido Semitic or Afro Asiatic languages. So there are many, many, many words and grammatical features that are similar between Egyptian and Hebrew or Arabic or Ugaritic or Phoenician. There are a number of these Egyptians. Closest relative is Berber, which is the language that's spoken by some of the tribes in Libya, though it was actively suppressed by Muammar Gaddafi and was not allowed to be taught in schools. And there are no good grammars of it. And it's not well known.

RFM [00:48:54] And that's where we get our word barbarian from, isn't it?

Robert Ritner [00:48:58] Yes, it is.

RFM [00:48:59] Well, let me ask you this.

John Dehlin [00:49:01] Wait. Rfm. I just wanna. Just really quick, like, for those who don't believe that Joseph Smith received golden plates by an angel, then the only other thing to think about is he's sitting around thinking, okay, I'm gonna tell people that I got plates from an angel, but they're gonna ask me what the plates were written in. He's thinking about a Jewish family in Jerusalem. You know, the obvious answer would be, I think Hebrew. You know, so I'm just. I guess I'm just trying to say why in the world would he pick Egyptian and not Hebrew? Do you have any, you know, any idea about that? RFM or Dr. Ritner?

RFM [00:49:39] Well, according to the Book of Mormon. Okay, so going from its self explanation, they talk about the fact that they're Hebrew, so they do speak Jewish. But the Book of Mormon specifically states, states Dr. Ritner, that the reason they wrote in Egyptian on the plates was because of the lack of space. In other words, they could convey much more information on the plates through writing in Egyptian than they could in Hebrew. I'm wondering if, Dr. Ritner, number one, if that's true and number two, if it's not true, if that does play into the general idea of Joseph Smith's day, that actually one glyph in Egyptian could cover an entire paragraph or even paragraphs of meaning.

John Dehlin [00:50:21] Right?

Robert Ritner [00:50:22] Well, that is absolutely critical. And I did not know that he had stated that in the Book of Mormon, because that answers actually everything. So the simple answer to your question is yes, there was such a belief. That was the prevailing belief before Champollion made his discovery.

John Dehlin [00:50:44] Restate it. Restate it. Just for those who didn't get it or understand, the belief was, the belief

Robert Ritner [00:50:50] was that this is a belief that goes all the way back to the Roman period as Egyptian hieroglyphs were being forgotten, because the Roman government did not accept any documents in Egyptian language. So if you did a legal document, it had to be in Greek or Latin. In Egyptian, the Roman government wouldn't recognize it as being legally valid. So that and that and various other features. The Romans stopped supporting Egyptian temples so they wouldn't pay for the hieroglyphic sculptures. So the nature of the Egyptian language was lost over time. By the Byzantine period, no one really knew it any longer. So late speculators were trying to understand what these bizarre symbols were, which they no longer knew. And so what they thought they were were symbolic explanations. And late scholars, Byzantine scholars said that if you did the drawing of an eye that represented the all seeing power of God who. And then you could spill out an entire paragraph from one sign. And in the 1600s you had a scholar, Athanasius Kircher, who thought he could translate an obelisk that had been moved to Rome. And he produced pages of what this supposedly said on the basis of a handful of signs. And we now know that all it says is the king's name. But he managed to create all of this out of it because it was the assumption that each one of those little signs represented something like a paragraph. And that is absolutely critical for our understanding of what Joseph Smith did, as I was able to show in an article I produced online. And we can talk about that later.

John Dehlin [00:53:04] Thank you, Dr. Ritner. Thank you.

Robert Ritner [00:53:06] I did not know that. If I had known that, I would have certainly referenced it in my article. And I'm happy to know that now because that basically is absolutely the smoking gun that shows what.

John Dehlin [00:53:18] Yeah, it's brilliant. And that's rfm. That's why I couldn't do this interview without you. So thank you for helping me make sense of that.

Robert Ritner [00:53:26] But I also want us to tell you now that what's extremely important to understand is that. That's wrong. That the Egyptian script is primarily phonetic. The Egyptians have signs for single. It is generally assumed and stated that the Phoenicians invented the Alphabet. They did not. The Egyptians already had an Alphabet before anyone else. The thing is, the Egyptians didn't think that was enough. They didn't like just having an Alphabet. So they have signs that represent one sound, A, B, A, P. Then they have other signs that represent two consonants, other signs that represent three consonants, other signs that represent whole words. Which is closest to the idea of, you know, this is a whole concept, but it's only a word, not a whole paragraph. And then they have other signs because that, like all Semitic languages, Egyptian doesn't write vowels, Hebrew doesn't write vowels. So they would spell something like, imagine if I were writing the word baal, I would write bll. So how do you know if you're talking about Bill the person? Bull, the animal, or ball, the bouncy thing? And the only way you do that is you put an extra sign that gives you something that we call a determinative that gives you the range of meaning. So if it's bll, and it means Bill, the personal name, you put a seated man after it. If it means bull, the animal, you draw a bull. And if it. Now, these have no spoken value at all. So these are just extra values that give you the mental range of what it is. Or ball, you do a circle. Now, that's important actually, for the Book of Abraham because some of the signs that he read were actually determinatives, not even words. And so they actually had no spoken value at all.

John Dehlin [00:55:47] Got it.

Robert Ritner [00:55:48] But we'll get back to that at another time.

John Dehlin [00:55:52] Okay.

Robert Ritner [00:55:53] That's what's actually going on. So the whole idea that you read the whole paragraph. Absolutely wrong. Absolutely wrong.

John Dehlin [00:56:01] Got it.

Robert Ritner [00:56:02] So that's what Champollion knew, and that's what no one in the US could have known.

John Dehlin [00:56:09] Brilliant. Okay. So we know that Joseph claims to have this power to translate special languages. The Book of Mormon, he claims he can translate Egyptian. And then in 1830, I think this is important in Doctrine and Covenants. What is now Doctrine and Covenants Section 21 in Mormon scripture, which I believe is a revelation given on April 6, 1830, which all Mormons should know, is the date that the church was actually founded. What we have is in Doctrine and covenants section 21, sort of God telling Joseph Smith what his special powers are or what, why he's called to kind of lead. And what we find is it says, in D&C 21, 1, behold, there shall be a record kept among you, and in it thou shalt be called a seer, a translator, a prophet, an apostle of Jesus Christ, an elder of the church, blah, blah, blah. So it is super important to understand, I think, that the. One of the ways that Joseph Smith was able to get followers, to get a reputation, to have people sort of be enthralled with him as an individual, was that he claimed special powers. It used to be the seer stone and treasure digging, but eventually it was, hey, God allows me to translate languages. And it's there in the founding revelation of the church on April 6, 1830. Joseph is a translator, and his first major language, or at least one of the major languages, is Egyptian. So I just think that's important. So now, as we come forward, a bit about Michael Chandler, let's go ahead and jump back to that part of the story. Michael Chandler shows up in Kirtland. Now, this is going to be a bit of a spoiler because we're going to be getting to the ways that Joseph Smith and those who helped him got it wrong. What do you want to tell us about Michael Chandler coming to Kirtland and specifically what he brought. And then I want you to talk about what he was actually. What the things were that he was actually bringing, which again, is a spoiler to this whole conversation. But I think it's important to understand up front, what were the items that Joseph brought and what was the content of the scrolls in particular, just in general?

Joseph Smith Acquires the Mummies and Papyri

Robert Ritner [00:58:45] Okay, well, the mummies that he was bringing, at least from the evidence we have from the surviving priori, the mummies themselves are lost, or potentially lost. It's been argued that they were burned up in the Chicago fire. One of them may have gone to the Niagara Museum, in which case it's at the Emory Museum now. So it's a good candidate for being one of those. But these mummies are late mummies. They are Ptolemaic in date, probably, which means they could not be from the time of the Patriarchs, although Chandler was advertising them that way. Because of course they would sell. Now you're not going to get as much money for a mummy if you say it's from the time of Ptolemy Euergetes ii. Because who is going to know who that is, you know. But if you say it's from the time of Joseph, you're going to get a better deal. And Joseph and Michael Chandler is a traveling salesman who is there to make money. And he's been trying to sell these things, he's charging for people to see them and then hopefully sells them off. And the papyri that are with them are books of the dead. They are the normal things that are wrapped up with mummies which are their passports to eternity. Basically they are the documents that allow the deceased to get through the dangerous passageways in the underworld. Because in Egyptian religion, even if you've led a virtuous life after death, you confront as you move through the underworld, as your soul moves through the underworld, you have to go through gateways that are guarded by demons that challenge you to identify them. You have to know special names and powers and you have to be provided with foodstuffs. And if you're. Food offerings are required. If you don't have the food offerings, magical spells will provide the equivalent of them. So the Book of the Dead includes spells to give you nourishment in case you're descendants stop bringing offerings to the tomb. It's your backup. So everyone wanted these and they're extremely expensive. You spend a lot of your life savings to make one of these documents. There's scribal societies that make they're ready made in advance and then they go in and people's names. So they're often a stock thing. It's not something that you commission to do from beginning to end, although some wealthy people might be able to do that. But this, the Egyptians knew they would be living most of their life, they thought just like this earth, but in heaven. So you wanted everything you had in your Egyptian religion to back up is life affirming. Paradise is primarily just this same life, but without the illness, disease or pain. So what you want is to reproduce everything as much as possible. And you can put that in book form and with ritual spells to make that all happen. And that's what these critical books of the dead are.

RFM [01:02:51] Can I break in here for just a second?

Robert Ritner [01:02:53] They're amulets is what they are.

RFM [01:02:56] Right. Well, I was struck, Dr. Ritner, while you were talking about the purpose of the Book of the Dead, because of course there's the Book of the Dead, which we know now, John Key notwithstanding, my apologies to him if he's listening, that this is the scroll that was used the Book of the Dead, in order to translate into the text of the Book of Abraham. That much I've got. Right so far, correct?

The Book of Breathing and Its Connection to the Book of Abraham

Robert Ritner [01:03:22] Well, if you want to be really technical, and this is super technical, the document that was used for the Book of Abraham, as I see it, and as the woodcuts would seem to establish, is actually something called a Book of Breathing, which is a different. It's a different kind of document. It's a derivative of. Of the earlier Books of the Dead.

RFM [01:03:49] Is that the same text?

Robert Ritner [01:03:50] There are books. Our Book of Dead is the second text.

RFM [01:03:54] Alright, but they're similar, is that correct?

Robert Ritner [01:03:56] They are. They're similar and they're precisely similar in purpose. And the Book of Breathings is just a late development, which is a replacement for the older Book of the Dead.

RFM [01:04:11] Okay, very good.

Robert Ritner [01:04:12] One develops into the other. So it's part of the same series of ritual texts and funerary prayers that's derived from concepts in the Book of the Dead. So as a. If you take Book of the Dead as a general broad category, the answer is yes. So earlier scholars would have lumped that in with the Book of the Dead

RFM [01:04:34] and the Book of Breathing.

Robert Ritner [01:04:35] We now take it as a separate book, but it's still part of that same concept of sequence.

RFM [01:04:42] Is that also called a Sin sen Manuscript?

Robert Ritner [01:04:44] Yep. And is sensing Egyptian word for breathing.

RFM [01:04:48] Right.

Robert Ritner [01:04:49] So it's the shot in sin. Sin, which means the Book of Breathing. So when we call it the Book of Breathing, it's because that's what the Egyptian title is. That's on those examples that actually have a label. That's the label.

RFM [01:05:03] Okay. So having said that much, it's basically a Book of the Dead, but more specifically Book of Breathing. So you've already described the purpose of that. And the Book of Abraham is linked to the Book of the Dead. The Book of Abraham text, at least facsimile 2, is linked to the Temple because a number of those figures are not actually translated. But that's just said the meaning of this will be revealed in the Temple. You remember those explanations, right, Dr. Ritner?

Robert Ritner [01:05:30] Well, facsimile two is something completely different.

RFM [01:05:33] It is from a different manuscript though, correct?

Robert Ritner [01:05:36] Yeah, it's not actually even a manuscript, it's a different object.

John Dehlin [01:05:39] And we'll be digging into the facsimiles in detail in a bit.

RFM [01:05:44] I'm so sorry. Because here's what I'm leading Toward, in my clumsy way, Dr. Vitner, is Brigham Young, who is, of course, Joseph Smith's successor. In a famous speech, he gave a definition of the temple ritual, the Mormon temple ritual, which we call the endowment. And this is what he said the purpose of the endowment was. And anybody who's been through the temple to receive their endowment will recognize that this is an accurate description of what goes on there. But the reason that struck me is because it sounded so similar to what you were saying is inscribed on the Book of the Dead. Here it is. Ready, one paragraph. Your endowment. This is Brigham Young speaking. Your endowment is to receive all those ordinances in the house of the Lord which are necessary for you after you have departed this life to enable you to walk back to the presence of the Father. Now, here's the interesting part. Walk back to the presence of the Father, passing the angels who stand as sentinels, being enabled to give them the key words, the signs and tokens pertaining to the holy priesthood, and gain your eternal exaltation in spite of earth and hell. Period, end of quote from Brigham Young. Does that sound at all like what's on the Book of the Dead? Because it kind of sounded similar to me. What's your take on that, Dr. Ritner?

Robert Ritner [01:07:06] Well, you're asking me to speculate on things that are outside my specific area of competence. But having said that, yes, if you simply look at. Now, this is Papyrus number two, the Tashomen text, where you have. There is a series of vignettes, and vignette is just a fancy French word for picture pictures that illustrate many of these spells which show the gateways and show the demon forces, including the snake walking on human legs, which was of interest to the scribes of Smith because they copied it in the curtain papers several times in those manuscripts. And it's referred to elsewhere. That's another story. But there are guardian figures in there and gates which are immediately recognizable even to the modern eye as a gate, and an angelic demonic guardian next to it, and the standing figure of the tomb owner talking to the person. So, you know, I can look at that picture and, you know, I can hand that to a third year, you know, third grader and say, what's going on there? And they can say, it's a person having a conversation with some weird spirit at a gateway. This would be immediately recognizable to anyone of any intelligence level, whether modern or ancient. You wouldn't need to read the text or even know anything about the manuscript to know that much. Does that question.

RFM [01:08:51] Well, it opens it up to Me the way what I told you about the Book of Mormon opened it up to you. Because if I'm understanding you correctly, the Endowment Ceremony itself, at least this part about which is the important part, it's the pinnacle moment in the Endowment Ceremony where you have to give keywords and tokens and passwords to an angel who's standing as a sentinel for you to enter into a representation of heaven in the temple, the celestial room. If I'm understanding you correctly, then maybe that actually could have been derived just from the iconography or the pictures on the papyrus that Joseph Smith had in his possession. Is that what you're saying?

Robert Ritner [01:09:30] Well, obviously, I have no idea what was going on in Brigham Young's mind, but, yes, I think that's entirely possible.

John Dehlin [01:09:38] And viewers and listeners will be able to get a better sense of this when we actually talk about the facsimiles, we can actually look at these images, and then people will have a visual sense of what we're talking about as well.

Robert Ritner [01:09:53] If I thought this was a foundational document and that it represented insights into heaven, which is what the Egyptians intended to be anyway, and I had it in my possession, or I had looked at it and I was told that this is where revelation would come from, then those observations are exactly what I would pull from it. I mean, that would be a reasonable prophetic use of this document.

RFM [01:10:23] Well, the reason I'm excited about this. I'm going to duck into the background here in a second, John. Don't worry about it. But I think that actually we are making some. We're doing some groundbreaking stuff here and getting new and additional insights into maybe how it was that the temple endowment was created by Joseph Smith with. With a lot of help from the Masons, of course. But. But anyway, I'll duck out. And.

John Dehlin [01:10:46] Yeah, I was gonna. I was. My thought when you were asking rfm, was. And I don't want you to duck out. I just want to make sure we don't cover things twice. But, but my. My wondering was that if. If in some way the. There was Egyptian influence in the Masonic ceremony, that then would have then filtered into the Mormon Temple ceremony. And I'm just totally speculating.

Robert Ritner [01:11:10] There's a great deal of Masonic influence in terms of iconography, because the Masons picked up on the Egyptomania of the Napoleonic era, and Masonic temples to this day are wonderful romance repositories of Egyptian ideas. And here I should make a personal remark. My ancestor was governor of Pennsylvania on the anti Masonic party, which is no longer with us, but Governor Joseph Ritner before, just before the Civil War was a. I don't even know what his religious beliefs were. I assume he's coast Catholic because they were the anti Masonic people. But I have toured the Masonic lodge in Philadelphia which is one of the most wonderful recreations of ancient Egyptian temple space I've ever seen. And I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to see what Egyptian designs look like. I'm not anti Masonic, I'm not a Mason. But I noticed when I was there, there they had a card file on Masons and I'm flipping through and it said Joseph Ritner, not a Mason in bold letters. So I was visiting under a different name. Apparently they haven't forgotten my ancestors, so I'm sorry. So there is, there is certainly a Masonic possibility.

John Dehlin [01:12:58] Excellent. So yeah, if Egyptian, apparently we just

Robert Ritner [01:13:02] don't do well with other religions since I come from a family of debunkers.

John Dehlin [01:13:10] Right. Well, there's, you know, everything's remix. You know, we just have multi generational influences. And it's certainly very possible that Egyptian relics or writings or fables or stories influenced the Masonic ceremony, which then influences.

Robert Ritner [01:13:28] Well, it's questionable, but again, it's a good foundational myth. The Rosicrucians want to be ancient Egyptians as well. So there are multiple societies that claim to have a basis in surviving ancient Egyptian rituals and motifs. And that's also true of the mummy movies because of course the mummy is being kept alive by the secret group of ancient Egyptian priests who are still with us, supposedly. Well, you'd be hard pressed to find one. I'd like to meet one.

John Dehlin [01:13:58] Excellent, great point, Arfim. Thanks for bringing that up. So you've established that these scrolls are books or artifacts that are commonly in this time period buried with mummies because they're going to be used in some way in their afterlife. Is that an okay summation?

Robert Ritner [01:14:21] It is a primary gift for them for their afterlife.

John Dehlin [01:14:26] Okay. So I think it bears mentioning something really important and that's the dates. So Dr. Ritner, if we had to estimate an approximate year or era when Abraham would have lived, and I have to even state that even, you know, even Jewish scholars will admit that there's a big question mark as to whether, you know, characters, Adam and Eve and Abraham and Moses even really existed. And we talk about this in our David Bacavoi interview. So one problem we have with the Book of Abraham is Abraham may not have ever existed. But then a second really big problem. You have the Book of Abraham, the dates so, Dr. Ritner, what's your understanding of when Abraham might have lived, if he had ever lived?

Abraham's Historical Context and Timeline

Robert Ritner [01:15:14] Well, since we have no historical records outside of the Bible for his existence, that becomes a problem. And so then the question is, where do you locate the time period that would be likely for people moving from Canaan into Egypt? And there have been a couple of different suggestions. I personally favor the explanation that was provided by the Egyptians themselves, which is the Egyptian historian Manetho, who was writing in the Ptolemaic period. In other words, roughly the same time as these papyri were being made. And he explained the biblical stories because he knew them. He was a historian writing for the Library of Alexandria. He was writing the history of Egypt. And so he had to deal with the Exodus. And he claimed that these Exodus stories were linked to the invasion of Egypt by the Hyksos, which was in what we now call the second intermediate period. And we're talking roughly around 1700 BC.

John Dehlin [01:16:31] Okay, so the number I had and that RFM just texted me was 2000 BCE. You're putting it around 1700, so a couple millennia. And I think we've already established that you date these papyri to around 100 BCE. Is that right?

Robert Ritner [01:16:47] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:16:49] So it's pretty hard to even make the claim that. That Abraham. That these papyri were written by the very hand of Abraham when they were actually written somewhere between 1600 and when they date to 16 to 1900 years after Abraham would have lived if Abraham had ever lived there.

Robert Ritner [01:17:10] That is so certainly true that even the apologists recognized that. And that's why they've had to say, well, okay, the original was written, but this is a copy. Okay, but there is. There is not a chance whatsoever that that text, that lang. That script it's written in did not even exist at the time of the Hyksos. They didn't even have those shapes of squiggles. So we can be 100% certain that it could not, under any circumstances, have been written at the time of whenever you want to make Abraham, assuming you want to make an Abraham at all,

John Dehlin [01:17:57] because the language hadn't evolved yet to where it had evolved by one.

Robert Ritner [01:18:01] The language or the script. Yeah, exactly. Or this manuscript, which didn't exist till much later, because, as I said, it's a late derivation of the Book of the Dead. All these things say late, late, late, late, late. I mean, there is no wiggle room. Zero. None. Not any. Not even a tiny iota. Impossible. And even if you play with Abraham and say, no, he was Instead, under the beginning of the new kingdom, which is where he's also been put, then you're only moving it to 1300 BC, which you're still to your thousand years away, more than a thousand years away. So under any scenario, no matter how weird you want to make it, and no matter how desperate, and I use that word with intent, you, you, you make your argumentations. It can never be anything more than absolutely ridiculous. I hope I made that clear.

RFM [01:19:07] Yes. So you're saying there's a chance.

Robert Ritner [01:19:09] Yeah. Right. If you are hallucinating and absolutely mentally

RFM [01:19:15] insane, I'll try not to take that personally. But just. This is actually not a challenge to what you're saying. But just to clarify, what it is you're already talking about is that in the history of the Church, it talks about the Book of Abraham. And this language is in the heading at the beginning of the Book of Abraham in the LDS scriptures, where it describes it as the writings of Abraham while he was in Egypt, called the Book of Abraham, written by his own hand upon papyrus. That's how it's described, that it's written by his own hand. And that's the difficulty that apologists have to try and work their way around with that particular issue.

John Dehlin [01:19:54] And I'm showing that introduction of the 1981 edition of the Book of Abraham. And yeah, we'll come back to this as well. But that's a super important point.

Robert Ritner [01:20:09] Well, there's also a point in the slide you just quickly showed because there's a change from what the Book of Abraham actually said to what the 2013 description says.

John Dehlin [01:20:21] Did you want to.

Robert Ritner [01:20:21] You will notice it's gone from a translation to an inspired translation. And that is a very big difference.

John Dehlin [01:20:30] Right? Yeah. And we'll totally come back to that. And the apologetic arguments around, as I

Robert Ritner [01:20:37] remember looking at the manuscript, the word inspired is not there.

John Dehlin [01:20:43] Yeah. Just while we're on the topic of timeline, rfm, if you'll just jump in on this question, as I understand some of the content in the actual Book of Abraham. And again, we'll come back to this. But Abraham's talking about things clearly from Genesis. And even Genesis hadn't been written, you know, back in 2000 BCE. Is that right? RFM?

RFM [01:21:08] No, that's an interesting point. If you're gonna go with the historical figure with a question mark next to it of Abraham living at 1800-2000 BC and writing in chapter two, and I think four and five Abraham about Genesis material. I think typically David Bacavoy would back me up. That scholars generally agree that that was probably written maybe around 600 BCE. So, yeah, that would have been a long time after Abraham lived for him to be writing the Book of Genesis, which had not been written yet and probably wouldn't be for another thousand years.

John Dehlin [01:21:45] It's kind of like writing Harry Potter fanfiction before J.K. rowling releases.

RFM [01:21:52] Yes, but of course you got to understand that according to the basic fundamentalist worldview that Joseph Smith had, it was Moses who wrote Genesis and therefore Abraham coming after Moses would be able to reference it chronologically. It's only when studies have developed to the point that they have now that we can see that that doesn't really make sense on a regular timeline.

Robert Ritner [01:22:15] Yeah, well, the same argument is applicable to the book of Exodus and for phrases and terms that are in the book of Abraham. Specifically the name Potiphar, which comes out of the book of Exodus and is in the Joseph story. You have in Book of Abraham a reference to the so called hill of Potiphar. Potiphar is an Egyptian name that is only occurring in the later period, post New Kingdom.

RFM [01:22:47] What year is that? Post New Kingdom?

Robert Ritner [01:22:51] Eight hundreds, Six hundreds, Somewhere in there. Seven hundreds. In other words, what I'm telling you now is that scholars have to date the book of Exodus. It had to have been composed no earlier than 700 BC because it has anachronisms in there that couldn't have existed. No Egyptian would have been named Potiphar before what we call the Libyan period in Egypt, which is one of my periods of specialization. The Berber period in Egyptian, Potiphar is PA di PA Ra, the one whom Pare has given. And that has a grammatical construction that wasn't possible and wasn't used as a personal name until around 700 BC. And so it's a distinctly Egyptian name, it's in a distinctly Egyptian place, and it's grammatically only possible at this time period, like the script, which means there is not a chance, same level of absolutely wrong, that the book of Exodus can date from a patriarch who lived at the time it claims.

RFM [01:24:21] Got it. And just to put a fine point on this, Dr. Ritter, your reference.

Robert Ritner [01:24:26] I've just said fundamentalism is possible.

RFM [01:24:29] Right. And I just wanted to make sure it's clear to the audience that you're referencing Abraham, chapter 1, verse 1:20, where it says, behold, Potiphar's hill was in the land of Ur of Chaldea. And if I'm understanding you correct, that's

Robert Ritner [01:24:42] also absurd because for another reason, and that's there is not if Potiphar is out of time. Anachronistically, putting an Egyptian name in Ur of the Chaldees is absurd. Absurd geographically, because there is no way there would have been such a thing wherever you put Ur of the Chaldees. And my colleague who is now my director of my institute, a senior Sumerian scholar, did a chapter in my volume because I asked him to, to discuss Ur of the Chaldees. There are two Urs that are possible. One is in Mesopotamia and the other is near Haran. But neither place would an Egyptian place name be there. And under no circumstances. I want to emphasize that with as many exclamation points as I could possibly do. Never would you have an Egyptian priest functioning there doing sacrificial rites in Ur. Wherever you put Ur. Never would happen. And the Egyptians didn't do human sacrifice anyway. And the picture isn't of a sacrifice. So everything about that, as we will eventually get to, is just a fantasy built on a fantasy built on a misunderstanding built on ignorance, built on not understanding anything whatsoever. Nothing built on a misunderstood and wrongly reconstructed drawing on a torn papyrus which they didn't understand how to restore. So the drawing is ultimately a fabrication and everything spun off of it is a lie on a lie on ignorance. I hope that was clear.

John Dehlin [01:26:40] It was.

RFM [01:26:41] Can I pursue this just a little bit further, John, since you're on this issue of Ur? It's my understanding, having been involved in the Book of Abraham apologetics for some time and reading a lot of stuff that was written, including by Hugh Nibley as well as John Key, two proposals for Ur, and there's one that's way south and then there's one that's much further north, the one that you mentioned as being near Haran. And it seems to me that John Gee and other Mormon apologists are really trying hard to favor the northernmost Ur, specifically because at or around the time of Abraham, when the Egyptian empire had its widest influence, it actually extended up and east toward that area. So they can try and justify the Book of Abraham talking about there being this Egyptian presence, an Egyptian priest in Ur of the Chaldees going with the northern Ur at that specific time period. Is that your understanding of their argument and do they have a good argument there?

Robert Ritner [01:27:39] It is my understanding of their argument and it's ridiculous. At the height of Egyptian political control under the native pharaohs, Egypt never controlled beyond the Orontes river, which is to say you are basically south of Nazi modern Antakya, ancient Antioch, which was in Syria, but it's now politically in Turkey, Harran is higher up, way north of that. And out of that territory, they never got there. Okay, so even under the Ptolemaic army, where Egyptian control was a little broader, it never had Iran. So at no time, at no time did the Egyptian state control Iran.

RFM [01:28:49] So no matter where you put Ur, either north or south, then according to my. Yeah, the Book of Abraham would be

Robert Ritner [01:28:56] incorrect about talking about Cleveland.

RFM [01:29:03] So the Book of Abraham would be

Robert Ritner [01:29:04] wrong about the likelihood of an Egyptian priest conducting a ritual in Haran is the same as an Egyptian priest conducting it in Cleveland.

John Dehlin [01:29:18] So. So for those who are listening and you know, we basically said, you know, the problems, some of the core problems of the Book of Abraham, Abraham may not existed. If he existed, he existed, oh, you know, 1700 to 1900 years before this would have been written. I even wonder whether was he a sheep herder? Like, I don't know what his occupation was, but could he have traveled to Egypt and learned Egyptian and then written it in the short period of time he was in Egypt? Like, what's the chances of that happening, Dr. Ritner?

Robert Ritner [01:29:57] Well, the Hyksos period that I mentioned, there were large Canaanite populations who had moved into Egypt. And we now know from studies of dentition and the DNA that we're actually getting from bodies in the delta, which is to say the northeastern section of Egypt, that there was a large scale migration this period of people out of Canaan into Egypt. They settled there, they brought with them their Canaanite ways. So yes, there were populations that were moving into Egypt during periods of famine and they were settling there. And to a certain extent they were Egyptianizing and they would have learned how to speak Egyptian, whether. I think it's highly doubtful they would have learned how to write Egyptian because even the Egyptians rarely wrote Egyptian. Reading and writing required intensive schooling in an Egyptian temple. 99% of the population, as we currently guess, couldn't read and write. We currently assume only 1% of the population could read and write.

John Dehlin [01:31:16] And certainly not Abraham showing up in Egypt from a foreign country.

Robert Ritner [01:31:22] No shepherd is going to write at all. That's not possible unless you are a member of an elite ranking family, upper middle class. At the minimum, you couldn't write and you had to be trained in a priestly school, which means you had to be apprenticed into the temple.

John Dehlin [01:31:43] Right.

Robert Ritner [01:31:44] Shepherds aren't apprenticed into the temple.

John Dehlin [01:31:48] And if this evidence isn't enough for you to start to wonder about the Book of Abraham, dear listeners and viewers, if I'm reading from the Church's own Book of Abraham essay, which we're going to go to in depth later. I'm reading directly from it. These fragments date between the 3rd century BCE and the 1st century BCE long after Abraham lived. That's the Church's own acknowledgement now and even a more devastating blow. And Dr. Ritner, I want you to confirm this, and this might be one of the most devastating blows of all. The Church's own Book of Abraham essay says none of the characters on the papyrus fragments mentioned Abraham's name or any of the events recorded in the Book of Abraham. Mormon and non Mormon Egyptologists agree that the characters on the fragments do not match the translation given in the Book of Abraham. So I mean, if you wanted sort of like the most obvious hit you over the head acknowledgement, the Church itself is basically saying that the content, the substance of these papyra never mentioned the word Abraham anywhere and don't have anything to do with Abraham or anything written that Joseph claimed to have translated into the book of Abraham. Dr. Ritner, do you confirm that?

Robert Ritner [01:33:04] Absolutely. This was something that was recognized already in the 60s. As soon as the papyri were rediscovered and placed in front of Aziz Astia at the Metropolitan and then given over to the Church immediately Hugh Nibley began to recognize that from his work that he did, and subsequently with Klaus Baer, he knew what this text actually said and that it did not say anything of the sort, which led to a variety of explanations as to why not, you know, where was the text? Was this the text is translation, the right word, Splitting hairs over the word translation, trying to explain where the missing manuscript was, try to account for why it says the illustration is right next to the text. Except there was supposed to be a missing manuscript that would then be in between, but it can't possibly be there. So that doesn't make any sense either. But we'll try this explanation, that explanation, some other explanation, and all of it is grappling with the simple fact that we have the text, which is precisely the same as the illustration. The text translations by Smith references that illustration as being the document we now have, the document we can read, which no one could at the time. He owned it. We can now read every single jot and squiggle on there, every single word. And Abraham is nowhere there. And in fact there is nothing on there that, you know, the only thing that might dovetail with that text is the word the. I can find the word the.

John Dehlin [01:35:02] Oh, it's so beautiful. It's just funny. Thank you. Well, this has been fantastic so far, Dr. Ritner and RFM. I think it's been really interesting to sort of set the context for, you know, our deeper discussion of the Book of Abraham. And to be honest, it seems like what we've already shown, which concludes with the Church admitting that the papyrus has nothing whatever to do with Abraham at all, probably should be the end of the story, should be the end of the discussion. It's like none of this happened. The Book of Abraham was made up and end of story. But interestingly, that's not how Mormon history went. Instead of we have this incredible history of the Church trying to explain away, well, we have the issue of these documents being destroyed. We have the issue of or allegedly destroyed and then refound. We have the issue of Egyptologists over many time periods debunking the Book of Abraham. And then we have the resurgence of some of these documents in the 1960s and then just decades of, of apologetic acrobatics trying to save the Book of Abraham from being something that sort of torpedoes Joseph Smith and with it the entire restoration. And so, even though logic says case closed already, it's super important that we go a lot deeper and really talk about in depth the problems with the Book of Abraham and most importantly, the problems with the Church's apologetics. And I think that's something, Dr. Ridner, that you feel very passionately about. Because while I don't think you care what people believe in terms of religious beliefs, I think you have a lot of respect for people's religious beliefs. I think you really take issue with shoddy scholarship or dishonest scholarship or unethical or misleading scholarship. Is that fair to say, Dr. Ritner?

Robert Ritner [01:37:03] Yes, exactly. It's not my business to debunk people's religion. That's not why I was involved with this. I was asked to read a papyrus and I read a papyrus. My concern is that if you're going to discuss this document, you discuss the document accurately. And that's where I feel I have a role to play, is that I can tell you what it is says. And when there are contortions that are made to try to make it say something else, then my scholarly sense is offended.

John Dehlin [01:37:39] I love it. And because we're kind of starting and maybe a bit of a new section of this interview, I'm just going to mention, as we want to in every section, and this will come out of left field for someone just joining us, it is really important that we note that Dr. Ritner, aside from his love for Egyptology and truthful scholarship. We are taking advantage of this historic moment of him coming on Mormon Stories and Radio Free Mormon to also provide our listeners with the opportunity to do something very historic and altruistic, which is that Dr. Ritner is facing kidney failure. He is in need of a living donor to secure his life and continued research. And we're inviting any and all of our listeners to spread the word. If you can help, please contact Dr. Dana McLean, Northwestern Medicine transplant coordinator atXXX-XXX-XXXX. Living donors save lives. I'm just going to mention that multiple times during this episode, thanks to anyone who heeds this call or spreads the word so that we can help save Dr. Ritner's life and prolong it so that he can do as much research as possible. So I just have to throw that in. Okay, so with that, what I want to do now. So we in our chronology, Dr. Ritner, Michael Chandler comes to Kirtland in 1835. He's saying he's already tying, you know, the Old Testament and Moses and Abraham and Joseph to these papyra. Joseph says, let's buy them. I think he buys two mummies and two scrolls. Is that right, Dr. Ritner?

Robert Ritner [01:39:15] I think so. I have to go back and refresh my mind.

John Dehlin [01:39:17] Rfm, is that right? Two mummies and two scrolls.

RFM [01:39:20] I think two mummies, four scrolls. But you got some mummies and some Skrulls.

Robert Ritner [01:39:24] Okay, so mummies, we have certainly four documents. So, yes.

John Dehlin [01:39:27] Okay. And so Joseph gets those. And doesn't he immediately pronounce what they are? Rfm, is that right?

RFM [01:39:36] I don't know if it's immediately, but I think it's soon after, if not immediately, that indeed the writings are on these scrolls are writings of Abraham and also of Joseph.

John Dehlin [01:39:47] Yeah. He basically says, as I remember in my studies, it's a scroll of Abraham and a scroll of Joseph. Does that sound right?

RFM [01:39:55] Yes. But he only, to our knowledge, got at least partway through his translation, which is what he called it, of the book of Abraham. And nobody knows, seems to know that if he ever got anywhere with the book of Joseph.

Robert Ritner [01:40:10] My assumption is that the book of Joseph is the story of Kathumen that never was finished. And we can look at that in a minute.

RFM [01:40:18] That'll be great.

John Dehlin [01:40:19] And we also should note, referencing our recent interview on the Joseph Smith translation, that he had already started the book of Moses. Right. Rfm, with his attempt to retranslate a more inspired version of the Holy Bible. Is that right?

RFM [01:40:35] Right. Yes, he started that in June of 1830.

John Dehlin [01:40:38] So he couldn't very well name one of the scrolls Moses because he had already. Moses had already been taken in a previous translation exercise.

RFM [01:40:48] Well, that's true, because you're dealing with a limited number of patriarchs and Bible personalities who already have a pre established connection with Egypt and therefore who, logically, at least in Joseph Smith's mind, would have writings represented on scrolls found in Egypt with Egyptian mummies.

John Dehlin [01:41:06] Right, okay. So he gets these scrolls and he begins a translation process. We wanna come back to this because, you know, at the time the church members were dealing with this stuff, they didn't know anything about the details. And we kind of wanna reveal this chronologically as the public was made aware. So without digging into the Kirtland Egyptian papers and all those things. Dr. Ridner, RFM, is there anything we want to do to set the listeners up for just understanding what was produced, when it was produced? I know that it was important to at least Brian Hoglid to note that part of the Book of Abraham was sort of translated in 1835 and then part of it was translated later in the Nauvoo time period. Is that right, Arfim?

RFM [01:41:59] Right. 18:35, which is up through Abraham, chapter two, verse 18, and the balance being translated in early 1842 in Nauvoo, and then it was printed in the church newspaper starting, I think in March of 1842.

John Dehlin [01:42:14] And then eventually it gets incorporated into Mormon scripture. Right, right.

RFM [01:42:18] I think that was around 1860 or so.

John Dehlin [01:42:22] Yeah. So a couple decades later it's actually brought into the canon along with the Book of Mormon and the doctrine and covenants, etc. Right, right. Okay. So let's actually begin with facsimile one, because I think that's a really reasonable and fun place to begin. Now, I know that most of my the consumers of our podcasts only consume this in audio form, but having said that in RFM, I know your podcast isn't yet on YouTube or Facebook, but we are providing visuals because we think it's going to help. Hopefully those of you who are tuning in via audio will still be able to understand this conversation. But if you really want to get the most from it, you'll want to switch to YouTube or Facebook where we're actually providing video. And so with that, what I'm going to put on the screen is facsimile one, which is what, you know, one of the first things that was produced. And Dr. Ritner, take it away as you want to take us through what was produced. But then go back and talk to about what the origin texts actually were and what they said.

Examining Facsimile 1 and Its Egyptian Meaning

Robert Ritner [01:43:32] Well, what you're looking at as copied shows you a. Well, let's see where to start. The prominent feature is a bed. I think I can all recognize it's a bed. It's in the shape of a lion. You can see a lion's head on the right hand side. It has lion's feet and a lion's tail coming out on the far left hand side, there is a body lying on that with his legs up in the air. And he's shown with two hands held up in front of his face. And the reason why they are presumably there is because there is a dark figure standing above him. The body is dark, though, weirdly, the head is white. It doesn't match. And that figure has one arm holding a knife so that the body on the bed would appear to be warding off the blow of an attack. Above the body's head is a floating bird. Flying bird. Below the bed there are four jugs with different heads. A human head. That should be a baboon head, a jackal head and a hawk head. Those are correctly done. And at the head end of the bed, there is an altar with flowers and wine jugs. Next to it, below the line of all of that as a baseline, there's a zigzag of water with a crocodile shown. And at the base of all of that is a series of what would look to modernize like just a series of rectangles with little rectangles inside of them, which is known as the niched bricking motif. As a standard feature of Egyptian design that goes all the way back to the most archaic period and is from interconnections between Egypt and Sumer as a part of brick architecture, which is just used as a baseline design in Egyptian art.

John Dehlin [01:46:13] And if it hasn't already occurred to the listeners, feel free to. If you don't have the YouTube video available, feel free to pull out your own standard works and turn to the book of Abraham and the facsimiles that are there, rfm, if you want to tell them where to go. I think they probably know, right?

RFM [01:46:30] I assume that they do, but I will let them know that that's not gonna really do the whole trick because starting with the next slide, you're gonna see things you're not gonna find in your scriptures and you would never know about if you only went by the

John Dehlin [01:46:40] scriptures and rfm tell us, just like in a one sentence, what is basically Joseph Smith claiming that this image is.

RFM [01:46:49] Well, what this image is is the crisis.

John Dehlin [01:46:51] According to Joseph.

RFM [01:46:53] It's the crisis point of the entirety of chapter one of the book of Abraham, when Abraham is being sacrificed by the priest of Elkanah, who is going to sacrifice him. And Abraham cries to the Lord for deliverance. And the angel of the Lord represented in Figure 1 comes down and delivers him at this moment and smites the altar, smites the priest, and Abraham is able to make a getaway and continue his journeys on.

John Dehlin [01:47:24] So that's Abraham on the bed about to be sacrificed.

RFM [01:47:28] Right. And those four Canopic jars below him, he identifies as four idolatrous gods. He identifies the crocodile as the God of Pharaoh. And then that's about everything that I probably should say here. And the bird, the bird, that's the angel of the Lord coming down to save him when he cries for help.

John Dehlin [01:47:48] Okay. All right, so Back to you, Dr. Ritter. Let's go back to the source text, shall we?

Robert Ritner [01:47:55] All right, so for those of you who can see the image, here is what actually survives. This is the real papyrus. This is the papyrus that Joseph Smith owns, which then passed from his family ultimately to a household servant and then on to the Metropolitan Museum in New York. And we know this is the original papyrus because it is glued onto a backing which has plot numbers for Mormon home allotments from. I think it's Kirtland that's on the backside. And you can see for those again, who can. That the body is in fact damaged. When Smith bought was not there, the papyrus was already damaged. And so someone has drawn in the connecting pencil lines to make the main body. And most importantly, both of those hands, the arms connecting to what look like two hands there that are survive on the fragment of papyrus.

John Dehlin [01:49:27] Basically, the head of the guy with the knife. And the knife. Right.

Robert Ritner [01:49:31] The knife and the head of the dark figure is drawn.

John Dehlin [01:49:35] The guy standing up, that's drawn in. And then on supposedly Abraham lying down, what's drawn in.

Robert Ritner [01:49:42] So what's important to notice is there is no knife that is preserved in this. So we don't actually know from the survival. You cannot say that this figure originally held a knife. There is no proof for that.

John Dehlin [01:49:57] Oh, I thought it looked like in his right hand he had a dagger or something. But I see what you're saying. Yeah.

Robert Ritner [01:50:05] And we don't know what his head actually looked like from this. If we only had this papyrus because there is no head there. And there was no head there for Joseph Smith because it's torn and we See them drawing it back to complete the image. And they have drawn it in a different way than they would ultimately put it in the woodcut. So they couldn't make up their mind initially how they wanted it, because if you can see the picture, you see the man's face is full face looking at you, the one with the dark body. But eventually they made it profile like the figure on the bed. And so, again, proof that there was no actual one that they could copy from. They were having to make up what was broken, and this is the best they could do. The problem is what they inserted is wrong. There was never a knife there. There was never a human head there. And there is a reason why the skin of the figure on the left dark. And it's not because he's a dark Egyptian or a Nubian. It's because he's a jackal, because he's the Egyptian God Anubis, who has a dog head and is a furry dog. And the black represents the color of his hair.

John Dehlin [01:51:43] And we'll jump to that photo in a sec. But. And it's also important to note that there's two arms that are drawn in, right?

Robert Ritner [01:51:50] And there actually is probably only one arm, right?

John Dehlin [01:51:56] And that's of Abraham lying down for the people mountain.

Robert Ritner [01:51:58] Explain that with parallels. The problem for understanding this in the way that Joseph Smith interpreted is this is a fairly common scene. This is not this scene of Anubis to give the name to the God on the left with the jackal body, with the God Osiris on the bed, which always has the form of a lion. This is the funerary bed. It is never, never, never an altar. You do not sacrifice anything on it. This is where the dead rest in peace and receive blessings, not sacrifice. You would never kill anyone on such a thing. And the pots underneath the bed hold the internal organs that are used in mummification, because when you dry out the body to mummify and preserve it, you remove the lungs, liver, stomach and intestines, because these rot quickly. And so they are removed from the body. The heart, by the way, is left inside. Everything else is. Those other arguments are taken out. They are embalmed separately and they are put in the canopic jars. This is so well known that if you look at the Brendan Fraser mummy movie of recent date, they talk about the canopic jars there. And in that movie, strangely enough, they make five of them. But there are only four. There are always only four. There are always four in the papyri. And Joseph Smith's Artists got it right, because we have. Because they copied the papyrus which had it right. There are only four.

John Dehlin [01:53:55] So if we go to the next image now, tell us what we're seeing in this image.

Robert Ritner [01:54:01] This is a reconstruction of what it would actually have looked like.

John Dehlin [01:54:05] So on the left is the original is the facsimile one, as we've already shown and as was released in the book of Abraham, right?

Robert Ritner [01:54:12] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:54:13] And on the right hand side, a

Robert Ritner [01:54:15] proper reconstruction where we can actually see Anubis head.

John Dehlin [01:54:20] It's a jackal, not a human.

Robert Ritner [01:54:22] And it's a jackal. You will notice his arm is extended, it does not have a knife. And you will notice that what is above him is actually a bird's wing that is extended off to the right hand side above his one hand raised, not two. His other hand is attached to his penis. He's holding an erect penis. Because what you are actually seeing is an X rated scene of Osiris rising from the dead and impregnating his wife, the goddess Isis, who has taken the form of a kite, a bird, and she is thus engendering her son, the God Horus, who will avenge his father, who was slain by the God Seth. This is all a critical moment in Egyptian mythology. In Egyptian mythology, every person who dies wants to be revived, like Osir. Osiris was revived by the God Anubis, the God of embalming. And so the figure of Osiris on the embalming bed, who is receiving blessing and embalming from Anubis, protecting him, not killing him, protecting him. This is enabling not only Osiris, but you after death, become a form of Osiris. And so you too will revive and be alive in the underworld, just like Osiris was. Which is why the surrounding hieroglyphic text has nothing to do with Abraham. It is entirely about a man by the name of Hor, a priest whose funerary papyrus this was, and it belonged to his mummy, which was one of those mummies. And this contains funerary blessings for him, asking that he be revived like Osiris in the picture, and that it contains an invocation to the gods of the north, south, east and west, that they induct Horus, like Osiris, into the underworld safely, as shown in the picture with Anubis, embalming Osiris, who equals Horus. And this is the moment where this is not what you typically find in most of the Book of the Dead papyri. This is a much more specialized, arcane ritual scene in which Osiris is showing, shown impregnating his wife, which you otherwise find on temple walls, which I'll be able to show you in a moment. We get scenes just like this, but for funerary scenes, typical scenes of Anubis. If we go to the next slide, I can show you a parallel example.

John Dehlin [01:57:45] Well, actually, and just to reiterate something you probably already said, where you can notice that where Joseph Smith and his scribes would have drawn the right hand of, I guess it's Abraham lying down. What it's more likely is that that was the left wing of the bird, not the right hand of Abraham. Is that correct?

Robert Ritner [01:58:07] Correct. Absolutely correct.

John Dehlin [01:58:09] Okay, so they got that second arm wrong. And of course they got the.

Robert Ritner [01:58:13] And we have also, as we shall see when we get to the other, some real Egyptian examples. There are typically falcons representing the goddesses Isis and Nephthys that are at the head and foot end of the lion bed and the head end bird, Nephthys is what is interpreted by Joseph Smith as the spirit of the Lord.

John Dehlin [01:58:45] Okay, so now going to the second image that we got from Mormon. Sorry about that. Perfect. So now turning to this wonderful graphic presented by Mormoninfographics.com what we have is facsimile 1 with all the different items in facsimile 1 numbered. And then we've got on the right hand side, a modern Egyptological and interpretation. And on the left hand side what Joseph Smith's interpretation was. And I don't even know if this, you were the original source of these interpretations. But I think it would be interesting to just kind of go through, I don't know, the first five or six or ten or even all of them. And I'll tell you what Joseph said it was, and then again you tell us what it really is. Is that okay?

Robert Ritner [01:59:33] Happy to do so.

John Dehlin [01:59:34] So starting with number one, it's the bird in the top right. Joseph Smith calls that the angel of the Lord. Did he get that right?

Robert Ritner [01:59:41] Well, as I just said a moment ago, that is probably the goddess Nephthys at the head of the lion bed. Okay, this is the sister. This is actually the sister of Osiris, who together with the goddess Isis, mourned the dead Osiris. And like Mary Magdalene, at the resurrection of Jesus, she is present at the resurrection of O Osiris. So she is regularly figured as being there. That's who that goddess is. And she and Isis both take bird form. Okay, so she's bird number one.

John Dehlin [02:00:20] Now it says in the modern Egyptological interpretation, the spirit of Ba or Hor.

Robert Ritner [02:00:26] That could be another interpretation.

John Dehlin [02:00:28] Okay.

Robert Ritner [02:00:29] It might be his. The Egyptians have multiple spirits, including the ka, the ba, etc. The ba is a bird headed spirit. Spirit. And that is another possibility. Okay, I'm going to show you a picture where it might well be the goddess Nephthys. But we do have images where it's the Ba spirit hovering over the corpse.

John Dehlin [02:00:51] Okay. Number two is the figure lying down on what Joseph would call the altar.

Robert Ritner [02:00:59] Let me just intrude one thing. It's actually the Ba. It should have a human head.

John Dehlin [02:01:06] So that's wrong. You're saying this.

Robert Ritner [02:01:08] The fact that it has a fully bird head suggests to me it's more likely the goddess Nephilis.

John Dehlin [02:01:13] Okay, so that was some other Egyptologists that would have made that interpretation. So the figure I would mention here,

RFM [02:01:20] I'm sorry, just jumping.

Robert Ritner [02:01:21] It might even have been me because I might have thought it was the Ba at an earlier age. I'm just thinking off the top of my head now. But as it is a bird's head, it's more likely to be an Aphrodis. And the parallel that I'll show you in a moment as a bird.

RFM [02:01:35] Okay, just jumping in the place where the bird head is. The exact head is missing and there's a lacuna there in the original. And so that has been drawn in as well as the hands and the head of the ninja.

Robert Ritner [02:01:47] Okay, well then we don't know.

John Dehlin [02:01:49] Got it. Thank you. RFM. Okay, the second figure is Abraham fastened upon the altar according to Joseph Smith. So that's the figure lying down on the altar. That's Abraham about to be killed. What is that actually? From an Egyptologist's perspective, it's actually the

Robert Ritner [02:02:05] God Osiris and it equals who is also equivalent to the priest Horus Hor. But it's the dead Osiris reviving.

John Dehlin [02:02:20] Okay, it's Osiris, but it's intended act

Robert Ritner [02:02:22] of reviving, which is demonstrated by his raising of his one hand to his face. That is the signal in Egyptian of waking up and scratching your face. So that is a gesture of just waking up. And I'll be able to show you that in parallels as well.

John Dehlin [02:02:46] But it's Osiris.

Robert Ritner [02:02:48] His other hand isn't there because as I will show you in parallel, his other hand would be on his erect penis.

John Dehlin [02:02:58] And it's Osiris. But it's also symbolizing the mummy who's in tune, which is whore.

Robert Ritner [02:03:06] Yes. Okay, so this papyrus, that's the man whose name is actually on it.

John Dehlin [02:03:13] Right. Okay, so it's O for two. The third figure is the dark figure with the knife stabbing, you know, about to stab the person on the altar. Joseph Smith says that's the idolatrous priest of Elkanah.

Robert Ritner [02:03:34] Well, it's the God Anubis, whose head has incorrectly drawn as a human head. It's also, as you can see, the wrong color because he's a jackal. And so his entire body is covered with black hair, not just the body. So they didn't understand that it's an animal God. So it's not a, it's not a priest, it's a God. And the God has an animal head and the head would be dark and he would never have a knife because what Anubis does is to minister spells and unquench and ointments onto the body and he certainly wouldn't be holding a knife to attack it. Okay, so it's restored incorrectly in the hand, the head, the color of the head, the nature of the creature and what he is doing. So in other words, there is nothing correct about that statement on all points.

John Dehlin [02:04:44] Okay, over three for the altar that according to Joseph, Abraham's lying down on. He calls that altar, the altar for sacrifice by the idolatrous priests standing before the gods Elkanah, Libnah, Mach Marachna, Korash and Pharaoh. What do you say that altar is?

Robert Ritner [02:05:09] That altar is a lion bed which is attested in Egyptian surviving monumental sculpture and even wooden sculpture from Dynasty 3, from the time of King Djoser. The step pyramid at Saqqara. We even have an example of this from King Tutankhamun's burial with a lion bed. This is one of the funerary beds which is used to elevate the symbolically the corpse into the sky. The Egyptians believed the horizon God was the God Acre, who had two lion heads. The bedstead head, there would be actually one on each side, two lions. So that when you put the corpse on the bed, you are actually putting him on the body of the lion goddess. Two double headed lion goddess who represents the sky. So this is part of the procedure in the mummification where you are symbolically raising the dead body into heaven by putting him on a representation of the horizon sky goddess or God rather here, Gok Akir. And so this is not a thing of evil or death in a negative way. This is actually exaltation in the most literal sense of where you put the body to symbolically cause it to ascend into heaven, not the angel of the Lord doing It. It's the bed that's doing it. The bed is the equivalent of the angel of the Lord. So if there was an angel of the Lord here, it would actually be the lion bed and not the bird.

John Dehlin [02:07:13] Got it. Okay.

Robert Ritner [02:07:16] And of course, the names that you mentioned, those are all gibberish and don't exist and have nothing to do with anything Egyptian whatsoever and never did.

John Dehlin [02:07:27] Okay, so that's 5, 6, 7 and 8, which are the Canopic jars, according to you, Dr. Ritner?

Robert Ritner [02:07:37] Yes, according to me and everyone else.

John Dehlin [02:07:41] So Joseph names them idolatrous gods. Elkanah, Libnah, Makmara, and Korash. Really quickly, rfm. Do we have any idea where those names come from? Do they appear like a town next door to Joseph or, you know, some apocryphal writing that he read? Do you know of any attempt to sort of figure out where he got those names?

RFM [02:08:02] This has been a long standing hobby of Mormon apologists to try and come up with some connection to either a place name, a person name, or pretty much any name you could come up with in any language, whether it's Egyptian or Mesopotamian or Hittite or hit Hebrew. And to come up with something in some other language at some other time that sort of sounds like one of these names and then to proclaim it as a bullseye and. Well, I guess then it depends upon your own perspective. John Gee has recently published a paper on the four sons of Horus, which are pictured there as 5, 6, 7 and 8, in which he engages in that exercise. He published it at the Interpreter journal, the online journal, with the editor, Daniel C. Peterson. And this is in the past two weeks that this came out. And he is so taken by the connections that he has managed to draw with Hittite and Mesopotamian names that he has proclaimed in the conclusion that the odds of Joseph Smith guessing these four names correctly are astronomical. And as he puts it, they are equivalent to winning the Powerball lottery three weeks in a row.

John Dehlin [02:09:20] Wow. Dr. Ritner, I guess a checkmate on you by John Guy. You know, I'm just. I'm being silly. Do you have a response to John Gee's assertions there? You already used the word gibberish.

Robert Ritner [02:09:37] My honest reaction, that's just pathetic.

John Dehlin [02:09:42] Oh, no. Tell us why.

Robert Ritner [02:09:46] These are extremely well known figures. The names are extremely well known. We have surviving three dimensional examples of these. Almost every museum mine has multiple copies. The Metropolitan has multiple copies. Every regional. Any museum that has Egyptian objects probably has some of these. Most of these have the name and hieroglyphs written right on them. I don't have to make it up. It's right there. John Gee knows that he has had training, even though he goes out of his way to ignore it and pervert it at every opportunity. In no case were these jars ever, ever associated with the Hittites or Mesopotamia. And if you can weasel out some, and the operative word is weasel, some kind of a connection to some far flung place, that's meaningless because these jars never had anything to do with it. It doesn't make any difference if, if you can find an Elkana coming out of Kentucky, that doesn't make it connected to a jar that has a known name and a known function and was never connected with that name in any context in the real world where I live. But John Gee does not.

RFM [02:11:12] You know, now that you mention it, Kentucky does sound kind of like Elkenna. No, seriously, that's the kind of connections he draws. And by the way, doctor, in his paper that did come out, this is John Gee's paper in which he has no less than 119footnotes.

Robert Ritner [02:11:30] He somehow managed, he followed me in that I have always recommended lots of footnotes.

RFM [02:11:37] Well, even with all those footnotes and in the body of his paper, he somehow manages to avoid actually ever once mentioning the real Egyptian names of these four sons of Horus.

Robert Ritner [02:11:46] Let's do that, shall we?

RFM [02:11:48] Would you? What are those names?

Robert Ritner [02:11:50] Sure. Can we bring up the picture again so that I can walk people through them? I'm going to show. I have a slide coming up for that in a moment maybe. I don't know if you want to hold that.

John Dehlin [02:12:00] Do you want to jump to that and come back?

Robert Ritner [02:12:02] Before we do, let's kill off the last two images or three images that we've got so that we can move to the next.

John Dehlin [02:12:08] Okay, so now we're over eight. We've got nine. Which is the idolatrous God of Pharaoh. So that's the alligator, the crocodile. And Joseph Smith is basically saying the crocodile is the adulterous God of Pharaoh. Did we have our first hit?

RFM [02:12:28] We have our first hit, I think.

Robert Ritner [02:12:30] Yes. Well, insofar as the crocodile is an Egyptian God and therefore would be a God who would be worshiped by Pharaoh. That would be correct. It is not a God who is however of kingship or pharaoh ness. So it is not a God specifically linked to and exclusive to Pharaoh. And the other problem that is clear from the book of Abraham is that Joseph Smith thought Pharaoh was a personal name. So what he is saying here is it's the God who belongs to the man pharaoh, as opposed to the title pharaoh. And so he's still off, even to the extent that this one is sort of a quote. All he's really saying in that remark is that this is an Egyptian God. And that doesn't take a whole lot of insight.

RFM [02:13:31] Can I ask you something, Dr. Radner? Are there any animals native to Egypt that are not in some way represented by Egyptian gods?

Robert Ritner [02:13:40] No.

John Dehlin [02:13:42] No.

Robert Ritner [02:13:43] But the crocodile was particularly infamous as being the symbol of ancient Egypt. So much so that when Augustus Caesar conquered Egypt, he issued coinage, and the main coin that was labeled Egypt Captured, the symbol for Egypt was a crocodile. So he issued a coin with a crocodile and the words Egypt Captured on it. So the crocodile has been the symbol of Egypt throughout the Mediterranean world because Egypt uniquely had them. The only other thing that was comparable was the hippopotamus.

RFM [02:14:27] Right. Can I bring up one other point just in favor of the book of Abraham? Because I want to give it its due. This isn't necessarily a hit, but whereas the description of facsimile one does have the bedstead, the lion couch, labeled as an altar, I do have to mention that in chapter one, verse 13, it does say about the altar, it says it was made after the form of a bedstead. So it does apparently recognize that it looks like a bedstead. But then it may goof it up by going on to say, such as was had among the Chaldeans.

Robert Ritner [02:15:03] Yes. Well, it's easy enough to prescribe it as a bed because he's lying on it. I think that's inferential. You can figure that out without much insight. But after the matter of the Chaldeans, wherever you want to put the Chaldeans, who are Mesopotamians, no, this Egyptian bed was never ever found there. That's ridiculous. That's just the case.

RFM [02:15:26] Should have stopped after the bedstead part.

John Dehlin [02:15:28] Yes, and just to be clear, do you consider nine the crocodile, you know, interpreted as the adulterous God of Pharaoh? Do you consider that a hit, Dr. Ritner?

Robert Ritner [02:15:42] Only vaguely.

John Dehlin [02:15:43] Okay.

Robert Ritner [02:15:44] I think if I said in my book. Well, he got one. Right. Okay, but. But only in the sense that it's a God whom Pharaoh would have worshiped.

John Dehlin [02:15:54] Got it. Okay, so who is the crocodile? What is the crocodile? It's not. What's that?

Robert Ritner [02:16:03] Sobek.

John Dehlin [02:16:05] Okay, so in this image, it says the God Horus.

RFM [02:16:14] I don't think Joseph Smith ever did Horus. You may be looking off the actual Egyptian.

Robert Ritner [02:16:17] I think. I think you must be looking on the right hand Side?

John Dehlin [02:16:20] Yeah, yeah. I'm saying that's. It's saying the modern Egyptological interpretation.

Robert Ritner [02:16:24] I don't know. I don't know who did that. There is a form of Horus linked to Sobek because there's Egyptian syncretism where gods merge into others. But if it's going to be Horus merged with Sobek, typically it is a crocodile body with a falcon face, and those exist. So I'm not responsible for the statement that it's Horus, so I can't explain that.

John Dehlin [02:16:58] Yeah, yeah. This is just something I pulled off the Internet that helps frame this discussion.

Robert Ritner [02:17:03] But I mean, because of the complexity in Egyptian religion, yes, Horus can take on a form who's linked to Sobek. And in that myth, Sobek helps to ferry the body of the wounded Osiris across water. And so that could be a reason why he's depicted here.

John Dehlin [02:17:30] Got it. Okay. The next one is 10, which. Which Joseph. Tell us. Tell us what 10 is referring to. You told us before just what it looks like to you.

Robert Ritner [02:17:46] Well, what it actually is is an altar. That's your altar stand on which that's an Egyptian altar with floral offerings on top. And there are wine jugs that are put on the left and right underneath it with the wine jugs have a very distinctive shape with a little wide opening mouth there. That's for either wine or it could be water jugs.

John Dehlin [02:18:18] And Joseph calls that Abraham in Egypt, which I have no idea how he got that.

Robert Ritner [02:18:22] I don't have a clue what that's supposed to mean.

John Dehlin [02:18:25] I mean, I know there was the wheat and famine, you know, like seven years of bumper crops. I'm thinking of Joseph in the Technicolor Dreamcoat here. That's my extent of Egyptian knowledge, Biblical knowledge.

Robert Ritner [02:18:39] So what I'm telling you, we still haven't gotten to the bottom. But what I'm telling you is that there is actually something that represents an interaction of an agent who elevates into the sky and protects. But that's the bed, which misidentified as an altar. And there actually is an altar, but it's not for the sacrifice of humans, but for the offerings of plants and foodstuffs and that he misidentifies as Abraham in Egypt, whatever on earth that's supposed to mean.

RFM [02:19:16] Dr. Ritner, I have read Hugh Nibley extensively, and I recollect that his argument for the accuracy of that was that that stand contained, I think, a lotus or some other kind of plant life that represented Egypt itself, and therefore it designated that what Was occurring in the picture. Was occurring in Egypt. Abraham being in the picture. It could therefore represent Abraham in Egypt. What do you think of that explanation?

Robert Ritner [02:19:51] Well, try selling that in court. I think in a legal court that no one would take that seriously. What I'm trying to say is that's unbelievably contorted.

RFM [02:20:06] Okay, so the. Is it a plan on it? Is it a. Oh, absolutely.

Robert Ritner [02:20:10] It is certainly a plan.

RFM [02:20:12] Is it ever used to designate the location of what's happening in the vignette as occurring in a certain location?

Robert Ritner [02:20:19] No, these are just standard offering scenes. Okay. The water lily, or Egyptian lotus is a symbol of rebirth because it opens at sunrise. And so it's a symbol of coming into being like the sun comes into being each morning. So it is something that is offered to the dead to symbolize rebirth. And it is something that people carry at parties to celebrate festivities. Just as we would give flowers now, so in the same way you'd give flowers at a funeral now, that's what the Egyptians did.

RFM [02:21:02] So what I'm understanding then, and what I'm sort of starting to see is that perhaps what's going on is that Hugh Nibley and perhaps other apologists take a correct identification of one item, at least if they get that far, and then there's a speculation that leaps off of that correct identification in order to make sense out of Joseph Smith's interpretations. But that speculation falls flat as far as you're concerned?

Robert Ritner [02:21:26] Yes. Well, I don't think it requires any particular deep understanding to recognize that that's a water lily there, because there are more than thousands of examples of this shown on altar. Any papyrus wall scenes will show you exactly the same scene with the plant very clearly distinguished as to what it is. So anyone with even a minimal knowledge of an Egyptian scene could pick that out and know what that is. So saying it's a lotus is not an insight. Knowing it's a stand for an alt thing can be seen from literally thousands of examples picking out the. The kind of vessels that are beside it. These aren't really very well drawn by the artist. The artist who did the Joseph Smith papyrus here was not a great artist. This is. You know, it's. It's. It's. His primary role was to do the text. The picture is sort of schematic. But we have these from so many other examples where you have fine artists doing it. We can be unbelievably precise about what these are. So there. There is no question about what they mean. And unless they mean Abraham in Egypt, on every wall scene in Egypt. Because since this is something that's not found uniquely here, it's found everywhere over and over and over again. Is it going to have a different meaning in all the nine other million places and only that meaning here? That's the kind of logic that Mr. Nibley was trying to put forward. It's like saying the letter A that we see in every letter, that in every inscription in English has a special meaning. In this one letter right here in this piece of paper, the letter A has this nuance. But on the wall over there and on my newspaper and everywhere else, it doesn't mean that. That is Nibley's argument, and it's ridiculous.

Egyptian Mythology and Its Influence on Later Religions

RFM [02:23:44] Can I say one other thing that is a little bit off topic? I don't want you to go crazy with this because I know you could go on for a long time. I just want to say I'm struck by the fact that the correct understanding of facsimile one is Osiris being raised to life. And it is supposed to also represent hor, or the owner of this papyrus. And through this, he becomes raised to life. And it sounds an awful lot like the Christian doctrine of all believers in Jesus being resurrected through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Robert Ritner [02:24:18] You noticed that, did you?

RFM [02:24:21] Well, at first it sounded very strange how you were describing it. And then I thought, wait a second, this isn't strange at all. This is Christianity.

John Dehlin [02:24:29] Are you inferring RFM that maybe Egyptology influenced Christianity? Is that what you're basically asking right now?

RFM [02:24:36] I'm just saying. I'm just noting that it's a very strange idea. But then it's perfectly mirrored in Christian doctrine.

Robert Ritner [02:24:44] Yes, well, I don't know how far you want to go off on a side. That's why I said the official theology of the Egyptian king is that on the night of his begetting, the God Ammon takes the form of the father and comes in looking like the father visits the wood, the future mother. He gives the sign of life to her nose and she becomes pregnant and she produces a child who is, sorry, 50% human and 50% divine, who is the savior of his people. And is the intercessor between the world of the gods and the world of humans. He was born of a virgin birth. Perhaps you've heard that before.

John Dehlin [02:26:03] So it's possible. Dr. Ritner, what I think I hear you saying is that Egyptian myth possibly influenced Christian myth.

Robert Ritner [02:26:11] This is what I show to my students who are shocked, appalled and amazed all the time.

RFM [02:26:18] And just to be clear, for me, are we saying that the Jesus figure in Egyptian religion is Osiris or someone else?

Robert Ritner [02:26:27] Well, Osiris is like a Jesus figure insofar as he is the resurrection for Egyptians. But the story of the birth of a saving figure is also Pharaoh because he is, he's a God on earth for ancient Egyptians. And he does play the role in many respects that Jesus did because he is officially the only priest in all of Egypt. So all priests who function in Egypt are his delegates who are acting in his guise. So in theory, only the king offers to the gods and all the priests are acting as imitators of the priests of the king. So I don't know how far you want to get into that, but there are many, many, many, many connections between Egyptian religion, Judaism and Egyptian connections and Christianity. And of course, Jesus spent time in Egypt and the theologians who made Christianity largely did so in the city of Alexandria in a, in a philosophical school that had been a pagan philosophical school before it became a Christian one. And in late antiquity, the last major philosophers who were there teaching in the Alexandrian school before it Christianized these people were also Egyptian priests of the goddess Isis and Osiris.

John Dehlin [02:28:23] Great questions. RFM, I'm so glad you're with us and Dr. Ritner, thank you so much. This is stuff I didn't expect to be learning and I'm just, I'm blown away and loving it. So thank you to you both. Just really quickly to clear this slide and I know we've got some other things, so I think we're now over 10, 11, quickly. Joseph says it's these door looking things at the bottom. He says they're designed to represent the pillars of heaven as understood by the Egyptians. Dr. Ritner, what's your interpretation of those doors at the bottom or door like

Robert Ritner [02:29:00] figures at the bottom? It's a wall design as represented by the Egyptians. It's the niche bricking facade that you can find even on. It's something that's common between Egypt and Mesopotamia and it was probably the result of in Egypt from back and forth trade in the earliest periods because you find it on ziggurats. So it's a design of bricking that's then used as a wall motif in Egypt. It doesn't represent the heavens, it represents a baseline, just the opposite.

John Dehlin [02:29:37] Got it. And then 12. This looks kind of intense. Joseph says 12, which I think ends up being. I don't want to spoiler, but it's right next to the crocodile and all along kind of the strata that the crocodile's operating in. Joseph and his scribes say rau ki yang, signifying expanse, or the firmament over our heads. But in this case, in relation to this subject, the Egyptians meant to signify shaumau to be hig, or the heavens answering.

RFM [02:30:09] The Hebrew word that should be hai.

John Dehlin [02:30:10] Hai. Okay. Or the heavens answering to the Hebrew word shamayim. So, Dr. Ridner, is that correct?

Robert Ritner [02:30:19] No, no. Part of that, it is water that is correct, but it represents not the firmament, but again, the Nile or a portion of the Nile. And so it's ground, not water. Yes. The Egyptians did have a concept of a heavenly river on which the sun God rode in a boat, but there's no sun God here, and the crocodile is in it, which means it's underneath it. And it probably refers to the lake of Khonsu, which is described in the actual text. So that's not a sky place. It's a portion of the embalming zone, which is what you're actually seeing here, because you're seeing the embalming taking place.

John Dehlin [02:31:08] So, in summary, if you were grading this paper and you had to grade it out of 12, so 12 out of 12 being perfect, what grade are you giving Joseph Smith and his scribes for the interpretation of facsimile? 1?

Robert Ritner [02:31:24] F.

John Dehlin [02:31:26] F. How about the God of Even?

RFM [02:31:28] With the God of Pharaoh in there? Can't we get maybe an F plus or a D minus or something?

John Dehlin [02:31:33] No, no. Out of 12. Like Paul. 0.5 out of 12. 1 out of 12.

Robert Ritner [02:31:37] You wanted a numerical grade.

John Dehlin [02:31:39] Yeah, give him numerical grade.

Robert Ritner [02:31:41] Out of 12. We'll give him one.

RFM [02:31:44] Okay.

Robert Ritner [02:31:46] Yes, that's a partial one for the God of Pharaoh.

RFM [02:31:51] We're taking it.

John Dehlin [02:31:54] So RFM's happy with that.

RFM [02:31:55] I'm declaring victory and leaving the field.

John Dehlin [02:31:59] All right. RFM's going back to church as soon as they let us.

RFM [02:32:02] Okay, a little more seriously, Dr. Ritner and John, can I just tell you, having studied all this Egyptian Mormon apologetic stuff, I'm frankly disappointed in this, because although I could not give you the exact reference, it was probably Nibley or someone like him. Could you put that back up there for just a second there, John? The one you just had up.

John Dehlin [02:32:21] Absolutely.

RFM [02:32:22] And I just wanted to say that I remember reading and being very excited to read and find out, and then even 10 teach in firesides that 11 that basically this entire thing was correct, that 11 really did represent the pillars of heaven, that there was a basis for that In Egyptology, that 12 really was the waters of heaven, because the Heaven was seen as the waters. You've got the alligator, the crocodile, the crocodile in the waters of heaven. But that's okay because he is a God and that's where gods would be, is in the waters of heaven. And that all of these things were correctly translated. And I read this in Mormon apologetic material and I even taught it to other members of the church. So I'm being honest with you when I say I'm frankly disappointed that this is so wrong, that I was actually so misled by Hugh Nibley and John Gee and others and Mormon apologists in being told that this was correct and backed up by legitimate Egyptology.

Robert Ritner [02:33:33] Well, if I could intrude for just a moment, both of those individuals actually knew better. One thing I didn't comment on, but should specifically is the phrase Rao qiang is not Egyptian. It sounds Chinese or Indonesian to me, but I'm sure it's not. It's made up or perhaps it's a bizarre derivation from Hebrew, I don't know, because I don't know Hebrew, so I can't comment on the Hebrew word. But what I can tell you is that that's not, not, not an Egyptian word.

John Dehlin [02:34:06] And rfm, I love that personalization of the, of the point. And I'll even take it one step further. If we had to estimate how many man hours, how much tithing money, how much cost and investment, how much cost in research, in publication, in conferences, in scholars attending conferences, you know, how many millions of dollars have widows basically, and others, Latin Americans, donated to the church, people all over the world donating to the church. And then the Church redirects those millions of tithing dollars so that they can pay the salary of Nibley and Gee and Wolstein and support fair Mormon in the background and the Maxwell Institute and Jack Welch and just all the armies and armies of apologists for decades who have been spending millions of dollars of contributions, sacred tithing funds from the Church to make these super specious and irresponsible and I guess According to Dr. Ritner, almost laughable assurances or interpretations of this in the name of scholarship so that the members of the Church can't understand what really went on. But instead, you know, rely on the credibility of Hugh Nibley's lore or his PhD from UCLA or wherever he got it, or John Lee's John, John Gee's degree from Yale. Like it's a super waste of resources and a really monolithic act of deception. And we're just on facsimile one now. Tell me RFM if I've misspoken or overspoken or overstated in the. Dr. Ritner, I want to hear if you have anything to add as well.

Critiquing LDS Apologetic Interpretations of the Papyri

RFM [02:36:00] No, I would just say that not only have they taken advantage of John Gee and Hugh Nibley's credibility, they unfortunately have also taken advantage of my credulity.

John Dehlin [02:36:13] Because you were a purveyor of these teachings.

RFM [02:36:17] Well, right. I didn't know any better. I'm not a student of Egyptology. I didn't go to Yale. I didn't go to the Oriental Institute in Chicago. I'm relying on people who have questions, credentials who have studied and who are representing to me that they are passing along correctly what they have studied and that the Egyptology that they have studied does support the Book of Abraham and the translation of the facsimiles.

John Dehlin [02:36:47] And Dr. Ridner, you're saying all of these men should have known better?

Robert Ritner [02:36:52] Yes. Well, what I'm actually saying is they did know better. You know, for whatever reason, they chose not to express that and to look for ways to argue against what's obvious. When I worked on the Book of Abraham, the reaction by my colleagues was, that stuff is ridiculous. Why bother? No one would take that seriously. None of my colleagues. I mean, it's dismissible immediately. Which is why all the way back to the Spalding book, which we'll eventually talk about, I'm sure this has been dismissed out of hand by everyone. And when I was first considering publishing the book and the idea was sent to a colleague to see whether the Institute would publish it, the response back was, why waste your time with something like this? It's ridiculous. I mean, this. This is coming out of Germany. The remark was, it's just why bother? I mean, it's so. It's so completely absurd that no one would give it even five seconds of time. So no Egyptologist, real Egyptologist, would spend three seconds reading John Gee's article on Elkenna. They wouldn't bother. I've only looked at it because I've been drawn in this and therefore because I was publishing the Egyptian manuscript. But if I had not been asked to read the actual papyrus, I wouldn't have spent a second on anything John Gee ever wrote. I think that's pretty clear.

John Dehlin [02:38:51] It is. And we're going to. Thank you, Dr. Ritner. This is so valuable. And I'm going to refer back to a quote that came out of my wonderful interview with Shannon Caldwell Montez. She quotes elder Donald h. Oaks in 2002, who spoke at a dinner with a Bunch of apologists. And, you know, he basically makes this point. And here's a quote, though. Argument does not create conviction, the lack of it destroys belief. What seems to be proved may not be embraced, but what no one shows the ability to defend is quickly abandoned. Rational argument does not create belief, but it maintains a climate in which belief may flourish. And so there we have, you know, Dallin H. Oaks basically saying, hey, apologists, we hire you for a very specific reason. We are not hiring you necessarily to create good answers, because I think the church knows there aren't good answers. We're hiring you to create answers. And I would add answers backed up by prestigious PhDs so that members of the church can just go, oh, well, John Guy went to Yale. He's smarter than me. Hugh Nibley has a PhD. He's smarter than me. He knows Egyptian. So I don't have to worry about this problem. It's not a problem. And we have it all the way to the top of the church leaders basically saying that they pay apologists to come up with whatever answers they can so that members won't ever question or doubt or lose their faith.

Robert Ritner [02:40:21] John Guy wants to have it both ways. He tells his audiences that no one can critique or understand this document unless they have a degree in Egyptologist like him. But he won't discuss that with me because I have a degree in Egyptology like him. You know, which is it, John? You're going to respond to me or you're not going to respond to me? If you don't want to respond to me because you don't have the facts, then don't tell people or pretend to people that you do, because quite honestly, John, you don't.

John Dehlin [02:41:04] Thank you for your directness, rfm. Thanks for your feedback as well.

RFM [02:41:08] Oh, by the way, about Elder. What was that quote from Elder.

John Dehlin [02:41:12] Elder Oaks down the chokes?

RFM [02:41:14] Elder Oaks? Just parenthetically, Elder Oaks has never been that articulate or eloquent in his entire life. What he's doing is quoting another person who I believe was Austin Farrar.

John Dehlin [02:41:26] Yeah. In the footnotes, I think you're right. Yeah. Thank you.

RFM [02:41:30] Boom, baby. Thank you.

John Dehlin [02:41:32] The Christian.

RFM [02:41:33] I'll be here all week.

John Dehlin [02:41:35] That's awesome.

RFM [02:41:35] Try the fish.

John Dehlin [02:41:37] Yeah. And what we're going to get to is that the church has known since at least 1912 the serious problems of the book of Abraham, and they've intentionally chosen to cover up and obfuscate the problems. And we'll get to that. We're coming to it, but we have to finish the facsimiles we still have more images, actually. Facsimile one. We have to finish facsimile one and so in the next image. So Dr. Ritner has basically provided us with a few more images to give some important background on facsimile one. We've covered a lot of territory, but Dr. Ritner, let's talk through these images to close out this segment. Tell us what we're seeing here.

Robert Ritner [02:42:15] Those of you who can see this, let me describe it. We have an image on which the papyrus design was based. So you were seeing a scene that is carved in a special, highly restricted, super sacred Osiris chapel that is on the roof of the temple of Dendera in the middle of Egypt. This is one of the most sacred, special sites that was used for the special festivals of the month of Koiak, which was in Egyptian time when Osiris was revived. And this shows the precise moment when the corpse of Osiris, the dead God, killed by his brother who sought his kingdom. So he killed Osiris. Osiris is dead. His body has been pieced together by his son Anubis. Anubis is shown here with his hands extended over the God Osiris lying on the lion bed, not altar. Anubis has a jackal head. He has his hands extended out in prayer over those two hands extended, praying for the benefit of Osiris. Osiris has his one hand to his face in the act of coming to life, scratching his face, waking up. And his penis is erect and it is inserted into a bird flying atop it, who is his wife, the goddess Isis, who is receiving his semen to produce his son Horus, who will be the next pharaoh and his avenger. And this is exactly what you've got in the drawing, much more schematically done on the papyrus.

John Dehlin [02:44:33] This is what Josephus scribes should have drawn in for facsimile one for the missing parts.

Robert Ritner [02:44:37] If we go to the next slide, there's a line drawing of this same thing. And if you look on the far right hand side at the head of the bed, there is a goddess with her hand to her mouth or head. And that is the goddess who sometimes appears as a bird in that same position over the head of the bed. And that's what I would suggest might be the. If. If you restore the head as a bird head, it's the goddess Nephthys.

John Dehlin [02:45:14] Got it.

Robert Ritner [02:45:15] Interestingly enough, what use the figure behind Anubis There is the God Horus, who is not yet born, but who Is watching his own birth

John Dehlin [02:45:29] kind of like in the pre existence. Huh? Rfm.

RFM [02:45:31] That's what I was saying. He's in the pre mortal existence. This is a Mormon. This is a Mormon document here. This is a Mormon carving.

John Dehlin [02:45:39] Hugh Nibley would be ecstatic. Okay, tell us what this Next image is, Dr. Ritter.

Robert Ritner [02:45:48] Here we have an example of the same scene now without Anubis, but again the lion bed. We have the body of Osiris. This is a line drawing that was done early on by mariette in the 1800s, the 1900s. And the penis has been hacked out, probably by Christians.

RFM [02:46:14] Ouch. That's gotta hurt.

Robert Ritner [02:46:17] They savagely attacked images of penises all the way through Egyptian temples. There are many gods who have erections that it's normal. I spend a lot of my time discussing images of erections. I'm sure my parents were so happy about that. But you can see not only the goddess Isis being impregnated, but you see at the head and foot of the bed here we have that bird form that I was talking about.

John Dehlin [02:46:47] Okay,

Robert Ritner [02:46:50] and if we go to the next one, here is a standard example now from a royal tomb of the same scene of Anubis with his hands extended over a body on, as you can see, a lion bed. And underneath it you can see the four jars. And those are the Canopic jars with the distinctive human, baboon, jackal and falcon heads, which are the four Canopic jars for the lungs, liver, stomach and intestines. And you'll notice the Anubis does not have a knife, but he's in the same posture. You'll notice he has a jackal head. You'll notice the bed has a lion head. You'll notice there's no knife involved at all. And here it's the wrapped mummy rather than an erect mummy. And this is for. This is the more normal scene. So the Joseph Smith papyrus is really very exceptional in having a scene of the impregnation of Isis, which is a very specialized and especially sacred scene that most people wouldn't have seen or had. So this is something that comes from that particular scene that's in this special chapel in this major temple. And by the way, that temple is Ptolemaic in date from the time of Cleopatra the Great. And it's roughly the same time period as the actual papyrus of Horus, the Papyrus of Hor. That is the Joseph smith papyrus facsimile 1. By the way, if I keep saying Hor or Horus, it's the same name. The name in Egyptian is Hor, but the Greek version of that is Horus. And so the God Horus and the man who's the priest named Hor have actually the same name.

John Dehlin [02:49:03] Got it.

Robert Ritner [02:49:04] We tend to say the God Horus because it's come down to us through Greek, Herodotus and other records.

John Dehlin [02:49:12] Got it.

RFM [02:49:13] Can I ask you a quick question, Dr. Ritner? I apologize. This is probably a dumb question, but as the Chinese say, there are no dumb questions, only dumb people. So, anyway, no, in the papyrus that Joseph Smith had in his possession, it's broken off. And I know that those are called lacunae, and that those happen with regularity in papyri. However, it occurs to me that the place where it is broken off, the centerpiece of that seems to be the same place that was hacked off in this sculpture, which is right around the place where that erection would have been with the bird above it. And I was wondering if, prior to Joseph Smith getting it, perhaps even thousands of years, not thousands, but 8,000 or 2,000 years ago, perhaps that was broken off at some point, even intentionally, by people who were offended by the depiction of the erect penis. Is it probably just a coincidence, or

Robert Ritner [02:50:09] might there be something to that coincidence? Because it's. These things are rolled and they break on the folds, and there was a crease there that goes right down through the middle, and it just. It probably snapped off of where it was rolled. And the problem is that when Chandler was bringing these around, he was partly unrolling them. And so every time you do that with fragile documents, pieces are going to break off. And we know that happened actually once Smith bought them because he ended up gluing pieces from different manuscripts in the wrong places. And in my book, I had to put back these little patches and try to figure out where they originally were went. And it was like a major jigsaw puzzle, because so many things had broken off and been glued back upside down, sideways, and in the wrong place and even in the wrong document. So as they unrolled them, which we know he did because that's described in stories that when visitors paid their. Whatever it was to come in and see them, he would roll them across the floor, and that would certainly cause damage. So it's just. It's probably just a natural thing. And after all these papyri, like the mummies had been shipped all the way from Egypt, where they could have already been damaged by boat to Italy, and then from Italy by boat to New York, and then on a wagon bumping from New York down To Philadelphia, to New York, Orleans and to Ohio. So they had an opportunity to suffer a lot.

RFM [02:52:04] Okay, well I thought I'd give it a stab. I just want you to know I'm still going to go with that premise for my dissertation

Robert Ritner [02:52:12] next.

John Dehlin [02:52:13] Okay, so to close out the slides for facsimile.

Robert Ritner [02:52:18] Yes. If I think the next thing is going to be on the

John Dehlin [02:52:23] the four sons of Horus.

Robert Ritner [02:52:25] Here we can actually see who the four sons of Horus are. And so you can see them there drawn. This is from this pulled from Wikipedia page. So this is so commonly known that anyone can check this. You don't have to take my. This is not my personal interpretation. It is well known the Egyptians texts survive which describe its specifically. And there are the gods and there are their actual names that you can read. Imsedi which is the human headed one. Duamutef who is the jackal headed one. Hopi, who is the baboon headed one. And Kibesinuev who is the falcon headed one. So there's not Elkinna, etc. Etc. We have these names. We absolutely have these names. Anyone who wants to can look up four sons of Horus right now on the Internet and read everything you'd want and see example after example after example. You don't need to take my word for it. And any attempts to make them be something connected to the Hittites is bizarre, just bizarre. If you go to the next slide, this is Book of the dead 151which is a major spell that is designed now this would have been in a papyrus that would have been almost certainly in one of papyri that Joseph Smith bought. Whether it was it survived and did not survive in the copy that we still have. But it would have been as one of those papyrus number two would have Tasheret men would have had it. And so we get statements to be said by Kibeh. So this is what the so called idolatrous God actually is. This is the one with the falcon head. I am your son O Osiris. So and so here would be whore. I have come to be your magical protection. I unite for you your bones and assemble for you your members. I have brought to you your heart. I have put it for you as a seat in your body. I have preserved your house after you for you are alive forever to be said by the baboon one. I am Hoppy. Oh, fill in the blank here I have come that I may be your magical protection. I have attached for you your head and your limbs. I have smitten for you, your enemies beneath you while you are alive forever. To be said by Duamotev. Who is the jackal headed one? I, O Osiris. I am your son, Horus, your beloved. I have come that I may save my father Osiris from him who did him harm. That is the God Seth. I put him beneath your feet forever. If you trample something down, that means you have control over it. And here you're invoking Osiris, which means you're at the same time invoking the dead man who is now merged with and a form of Osiris, to be said by Im Seti, that's the human headed one. I am your son. Oh, fill in the blank here I have come that I may be your magical protection. I preserve your house abiding, Abiding, as Ptah has commanded. That's the craftsman God at Memphis. As Re, the sun God himself has commanded. Then we have directions. Lo, one shall use this only when he is pure and spotless, without eating goats or fish. Fish are going near women. In other words, you had to be ritually pure after bread and burnt incense have been offered. No human sacrifice here. Food offerings and incense, that's normal. That's what Egyptians offer, not humans, to these gods. As for every blessed one for whom this is used, he shall be a sacred, sacred God who is in the God's domain, and he shall not be kept away from any gate of the west. The Egyptians believed the underworld was in the west because that's where the sun set. He shall be a follower of Osiris wherever he goes. A truly excellent spell proved millions of times. So that's what's going on in the that scene.

John Dehlin [02:57:15] That's sort of just a description or a narration almost, or a description of the ritual. Right.

Robert Ritner [02:57:24] If Hugh Nibley had been honest, he would have reproduced Book of the dead 151 and said, this is what this scene is about.

John Dehlin [02:57:33] Now, I have to admit, rfm doesn't that kind of sound a little bit like proxy work for the dead when you hear him read that? Like what you would hear right before a Mormon temple baptism for the dead or even an endowment ceremony sort of this. There's a little bit of ritualistic language that reminds me of the temple ceremony. Do you feel the same way, Parfm?

RFM [02:57:55] Well, I do, but I also have to caution myself that when my knowledge of ritual is limited pretty much to what I've experienced in the LDS temple, it is very common for me, as it is probably for most people to interpret any other kind of ritual ideas from Egypt or anywhere else in terms of what it is that I already understand. So I'm trying to avoid that. But I did have a similar feeling to you. Can I say something here about these four sons of horse? Because I need to get another point in here for Joseph Smith in addition to the one semi point for the God of Pharaoh. Is it correct? Because in Facsimile two, the four sons of horse show up again in the hypocephalus there under figure six, and there, Joseph Smith translates that as representing this earth in its four quarters. Is it true that one of the interpretations or understandings about the four sons of Horus is that they could represent the four cardinal directions

Robert Ritner [02:59:01] in so far as they are the number 4? 4, then. Yes. Any. Anytime you use the number 4, you can always say that that kind of has a connotation of the four directions.

RFM [02:59:13] As far as Hugh Nibley is concerned, and I learned at their knees, John Gee's concerned, Kerry Muhlstein's concerned, et cetera. The four sons of Horus being identified by Joseph Smith as representing the earth in its four quarters is presented as being the direct hit, absolute bullseye that Joseph Smith got right in his interpretation of facsimile 2. And I'm really, really disappointed to hear that you're telling me that's not necessarily the case.

Robert Ritner [02:59:41] I'm telling you, if you got it right that they are the number four, The symbolism of four for the four corners is universal.

RFM [02:59:56] Okay, I'm taking that as a hit, then. So this is one. This is one. Maybe it's a half of one, along with half a one for Pharaoh and the crocodile God Sobek. I'm gonna add those together. I'm gonna give me a big one right there.

John Dehlin [03:00:11] Okay, one out of 12. Good job. Good job, junkie.

RFM [03:00:15] Well, actually. Actually, it's one out of a lot more than that because we had to go into Facsimile 2, which has a lot more figures in it than just figure one or facsimile one?

John Dehlin [03:00:25] Believe it or not, that's coming up, everybody. Dr. Ritner, you have one more slide you wanted to share with us, and I'm guessing that there's going to be some backstory for us to understand why this particular slide is relevant at this point in the discussion.

Robert Ritner [03:00:41] Well, in the various articles done by John Gee attempting to justify the legitimacy of Smith's interpretation of facsimile 1, he states that there is an Egyptian papyrus that links the name Abraham to this scene, and that is even cited in the Church's statement, the official online statement to which I responded a number of years ago. And that is a papyrus from Leiden, which is a magical papyrus. It's third century, I believe, ad. So it is much, much later than the book of Abraham supposedly is said to be. It is much later than the actual papyrus that we've got for the book of Abraham. So if it is a. If it is connected, it would be after the book of Abraham, not before it. But the problem is, let's actually look at it and see what it is. It has nothing whatsoever to do with this tale of Abraham. And when one looks at the translation and I've lost it off my screen now, can we pull it up?

John Dehlin [03:02:20] Yeah, yeah. So this is a picture of what tell our listeners.

Robert Ritner [03:02:26] This is a picture of the Leiden papyrus, otherwise known as the Papiri greci magicai, the Greek magical papyrus number 12, lines 474 to 79. It also has a number, as you can see there, PDM for Papiri demotike magikai. Because this is a manuscript that is written both in Egyptian and Greek. It's written by Egyptian scribes who are fluent in both the Greek script and the Egyptian script. And what this is is a sex spell. This is a love spell to force a woman to have sex with you. And this is part of a manual that would be like a cookbook, you know, a book of magical spells. If you wanted to have a woman come to you, go through the papyrus and find this. And it's very fragmentary, it's largely broken away, but the parts of it that survive. Say you bring a seal, something of copper and a lion and a mummy and Anubis, while they seek something with a scarab. And then you recite magical words. These are abracadabra words that don't mean anything even in Egyptian. Adio orich tam bito, Abraham, Huat, Planio, etc. Etc. And the whole soul for her fill in her name. Whom then fill in the name of her mother, the female. And unfortunately, your picture of my picture, your picture is blocking my screen here. The female body of her fill in her name. Who so and so bore, I conjure by a God whose name is broken to inflame her. Her name again here, her mother's name there. Write these words together with this picture on a new papyrus and you get the scene of the lion bed with the mummy of Osiris and Anubis, who had been described as what you write. So there you have in the text, an actual mention, although it's broken, of the lion bed, the mummy. And the reason for this is this is that moment in which Osiris comes to life and impregnates Isis. And that's what you want to happen to this woman, that she will be inflamed in the same way by invoking the. This image. And you'll notice Abraham is in there, but he is not obviously part of a story, unless there's some interesting, really exciting part that Joseph Smith left out. I'd like to read that part. But instead, here it's invoked just because it's a magical name. The Egyptians made use of every God imaginable. The Egyptians invoked Mesopotamian names, Greek names. They even invoke Exodus and invoke Yahweh. One of the most popular gods to mention in this papyrus is Yao, which is a form of Yahweh. Because the Egyptians accept all gods. They never persecuted any God. They accepted every God, including the ones who persecuted Egyptians. So what they did is every wise man, they would also put their name because they thought they had power. So it is here, Egyptians invoking the name of Abraham as a wise man. But this is done in the Roman period because they. Not because of their personal experience with Abraham, but because now they're aware of the Bible. So they're pulling this information out of the Bible and actually citing the Bible. Abraham. Abraham is a magical name. It's like saying conjuring by Solomon, who

John Dehlin [03:07:35] controls demons and Dr. Ritner, just, just because I. I'm not familiar with this and I want to make sure I understand. Tell us how to tie this back to the Book of Abraham and Mormon apologetics.

Robert Ritner [03:07:49] This has the word Abraham. It is. So it is here in a spell that shows the lion bed. But it's the lion bed that's used like the lion bed is used all over the place. It has nothing to do with the Book of Abraham. It's simply fortuitous that it's a coincidence that it has. It happens to be the same scene that's on the Joseph Smith papyrus, because nothing about this papyrus relates to the story of Abraham in Egypt.

John Dehlin [03:08:24] But as an apologist, as a Mormon

Robert Ritner [03:08:26] apologist, Abraham is here simply because he's a magical name and it's no more significant than the other O ga ba ba ba ba ba, etc. That's there as abracadabra. And yes, it's been mentioned specifically Bonjour G Repeatedly as a connection showing that Abraham and the lion bed are related. The abracadabra here is not invoking the lion bed. It's merely a magical power to make the woman come and jump on your body.

RFM [03:09:08] By the way, if I can just intrude here and answer your question, John, this is something. Yes, that I first saw about 20 years ago. Now. It was an An Insights, which was the name of the monthly newsletter from the foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies in which this was proclaimed as being a huge support for the Book of Abraham. Because the Book of Abraham, of course has facsimile one which has a lion couch scene and it represents it as being Abraham on the lion couch or on the altar. And here we have a legitimate ancient piece of papyrus, this Leyden manuscript, which has a lion couch scene just like in facsimile one. And I think it's actually below it written in Greek in the actual document, even though here the transliteration is above it there is the name Abraham. So there is this connection now in the Leiden manuscript between Abraham and a lion couch scene and facsimile one. So now it is not out of the question that Abraham would have something to do with a lion couch scene as it is represented in the Book of Abraham. And this was rather trumpeted with some vindication at the time. And where you'll find this in the essay, John, is it's just one sentence. There is a section here toward the end which is called the Book of Abraham in the Ancient World. And this is where they try and trot out their connections to this. And by the way, they do have the connection about the the four sons of Horus and the four quarters. They say Joseph Smith represented the four figures in figure six of facsimile to us, this earth and its four quarters. And they say a similar interpretation has been argued by scholars who study identical figures in other ancient Egyptian texts. They give a footnote there. I won't go there right now, but they go on later on and they say when this one line here it is a third century papyrus, this is the Leiden papyrus, they don't mention it by name, but it says a third century papyrus from an Egyptian temple library connects Abraham with an illustration similar to facsimile one in the Book of Abraham. And there they give footnote 44 and they link that to, oh, an article by twetness Hauglit and Guy, but it's excerpts from P. Papyrus Leiden. And so, yeah, this is something where they're referring to this very drawing.

John Dehlin [03:11:39] Thank you, Arfem. That's so valuable context. And I've heard you and Bill Rill, talk about that in your wonderful three part series on the Book of Abraham. And let me just ask you this, Dr. Ridner, like, okay, you know, maybe you don't share a Mormon set of beliefs. Maybe Barfem and I don't much these days either. Let's just say you're John Gee or Hugh Nibley or Gary Milstein or whoever and you do have a PhD in Egyptology, you do understand Egyptian and you do come across this manuscript. Is there any world where it's reasonable to then put this in front of a Mormon audience, a believing Mormon audience, a questioning Mormon audience, and try and make the case that it somehow substantiates the authenticity of the Book of Abraham translation as we have through Joseph Smith, you know, trying to realize that these men are likely sincere believers. They likely really believe the church is true. They know that the Book of Abraham is on the ropes. They really want to find reasons for people to still believe. They're probably not intentionally trying to deceive. So let's just say they come upon this. You know, I'm thinking, wow, cool. The word Abraham is with Anubis and the lion bed. Like wow, that's significant. Is it reasonable in any stretch for them to have sort of tried to use this to bolter the Book of Abraham? Yes or no. And if yes or no, why or why not?

Robert Ritner [03:13:11] Well, I can understand why they did it and it's an interesting conjunction. However, if the lion belled were a unique or rare phenomenon, then the conjunction would be really striking. But because I can walk into any Egyptian museum and turn around and find a lion bed within five minutes on many, many things on papyri, drawn on coffins, actual lion beds, in some cases on wall reliefs. It is a very, very, very, very ubiquitous motif. It is not at all unusual or exciting. So Abraham is only used a few times in the magical papyri, but you also get other figures that are used in the magical papyri. So if you talk about Abraham, you have to look at where Abraham is used. And in no case, I mean the couple of cases in the whole, all of the magical texts, never is he used in relation to this, to the Book of Abraham story. He's merely being used as a prophet of early times. And these are late, late, late texts by which time they're drawing it not from any personal memories. These are not ancient texts, these are not early texts. These are ones that are themselves derivative of the Bible because in some cases they quote it. So that mean that's why Abraham is taken so if Abraham. So what you're telling me is if it's legitimate, it means the Book of Abraham influenced this AD Papyrus. So where's the intervening evidence to show it was around and influencing things? So the dates don't work, the context doesn't work. You can't say, oh, this is special because the. Look, the lion bed is there. Well, yeah, because the lion bed is on everything. So the lion bed is not a big deal. That's not particularly surprising. And why is the lion bed there? For the reason that I explained. Because it's a reference to Osiris's power to engender sex. And this is a sex spell that isn't actually what I saw in the Book of Abraham. I mean, maybe there are more chapters that he didn't get to. It's not in the story we have. So if you're saying that this is a connection, what you're saying is that Smith left out the good part.

RFM [03:16:33] Well, Dr. Ritner, I have to remind you that God blessed Abraham, that his seed would be as numerous as the sands of the desert or as the stars of the sky.

Robert Ritner [03:16:42] Maybe that's what we're seeing happening.

RFM [03:16:45] Okay, and before we leave that, before we leave that, I have to bring up the fact that I was disappointed in Kerry Muhlstein, who's one of the two preeminent Egyptologist apologists for Mormonism in the Book of Abraham. And he is on record in a video, and you probably know which one I'm talking about. It may have been a response to your video that you did initially in 2002 or so, but or 2012. But he is on record as saying, referring to the Leiden manuscript, that it contains the name Abraham and that actually translated the words are Abraham is upon the lying couch. Have you heard him actually say that? Because I have.

Robert Ritner [03:17:29] No, I have not.

RFM [03:17:31] We have to get the audio.

John Dehlin [03:17:35] Especially intriguing is a lion couch scene, roughly contemporary to the Joseph Smith papyri that mentions Abraham. The Leiden demonic papyrus we dates to about the same time frame and again from roughly the same location. It has a lion couch scene and we don't have the entire portion of the papyrus left, but there is definitely a lion couch scene with the name Abraham right below it.

Robert Ritner [03:18:00] It is associated somehow with that graphic in. There is a lion couch scene. It's actually part of a love charm and the text says it's got a picture of a man on a lion couch. And the text says this or Abraham upon his couch.

RFM [03:18:15] By the way, in the three part piece that Bill Reel And I did in a separate podcast. It's about a year and a half ago. We do play the audio there. So it is of record. And he did say that, but I wanted to get your take on that.

Robert Ritner [03:18:28] I go on record now as saying something I don't like having to do, but I will. Kerry Mulstein was trained at ucla. I know from the professors who taught him there that he was not taught late Egyptian hieratic, nor was he taught demotic. So he has not been trained in the script in which the book of Abraham, quote unquote, or the breathing permit of horror was written. So where he made an attempt to critique and evaluate my transcription and understanding of that document, as opposed to Michael Rhodes, he doesn't actually have the background to make that decision. He might know Middle Egyptian hieratic. It's very, very different. Michael Rhodes couldn't read Ptolemaic hieratic if his life depended upon it. I mean, he's not been trained.

John Dehlin [03:19:37] And our listeners don't know who Michael Rhodes is. I'm guessing many of them don't.

Robert Ritner [03:19:41] He produced a book in competition with mine. I was denied access to seeing the papyrus. Actually, I petitioned to see the church before I ever started working on the papyri. I was told I could not. They got Michael Rhodes to do a book instead. And Michael Rhodes basically recycled the translation of Hugh Nibley from many years before. But more to the point, to answer the question RFM that you just asked me, demotic is a highly specialized field within Egyptology. It is a sub, sub specialty. Most of my colleagues, 80%, cannot read a word of demotic. Kerry was never trained in demotic, so he cannot read the script that he has said. That you're telling me he is describing demotic is tough. That is my specialty. And when I got my PhD, you have to, at Chicago, sight read a text that is suddenly handed to you out of nowhere. And the text I was handed happened to be this papyrus. It's extremely complicated. And this isn't. This is not merely complicated demotic. It's Roman period demotic. And there are three kinds of demotic because it changes over time radically. So most people who read demotic don't read Roman period demotic either. But that's my fort. That's my strong point. So I was handed the very thing we are now talking about thrust in front of me and said, keep going until I tell you to stop. And I transliterated it and read it aloud in front of a group of individuals who would be my peers. And I Got honors because I read it flawlessly. So that I can do.

RFM [03:22:02] Did you get to the part where it says Abraham upon the lying couch?

Robert Ritner [03:22:06] Yes. Unfortunately, that section is broken. The word lion is there. Who is there? But they're not even in the same sentence. Does that answer your question?

RFM [03:22:19] If I'm understanding you correctly, Kerry Muelstein was engaged in a little bit of maybe wishful misrepresentation of what the actual translation is.

Robert Ritner [03:22:30] That is correct.

John Dehlin [03:22:32] And I guess I want to ask the same question we asked earlier, whether it's Guy or Muhlstein or whoever was involved in discussing this, putting this forward as some type of proof, in your view, Dr. Ritner, did they know better? Do they know better?

Robert Ritner [03:22:49] They should. Yes, I'm sure they do.

John Dehlin [03:22:54] Yeah. Okay, well, I think you've been super. I mean, I'm just over the moon, ecstatic at your generosity. Dr. Ritner, today we're, you know, we're only, I don't know, a third of the way done with this presentation. We have a lot yet to go. I'm guessing you're feeling ready to call it. Call it a day today, right, Dr. Ritner?

Robert Ritner [03:23:22] I've probably irritated enough people at this point.

John Dehlin [03:23:28] And rfm, I know you got. I know, rfm. You changed some plans to be able to be with us today, but wow, what an amazing first several Hours. With you, Dr. Robert Ritner, and with you, RFM. RFM. Anything you want to say in closing?

RFM [03:23:43] No, just that it's been wonderful to talk with Dr. Ritner, somebody who is a really highly regarded Egyptologist. And by the way, I don't know that he would toot his own horn enough, but I think that he's doubtless within the top five or ten Egyptologists in the world today. Would I be far off in saying that, Dr. Ritner?

Robert Ritner [03:24:09] I wouldn't want to make that claim.

RFM [03:24:12] Are you denying it?

Robert Ritner [03:24:15] I would say that I have been given a unique chair in Egyptology in the United States, and so that kind of speaks for itself. And I'll let that. Let that ride. My CV is available online. One thing before we go for the end of the session, if I might, please, and that's to speak to your audience. Over the years, I have had an array of letters and emails coming in. Some of them have been extremely negative, but a large number of them have been extremely kind. And I have been able to answer some of them. I haven't been able to answer all of them, but I want to thank those of you who have written me kind letters. I'm also interested in amused by those who've written me very negative ones. But there was a time I was getting extremely negative ones and then suddenly I got so many that there was even a website that was posted with I think, 59 Responses Thanking me for my work. I really appreciated that. I have put a link to that on my personal website for the Oriental Institute. I had to fight, by the way, with my administration to do that. They didn't want to have anything to do with Mormon issues for fear of losing donations to my institution. So anyway, thank all of you for your interest. I hope I haven't annoyed you more than necessary today. And again, thanks much.

John Dehlin [03:26:10] No, you've been brilliant, Dr. Ritner. I can't thank you enough or people. Thank you. I promised Dr. Ritner. He talked to me about some of the disturbing letters or emails that he's received from kind of Danite, like modern cyber apologists who were angry that he would share with us his scholarship in any way that might challenge orthodox Mormon faith. And it's been really sad to see that anyone would mistreat gentleman and a scholar like Dr. Ritner just for sharing his expertise with no real axe to grind. So I want my listeners to make me proud and email Dr. Ritner, it's R. RitenerChicago. Edu, and tell him how much you love him, tell him how much you appreciate him, tell him how much his work has meant to you, how much this episode and future episodes mean to you. So we can flood his inbox with thankful, grateful, positive emails. Because basically what we're doing is allowing people to base their lives on reality and not on distortions and misperceptions and untruths. Because people's time and money and lives and reputations deserve to be based on truth. So that's what we're doing here. And that's why we need to show Dr. Ritner our thanks and and I'll close. As I began, Dr. Ritner is facing kidney failure and is in need of a living donor to secure his life and continued research. If you can help, or if you know anyone who can help, Please contact Dana McLean, Northwestern Medicine transplant coordinator,XXX-XXX-XXXX. Living donors save lives. So let's get Dr. Ritner a kidney and let's allow him to continue his wonderful research and just let him allow him to continue being an amazing human on this planet. Because we need as much Dr. Ritner on this planet for as long as we can. I hope we're not embarrassing you with our. With our Praise and gratitude, Dr. Ritner.

Robert Ritner [03:28:24] Yes, actually, you are, but thank you. That's very extremely kind.

John Dehlin [03:28:33] So, dear listeners, RFM and I will be back in a couple days. We're going to come back with Dr. Ritner. We're going to talk about facsimile two, facsimile three. We're going to talk about the Kirtland Egyptian Papers. What are they called? The Joseph Smith Papers. Is that right?

RFM [03:28:48] Rfm, Abraham Egyptian papers is the current nomenclature. I understand. By the way, before I sign off, I just want to say something to all of my listeners as well. If any of you are predisposed to write Anything negative to Dr. Ritner in regards to his position on the Book of Abraham, I just want you to stop for a second and think to yourself, what would Osiris do?

John Dehlin [03:29:12] I want to know what Anubis would do. I think that's the question.

RFM [03:29:16] I want to know what Seb would do.

John Dehlin [03:29:17] Would Anubis take his arm with a knife and strike Dr. Ritner, or would Anubis put out his arms in a blessing and protect and bless Dr. Ritner? I think that's the question, isn't it, RFM?

RFM [03:29:31] Well, I think set would cut him into 72 pieces.

John Dehlin [03:29:39] Excellent. Okay. And we'll be talking about Mormon apologetics in the Book of Abraham and different attempts over the years to try and attack and or rescue the Book of Abraham. So there's a lot more to come, but today has been brilliant. Again, thanks, Dr. Ritner. Thanks the brilliant RFM, and thanks to all you listeners who support Radio Free Mormon. Donate to Radio Free Mormon, donate to Bill Real and Mormon discussions, and please donate to Mormon stories podcast@mormonstories.org so that we can continue providing you with this type of programming. Rfm. You want to tell people how to find your podcast?

RFM [03:30:16] Yes. Radiofreemormon.org, very easy to remember. John, can we get that phone number once again for the kidney donation? Just because I think that's the most important thing here.

John Dehlin [03:30:25] Dana McLean,XXX-XXX-XXXX. And I will make sure and share this number and the name on the show notes for the MormonStories.org podcast post. And I'm sure you'll do that, too, on the simultaneous post on RFM.

RFM [03:30:43] Absolutely brilliant.

John Dehlin [03:30:47] All right, thanks, everybody. Thanks, Dr. Ritner. Thanks, RFM. We'll see you guys soon on another episode of Mormon Stories podcast and Radio Free Mormon. Take care, Everybody bye bye.

Robert Ritner [03:31:11] Now when he was a young man he never thought he'd see people stand in line to see the boy king

John Dehlin [03:31:19] King T, how you get so funky?

Robert Ritner [03:31:25] Did you do the funky?

RFM [03:31:27] Born in Arizona who did a Babylonian

John Dehlin [03:31:31] king punk

Robert Ritner [03:31:36] now if I know they light up just to see I'd taken all my money and bought me a

John Dehlin [03:31:43] museum

Robert Ritner [03:31:46] Buried with a donkey he's my

John Dehlin [03:31:51] favorite honky Born in Arizona King Tonk.

Robert Ritner [03:32:02] Dancing by the Nile Ladies love the

RFM [03:32:07] sky,

Robert Ritner [03:32:10] Rock and song he ate a

John Dehlin [03:32:15] crocodile

Robert Ritner [03:32:18] he gave his life for tourism. Golden idols, he's an Egyptian. Now when I got I don't think I'm a nut don't want no fancy funeral Just one like old King Tut he could have won a Grammy Buried in his jammies. Got a condo made of stoner

RFM [03:33:16] ra.

Part Two Begins: Responses and Human Sacrifice Claims

Part 2 of 3 · Ep. 1340

Robert Ritner [00:00:00] 1, 2, 3.

John Dehlin [00:00:19] Doctor Ritner is facing kidney failure and is in need of a living donor to secure his life and continued research. If you can help, please Please contact Dana McClain atXXX-XXX-XXXX. Huge thank you to Bruce MacArthur for making today's episode possible. Hello everyone, and welcome back to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It is August 3, 2020, and we are back with another epic historic interview with Dr. Robert Ritner, accompanied by my co host, RFM, Radio Free Mormon. Hello, RFM, thank you for joining us.

RFM [00:00:57] I am so happy to be here for part two. John and Dr. Ritner.

John Dehlin [00:01:01] And Dr. Ritner, so glad you could join us again.

Robert Ritner [00:01:05] My pleasure.

John Dehlin [00:01:07] So let's begin really quickly, Dr. Ritner, before we jump in. So we've already talked about your background, Dr. Ritner. In episode one, we talked about the historical context and the history of the Book of Abraham as it related to Joseph and Kirtland and Michael Chandler, et cetera. And then we did a dive into facsimile one, and then we kind of ended there because there was so much to cover. Today we're going to be covering facsimile two and facsimile three. But before we do, I think it would be fun to just do a little bit of a reflection on what you have experienced so far since we released episode one. So is there anything you'd like to share just in reflections of the reaction and then in specifically any responses about the content?

Robert Ritner [00:01:59] Well, yes, absolutely. It's been absolutely overwhelming. I have spent the last two days responding to as many emails as I can, and I have received dozens in the plural now of responses, all of them positive, I'm happy to say.

John Dehlin [00:02:14] What are the types of responses you're getting?

Robert Ritner [00:02:17] Extremely touching. F2 remarks about the value of these interviews, about my scholarship, about the critical nature of the Book of Abraham for people's lives in ways that I as an outsider, couldn't possibly have imagined. This is only a 15 page manuscript. I had no idea that it could have such an impact on the way in which people actually construct their lives and their thoughts. I mean, I was simply trying to work on a papyrus. And so this is. It's been a learning experience for me. And I'm absolutely humbled that anything that I could do in my arcane world of dealing with a dead civilization would actually be meaningful for a living human being. And apparently it is in ways that I could not possibly have imagined. And to all of those who have reached out to me and sent me kind and in some cases very detailed notes and anguished notes. I really appreciate it and I thank you so much for trusting me with your remarks and for letting me know what you thought. And I have done some of my homework, so I'd like to segue quickly

John Dehlin [00:03:34] into some really quickly rfm. Do you have any reactions you want to share before we jump into the content?

RFM [00:03:40] No, except I've just been hearing a lot of great things about part one as well.

John Dehlin [00:03:44] Oh, good. Okay. Well, so far so good. Is there some stuff you want to talk to Dr. Ritner? Just about facsimile one and people's reactions to it?

Robert Ritner [00:03:55] Well, absolutely. Just first of all, lest we forget about this, it's clear that Smith's reconstruction of the story of Abraham in the Book of Abraham with the aborted sacrifice of him is largely a carbon copy of what you have in the biblical text, where Abraham is confronted with a sacrifice that's also aborted but of his son Isaac. And the reason where again in both cases Yahweh steps in in both of those stories and prevents the what would be murder. But it's important to note that now as we are speaking in Egypt, there is an Abrahamic tradition which is alive and well and being celebrated as we speak, because we are in the time of the major festival for the Islamic world, which is the Eid al Arha, which is the festival of sacrifice and that celebrates the permission by Yahweh to Abraham to not kill his son Isaac. That is the critical, the most important celebration in the Islamic world. Now the reason for bringing that up is that if there were post biblical traditions of Abraham, you would expect to find a reflex of that in the continuing cultures of the Nares. They haven't forgotten everything. And the Abraham story is not only alive and kicking, it's predominant. It is more important than Moses in the current world of Egypt. And yet there is not one trace, not a scintilla, not a any reflection of the Book of Abraham tradition, whereas the biblical tradition is extremely predominant. So one has to wonder if there were a second story, why is it that it is not enshrined in living testimony when Abrahamic lore is so strong? And that brings up the question of the Leiden Papyrus where there was a post example of the of the Book of Abraham tradition in a Greco Roman document, in a document from this is something else I want to point out. I went back and checked the date. I was following the church's remark in their statement that it was third century. This Leiden Papyrus, it's actually fourth century. So it's 100 years even more remote from the time when Abraham was supposed to have existed. But the problem is, if it's being reflected there, why don't we see it somewhere else? And we don't. It's not there. It's not in the Islamic tradition. The Hebrew tradition are various varieties of Christian traditions. So that is a problem, especially when we're seeing Abraham celebrated literally as we speak.

John Dehlin [00:07:14] Do you have a reflection on that, rfm?

RFM [00:07:17] No, only that. And I know we're going to get into the. The apologetics relating to the Book of Abraham, but acknowledging everything that Dr. Ritner has said is absolutely accurate. What the apologists tend to do is they tend to look at a different set of legends relating to Abraham's attempted sacrifice in Babylon when he was thrown into a furnace, very much like the story of the Hebrew children that we read about in Daniel, and he was saved.

Robert Ritner [00:07:48] May I interject there? Oh, please do, because I've discussed that specifically, and I heard John Gee refer to that in a podcast this morning that I was asked to listen to. The problem with that is that that has nothing whatsoever to do with the patriarch Abraham. And John Gee knows that that particular Coptic story to which he refers to is set in Mesopotamia, and it is not of the Patriarch Abraham, but of St. Abraham of the town of Arbela, which is the modern Iraqi city of Erbil. And the pharaoh, in that the word pharaoh is being used as a title, not a personal name, and he is not an Egyptian king. The Coptic word there, Pharaoh, is the descendant of the earlier Egyptian word Pharaoh. And Pharaoh in that Coptic text, which I have read is simply a designation that means king. It's the same term that you would use for the Roman emperor, the king of Persia, or anywhere else. So it's not distinct to Egypt. So the king who burns this saint, this is taking place under the Sasanian Empire, all in Mesopotamia, with a Sasanian Persian ruler punishing a local Iranian saint who is Syriac, a Jacobite. This has nothing to do with Egypt whatsoever. It's merely a saint's tale from Iraq that has been copied over into the Egyptian tradition. But it's not antiquity, it's not the patriarch Abraham, and it has nothing to do with that, except that the saint happens to have the same name. So this evidence is irrelevant, and it was published accurately that the king referred to as Shapur II of Persia. We know precisely who this, this is, and the text specifically says that his territory of control is Mesopotamia. It couldn't be more specific. Presenting this as John Gee did in a Feschrift is a dishonor to the person to whom it was presented. And it is a complete. Absolutely. A complete distortion of facts that have been known since. Since 1908 when it was properly published. And the 1908 publication is accurate. And what John Gee does with it is a complete fabrication. And he even admits that everyone else has recognized that it's some Persian king named Shapur. Well, it's not some Persian king. It's specifically Shapur II in Mesopotamia. No relation to Egypt. End of story. I hope I answered your question.

RFM [00:10:57] You did. Are those the same stories that are reflected anciently related to Nimrod being the king?

Robert Ritner [00:11:05] That I can't tell you.

RFM [00:11:07] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:11:08] All right, So I think, Dr. Ritner, you have a few other things you want to share just to follow up on our. On our discussion of facsimile one from last time. Is that right?

Robert Ritner [00:11:20] Ah, yes, actually, there is. There's the issue also from the podcast that I was asked to listen to this morning, and that is a podcast entitled, I think Mormon Voices that was.

John Dehlin [00:11:35] Yeah, let's set this up. Rfm, do you mind setting this up for our listeners, those who are just joining us and may not fully remember presentation one?

RFM [00:11:45] Oh, sure. Well, I think that what Dr. Ritner's talking about is the fact that last week, I think it was the fair Mormon group does a podcast, and they had an interview. There was a lady who did an interview with John Gee, and he was presenting a number of comments about the Book of Abraham, a number of apologetic evidences for the Book of Abraham. And in the middle of this conversation, he refers to Dr. Robert Ritner in the context of talking about sacrifice, specifically human sacrifice among the ancient Egyptians. It was John Gee's position, and still remains his position, that actually the ancient Egyptians did perform human sacrifices. And so therefore the narrative in the Book of Abraham is correct as to time and place. Talking as it does about human sacrifices, he notes that Dr. Robert Ritner states that there is or was no human sacrifice in ancient Egypt. But then John gee says that Dr. Ritner has apparently forgotten what he wrote in his doctoral dissertation in which Robert Ritner. Dr. Ritner stated there that there was such a thing as human sacrifice in ancient Egypt. And then he said that, of course, somewhat facetiously implying that Dr. Ritner has reversed his position from his doctoral dissertation to what he's claiming now.

John Dehlin [00:13:14] And this is important because when we look at Joseph Smith's. And we know from last week that when Joseph Smith has this human like figure on top left, that should be a numis, but they've drawn in the head and they've drawn in a sword or a knife, even though that's not what that should be represented there, that Joseph is imposing on this human sacrifice. And so we've got Joseph Smith basically, in effect, claiming that Egyptians were involved in human sacrifice 2000 years before BCE right. And so that's the main contention. And then Robert Ritner would then have you, Dr. Ritter, would have opinions about whether in Egypt there were human sacrifices at all or there's any evidence of that. Is that right?

Robert Ritner [00:14:06] Oh, absolutely. And I would be happy to respond.

John Dehlin [00:14:09] Okay, so let's, let's hear it. How, how else might Joseph have gotten this wrong?

Human Sacrifice in Ancient Egypt Examined

Robert Ritner [00:14:15] All right, well, if, if, if we're going to deal with the issue of human sacrifice, the, the problem with the reasoning being done by John and Carrie Muhlstein with regard to this is you can't merely argue, does human sacri. Then you have to also ask, does human sacrifice exist in the fashion that it's depicted on this picture is in fact this illustration, an actual image of it, which we know is not the case because this is a doctored image. There was no knife.

John Dehlin [00:14:52] And for those who just didn't catch it last week, it is more supposed to look like this image on the right. We've pretty much established that Joseph and his scribes would have drawn in a human sacrificing another human, when really it's Anubis. And you know, as you described, how would you summarize this image on the right, Dr. Ritner, for those who didn't catch last time, instead of it being a sacrifice, what it should be according to the.

Robert Ritner [00:15:22] Yeah, actually, Anubis is simply administering embalming materials for the resurrection, quite literally of Osiris on the. Not altar, but a funerary bed.

John Dehlin [00:15:37] And so even though we've already established that they got that wrong, we still have to have this tedious discussion about is it even possible that sacrifices should exist in the timeframe. So keep going. So now we've got facsimile one.

Robert Ritner [00:15:51] Again, sacrifice is the critical part of the story in the actual text. So we can dismiss the picture as being human sacrifice. But the question is, since it's raised in the text, is that reasonable? Right. And there you have two questions. First of all, would the Egyptians be practicing human sacrifice A and B, would they be sacrificing a human in Ur of the Chaldees, or specifically El Kenna, according to the designation in the text and the designation of the idolatrous priest who was supposedly holding the knife rfm.

John Dehlin [00:16:32] Would you be able to jump to that section real quick in Abraham and just read to us a verse or two just so that we know where you're reading from in the text and kind of what it's saying? Do you have that handy?

RFM [00:16:42] Yeah, actually I do. It's Abraham chapter one, of course, which is right after facsimile one, which it's describing. And I will say something that just isn't interesting to me when I listen to the apologists such as Kerry Muhlstein speak. Sometimes they incorporate elements of Abrahamic lore into the Book of Abraham. And they talk about Abraham here being sacrificed because he was preaching against the idols that his father worshiped. And there are some old accounts in the Abrahamic lore about him breaking apart these idols with a hammer. And then that's why he gets in trouble with the local authorities over in Mesopotamia and he's thrown into the fire. But what I note here in the Book of Abraham, it actually doesn't say that in our Book of Abraham, it really doesn't say exactly why it is that Abraham's being sacrificed. It's implied that it's because he's raising his voice against the idolatrous gods. But what he starts Saying in verse 7 is this. Therefore. Well, he talks about that he raised up his voice. No, the fathers turned their hearts toward these idolatrous gods. He gives their names, the four names, right, and the five names, if you include Pharaoh, king of Egypt. And then verse 7. Therefore, they turn their hearts to the sacrifice of the heathen in offering up their children unto these dumb idols. Now, please notice that these are thank offerings in the Book of Abraham. It even uses that word. So they are so into worshiping these idols that they're going to offer up their children unto them and hearken not unto my voice, but endeavored to take away my life by the hand of the priest of Elkinh. The priest of Elkanah was also the priest of Pharaoh. And it says. Now, I'm not going to try and read too much, but that's, that's the thing is that now at this time it was the custom of the priest of Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, to offer up upon the altar which was built in the land of Chaldea for the offering unto these strange gods, men, women and children. And so they laid their hands upon Abraham to sacrifice him as a thank offering. That's what it's called. In verse 10. Even the thank offering of a child did the priest of Pharaoh offer upon the altar. So they're going to offer up Abraham just like they did three other virgins because of their purity and because they would not bow down to worship the gods of wood or of stone. So impliedly, and only impliedly, Abraham is also being offered up as a thank offering, but because he also was so pure that he would refuse to bow down and worship their gods of wood and stone. So that's what it says.

John Dehlin [00:19:33] Okay, now, thank you, RFM. Now, Dr. Ritner, what's wrong with, you know, with Joseph's writings in the book of Abraham as it relates to what you know about Egyptian history?

Robert Ritner [00:19:44] Well, let's go to my next slide, if you could.

John Dehlin [00:19:46] Okay, I'll share the screen.

Robert Ritner [00:19:54] It is in fact the case in my book here. You're seeing here not just my dissertation, but this is the published, expanded version of it for those who want to read my discussion. You can actually do that? You don't have to take my word for it. Over this podcast, we actually make our Oriental Institute publications available free. I mean, you can buy the book if you like. I don't get residuals, so it doesn't matter to me whether you buy it or not. Although it is and has been our best selling book, by the way, in our press run. So this is now in its fifth printing.

John Dehlin [00:20:34] What's the title of the book, for those who are listening?

Robert Ritner [00:20:36] The Mechanics of Ancient Egyptian Magical Practice. Okay, now in this book, I am the one who points out the existence of human sacrifice. And I do that. I do that on page 162. If you go to the. My point is, before I forget, is that anyone who wants to read this, you can do a free download of the entire book. You can get the whole book for free digitally. Just go on the Oriental Institute website, look under our publications, look for my name, There it is. You click a button that says download and the PDF is yours. So if you want to know anything more about the details of execration or you want to read more deeply about the issues of the nuances of human sacrifice or sacrifice in general, it's all in there. So let's go to page 172. 162. So here we have. You can see, for those of you who can get the visuals, you can see my section titled Human Sacrifice. What I did was analyze as the core of my dissertation an archaeological site at a Nubian fortress near the second Cataract. It's a site known now as Mer Gissa. This was a new installation by a fortress in Egyptian's Middle Kingdom. And this was built in a virgin site. There was no local town there. The Egyptians set up a fortress. And whenever you set up a fortress, you would perform execration magic. And what? Execration. It's a fancy word for cursing your enemies. And you make little dolls, which are the antecedents of voodoo dolls. And the Egyptians, you would then write the name of your enemies on these dolls. And this is sponsored by the state. So the chancellery would actually go through, keep a list of all the names of the foreign rulers. And there was a standard boilerplate list of the rulers of the north, south, east and west. You put them all down there, some new king came to the throne or new chieftain. If they knew about it, they'd change the name on papyrus. And then when you made a new set of figurines, you'd write these on multiple sets of figurines. So any one figurine would have many, many names on it. A section for Egyptians, a section for people from Palestine, people from Libya, people from Nubia, and even criminal Egyptians. And then you smash them, you stick pins in them, you burn them, and ultimately you bury them. And the thing is that what you do when you bury them is you want them to be placed in an area where there is an old abandoned cemetery. Traditionally, we find these included in cemeteries where the offerings have stopped. And so what's happening from the Egyptian perspective is that the ghosts who live in that cemetery have not been fed thank offerings, they haven't been fed food. And so they are angry and hungry. They want their food offerings. And what you were doing is you're saying, here, take these people, and that's what these little voodoo dolls are for. So that they will be ritually tortured by the spirits as punishment, but they are being given over to the spirits of the dead to affect the curses. So you're asking ghosts to torture these people. And the whole point of this exercise is that it will be magically effective so that the Egyptians do not have to go to war. It's a way of making sure your enemies are peaceful and under your control without actually having to go out and fight them or persecuting them in any way. Or putting it another way, it's so you don't have to actually kill them. So instead of human sacrifice, the traditional practice, the normal practice, the practice that's celebrated in all the temples, is the killing not of human beings. But the killing of little clay figures, that is what is depicted on temple walls. That is what execration is all about. That is the cursing ritual that's performed in all the fortresses on Egypt's borders and in the temples inside. So on a regular basis, do Egyptians commit human sacrifice? The answer is no. Do they sacrifice images of humans to avoid having to actually kill them on the altar? Yes. So there is some interaction with human sacrifice, and it's a way of getting out of doing it by smashing little clay dolls. Now, if you are on a fortress in Palestine, your fortresses are never going to be in a barren place where there are no surrounding towns. Because somewhere very close there will be a Canaanite town. Always, if you need to find a graveyard, you can find one. It's not a problem. If you are in Mir Gissa, there is desert stretching away for hundreds and hundreds of miles where there are no villages and no towns at all. And there was no town there when the Egyptians built their fortress. So can we go to my next slide?

John Dehlin [00:26:55] Yes, we can.

Robert Ritner [00:26:56] By the way, many of these slides, I want the audience to understand that I'm having to cobble together illustrations sort of on the fly because I am officially locked out of my office and can't get at my slides, my book, my notes, et cetera, because of the coronavirus. So I'm working with what I can throw together from my office.

John Dehlin [00:27:15] No, that's great. And I just want to summarize because there's a lot of my audience that might get lost in the details, but just want this to be summarized. So we basically have Joseph Smith claiming that Pharaoh is sacrificing Abraham. We have, you know, John Geese saying,

Robert Ritner [00:27:37] I'm going to tie it all together in a nice package after I get to this next slide.

John Dehlin [00:27:40] Okay, great, great, great. Okay, so here we are back. Do you want to go to the burial slide now?

Robert Ritner [00:27:46] Yep. Okay, so what we're doing now is I'm jumping over the rest of my discussion of the human sacrifice. At the site of Mirgisa. There was found a discarded Nubian body. The head was cut off. And we have the flint blade that was actually used to cut the head. It was lying there by the severed skull. I did not participate in the excavations, I should point out of this site. But what I did do was analyze everything that was part of this execration ritual. All the pieces, including the body. And I pointed out in that section that is now no longer on the screen that this was almost certainly a human sacrifice. That a. A person was killed at the time of the execration because the body wasn't buried, it was discarded. It was essentially tossed aside in a sand pit in one place, the head somewhere else. So in this next section in burial, I talk about the reason that's important that there be a burial. This is where I explain that in all the cases that we have, typically they are put in a older cemetery for the purpose of invoking that ghost that I mentioned. Well, Edmer Gisser, you couldn't do that. There's no ghost because there's no older cemetery. There's no angry spirits who haven't received their offerings. So what do you do if you don't have an angry dead person and you need that for the ceremony? You make one. So what you do is you take a political prisoner and you execute him. So yes, it's human sacrifice, but it's also political execution because this is undoubtedly a captured prisoner on a border fortress where you are fighting Nubians. So how you look at sacrifice vis a vis how you look at political execution is a problem. And that's the case wherever you would have it. But here it is important to note that what you've got is a unique phenomenon. When you say the Egyptians practice sacrifice using the English present tense, you mean that happens all the time? That is a regular feature. And what I'm saying is we have a case where once Egyptian practiced in the past tense sacrifice. So it is not a normal custom. The normal custom is to avoid it by using smash dollies and then you put them in an old graveyard. Here they use smash dollies and they had to make a graveyard. That is why I am not contradicting myself. It is what I explained in livid detail within the body of my dissertation, which John has said somehow contradicts itself. Read it for yourself. It's free.

John Dehlin [00:30:44] And so on the podcast, when John Gee and Hannah Cyriak basically say that in fact human sacrifice was a practice in Egypt 1700 years before BCE and that Joseph Smith must have been inspired by God because he got that right. And you, Dr. Robert Ridnard, should know that best because in your own dissertation you talk about Egyptian sacrifice. Your response is what?

Robert Ritner [00:31:21] Not in Egypt, in Nubia, not in Syria, not in Elkin, if there is an Elkin, which is problematic in and of itself. And we can talk about Elkin A in a moment when we get to facts. Simile 3.

John Dehlin [00:31:36] Right. And not as a practice. Right.

Robert Ritner [00:31:38] Not as a normative practice.

RFM [00:31:41] Okay, and just to come in here and emphasize what I read in chapter One, verse eight of the book of Abraham. It does state it was a common practice there. It says now at this time it was the custom of the priests of Pharaoh to offer up upon the altar men, women and children to their strange gods.

Robert Ritner [00:32:01] It's also important to notice that what's being, what's being done here? When you're killing this Nubian prisoner, you are not actually offering him to anybody, right? To what gods? He's not being killed as an offering to gods. He's being killed to make him into a ghost. So this is not being done on an altar to any God. This is in a pit in the desert. Not in a temple. Not in a cult setting of a temple with priests around. There are priests around who are invoking this, but they're not doing it in front of images of gods. So the Nubian is not being sacrificed to anyone. He's being sacrificed for the purpose of making an angry dead man. So it is not the procedure that's being described. It's not like you have a statue of Osiris and you are killing this man in front of him, or a statue of the idolatrous God of Elkhena, because no statue of a God is there. So it is completely incorrect in context, not for the same purpose. It's not as an offering, but is instead to make someone unhappy. It's a non thank offering. It's to tick someone off so that he will then torture the names of the spirits that are written on the voodoo dolls. So the mechanism is 100% the opposite. And guy knows that because of course, I was his teacher and I taught him what execration magic was and he should know better.

RFM [00:33:57] Well, I just want to add here because I know we want to get the facsimile too, John. Yeah, but the reason this strikes me with such force is that I listened to this interview from last week and anybody can listen to it. And it was obvious that John Gee was making fun at your expense, Dr. Ritner. He even giggles about it along with the interviewer about how ridiculous you are that you say that the Egyptians did practice human sacrifice in your dissertation, but now you're saying the opposite with the suggestion that the only reason you're saying the opposite now is because you're just trying to tear down the Book of Abraham, no matter what you have to do to do it.

Robert Ritner [00:34:43] Well, what I've had to say about sacrifice has nothing to do with the Book of Abraham.

RFM [00:34:47] Right?

Robert Ritner [00:34:48] We can talk about at some point how I was brought into the Book of Abraham. Situation, but that's another question.

RFM [00:34:56] We will. And I just want to underscore one other thing here, John, and I apologize.

John Dehlin [00:34:59] No, don't apologize. I love it. That's why you're here, buddy.

RFM [00:35:02] Okay. Well, Kerry Muhlstein and John Gee, but especially Carrie Muhlstein's writings. He has gone to great length to say publicly and in writing in the Ensign and also in videotapes that are available on the Internet in support of the Book of Abraham, that the description of human sacrifice in the Book of Abraham is exactly the way all Egyptologists, or at least the majority of Egyptologists, his colleagues, understand the way the Egyptians used to practice human sacrifice. He says 20 years ago when he got involved in this. No, it was different. People didn't understand about human sacrifice then. But that Kerry Muhlstein has almost single handedly led the Light Brigade into changing the opinion of all Egyptologists to revolutionize the idea and that now all Egyptologists understand that the way the Book of Abraham describes human sacrifice in Egypt is exactly the way it was practiced among the ancient Egyptians. Is that statement correct, Dr. Ritner?

Robert Ritner [00:36:10] Well, I'll try to be as concise as I can be on this. Carey wrote his dissertation on this very topic and he was very careful to describe these as political executions rather than human sacrifices. He walked a careful line that passed muster with Egyptologists. He did not prove that there was human sacrifice. He in fact just pointed these out as being political execution. You have examples of a text which John Gee also references in this podcast of a sila of King Neferhotep of the Middle Kingdom, in which boundaries are being set up for a temple precinct. And it is said that anyone who, who trespasses, any bureaucrat or priest who trespasses into this estate and would attempt to take away some of its assets would be burnt. Now, that is a statement of what would happen for committing a crime. If you invade the temple precinct and plunder its resources, you will be burned. It's a death penalty for committing a crime. This is not for failing to worship the gods or failing to respect a deity or a ritual. It's if you commit a crime, there will be capital punishment. That is not sacrifice. And yet this is the kind of example they want to choose. This is like saying, if you kill someone and we hang you for it, it's a human sacrifice. If that's the way you want to understand it, fine. Any execution could be taken in a religious way and given a connotation. We execute people. Now, is that human sacrifice? For some, you would say yes. But it's a question of is this how the Egyptians are understanding it? And the answer is certainly not. They're putting to death for criminal purposes. There is also a recently excavated area in the Delta, the northern part of Egypt during the time of political turmoil where a large number of bodies have turned up that are again, probably the result of warfare. It's been argued to be a massacre, slaughter of captives, but that's in warfare. Is that human sacrifice? I don't think so. During the course of war, people are killed, yes, you can say that's to the benefit of a deity or the country. But that is not what is typically understood as human sacrifice. It's military activity. So all of the examples that they like to point to that are so called recent ones are in fact either criminal punishment or military activity. It's not a question of human sacrifice on an altar. There's no altar that's been found at this site in the Delta. There's no altar that is found in Mir Gissa. There is no altar found adjacent to the Neferhotep stele. So all of that is smoke and mirrors and confusion of terms and attempting to juggle anything in order to make it all make sense. But the bigger question is, so what if the Egyptians practiced human sacrifice? Would the Egyptians have practiced human sacrifice in North Syria where they didn't have any physical control? Would they have looked like that on that illustration, which we know is doctored and therefore cannot be an illustration of it? So it's not a question of finding one little thing that might work. You have to make all the pieces fit. And that is the continual problem with the apologists is they find one small aspect which if you squint your eyes and look, you know, slightly to the left, you can say, well, it sort of looks like this, but then it doesn't fit the entire picture. Because you're asked to ignore all of that and you can't ignore all of it. If the story is true, then all parts of it have to be true, not just one aspect of one picture or two lines in the text and fail to do is present a complete picture. If you don't show all your work and explain all the details, then you cannot have a defense. And they never do that. And the reason is they don't have the facts. And no amount of apologetics until the end of the universe will produce facts that never were and don't exist.

RFM [00:41:13] Can I ask you just a yes or no question, Doctor?

Robert Ritner [00:41:22] I forget the question. Okay, here it is that true the answer is no.

John Dehlin [00:41:29] Okay.

RFM [00:41:29] Because I was going to say the book of Abraham says that it was the custom among the Egyptians to sacrifice people for refusing to worship their gods.

Robert Ritner [00:41:39] There is no evidence of that ever in any context. On the contrary, the Egyptians don't care what gods you worship and they adopt every single deity, including Yahweh. The most popular deity in the Greek period Egyptian magical papyri is Yao, which is just a different writing of Yahweh. The Egyptians invoke Apollo, Diana, Ereshkigal from Mesopotamia, Resheph from Syria, baal. The Egyptians add gods. They don't take any away. Never, never do they persecute you for worshiping, for not worshiping their God. There is one period in Egyptian history, a monotheistic period under King Akhenaten where he persecutes all the God except his favorite sun disk. But that's a unique period. The Egyptians, as soon as he was dead, that movement stopped.

John Dehlin [00:42:41] And what year would that have been, approximately, Dr. Ritner?

Robert Ritner [00:42:45] 1300s B.C.

John Dehlin [00:42:47] okay, and again we have Abraham, if he even lived somewhere between 1700 and 2000 BCE. So long before, Long before.

Robert Ritner [00:43:00] Shall we move to. I hope we've discussed human sacrifice sufficiently, but we can. I understand Kerry has changed his mind and his approach going now that his dissertation is published and he doesn't have to go through peer review. He can speak of human sacrifice all he likes.

John Dehlin [00:43:24] But if Guy or to Milstein were to make these claims about human sacrifice in this time period in front of colleagues such as yourself, what would the reaction be of the colleagues?

Robert Ritner [00:43:38] Disbelief and disagreement. Yeah, universal.

RFM [00:43:43] And the only reason I'm making such a big deal about it here is because both John Gee and Kerry Muhlstein have chosen to make such a big deal about it in their apologetic writings. Because when you look at it from the one side, if the ancient Egyptians did practice human sacrifice, which I understand they did not, Dr. Ritner. Contrary, Guy and Muhlstein. But if they had, it's not a huge support for the book of Abraham. I mean, a lot of different cultures practice human sacrifice. The problem is that because the book of Abraham specifically says they did practice human sacrifice and that Abraham was on the receiving end of one of those human sacrifice attempts, that if the ancient Egyptians did not practice human sacrifice, then it becomes a huge obstacle to the truth of the book of Abraham. That's why they have to go there, I think.

Robert Ritner [00:44:34] Well, sacrifice is critical to the story of Abraham in the Bible. His papyrus is the his way in. It is his story. It has to be based on the Egyptian papyrus which he bought. So what he has done is he's coupled the sacrificial story coming from the Bible with the piece of Pyrus which he bought. And so then you have to have sacrifice in Egypt. It's the theme of Abraham merged with the merchandise he had. There's your story.

RFM [00:45:09] Very good. Thank you.

John Dehlin [00:45:12] Makes sense. All right, let's jump to facsimile two, because we've still got facsimile two and three. Last time we talked about, you know, how many misses Joseph Smith had in facsimile one. And so now it's time to talk about whether he has hits or misses in facsimile 2. So I will share the screen now for those of you who would like to watch as we have Dr. Ritner actually translate these images to tell us what they actually say versus what Joseph Smith translated them or supposedly translated them to have said. Check us out on YouTube or on Facebook on the Mormon Stories podcast Facebook page. We think you'll get a lot more out of this if you refer to the visuals. So, Dr. Ritner, here we have Facsimile 2 as it was first presented to the saints. RFM, do you want to tell us anything about the presentation of facsimile 2 to the saints?

Facsimile 2 and the Hypocephalus Explained

RFM [00:46:16] No. Except for the fact that actually, this is the way it is reproduced now in the published Book of Abraham. And Dr. Ritner is going to tell us about how a lot of these pieces were actually missing from the papyrus that Joseph Smith had in his possession and how he filled it in by borrowing from other places.

John Dehlin [00:46:36] Perfect. All right, take it away, Dr. Ritner.

Robert Ritner [00:46:40] Well, a couple of general things to notice about this, first of all, and that is that the heading of this in facsimile 2 that you haven't reproduced, but the statement as published says that it is from the Book of Abraham. Now, the book of Abraham is supposedly a papyrus, and John Gee and others have argued that this was a long roll that is missing, except this seems to be from it. And this, of course, also is missing. We don't have this as fighting piece of papyrus, but every one of these things that look like this, this is a separate piece. We know what this sort of a document is. It is a round, cut out piece of papyrus, stiffened papyrus. It's not a roll, it's a rondel, a circle, because it's intended to be a solar symbol which is placed underneath the head of the mummy. It's not wrapped up and put in the hands or by the feet like you would a Book of the Dead scroll. So this was never part of a long roll. It could not have been part of a long roll. And it has a personal name on it that I can read. The name is Sheshonq. And this name is for a separate mummy that was not the mummy whore who owned facsimile one. What I'm saying is that if Joseph Smith thought this piece, which he had, is a fragmentary piece of papyrus, which, as we'll see in a moment, was broken, not whole and not fully round, just a broken piece, he didn't know how it would originally have looked and assumed it was part of a sheet that was broken off. He assumed it somehow joined with facsimile one because they are both said to be part of the Book of Abraham. If there were a book of Abraham, this would have had to have been on the papyrus. Except we know it can't have been on a long sheet of papyrus because these only come in circle form. No other way. Can't have it any other way. And it can't be for the same man in facsimile one because it's a totally different name. Now, he bought several mummies and so this was originally on one and the facsimile one was from a different mummy. And he mixed them up over time, they got separated from the mummies, they're jumbled together and he didn't know how many scraps he had. And. And he also didn't understand the concept of a long piece of papyrus because there was all broken up. So any judgments or statements made about how long the papyrus is can be thrown away. We can't rely on the long witnesses. What did they know in the 1800s what a long piece of papyrus would be? They didn't know what papyrus was basically, and what a standard sheet. Anything that was larger then a normal piece of paper of the 1800 size would have been considered large for them. So they saying large doesn't. We can't say, oh well, then it was 10ft, 40ft, whatever, and it can't even be real if this piece was supposed to be part of it. And we know it never could be because it was always a circle, never part of a square or rectangle, and couldn't have been attached in any way to a document for a different person and a different mummy that he just happened to purchase together. And as we shall see as we discuss what's on this circle, there are bits and pieces of a third distinct unattached papyrus The Book of the Dead of Tahsheret Men, which he used to fill in the holes of because he thought it was. And he didn't know what it was. So he had absolutely no understanding of what documents he had, which ones made up his Book of Abraham. And they're clearly from things that couldn't possibly be the text of the Book of Abraham. Because like facsimile one, nothing in this text, and let me underline the word nothing, is actually related to what is in the English text of the Book of Abraham, for which there is no underlying ancient language. Egyptian, Hebrew, Arabic. Anything else?

John Dehlin [00:51:33] Let me ask you this, Dr. Ritner. So if we on our screen go Back to facsimile 1. Facsimile 1 is in a square, right?

Robert Ritner [00:51:43] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:51:44] And so you're saying this facsimile one

Robert Ritner [00:51:48] is in a rectangle in a square. But when we see where it came from, you see it's a long horizontal sheet.

John Dehlin [00:51:54] Okay, so facsimile one was part of that original scroll that Joseph identified as the Book of Abraham. That was really the score of. Tell us what the name of the scroll was.

Robert Ritner [00:52:08] Book of Breathing of a priest named Hor.

John Dehlin [00:52:10] Book of Breathing of a priest named Horrible. So that turns into. And I'm showing these on the screen, that turns into facsimile one. We've already established that Abraham probably never existed. If he did, the time frame of his existing versus the timeframe of these scrolls is off by about 1600 years. Is that right? And then we've already agreed, which the church we've already established, and the church agrees that the name Abraham doesn't appear anywhere on facsimile 1. And what is represented in facsimile 1 literally has nothing to do with Abraham or anything in the contents of the book Abraham. So that's facsimile one. And then what you just told us is for facsimile two, it's this circle. And the image that's in this circle wasn't even related to that. That original papyrus that Joseph was working with. It would have been found somewhere else.

Robert Ritner [00:53:11] Document a different shape and a different person.

John Dehlin [00:53:13] Yeah, totally different person. Totally different shape. And again, a totally different time period. And in a second, you will show us what its origins were and what it actually talks about.

Robert Ritner [00:53:24] Okay, so this is the way it was actually copied by Joseph Smith's scribes.

John Dehlin [00:53:30] So tell our. Tell our listeners what they would be seeing here if they were actually looking at the image.

Robert Ritner [00:53:37] So what you are looking at now is a hand copy done by Smith scribes. That is preserved in the. What have been called various things, the Kirtland Papers, the wonderful discovery of Alphabet and grammar and RFM remind me of what Brian Haugland is calling these now.

RFM [00:54:02] I think these are called the Abraham Egyptian Papers.

Robert Ritner [00:54:07] Well, these are manuscripts that always were retained by the Church. The church didn't have all the papyri, but they did keep these records.

John Dehlin [00:54:19] And let me just ask why, if they had, if someone at some point had a copy of, you know, if there was a. A piece of papyrus or a piece of Egyptian paper that had the images, you know, the circle and the images that turns up, turns out to be Produced as facsimile 2, why would some scribe have made a copy of it with handwriting? Do you have any idea, Dr. Ritter?

Robert Ritner [00:54:48] Well, this is all the translation process. They were making hand copies so that they could try to read them. And what you see is they copy the sections that are extant. And the other areas, there are wide open blank spaces because it had simply broken off. These papyri were not preserved intact when Smith was working on them. Now, whether some of that was broken off at the time he bought them or whether they were broken off as they were displayed repeatedly for visitors. There are references being spread out on the floor. If you do that with fragile text over and over again, sections are going to break off.

John Dehlin [00:55:36] And so you make a handwritten copy, a drawing of what it is so that you can work with it and not destroy the source paper. And we just have to. We haven't really talked about the history of this, but the Abraham Egyptian Papers, the Church kept in its vault, right. Rfm for many, many, many decades and didn't tell anyone they had them. And these only got produced when the Tanners and others sort of forced the Church's hand in the 65, 66 time frame. Is that right, RFM?

RFM [00:56:07] Well, actually, the Tanners did have leaked to them a transcript of the Abraham Egyptian Papers, and then they had leaked to them an actual microfilm version of the Abraham Egyptian Papers, which is What I think Dr. Ritner had to use in his 2014 response to the Church essay. Because until the last couple of years now, as a result of the efforts of Brian Haugland and the Joseph Smith Papers project, only in the last three or four years, to my understanding, has the Church finally allowed to be published the actual papers that were used by Joseph Smith and his scribes to translate the Book of Abraham. That is the Abraham Egyptian Papers. I was shocked to find out that as recently as six years ago in 2014, they were not publicly available. And that Dr. Ritner had to go to extraordinary lengths in order to find the Tanner's version of it so he could use it in responding to the Church essay, because the Church would not allow him to have access to the originals or reproductions of the originals through the church. Is that right, Dr. Ritner?

Robert Ritner [00:57:18] That is exactly correct. The Tanner book was. The microfilm book was absolutely indispensable. Of course, unfortunately, the printing of that was, let's just say, faint and not the best possible quality. I was never allowed to see the originals, but it was sufficiently good that I was able to work with it. And all of my interpretations are the result of that microfilm book. If I had not had that book, I could have done nothing with this material.

John Dehlin [00:57:51] So shout out to Sandra and Gerald

Robert Ritner [00:57:54] posthumously for their great work, absolutely fundamental book, and not only for making the microfilm available, but for other discoveries that they made in 1968, in the initial dialogue journal publications that came out with the. With the release of the papyrus, they made major interpretations about facsimile 2 that are completely accurate to this day. And they were able to match the restoration how the scribes actually filled in those blank spaces. And they did that without being able to read hieroglyphs, but they were able to see where some pieces were copied over from other manuscripts within other papyri within the collection. And it's perfect.

John Dehlin [00:58:47] And we're about to go through that, right?

Robert Ritner [00:58:49] Yep.

John Dehlin [00:58:50] Okay. So on the screen, we're seeing a hand drawn representation of the source document that Joseph Smith, Egyptian document that Joseph Smith would have been using, that ends up becoming the basis for the Church's production of Facsimile 2. Right. And there's big chunks. Let's just. If it's a clock, let's just say from. From 1 o' clock to 2 o', clock, basically from the center on out, there's a big chunk of the papyrus of the image that's missing. Is that right, Dr. Ritner?

Robert Ritner [00:59:22] Completely missing, yes.

John Dehlin [00:59:23] Yeah. So we have another instance where Joseph Smith and his scribes have to draw in a big chunk of the missing papyrus. And we can now from you find out how well they did at reproducing the missing fragments, Correct?

Robert Ritner [00:59:40] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:59:41] All right. So. So is there anything you want to tell us about this hand drawing of. Of whatever the source would have been before we go on to the next slide? What is this? What is this about? What. Can you read any of this and if so, what's it saying?

Robert Ritner [00:59:56] Well, I've actually published it in my, in my book. So yes, I've actually, I've been able to read everything. The problem is that some of the, some of what you have here are in hieroglyphs. Some of what you have are in hieratics. So you actually got different scripts, sort of a cursive hieroglyphs. The primary scene is the creator God is sitting in the middle. You're missing his head. There are baboons who are worshiping him on either side. You can see them with their arms upraised. Maybe you can notice their tails flanking a seated figure who has multi heads because he's facing in two directions at once. There are then side inscriptions that flank the left and right of those. The one, as we look on the screen to the left includes the name of the owner, the name of the mummy for whom this was made. This is basically a text in order to cause the spirit of the mummy to rise up with the rising sun and so to ascend into heaven. And that's what all of this solar imagery is about. There are different ways of expressing gods of the sky and the way that the spirit of the mummy will rise up. So that's basically what we're talking about.

John Dehlin [01:01:19] Okay. All right.

Robert Ritner [01:01:23] When you get a little further in, we can talk about what it actually says.

John Dehlin [01:01:27] Okay. So I think this next slide is going to allow us to analyze whether what they drew in actually represents what would have been there had they had the source text, is that right?

Robert Ritner [01:01:42] That's correct.

John Dehlin [01:01:43] Okay, so what are we looking at here on this next slide?

Robert Ritner [01:01:45] 1968 article by

John Dehlin [01:01:51] the Tanners in Dialogue magazine. Right.

Robert Ritner [01:01:54] Or Hayward and Tanner in Dialogue. Right, Dialogue.

John Dehlin [01:01:59] Okay.

Robert Ritner [01:02:00] And what you've got on the left hand side is the. Is a reproduction of the drawing that we just saw. This is the, this example of the circle. The technical name for this is the Greek term hypocephalus, which is simply a fancy term for under the head. That's all that means. This is the under the head thing because it's a little disk that's used like a pillow to raise your head up to cause you to ascend into the sky spiritually. So the right hand quadrant was broken off and missing, and Smith didn't have access to it. And so he's going to use it as a drawing. He wants a complete thing. So what do you do? And so you'll notice there is a box that the Tanners have put, or Hayward and Tanner, excuse me, have put, with a little arrow going toward that Square. And what you see is the falcon headed sun God Ra with a sun disc on his head. There are two eyes of Horus on either side of him, the so called Ujjat eyes of protection. And he is in a boat

John Dehlin [01:03:17] and

Robert Ritner [01:03:17] that is in a rectangle because that rectangle is taken directly out of one of the columns of the Papyrus of Tasheret Min, which is Joseph Smith Papyrus number two, a totally separate manuscript for a different mummy that I alluded to, one of his other, one of the other mummies. So we now have three different people that are coming with three different manuscripts, none of which could be together on the same scroll. So this particular image is from papyrus number two, which was never associated with, couldn't have been attached to, didn't belong to papyrus number one or the Hoopacephalus, either one of them. But it's being used to fill in this slot arbitrarily. And if you look on the right hand side there, you can see it filled in and that's the way it's actually published. So the left is what's really in the archives showing you what the scribes were working with as their manuscript. They're working subject and on the right is their end product. And the little boxes with arrows show you things that were filled in that were taken from other sources. So that the box at the bottom underneath this figure of Ray is additional text. But that one was taken from further columns of papyrus number one, the book of breathings of Hoar. And the same is true with what you've got on the right hand side where the section to fill the circle going around the edge. You can see there are boxes on the right hand side and those have been taken in from other sources also. All of it copied from different manuscripts that could never have all been together on the same piece. So the scribes just went looking in the Egyptian where's a nice passage that looks pretty. Okay, we'll copy that in here. So what I'm telling you is that the image that we have for facsimile 2 is as doctored and artificial as the published version of facsimile 1. It has some parts that are real and the rest here instead of just making it up, which they did for facsimile one that was just, okay, what could this be? Let's put a human head here, here they're going, okay, well let's just borrow some Egyptian from somewhere else. Which shows you two things. One, they didn't think anyone else would ever be able to figure that out. And Two, they didn't realize that was a problem. And three, actually, it means they couldn't read it. Nobody could read it,

John Dehlin [01:06:33] which we know is true, because no one could really understand Egyptian, you know, in New York at that time. Right.

Robert Ritner [01:06:40] Well, it's also particularly clear because Joseph Smith admits he can't read it because where he actually publishes it, we have annotations that we will get to where he has a very convenient out not to be read at this time.

John Dehlin [01:06:57] Right. Do you want to mention really quickly the writing that's kind of along the edges of this hypocephalus?

Robert Ritner [01:07:08] Yeah, it's an inscription that runs around the circle. That's its own separate text. If you give me a second, just pull up my formal.

John Dehlin [01:07:24] So, basically, listeners, I'll just describe this as Dr. Ritter's looking it up. In addition, in the facsimile to the various images that are in different, let's just say, sections of the circle, you've got this text that's kind of written around. Around the circle, along the edges. And because that was missing, Joseph Smith and his scribes would have had to fill in the writing so that it becomes one continuous string of writing all around, let's just say the circumference or the outer edge of the circle. While Dr. Ritter is looking that up, is there anything you want to add RFM to. To the description and what we've been talking about so far?

RFM [01:08:14] No. I think you've done a great job, and I'm trying to be cognizant of the fact that some people will just be listening to this without actually looking at the diagrams. If you are just listening to this. And that will be the only option available on the radiofreemormon.org website. I do encourage you to take the time to go back and look at the Mormon Stories podcast version that actually has video and has these diagrams, because that will be very helpful to you to understand what it is that Dr. Ritter's talking about.

Robert Ritner [01:08:52] The text says, I am the punisher in the mansion of the Bin Bin and Heliopolis. Greatly exalted, greatly effective. The copulating bull who has no equal, the great God in the mansion of the Ben Bin in Heliopolis. Come to the Osiris Sheshonq, the justified son of broken. He is that great God in the house of the noble. That's what it actually says.

John Dehlin [01:09:16] Okay.

Robert Ritner [01:09:16] Is that the word Ben Bin? Several times. That is the primordial mound that rose up out of waters at the beginning of time. That is part of the Egyptian Understanding of Genesis, where the creator God rises up on a little hillock that moves out of the primordial waters.

John Dehlin [01:09:35] So, Dr. Rinder, that whole text that you just read is what remains. What's that? Say it again.

Robert Ritner [01:09:43] You read it around the outer circle,

John Dehlin [01:09:45] the parts that are not missing. Right.

Robert Ritner [01:09:48] Part of that is missing and part of it is restored.

John Dehlin [01:09:54] But the part that you read have to be the parts that we can still read because the part that's missing we don't have. Is that right?

Robert Ritner [01:10:01] Well, what's missing is come to the Osiris Sheshonq, the justified son of.

John Dehlin [01:10:07] How do we know that if it's missing?

Robert Ritner [01:10:09] Because this is a standard text that occurs around the ring of all of these.

John Dehlin [01:10:14] Got it. Okay, so we're able to find this text.

Robert Ritner [01:10:17] This is the Book of the Dead. This is another standardized manuscript form. So I'll be able to show you in a moment what a normal one of these looks like that isn't broken.

John Dehlin [01:10:29] Okay, so. So for the part that's missing and

Robert Ritner [01:10:34] those, I can restore that it's the name Sheshonq because that occurs somewhere else on the papyrus where it is not broken.

John Dehlin [01:10:44] Okay, so I'm just gonna ask this.

Robert Ritner [01:10:47] Where the ring is gone, that's where you would be having the name of the tomb owner. But. So I know it has to go in there, but it would. But it's actually occurring to the left of the seated multi headed God where his head is broken off. We'll get there.

John Dehlin [01:11:07] Okay, so what they wrote in. In place of the text that should

Robert Ritner [01:11:14] have been there wrong is misplaced and it has. That does not belong there.

John Dehlin [01:11:21] Do you know what it says? Did you already read to us what it says?

Robert Ritner [01:11:24] I'll have to go back and find that again. I have explained with that. Where it's a patch taken from papyrus number one.

John Dehlin [01:11:32] So just to make sure, we've got the scribes in Joseph Smith writing in filling out the verbiage of the circle with language that has nothing to do with the actual circle itself. Is that fair to say it's from

Robert Ritner [01:11:48] a totally separate document? Right.

John Dehlin [01:11:50] Okay, should we go to the next.

Robert Ritner [01:11:53] I have pointed out some of these things in other places, but the Tanners get the credit. Or sorry again, I keep forgetting it's Tanner and

John Dehlin [01:12:07] rfm. Help us out.

RFM [01:12:09] Was it Hayworth or Haywood Hayward?

John Dehlin [01:12:12] Okay. Okay. So do you want to show us the next slide? Is that where we're going?

Robert Ritner [01:12:17] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:12:18] Okay, here's the next slide. Tell us what. Tell us what we're seeing here.

Robert Ritner [01:12:23] So there's an example where you can actually see the substitution, the blank space there. And then here we have this figure of the sun God in his bark. And obviously that wasn't there. And the text that goes around the ring is obviously totally missing, but suddenly it has been resupplied. And if you look at the God seated in the middle that the baboons are worshiping, he has no head in the one. And on the right he does, but you'll notice it's off kilter.

John Dehlin [01:13:02] Right.

Robert Ritner [01:13:02] Pushed to the right. It's almost like, why.

John Dehlin [01:13:07] No.

Robert Ritner [01:13:07] Where did he get that head from?

RFM [01:13:10] Right above it. Figure.

Robert Ritner [01:13:12] Sure. Exactly. So he just recopied it from directly above.

RFM [01:13:19] Did he not recognize that that was a body in the lower picture? And is that why it's off to the right?

Robert Ritner [01:13:27] Well, I think he didn't. I don't think he understood what was going on there because it's clearly in the wrong. It's been restored in the wrong place. It doesn't hit the neck.

John Dehlin [01:13:37] Well, that's really profound that he just. They just reproduced the head of the figure above it and just copied and pasted it down below.

Robert Ritner [01:13:44] Well, that's what copying pasting, like we would do now with. With a typeset man or a non typeset manuscript, digital manuscript, is exactly what they were doing. Pick this, put it here. Pick this, put it here, Fill in the hole.

John Dehlin [01:13:58] Okay.

RFM [01:14:00] And as I had mentioned before in our previous comments, before we started recording John and Dr. Ritner, in Figure 2, the one that has the bottom right section of that panel that's obliterated in the original, but now is filled in, we have apparently added to that area to fill it out, a depiction of the lotus stand, which we also find in facsimile one as well as in facsimile three.

Robert Ritner [01:14:29] Yes, it's just been inserted here directly from facsimile one.

RFM [01:14:33] So I'm just bringing up the fact that even in the facsimiles that we have, we have a known antecedent for this addition to the panel in figure two.

John Dehlin [01:14:43] Yeah, got it. Okay, so that helps us.

Robert Ritner [01:14:48] Jigsaw puzzles that were both defective, and you just started mixing and matching pieces between them to fill in the holes, and you had to sort of bend the pieces to fit. That's what's going on.

John Dehlin [01:15:01] Okay, that's really important. Should we go to the next slide?

RFM [01:15:06] Bring up here, for journalistic and apologetic integrity, though, the Reconstruction of Figure 3 to have the sun God with the sun disc over his head in the solar bark there, which was borrowed from another document. Dr. Ritner, would that be an appropriate restoration or replacement or figure to have in a hypocephalus?

Robert Ritner [01:15:31] Absolutely. Yeah. And when we see an example, I'll show you that just to be fair, that would be the kind of thing that you would get, although it wouldn't necessarily look like that, because this one is very specifically. Every single feature of this one, including the writing and the eye signs on either side of them, is directly borrowed from the book of the Dead of Tasheret Men. So this is not precisely what you would find. It's merely in the ballpark range.

RFM [01:16:02] Okay, so are we saying that this

Robert Ritner [01:16:04] is the right ballpark range? But no, it's not the precise symbol.

RFM [01:16:08] All right. Can I take any credit for Joseph Smith on this one?

Robert Ritner [01:16:13] Yeah, they guess. Well, but then every single thing that's preserved is a sun sign, so it's within the imagery. That's what you expect.

RFM [01:16:24] I'll take that as a yes. Thank you very much.

John Dehlin [01:16:29] All right, should we go to the next slide?

Robert Ritner [01:16:32] Yeah. So here's an example of just precisely that. This is one of the standardized hoopocephali. That's from the British Museum, from a woman by the name of Tashret Khonsu. Her name means the daughter of Khonsu. And there you can see the text going around in the circle. And if you see the blown up, the full images on the left, that's the way it should look. And you'll notice the central figure really ought to have foreheads, not two, and they ought to sit on his neck. In the upper right corner, you should have two boats. One of them is certainly the sun God, but he's not in a falcon form. It's actually there in a scarab form, a beetle. And you see him there. So it's. And they're not so standardized. You might have had something that looked like what the scribes filled in. Except we know where they got that because it's taken specifically from something that's also in the same corpus that Smith had. Now, immediately adjacent to these two boats, you can see the script that's going around the ring there. That's precisely the point where it says, for Tasharet Khonsu, the woman who owned this, it says, made before the housewife, Tahsheret Khonsu, right there. So that is precisely where the name would be of the one that we were just looking at. But that's, of course, where it's broken away. But if you look at the publication that breaking away, where the Name of Sheshonq would be. Has all been filled in. So that's what you got there. Now, if you look, just to see how this also works. And below the God with four heads in the middle, you can see a cow upside down. And there's a figure, a female figure holding a lotus wand toward the cow. And there's a God seated with an erect penis, the God Min Ammon, who's also shown upside down. And if we were to go back, you find those very same images are found on the example of Sheshonq, the one that's in the Smith collection.

John Dehlin [01:19:13] Yeah. And we also don't have the head from the image at the top middle, copied and pasted and reproduced onto the figure in the middle. Right,

Robert Ritner [01:19:25] right. Because they're different heads. And you notice that there's no floral stand next to the one at the top.

John Dehlin [01:19:32] No floral stand. Yeah.

Robert Ritner [01:19:34] Can we go back for just a sec?

John Dehlin [01:19:36] Yeah, we can. So right here.

Robert Ritner [01:19:42] Yeah, Back. One more to the. Keep going. All right, bring that up there. You can see we have the. If you look below the seated central figure, there is a figure holding. Directly below is a figure holding the lotus and the upside down cow and the figure seated on a throne with a human and a bird body and holding an erect penis. All is right there in that row. So these are all standardized images that one would find. And you can see it in the complete example as well as in the Sheshonq example. So these would be. Could be mass produced and you just fill in the name of the owner. So the imagery ought to be fairly consistent is what I'm saying. It's a standardized thing. They're not all going to be exactly the same. Scribes wouldn't always copy precisely, but they will be pretty similar. Yeah, we can go beyond now.

John Dehlin [01:20:47] That's. That's all. That's all really clear. That's all really clear. And like. Like you said, rfm, I guess it. It is a little bit impressive that they've got a boat. Right. Even though maybe it should be two boats or other. Other things represented.

Robert Ritner [01:21:02] That's good. I'm. I'm kudos. Yes.

John Dehlin [01:21:07] Yeah. But that doesn't mean that it's what it should be.

Robert Ritner [01:21:11] The thing is, I know where he got this particular boat. Right. Because it's elsewhere in the papyri.

John Dehlin [01:21:19] Right? Yeah.

Robert Ritner [01:21:22] In the same way. With the same hieroglyphs next to it. So it's a carbon copy.

John Dehlin [01:21:26] Right. Okay, so now we are to this slide. Is that where we are now?

Robert Ritner [01:21:34] Now we can start Talking about what Smith says these things mean.

John Dehlin [01:21:39] Okay, so really quickly, rfm, if you'll give us a little bit of context here. Do we have, you know, is there anything about the text of the actual Book of Abraham that we. That Joseph would want us to tie to facsimile two? Do you know what I'm asking?

RFM [01:21:58] Yes, and actually I do, because I was doing that research while you were talking.

John Dehlin [01:22:01] Excellent.

RFM [01:22:03] There is actually a little bit. First off, if you open up and you find the facsimile representation on the left side of the page, on the right side, you have explanations. By the way, when you look at the facsimile on the left side above it is printed a facsimile from the Book of Abraham. That's what Dr. Ritner was referring to earlier when he said that it is presented even though it's on a completely. It's not even on a separate scroll. It's not even a scroll. It's a hypocephalus. Right, exactly. It's designated in the text as being a facsimile from the Book of Abraham. And that's why he was saying that that is incorrect, because that's where it is said that it is a facsimile from the Book of Abraham, when apparently it could not have been, because it's not a facsimile from any book, much less the Book of Abraham. But having said that, there's a lot of explanations that have a lot of strange sounding names that are represented as being in Egyptian. But there is definitely a connection between this facsimile two and chapter three of the Book of Abraham. Because chapter three is of course, where it goes into all the, well, outer space kind of descriptions of things and planets and those sorts of things in the Book of Abraham. But the first and most obvious one is figure one where it talks about Kolob. Okay? And I say figure 1 of facsimile 1 and the explanation that's given, and the first thing it says is Kolob. And then it talks about where it is. It's nearest to the celestial or the residence of God. And it goes on and says a few other things about Kolob. And if you look at chapter three of the Book of Abraham, he talks about looking through the Urim and Thummim and I saw the stars, right? And one of them was nearest unto the throne of God. Well, the throne of God is represented in facsimile 2 by the explanation. And then it goes on to say, the Lord said unto me these are the governing ones. Governing ones are talked about in the explanations to facsimile 2, and specifically, and the name of the Great One is Kolob. So there is that connection. And then it talks about, I have set this one to govern all those which belong to the same order as that upon which thou standest. Now, when we're talking about orders of governing planets, that is referred to here in the explanations of facsimile 2. And finally, this is another interesting one, and I'm sorry, but it has to do with still figure one, where it says one day in Kolob is equal to 1,000 years according to the measurement of this Earth. You see that up there?

John Dehlin [01:24:35] Yeah.

RFM [01:24:36] Well, it actually doesn't have the entire thing up there. It just has it in abbreviated form in this diagram. But that's what it says. It's much longer in the explanation, but that hooks into Abraham chapter three and verse four, the last part of it, talking about Kolob and how Kolob is after the manner of reckoning, it being 1000 years according to the time appointed unto that whereon thou standest, that is Earth. This is the reckoning of the Lord's time according to the reckoning of Kolob. So at least in those places, it is clear that there is a direct connection between the translation of facsimile 2 and the text that is provided at least at the very beginning of chapter three of the Book of Abraham, which largely seems to deal with the same sort of thing, which is planets and governing planets and this central planet near which God resides, Kolob. I'm done.

John Dehlin [01:25:31] Okay, perfect. So what you've helped us establish RFM is that Joseph Smith certainly gave us all the impression that whatever he wrote down in parts of what he wrote down in Abraham chapter three, he was pulling from, from what we would call facsimile two, which actually isn't a facsimile, it's a hypocephalus. Right?

RFM [01:25:51] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:25:52] And so we know that he was looking at this, and we know that he produced text in the Book of Abraham from this.

RFM [01:26:01] Right. And I don't want to steal any of Dr. Ritner's thunder, but if you look at the very bottom of the explanations, I know there's a movement of foot, I believe, to try and say that this is a revelation instead of a translation. You can't find it on that graphic. But if you look in the actual scriptures that we have in the pearl of great price Book of Abraham under the explanations of facsimile Number two, you will find it goes through all these different figures. In the bottom. It says this. The above translation is given as far as we have any right to. To give at the present time. It is very difficult, if not impossible, to try and characterize what Joseph Smith presented as doing here as anything other than a translation. That's exactly what he calls it there.

John Dehlin [01:26:52] So Joseph and his scribes clearly call this a translation in their work, as

Robert Ritner [01:26:58] they did facsimile one, as we shall see they do with facsimile three.

John Dehlin [01:27:04] Right, okay, so let's actually find out. Let's try and juxtapose now what Joseph said we are looking at versus what an Egyptologist who actually can read Egyptian and translate Egyptian, Dr. Robert Ritner says that we're looking at. So if we go to the hypocephalus and we go to figure one, Joseph calls that little area Kolob, the residence of God. Is that in fact what you are reading there, Dr. Robert Ritner?

Robert Ritner [01:27:39] No, it's not. And forgive me, I'm going to pull up a plate that I can see on larger scale for my eyes and not the screen, because I want to look and see what his full description, which is a massive paragraph here. So, no, there is no such Egyptian word as Kolob. It does not refer to any planet. The Egyptians did understand planets, but there's no one named it Kolob.

John Dehlin [01:28:11] Okay, so what are we looking at if it's not Kolob, the residence of God.

Robert Ritner [01:28:23] Number one. We are looking at the four headed God of creation, the God of the four cardinal directions and the four winds. This is the image which represents the world in its four directions. That's why he should have had four heads. And we see that he's only got two.

John Dehlin [01:28:48] And we see that in the image that we looked at. Previously on the left now we see the God with the four heads. If Joseph had rewritten, had had filled in correctly what was missing in the hypocephalus, we would have seen the foreheads there, but because they were missing, they drew in again by copy and pasting the head of the God above or the figure above down to the figure below. You know, we're not even seeing those four heads, but if we had been seeing the original, we would see four heads, and that would be the God named what, Dr. Ritter?

Robert Ritner [01:29:26] Probably amun Ra.

John Dehlin [01:29:28] Okay. And whoever interpreted this image has the God Khnumu,

Robert Ritner [01:29:38] God Khnum.

John Dehlin [01:29:41] Yeah. And, and that's again, whoever made this

Robert Ritner [01:29:44] interpretation that I don't I can't tell you.

John Dehlin [01:29:47] Okay, well, it's not even there, so it's hard to say what, what it should be.

RFM [01:29:53] Hey, John, can I bring up something before you go to number two? I'm sorry, I know we're never going to get through at this rate, but this is really interesting to me. Kolob is what Kerry Muhlstein, he cites it as a bullseye for Joseph Smith, not because it's Egyptian for anything, but because the root klb in Hebrew can mean middle or center. Now, he doesn't go into any great lengths to talk about why a Hebrew word for something is present in an Egyptian hypocephalus. But if you'll put that image back up there on the screen there, JOHN Yes. This is where it has led to this idea that Kolob is in the center of the universe. Have you ever heard that? John Dehlin Absolutely. It's because it means middle or center in Hebrew, at least according to Kerry Muhlstein. I expect he's right about that much. But I can't help noticing where Figure 1 is, that it's identified as Kolob. Where is it?

John Dehlin [01:30:57] Well, it's in the center.

RFM [01:30:59] It's in the very center of the hypocephalus. Right. So Joseph Smith took Hebrew that he learned from Joshua Satius in 1836. Kolob KLB means center. And he identifies the center of the hypocephalus as being Kolob, the residence of God.

John Dehlin [01:31:18] Because maybe that is kind of throne, like looking when you're looking at that figure, is that maybe it's.

RFM [01:31:25] Oh, I'm just saying that even more obviously he's identifying the center of the hypocephalus, a word that means center in Hebrew.

John Dehlin [01:31:32] Right. Yeah, that makes sense.

Robert Ritner [01:31:34] Well, he's clearly letting Hebrew influence him. And I've had colleagues inform me that Smith had the resources of an Ashkenazi Hebrew scholar. I assume that's who you mentioned.

RFM [01:31:47] Yes, he came and taught Hebrew to the School of the prophets in 18.

Robert Ritner [01:31:53] So that's, that's, that's where that bit of information came from. And that's why he would have identified him with this figure.

RFM [01:31:59] I think. So.

Robert Ritner [01:32:00] There is no Egyptian writing there next to him that says.

RFM [01:32:05] Right.

John Dehlin [01:32:08] Okay. So for figure two, Joseph Smith. So sort of at 12 o', clock, the figure around 12 o' clock of the image above the center, Joseph Smith wrote, stands next to Kolob, called by the Egyptians oliblish, which is the next grand governing creation, near to the celestial or the Place where God resides, holding the key of power, also pertaining to other planets, as revealed from God to Abraham as he offered sacrifice upon an altar which he built, had built unto the Lord. Is any of that what you're reading in Figure 2, Dr. Ridner?

Robert Ritner [01:32:52] What Figure 2 actually says? The text is broken because it breaks off on that right hand side, the original one. Going from the original, what it says is the name of that great God. Break right where the name would be.

John Dehlin [01:33:09] And do we know what the God is?

Robert Ritner [01:33:11] We don't know who the God is because there's no name. The standard that he's holding has a little jackal on it. And this is not the God Anubis, but a God named Wepwawit, who is used to be the herald at the beginning of processions. So the little jackal God on a stick is Wepwawit, but the God behind him. The name is not preserved here. It. It's. There would have been because it says the name is. But it didn't break. It's like the, you know, the missing thing in a Agatha Christie movie where someone says, and the killer is. And then drop dead.

John Dehlin [01:33:50] Okay, all right. So no, we don't have a name because. Because the name, what I can assure

Robert Ritner [01:33:57] you is it was not Obelisk.

John Dehlin [01:34:00] How can you assure us of that?

Robert Ritner [01:34:02] That sounds like the Dr. Seuss children's book Obeluk. What about the word Abraham that fell from heaven?

John Dehlin [01:34:09] What about the word Abraham? Is that anywhere there in that little section?

Robert Ritner [01:34:12] No, I couldn't find it. I looked.

John Dehlin [01:34:15] Okay, what about sacrifice upon an altar? Is that anywhere in there?

Robert Ritner [01:34:20] No. And there's no altar. Except that, of course, he's added. Well, he's added in the stand with the flower, which, if you will remember, in the facsimile one, he labeled as representing Abraham in Egypt. So he's taking. He's stuck it from here in a cut and paste. We're giving it essentially the same meaning it had in facsimile one.

John Dehlin [01:34:50] So he filled in something that he thought looked like an altar from a totally different part of a different. Of a papyrus.

Robert Ritner [01:34:58] Well, the altar he didn't understand. But here. But we're calling it altar. He didn't know it was altar. He called it Abraham in Egypt. And so where he's getting his reading of Abraham is from this flower stand that he himself has inserted there and would never have actually been there.

John Dehlin [01:35:16] Got it.

Robert Ritner [01:35:17] So only putting Abraham in on the basis of his own insertion.

John Dehlin [01:35:22] Okay.

Robert Ritner [01:35:22] Different manuscript. And we know from the parallels it wouldn't have been there. So it's completely wrong, wrong, wrong and wrong.

RFM [01:35:29] Dr. Ritner, I apologize again for inserting this here, but I want to give Joseph Smith every opportunity to be proven a true prophet. If you look at Figure 1, the explanation, it does talk about an Egyptian word there at the end where he says, Yahoo. Do you see that there?

Robert Ritner [01:35:51] Yeah.

RFM [01:35:53] It's obvious that he is representing this as actually being an Egyptian word. Does that mean anything in Egyptian?

Robert Ritner [01:36:00] It's an attempt at saying Yahweh.

RFM [01:36:04] Did the Egyptians say Yahweh?

Robert Ritner [01:36:07] The Egyptians would have sounded it out, but it would have sounded like Yahweh because they're borrowing the Hebrew. So again, this is simply coming in from Hebrew.

RFM [01:36:18] Right, Egyptian. I'm sorry. The same thing with Figure 2. He also presents something that's supposed to be Egyptian, and that's. That stands next to Kolob, called by the Egyptians Oli Blish. Do you see that there.

Robert Ritner [01:36:32] There is no such Egyptian phrase or word.

RFM [01:36:35] All right, so that would be apparently incorrect.

Robert Ritner [01:36:38] That is completely incorrect.

John Dehlin [01:36:40] Okay, so we're over two on this. On this image, on this hyphosepelis, which he calls effects Himalay.

Robert Ritner [01:36:47] And we've got one Hebrew from the other.

John Dehlin [01:36:50] Okay. All right, so figure three, which we know he's. He's copied and pasted from a totally different papyrus, right? Well, because. Because Figure 3 would have been drawn in or. Or copied and pasted from a different. Totally different document entirely, Right? We've already established that.

Robert Ritner [01:37:13] Yes. Excuse me. I'm shuffling images, but my laptop is so small, it's hard for me to read the tiny details on that picture.

John Dehlin [01:37:21] So it's the man sitting on the boat that he.

Robert Ritner [01:37:26] Oh, sure, yeah. That's Ra.

John Dehlin [01:37:30] And so he called. It is made to represent God sitting upon his throne, clothed with power and authority, with a crown of eternal light upon his head. Represent, presenting also the grand keywords of the holy priesthood as revealed to Adam in the Garden of Eden, as also to Seth, Noah, Melchizedek, Abraham, and all to whom the priesthood was revealed. Now, we know that this image doesn't even belong in this hypocephalus, but let's just say that he was still translating that little fragment that he pulled from elsewhere. Do you see, see Robert Ridner in that little section three, the word Noah, the word Seth, the word Melchizedek, the word Abraham, Garden of Eden, Adam, holy priesthood, any of those things in that little section three,

Robert Ritner [01:38:22] the only thing that I can see in there is the crown of eternal light that is the sun disk, which is sitting on the God's head.

John Dehlin [01:38:33] Well, what about all those other things I just read that Joseph found in there?

Robert Ritner [01:38:37] Other than the visible circle of the sun, nothing.

John Dehlin [01:38:42] So none of those words appear in that third section?

Robert Ritner [01:38:45] Not one.

John Dehlin [01:38:47] Okay. But light on top of a head, he did get right.

Robert Ritner [01:38:52] He recognized the circle as representing the sun disk.

John Dehlin [01:38:56] RFM, anything you want to add about Figure 3?

RFM [01:39:00] Are there any words in that figure?

Robert Ritner [01:39:04] There are some fragments of words that are taken over from the Book of the Dead, but they're not whole words. They're just bits and pieces. What happened to be next to this image on the other papyrus?

RFM [01:39:16] Okay, and you're not able to read

Robert Ritner [01:39:18] those then, because they're incomplete.

RFM [01:39:21] Okay.

Robert Ritner [01:39:21] On either side of the seated God, there's a fancy eye sign, which is a protective hieroglyphic symbol that means that's ujjat, which means health, security, safety.

RFM [01:39:34] Oh, really? Does it? So is it possible to interpret the Eye of Horus? Mm. Like health in the navel, marrow in the bones, perhaps?

Robert Ritner [01:39:44] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:39:47] What are you doing? Rfm.

RFM [01:39:49] Well, I'm just proving that Joseph Smith is a prophet, because what he said here is that it represents. What was it, figure 3, the grand keywords. Yeah, as also the grand keywords of the holy priesthood as revealed to Adam in the Garden of Eden and all those other guys to whom the priesthood was revealed. I mean, I don't want to go too much further into it because I am bound by blood oaths, but seriously,

Robert Ritner [01:40:16] I don't know anything. Marrow is not implied necessarily here, but. But health. Yes.

RFM [01:40:21] Okay. Health in the navel, though, perhaps navel,

Robert Ritner [01:40:24] no navel, but health.

John Dehlin [01:40:26] But, I mean, but again, rfm, what you're doing, and I know you're kind of joking, but you're basically just trying to take anything that sounds Mormon or Mormonish or related to the temple ceremony and imposing it on any images you can find. Isn't that kind of what you're doing on behalf of apologists?

RFM [01:40:47] Am I doing that? Well, I guess it probably seems that way, and it probably actually is that way. But when Dr. Ritner said that these wedge at eyes can represent health, it did occur to me. So that's all I was following up on.

John Dehlin [01:41:02] Yeah. Okay. And, you know, I mean, the way I'm thinking about it is like, yeah, you know, the Mormon plan of salvation talks about a sun and a moon and a star. And so if we can find anything in here that has a sun, which would be any circle, then we could say Joseph Smith had A son and the sun represents the celestial kingdom and the plan of salvation. But just because Joseph can identify some type of symbol that then can translate into some type of meaning in some part of his theology does not mean that in any way whoever created this hypocephalus was in fact trying to communicate the plan of salvation to whoever would read it. Right.

RFM [01:41:51] No, I think that what we're dealing with here is actually the Texas sharpshooter fallacy, which is where you've got actually hundreds of interpretations just among these three facsimiles. Maybe hundreds is too many, but there's a whole lot of them. To find something that's very general, that can then be used generally to look at something else that's related to Mormonism is probably not an effective way of determining whether Joseph Smith was actually translating these accurately.

John Dehlin [01:42:21] Yeah, I'm with you. But it's nice for you to try and represent the arguments of the apologists.

RFM [01:42:28] Anyway, I'm in there pitching.

John Dehlin [01:42:31] Okay, I'm sorry, you can't see. See this, Dr. Ritner. But now we're on to figure four, which on our image is sort of like a bird with some sort of boat. What's that?

Robert Ritner [01:42:43] Bird in a boat.

John Dehlin [01:42:44] Yeah. So Joseph says answers to the Hebrew word rao kiyang, signifying expanse or the firmament of the heavens. Also numerical figure in Egyptian signifying 1000, answering to the measure of the time of oleblish, which is equal with Kolob in its revolution and in its measuring of time. Did Joseph get that image right? That's a lot of words for a bird in a boat, Dr. Ritter.

Robert Ritner [01:43:14] Yes. Well, there's no actual text that goes with this. There's no hieroglyph there. It's just simply the picture. And it represents the God Sokar in his bark. Sokar is a God of Saqqara. That's where the name comes from. Which is the burial place outside of Memphis in Egypt, near Cairo. He is the God of the cemetery there. He is the God of inertness, the stage of death just before life. And he's often considered to be an aspect of the God Osiris. Other copies add variants of his epithet Ba Bao, Ba', u, the Ba, spirit of the BA, spirits, etc. But there's no text here.

John Dehlin [01:44:07] Okay, but Joseph is finding, you know, oblablish. And Rao qiyin.

Robert Ritner [01:44:13] There's no Rao Qiang, which he admits is Hebrew. Another example of intrusion of Hebrew, which occurs over and over again in this.

John Dehlin [01:44:22] What about the number 1,000?

Robert Ritner [01:44:23] Anything to do, he is a God who's referred to as Chonic, that's to say he's of the Earth. So he is not heavenly, he's earthly.

John Dehlin [01:44:34] How about the number 1,000? Can you find that anywhere for us, Dr. Ritner?

Robert Ritner [01:44:37] No, absolutely not. Has nothing to do with the heavens.

John Dehlin [01:44:41] Okay, bummer. Okay. 0 for 4.

Robert Ritner [01:44:46] Ish.

John Dehlin [01:44:47] Number 5. If we're looking at number 5, we are looking at the cow. The upside down cow below the center. Immediately below. Joseph calls the upside down cow. It's called an Egyptian initial on dash. So he's getting very specific here. This is one of the governing planets. Also, I don't know why he's calling a cow a governing planet. And is said by the Egyptians to be the sun and to borrow its light from Kolob through the medium of Kai E. Van Rush, which is the grand key, or in the other words, the governing power which governs 15 other fixed planets or stars as also flow sea or the moon or the Earth. And the sun annual revolutions planet receives its power from the medium of. I almost feel. Feel like I'm not looking at the right image because how in the world is he getting all this from an upside down cow? Rfm, help me out here. He goes on to have these because

RFM [01:45:47] Joseph Smith believed that a single Egyptian character could be translated into large expanses of text.

John Dehlin [01:45:54] But I mean, it says this planet receives its power through the medium of Klee Flos, ISS or Ha Ko Kao beam, the stars represented by numbers 22 and 23, receiving light from the revolutions of Kolob. He gets all that from an upside down cow. And I'm just not seeing it.

RFM [01:46:14] It's only upside down. If you're looking at it wrong side up. John, just turn it.

Robert Ritner [01:46:19] Well, let me tell you what's right about that. Okay, that's the shorter answer. In Egyptian mythology, when the sun God departed from the world of humans, he rose up on the back of a sky cow. The goddess Hathor manifested herself as a cow. She put him between her horns and she rose up into the sky. So the Egyptians can depict the sky in the form of a giant cow and is on the back of the cow that the sun God rides. That's why the cow is on this sun disc, because if you look at the thing, what's happening is it's depicted as the sun, is what we're understanding here with this image. The reason the cow's upside down is the round circle of the disk itself. The piece of papyrus is the sun and it's on top of the cow who's carrying it and the God she's carrying is also the four headed deity in the center who's labeled number one. So everything on this disk is related to the sun and the sky, but the cow is not a planet. None of those names are meaningful. Egyptian. None of the numbers are right. And the cow is simply representing the whole body of the heaven itself. And the goddess who we will get to, I think we get to her right behind the cow, who has shown full face and is holding a lotus, that's the goddess Hathor in her manifestation in female human form. So these are two depictions of the sky goddess and they're placed center, supporting the whole disc. So they're acting as the fulcrum on which the disk rests. Because when the mummy's got his head on this, they will then be right under the center of the head of the mummy, spiritually lifting him up onto the sky. And that whole paragraph I got out of two pictures. So it is possible to get a two paragraph explanation, but it's not text, it's explanation from mythology.

RFM [01:48:55] Right.

Robert Ritner [01:48:56] That's the way an apologist for the Egyptian religion would work.

RFM [01:49:00] So Enish, go on. Dosh, which is called in Figure 5, explanation to be Egyptian. Is that Egyptian?

Robert Ritner [01:49:08] No, in no way, shape or form.

John Dehlin [01:49:12] What about Klarflas is S or Haukou Kaobeam, Is that Egyptian?

Robert Ritner [01:49:18] About as Egyptian as Mugu Gai Pen.

RFM [01:49:23] Well, you know up there where it says F, L, O E E, S, E. John, can you see that Flossie? I think it's Flossie.

John Dehlin [01:49:31] Flossy.

RFM [01:49:31] Identifying the cow as Flossy, I think that's a hit. But seriously, to get closer to this. So Joseph Smith identifies the cow as the sun. As I'm understanding you, that's not exactly right.

Robert Ritner [01:49:46] It's not the sun at all. It's the heaven holding the sun that holding the sun.

RFM [01:49:50] Right, but that's about as close as he's gotten so far, I think. Right?

Robert Ritner [01:49:55] Yeah. Acknowledging that it has something to do with the sky is correct.

John Dehlin [01:49:58] Okay, but when you're dealing with the afterlife, you're probably going to be right if you call something having been related to the sky or the heavens. Right.

RFM [01:50:09] I think when you got excommunicated you lost the spirit of God completely. John. He's such an apostate.

John Dehlin [01:50:19] Yeah, yeah, that's true. Guilty.

RFM [01:50:23] It was close. It was very close. But unfortunately, these words that are represented as being Egyptian and specifically so apparently end up not being Egyptian at all.

Robert Ritner [01:50:30] It's, it's Just.

John Dehlin [01:50:31] It's just gibberish, really. All right, let's move to Figure 6. Figure 6 is to the left of the upside down cow. And Those look familiar, Dr. Ridner. It looks like those four figures that we got from facsimile one. Do you want to. So Joseph says represents this earth in its four quarters. What are those four figures and what do they represent, Dr. Ritner?

Robert Ritner [01:50:57] All right, well, this is going to take some time. Let's go to the next slide. We have seen those four individuals before, although when we saw them, we only saw their heads on jug bodies. Here they are shown as full standing mummy form figures with bodies. These are the same as the Canopic jars that are on facsimile 1. The description in facsimile 1 was that they are the idolatrous gods of Elkinh and other places. Here they represent the earth and its four quarters. It does not seem to be the case that Smith and his scribes realized that this were actually the same images. We know them now because these are so well represented in every collection in museums of Canopic jars. So that the image I showed last time from Wikipedia showed them in standing mummy form just like they are here. And they're same order, same everything. They are the Canopic children. Now, what I'm showing you now for those who can see it will be of limited value, but it will make my point maybe. This is from the cobbled together from the basic Egyptian dictionary that we use to read hieroglyphs. This is the traditional Egyptians known as the Werter book, which is just the German word for dictionary. And here are the entries for the four sons of Horus in the order that they actually appear. These are their real names. The name of the first one with the human head is IM Seti, and his description is at the top. For those of you interested in knowing what an Egyptian dictionary would look like for modern scholars, you get the transliteration, that is to say at the far left column, we put it in letters that we can read in English, ish letters, followed by the way it would look in actual hieroglyphs. Then you get the block of definition and you get variant examples of how it can also be written. That's the way this works. So it's your quickie introduction to how to look up an Egyptian text. Now, unfortunately for the viewer who can see this slide, the dictionaries in Egyptian are primarily in German because it was the Germans who really in large measure began the work on the language in the field after Champollion So what we have here in the inscription, and I'm squinting so that I can actually see my tiny screen, it says one of the son, a son of Horus, Especially for a protection God for the dead and for the internal organs. What you'll notice it does not say in that definition of what the core elements of what this God is, is. It has anything to do with directions. The next God is the baboon headed God whose name is Hapi, and it has the same description, one of the sons of Horus, especially for a protective God for the dead and the internal organs. Then we have the jackal headed God Duamuteph, whose name by the way means the one who protects his mother. And we have the same description, no reference to a cardinal point. And then finally our last God who has the falcon head, his name is Kebeh Sinuef, the one who refreshes his brother whose brothers plural. And again the same description and no reference whatsoever in this pivotal basic dictionary definition that these have anything to do with the cardinal points. Let's go to the next slide. So still from the dictionary of Egyptian language, what I'm showing you here are four different pages from different volumes of the nine volume dictionary that actually do give you the words for the cardinal direction. And they are in the order the Egyptians always give them. Because the Egyptians put south at the top of their maps, because they look toward the direction the Nile came from. That's how they oriented themselves. They didn't put north at the top, so south. The word is resi. You'll notice it's not any of those four sons of Horus. And you don't see those figures there in the hieroglyphs. North Mechti doesn't look like anything that we just saw. East Yabtet doesn't look like anything we saw. And West Yamntet doesn't look like anything we saw. If the Egyptians wanted to indicate the four corners of the universe, they would use either the God who's at the center of the Hoopacephalus that's got four heads, or they would use these hieroglyphs, which are clearly not what's there in the text. I want to draw your attention also while we've got it, as well as you're getting your basic hieroglyph lesson. The last entry under east shows the writing for east and it's added a little snake. The German definition there tells you that that actually says Goddess of the East. That is a real personification of the east in divine form. That's what it looks like. Look at the last example for west. There you have the word for west with a little snake determinative. That snake goddess is the actual personification of the earth in its western corner. So that's what you would have had if you wanted to do that. And not the four sons of Horus, you'll notice they're not in the basic dictionary. They're not used for the basic words for south and north, and they're not in the representation even as the personified deities. And I'm not done yet. So next slide. Now, there is a text that is referenced by some to show that there is a link between the four sons of Horus and the four cardinal directions. And I would agree with that because anytime you have a group of four, it automatically in Egyptian symbolism, as in symbolism of almost any culture, if you have four, it is going to represent the four corners of the earth which are based on our four sensory directions of our body, front, back, left and right. So it's basically just our body projected onto the world. That's why there's four and not five or six. So even though there's no text that specifically says this God equals this equals that, north, south, east, west, so much so that it's not in the dictionaries or anywhere else. We have one text from Medinet Habu, where the Oriental Institute has been excavating for as long as and copying for as long as we have existed. It is our temple, and there are reused blocks there that are from an earlier reign. The temple of Medinath Habu is for Ramses number three, but there are reused blocks from Ramses number two that are inserted within it as fill, basically cut and paste. And we have here a text that John Gee has cited, as have others. And I'm showing you what I've taken directly out of John's article that I was able to get from the Internet. So we have our depiction, our Oriental Institute depiction on the left. The relevant parts are highlighted by John in red. And John's somewhat inaccurate translation is on the right. And so let me read to you what it actually says. And it's in the. I'm only going to read the red block. And again, you've got a translation from John on the right. It's not wrong, it's just not complete. What it actually says is im Seti, go quickly to the south so that you might say to the gods of the south that Horus the son of Isis, son of Isis has taken the great white crown and the Red crown. The King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Ben Ra Ramses II has taken the Great White crown and the red crown. That's what is actually going on there. And then it is followed by Hoppy and then the same thing. You'll notice it's in multiple horizontal columns. So it goes Imseti, Hapi, Dwamutev and Kbesinoef. Go quickly to first one to the south, next to the north, next to the east, next to the west, so that you might to the gods of those areas, so that you might announce the accession of the king. So that's the core of what it actually says. And what does that actually mean? Let's think about that for a moment. If you're saying to Im Seti, go quickly to the south to say to the gods of the south, this announcement, you're not saying that Im Seti is a God of the south, you're saying he has to go to the gods of the south. He's not representing the south, they are. He's merely the messenger who sent there. So yes, there's a link so that each of these gods is being sent to a place, but they are not the representative of the place themselves. If Hapi has to be sent to the gods of the north, then clearly he's not the gods of the north. Right, he's the messenger. So all we have here is a referential link that that's where they're going, not that that's what they actually are. And what they, what they are are the number four. And so they have a link to the core, the coordinates. They are not the representations of themselves. That's not just splitting hairs. We have here a reference to the gods of the north, south, east and west. And these four kids are not those. It's merely where they're. Those directions are simply their assignments. And we're not done yet either because let's see what the implications of this are. Now back in facsimile one, where we have these are listed, the various Canopic jars are listed as the gods, right? So let's take the God number five on facsimile one. I hope I'm not losing anyone.

John Dehlin [02:03:53] Falcon.

Robert Ritner [02:03:53] Right, that's the falcon. That's the far back. So the falcon on the back is the God of Elkena, according to Joseph Smith's interpretation, as explicitly stated on facsimile one. So now we go see. We know that happens to be Kebesinuev. So now let's look about. Let's look at what it says about Kbesinuef in John Gee's article where he's claiming that this particular inscription proves the validity of facsimile one, you have to bear with me here. So Kbeh Sinuev is the last God mentioned in the red square in this Egyptian text, you're reading from right to left. So he's the vertical column at the far left, at the upper left edge of the box, it says go hurriedly to the west, so that you might say to the gods of the west that Horus, the Sun, etc. Has received the great white crown and the red crown, and the king Ramses has done so, et cetera. So where is Kebel Sinoef going? And what direction is Kebel Senuev associated with? Clearly, explicitly the west of Egypt. Right. Couldn't be any clearer. The word for west is written in the unambiguous word for west. And in John's translation he recognizes that there is no objection that God is going to the west. And therefore, if that God is the God of the west and he is the God of Elkinh, where is Elkinna?

RFM [02:06:07] East.

Robert Ritner [02:06:09] It has to be Libya. And so this is saying in facsimile 1 and in the book of Abraham's text, which describes all of these activities at Elkinh, where the Egyptians are in control and Abraham has free movement, that Abraham is in fact wandering through Libya. That is the logical deduction of the evidence that John Guy has authorized and insisted is accurate. And there is no other logical explanation except by a simple process of rational deduction. If this God is this place and this is an accurate equation of a God with a known direction, and here it is, this is the one text that makes it explicit, explicit. And John Gee sanctions it. And that direction is west, and that God has to be Elkanah, and Elkanah has to be where that God goes, then Elkinh has to be west. And the west of Egypt can't be Syria, it has to be Libya. And the last time I looked at any of the accounts of Abraham, the ones that are coming from mystical traditions or anywhere else, none of them put him with sheep in Libya or without the sheep.

RFM [02:07:50] And when I had said east earlier, Dr. Ritner, I was referencing some attempts by apologists to make it the God of Canaan,

Robert Ritner [02:08:00] well, it would still be a problem if in fact it's Kibbeh Sinuev it would. One of the very reasons that John has trumpeted proving over and over again in multiple discussions, lectures and articles available on the Internet, which is where I downloaded his images, that this has to be equivalent to the God of this site, and it has to be Keb Esinuef. I didn't draw those relations. John did. And the only logical explanation that anyone can draw from A equals goes to B goes to C is that this has to be on the west of Egypt. And so Abraham, if the text of Abraham is true, all of the events, every single thing he's describing is taking place in modern Libya.

RFM [02:08:57] I think what you've illustrated is a good example of something that I see sometimes with Mormon apologetics, Dr. Ritner, and that is they will take the four sons of hierarch in facsimile one, as John Gee has done recently in his article at the Interpreter and elsewhere, and try and find some kind of connection to Joseph Smith's names for these four deities in Mesopotamia or among the Hittites or anywhere he can find something that is remotely close and call that a bull's eye. Now, separate from that, he'll take the same four sons of Horus from facsimile 2 and talk about them being the four cardinal directions based upon that one inscription, as I understand it, that you presented there, where they're not really representing the four cardinal directions, they are simply sent with the message of the crowning of the new king to the gods who do represent the four cardinal directions. Correct?

Robert Ritner [02:09:53] That is correct.

RFM [02:09:54] And if you leave it there and don't go any further, you're safe enough as a Mormon apologist. But what I hear you doing is actually taking those conclusions and those arguments to their logical conclusion.

Robert Ritner [02:10:09] Well, this is what I'm arguing is that you can't look at something for just one little piece. You have to see the whole coherent picture. And if the evidence doesn't all fit together, then you have problems. But you can't present only a part of a picture and ignore all the rest. And if I could go off while we were on Cola, before we get out of this, I'm becoming bizarrely familiar with chapter three of the Book of Abraham, because in there, there is another heavenly body in 13. And I'm going to read it, if I could, for just a moment. And he said unto me, this is Shinnecha, which is the sun. Now, there are discussions by John Gee, who has referred to this today in, well, I heard it today in his recent podcast from last week, saying that this is a hit as an example of an Egyptian term which represents the ecliptic of the sun that is referred to in certain specific time periods. And it's A technical Egyptian term. And I discovered that Shine even has its own webpage on Wikipedia saying basically the same thing. And I assume it was an apologist who represented that. Now, the problem with that is that there is a collection of Egyptian words that could come out sounding like shen neha. It would actually be shen nehe, which would mean if you put them together, the circuit of eternity. And that would seem to be a real hit. Shin nehak versus she ne ha. Now, the problem with that is, does this term actually exist? So, okay, we've thrown some sounds together, and if you throw enough sounds together, you could get accidental sounds that sounds like something Egyptian. So the question is not, as the apologists opposed it, if we make this sound, could it sound like something cobbled together in Egyptian? The question is, does such an Egyptian term even exist? Where is the proof? They don't go there, because they don't. I asked one of my colleagues to search in the Thesaurus Linguaegypti, otherwise known as the tla, our reference work that includes all of the published Egyptian hieroglyphic inscriptions. So he did a global search for the number of times that the words shin, circuit, and nehe are put next to each other. Then he did a search to see the number of times that they are closer than 10 words apart. The number of hits he got was zero. What I'm saying is there is not a single case of where shen nehe occurs as a combination. Not one. There's not even a case where shin is 10 words next to ne. So the combination of shen nehe to represent the sun or anything else is a total fabrication. It's an accidental coincidence of sounds, but it's unsupported by any evidence whatsoever. And so the work being done to say, look, what we can come up with is where you take something and you want to find an answer for it. It's not where you actually go to the evidence and then create an answer saying, ah, the evidence shows you this. Because the evidence shows just the opposite. And that's the way apologists work. It's the way they always work.

RFM [02:14:27] So it sounds to me like you're saying John G. Does not know Shinneha from Shinola.

Robert Ritner [02:14:36] Yes. Yes, I am.

RFM [02:14:38] If we can go back just for a second. And this is just a personal note about.

Robert Ritner [02:14:41] Was that clear?

RFM [02:14:43] Which part?

Robert Ritner [02:14:44] What I just was explaining about shennehe,

RFM [02:14:47] it actually was to me. Was it to you, John?

John Dehlin [02:14:49] Yep, I think so.

RFM [02:14:52] He's making stuff up. He's taken two words that sound sort of like these parts Two words, separate words not attested in any Egyptian source as being together or even being within 10 words of each other and combining them together to create a made up word to represent something that sounds like shine, ha, but still isn't the sun. It's just the ecliptic along which the sun progresses. And calling it a bullseye.

Robert Ritner [02:15:20] I have no idea where he got this notion it's the ecliptic, because if the word doesn't exist, how does the concept.

RFM [02:15:26] You got me there. But I did hear him talking about that, just as you did on the four corners of the earth and these four sons of Horus. Is that one description that you were talking about before? Is that the only reference to the four sons of Horus and four corners of the earth at all?

Robert Ritner [02:15:43] It's the only explicit one that I know, and it's the only one John Gee could point to in his article on the four sons of Horus and the cardinal directions.

RFM [02:15:52] Okay, well, here's my personal thing, is that I did not know that that was the only place. And for years, as a Mormon apologist, I took at face value the claim that Joseph Smith, representing the four sons of Horus as the four cardinal directions, or specifically the earth and its four quarters, which is what he says was an absolute bullseye. I took John Gee's word for that. I don't know if Hugh Nibley said it before him, but John Gee certainly said it. And I represented that to many people in defense of the Book of Abraham as a bull's eye for it. And now that I find what is the real scholarly foundation for it, it seems to me very weak. It doesn't hold up. And I find that what I was telling other people was incorrect and that what John Gee had told me was not correct.

Robert Ritner [02:16:44] Well, as I said, there is a link. Because if you go back to the slide that we had that was labeled burial, there happens to be a footnote in there where I'm talking about the breaking up of these voodoo dolls. And you put them in the four corners and I have a footnote there. Oh, actually it's. Maybe it's on. I'm sorry, it's not under burial. It's the previous one, human sacrifice. Look at my footnote 750 for those of you who can, by virtue of its association with the cardinal directions, four is the most common symbol of completeness in Egyptian numerological symbolism and ritual repetition. For the common ritual use of four enemy figures, see, for example, blah, blah, blah, although four is the expected number, blah, blah, blah. So What I'm saying is they use four all the time for all sorts of things. So, yeah, we have four different prisoner figures that represent the four directions. You can have four chests. When you bury someone in a. In an excavated tomb, there are in Book of the dead 151 spells for four specific bricks that are put in the four corners of the room which are associated with four goddesses. All of these things represent the four corners of the universe. So if you're saying, can these Canopic jars do that? The answer is yeah. So can any four figures? And all these ritual figures are multiple. There. Look at my note. And there. Honestly, I'm not talking about Book of Mormon and I'm not talking about the Canopic jars, just another group of four. So any group of four that applies to. So in a way, Nibley's idea is not inaccurate. And I've noticed that the Wikipedia page, the same one I showed last time, the bottom half does actually give you directions associated with the four Sons of Horus. That wasn't apparent in that slide because I didn't photograph that part of it. But where do those directions come from? They come from the relief I just now showed you, so make of it what you will.

RFM [02:19:20] Dr. Ritner, I don't know if you had covered this before, but before we leave, the four sons of Horus, I know you had meant to you tell me if you did. You had mentioned that they appear in facsimile one, they're labeled as the idolatrous gods, and each of them given a name. And then in facsimile two, they appear again standing up the same for Sons of Horus. But now it appears that Joseph Smith was unaware that these were the same figures as appeared in facsimile 1. Had you commented on that?

Robert Ritner [02:19:56] I didn't. I had. Not in print, I don't think.

RFM [02:20:00] And I meant just in this podcast.

Robert Ritner [02:20:02] I believe I did just a few minutes ago. Yes.

RFM [02:20:05] Okay.

Robert Ritner [02:20:05] The other thing, of course, the other problem is if they are the same when we know they are, then those four different place names would have to be in four different directions, too. So they couldn't all be concentrated in Syria, so they couldn't all be encountered by Abraham. It wouldn't be simply that Kibbusinoef was. Was, you know, off in Libya, but one of them would be down in Nubia. So how do you account for that? Abraham was a. Was apparently a very good wandering fellow. If he encountered all of these gods in all of these places, how can you have Something that's representing places he went and gods of the four corners.

RFM [02:20:50] Right.

Robert Ritner [02:20:50] I'm sure John will have an answer, and I'm looking forward to hearing that.

RFM [02:20:54] Oh, he probably will. But the basic thing that I think I wanted to point out, and maybe you had already, is that it does appear that Egyptologists today immediately recognize the four canopic jars in facsimile 1 as being the same four individuals in figure 6 of facsimile 2. But it does not appear, at least from what we can tell of the translations given by Joseph Smith, that he recognized them to be the same four beings.

Robert Ritner [02:21:21] No, but I suspect that if you look in the editions of Facsimile one and Facsimile two by John Gee, Michael D. Rhodes, and Hugh Nibley, they will make the link so they recognize that they're the same. So it's not just a question of Egyptologists understanding this. It's so well known that anyone who just looks at the Wikipedia page, which is why I brought that up last time, this is essentially now common knowledge. People recognize this. We have school children who come in on museum trips to our galleries. They can point these things out. It's something that's taught. Now, obviously, nothing like that was known in the 1800s. So our world is quite different. And anyone now with computer access can learn all about the details of Egyptian religion and iconography. But obviously there was no way. I mean, we can't fault Joseph Smith for not knowing who these were. I'm merely faulting him for making up a translation.

RFM [02:22:35] Got it. Had you said everything that you wanted to say about the four sons of Horus, Dr. Rickner?

Robert Ritner [02:22:41] I think I've talked them to death.

John Dehlin [02:22:43] Okay, so coming back to the image for a second, we were pointing people to section six of the Hypocephalus, which. Which has those four sons of Horus which were on the Canopic jars in facsimile one. And of course, we've already mentioned that in facsimile two, Joseph Smith called these representing this earth and its four quarters. And everything that we just said before is a really long way of then allowing you, Dr. Ritner, to tell us in the context of this hypocephalus, what would those four figures represent as you would read this in the context of the hypocephalus, Dr. Ridner?

Robert Ritner [02:23:38] Well, these are the protective spirits for the body of the deceased.

John Dehlin [02:23:43] Okay. That's that simple.

Robert Ritner [02:23:47] That's. I mean, perhaps the number four. Perhaps this is one case where there, the number four might be the four directions. Except there's no specific implication that that's the case.

John Dehlin [02:24:04] Okay.

Robert Ritner [02:24:05] In other words, we're getting that notion not from some inscription, not from something that's inherent in those gods, but merely because of the fact that there are four of them.

John Dehlin [02:24:17] Yeah.

Robert Ritner [02:24:18] So the interpretation is coming from four. If they were four Twinkies come up with the same thing. In other words, it's not the thing itself, but merely how many of them there are.

John Dehlin [02:24:30] And I just.

Robert Ritner [02:24:31] That's the kind of argumentation you need to use when you're trying to understand what the symbolism is. It has to be intrinsic in the figure and. And not just how many of them there are.

John Dehlin [02:24:43] And I would like to make a process observation at this point, kind of a meta observation. So we don't know if Abraham really existed. We know that Joseph got the names, you know, the purposes and the names of the scrolls wrong. We know that he got facsimile one totally wrong. We know that he's got facsimile two totally wrong. We know that in the case of both facsimile one and facsimile two, that they've drawn in completely erroneous or copied and pasted completely erroneous portions into facsimile two, in this case, from totally different documents to fill in the holes, like, in every possible way. This is really an absurd discussion, which is why most Egyptologists would probably avoid this discussion altogether. But here we have the apologists saying, oh, my gosh, here's a big hit. There's four figures in a part of this hypocephalus that represent the four corners. And so now what we've done is we've taken an entire probably 30 minutes to 45 minutes of our podcast digging into this really deep sort of detail or minutiae about why those four figures may or may not represent north, south, east, west, when in reality, we would probably lose most of our listenership because A, they're listening, not viewing, and B, their eyes and ears are glazing over as they are trying to follow the technical language that we're talking about. And the reason why I'm bringing all this up, Dr. Ritner, is not to be ungrateful for your amazing expert time with us, but it's to sort of highlight the game that apologists play. When Dallin H. Oaks met with apologists a few years back, he said, we don't have to. You know, this is me paraphrasing. He basically said, it's not that we have to give accurate, complete Precise answers. What we have to do is give answers. And, and if we can get this. Again, this is my interpretation of what he's basically told the apologists. But if we can just get fancy PhD level Yale Egyptologists to give a plausible hit, and we'll throw a thousand, we'll let John Gee and Gary Muhlstein, we'll pay their salaries, we'll let them fly all over, we'll let them use fancy Egyptian jargon and their interpretations of scrolls. If we can just have them throw a hundred hits at any curious questioning Mormon, we'll throw all these interpretations at them. They'll get lost in the back and forth between these non credible Egyptologists and a credible Egyptologist like Dr. Ritner or a really brilliant amateur Egyptologist in RFM will lose them in the dialogue in the back and forth. They'll get so bored and they'll just say, well, okay, it looks like credible. You know, from the believing, questioning Mormon standpoint, what all this amounts to, this 45 minutes that we've just spent is, wow. Well, it sounds like credible Egyptologists can disagree on the mean meaning. I can either believe Dr. Ritner and apostate John Dehlin and clearly apostate RFM, or I can believe Guy and Muhlstein, who are faithful and keeping their covenants. Since reasonable people are disagreeing, I'm going to just go with Guy and Mohlstein. This is probably a hit. And now I don't have to pay attention anymore because I'm already so overwhelmed with all this symbology and, and Egyptology language that overwhelms me anyway. And what they've done by sucking us into an absurd conversation is get the fog and the eyes and the ears to glaze over and have people lose interest in the core reality, which is the fact that we're even having this conversation in and of itself is completely absurd. Now, am I making my point at all clear? Dr. Ritner or RFM? Do you guys kind of see what I'm getting at here? If we're looking from the standpoint of just some average Mormon who doesn't know anything about Egyptology, who's just trying to decide if they should believe in Joseph Smith and the Book of Abraham or not, how these tactics of the apologists pull us into all this minutiae, that really might not help the average Mormon figure out if this stuff is true or not. Do I make any sense there?

Robert Ritner [02:29:35] If I could jump in for just a moment, please. That's why I asked if it was clear I realized I was doing we were going down a wormhole. But I think it's important for anyone tuning in or watching this, if I'm going to make some sort of a declaration, I want to prove it. That's why when I write my books, they are filled with footnotes. You don't have to read those footnotes if you don't want, but I'm not going to make a generic statement without it up. And when I watched the podcast of the Fair Mormon production of by John Gee of it was called the Book of Mormon. I mean, sorry, the Book of Abraham. I presume he went through a whole series of his recent discoveries before an audience and he said, well, I went to this conference and I. And this is what I said. I, I showed that facsimile one was execration magic. And then I went and I showed so, so, and so. And I, I talked about this and I showed this. What he never did is what we're all told to do in elementary school on math tests, show your work. He gives you the declaration, but he doesn't honor the audience or respect the audience enough to actually give them any of the details of how he actually comes to his conclusions. In that particular talk, he says, well, there's this formula, but the person got it wrong. There was an error in the math, and now let's move on. Well, the only way we know there's an error in the math is because John says so. He doesn't show it to us. So in all of his claims, John just says so. He doesn't display the evidence to the audience, and that is disrespectful to an audience that is perfectly capable of understanding the arguments, our arguments, my Egyptian arguments are weird because they're things that most people don't interact with. But if they're explained carefully, simply, you can follow them. Reasonable people can understand them. I do this with students all the time who have no backing. I teach Egyptian religion to students who are taking it as an elective, who don't know any of the gods, don't know any of this deep theology. They hear me explain the kind of thing I just did and they write papers on it. Education is what I do. But education means you actually explain the elements and you argue in a reasonable way to create a coherent picture. I'm not going to simply tell you this is false. I would not have come onto this podcast and say there is no human sacrifice and then not follow it up with, here, let me show you what I said and let me finesse it with the actual details. What apologetics don't do is give you the details to give you a practical, comprehensive picture in context. Because if you don't have the context, then you're. You're arguing about, okay, well, is this. This figure of a God, so and so. Well, who cares whether it's so and so? What if Joseph Smith had said it was Apollo? Okay, I'll give you. There's Apollo. Apollo is a God. But does that mean this image is Apollo? And does the fact that that's Apollo, meaning, allow you to put Apollo in a text supposedly spun off of it? They don't do those. They don't do those extra steps. It's just. Okay, yeah, this one fact, we can just say that's this and we're done now, and that doesn't work. And John, this morning on what I heard from last week's interview on Mormon voices, I think it is fair voices, I'm sorry, I don't know. These. He talked about the difference between work by inspiration and work by scholarship. And he said you couldn't just have an inspirational understanding of the book of Abraham. You had to actually do the scholarship. And sometimes things like this were boring, but you had to actually do them. So I would agree with him. It's time he did.

John Dehlin [02:34:27] Absolutely.

RFM [02:34:28] Can I give you my overview of why this has been so many wormholes?

John Dehlin [02:34:31] Yeah, please. Rfm.

RFM [02:34:32] Okay. It's all set up by the apologists. Now, what I see going on, first off, we've got two similar things going on and there are others as well. But the first thing we have is the issue about human sacrifice in ancient Egypt. We spent a lot of time on that. Second thing we had to do with was the four sons of Horus representing the earth and its four quarters. And. And we just spent a lot of time on this now, breaking those down and giving you the overview. Please let me know if I have this wrong. Dr. Ritner. The state of modern Egyptology is there is a consensus that the ancient Egyptians did not, repeat, not practice human sacrifice. And yet the Egyptologists go to this one example, which Dr. Ritner noted in his doctoral dissertation at that fort that had that individual who was apparently slain to create an angry ghost. And they cite, the apologists, cite that as an example to prove that, contrary to the consensus, there actually was human sacrifice in ancient Egypt. And so because they go contrary to the consensus and pick out one example which actually does not support their position, it is left to people who know what they're talking about, like Dr. Ritner, to explain in detail why that does not support their position that there was human sacrifice in ancient Egypt. Those are the details that apparently the apologists do not want to go into. And the same thing, I think, happened with the four sons of Horus, as Dr. Ritner showed by looking at the dictionaries. There's nothing in those dictionaries that talk about the four sons of Horus anywhere as representing the four cardinal directions. In fact, there are other individuals and other gods who do represent the four cardinal directions. And yet, by looking at this one inscription about the four sons of Horus being sent out to the four directions with news of the new king's coronation to give it to the gods who actually do represent those four cardinal directions, it leaves Dr. Ritner and you and I in this podcast in the position of having to explain in some detail why it is that the apologists are wrong in making this association. So the wormholes and the details are necessary to show why they're wrong. The reason they don't have to go into these details is because they don't want to go into the details. They just want to present the erroneous conclusion as if it's fact and then move on and say nothing to see here. Do I have that right?

Robert Ritner [02:37:10] Dr. Ritner, you've just proved my point that an intelligent listener can understand all of this because you just got AN A.

John Dehlin [02:37:20] Yes. Dr. Ritner, let me be clear. I'm not saying that what we just did was invaluable. I think it's extremely valuable because both in our first segment and in today's segment, what you're doing is you're actually showing the homework to show that the types of apologetics that Guy and Mohstein and others and Rhodes have been using have not, you know, are not based in legitimate Egyptian scholarship. I'm also just noting the fact that the game that they're actually playing is not to do good scholarship.

RFM [02:37:56] What?

John Dehlin [02:37:57] The game that they're playing is to just have names with credible sounding degrees and letters after their names give Egyptian sounding like explanations, showing symbols showing citations and footnotes so that the average member can just sort of go, huh, John, Gee, where did he get his degree? Oh, at Yale. Oh, he's an Egyptologist. Oh, there's fancy hieroglyphics and footnotes. Well, clearly there's a smart Yale trained Egyptologist that studied this stuff. And yeah, there may be other people that disagree. I don't understand all these fancy words and symbols, but that's good. Enough for me. And that's all I'm saying, is there's a bigger game that they're playing here that has nothing to do with what's true and accurate and scholarly. It's just provide. Like Oakes said, they're just providing answers. And to many members of the church, the fact that there are answers from a guy who calls himself an Egyptologist who got a degree at Yale or Nibley, he's a smart guy. He got a PhD at UCLA and says he can read Egyptian. Well, if those guys say that they. They believe it, that's good enough for me. And I'm just saying I'm frustrated at the fact that for many of the members of the church who are trying to figure out if the Book of Abraham is true, they're not going to have the time or the interest in listening to the details and reading the scholarship and reading Dr. Ritner's book. They're going to just have their eyes and ears glaze over and say, well, what Gia's done is enough for me. Does that make sense, Dr. Ridner and

Robert Ritner [02:39:47] RFM, that's exactly what he's doing. Yes.

John Dehlin [02:39:53] RFM. Do you have any additional comment as well?

RFM [02:39:57] The most important thing that I take away from this entire discussion, John, is that RFM got AN A from Dr. Robert Ritner.

Robert Ritner [02:40:08] You did.

John Dehlin [02:40:13] And do you want to address what I said? That's all true.

RFM [02:40:17] I got a higher score than John Gee.

Robert Ritner [02:40:20] I think you did.

RFM [02:40:21] Hot dog.

Robert Ritner [02:40:25] You'll get your PhD in the mail.

John Dehlin [02:40:30] Come on, RFM, number one, that's. I. Humor is essential. Number two, you got to validate what the frustration I'm expressing.

RFM [02:40:38] Oh, sure. Well, it's always frustrating, but, you know, this is the way things are in religion and politics and anything where people have a very emotional investment in one side or another, which is they're simply going to look for people to validate what it is they already believe. And if that person has a degree, then so much the better. It's just. What is that called? It's called confirmation bias. Right? Yeah. And you actually have to look behind what it is that John Gee is saying. You actually have to go beyond his summary conclusions that he presents in his presentations, like this recent interview. He doesn't go into anything about what it is that he's talking about. In other words, why it is he's reached that conclusion. He just wants to give you the conclusion with the bare amount of facts that will support it. I was just watching this morning, Kerry Muhlstein doing the same Thing in another video where he talks about kolob, right? And kolob appears in the Book of Abraham. And kolob is from the Hebrew root, okay, Hebrew root klb, which means center. And then he calls it a bullseye. And I'm going, okay, if I'm listening to this as a third party who's never heard anything about this before, what on earth does a Hebrew word that has a root that means center that shows up in the Book of Abraham, how is that a bullseye for anything? Well, he doesn't go there. And then they flip to the next one. This is a fair Mormon, I think, presentation. And they're just lining up the bullseyes. And it seems that if you say anything by a PhD Egyptologist, which Carrie is. And then say it's a bullseye without even. Without explaining why it is, and even though it doesn't seem like it would be, it's taken that way, at least if you want to believe it is from the outset.

John Dehlin [02:42:25] Thank you, RFM Thanks, Dr. Ritter. And I hope you know how grateful we are that you're actually showing us the scholarship, because you really are illustrating the weak foundation that Guy and Molstein and others are standing upon. So thank you for that.

Robert Ritner [02:42:42] My pleasure.

RFM [02:42:44] Did you want to talk about men's penises now?

John Dehlin [02:42:46] It is time. It is time. It is time. So we've established that 6, portion 6 of the hypocephalus does not necessarily represent the earth in its four quarters. Let's go on to portion seven of the hypocephalus. We have, according to Joseph Smith, it's representing God sitting upon his throne, revealing through the heavens the grand keywords of the priesthood, as also the sign of the Holy Ghost unto Abraham in the form of a dove. So that figure sitting down with the thing sticking out upside down, Joseph has that being God sitting on his throne, revealing the grand keywords of the priesthood, the sign of the Holy Ghost and Abraham in the form of the dove. Now tell us now that I've given you the correct Description of Figure 7 as described by Joseph Smith. And we've got it here now enlarged and turned around. Can you now tell us, Dr. Ritner, what that is actually a picture of?

Robert Ritner [02:43:55] Well, it's the God Min Ammon, a form of the Creator God who begat the world by masturbation. He created air and moisture by his semen when he ejaculated. And he is shown in the act of basically doing that, seated in two forms, both in a human form, seated on a Throne and in a bird form, associating himself with the God Ra, the falcon, God of the sun. The bird form is coming out of his back. He has one arm upraised, holding a flail, which is one of the two symbols of authority and rulership. If you can imagine the coffin of Tutankhamun, one of many of them. Standardly, the king has his arms crossed across his chest and one is the shepherd's crook that he holds and the other is the flail. And here the God is holding the flail. He has. The God approaching him is actually a lizard God whose name is the one who unites eternity. And he is offering to Ammon the Ujjat eye, the symbol of health, insecurity, the eye of Horus. And he's hovering above an altar with flowers.

John Dehlin [02:45:28] Okay, and so not necessarily a hit for Joseph Smith.

Robert Ritner [02:45:37] Not exactly.

John Dehlin [02:45:38] Rfm, do you want to tell us what this image represents here?

RFM [02:45:45] Are you talking about Min M I n. Min Ammon?

John Dehlin [02:45:48] Yes, yes. But I'm now showing. Can you see the screen?

RFM [02:45:53] Yes. The one with the four different versions.

John Dehlin [02:45:55] Yes. Tell us what happened. This is kind of the castration of men, basically. Tell us about that.

RFM [02:46:00] Well, Dr. Ritner just told us about how Min Ammon was representing as commencing the creation through masturbation. Is that right, Dr. Ritner?

Robert Ritner [02:46:10] Yes.

RFM [02:46:11] This is where we get the term the Big Bang Theory, John. So it appears that there's been a love hate relationship with men's penis through the years. Because in the which one's earliest it goes, yeah, top left.

John Dehlin [02:46:26] Top left is 1902 pooler of great price facsimile 2.

RFM [02:46:30] Yeah, in 1902, which wouldn't be the first time it was published, I think. But you can see that the penis is missing from that facsimile. Then in 1921. Still missing, isn't it, John?

John Dehlin [02:46:45] In this one. Yeah.

RFM [02:46:47] So in 1981, now, bottom left, they put it back in. Apparently someone put it back in, realizing it had been taken out by mistake

John Dehlin [02:46:56] in the earlier or intentionally taken out because it's obscene.

RFM [02:47:01] Well, I don't know. You know, I don't know how many times I'd looked at this and I'd never figured out this was his penis. It looks like he's a fire hydrant coming out of his navel or something. You know, it's just. It doesn't look like where I'd put a penis, at least not on my anatomy. Not to give too much information. Maybe all the other guys in the world have it coming out of their navel, I don't know. But 1981, it's there. And then in 2013, edition of the Pearl of Great Price, it's still present. So it's still present in the current Pearl of Great Price. If you open it up, you can see Min's penis, big as Dallas right there. But in earlier editions it had been taken out. And perhaps out of modesty.

John Dehlin [02:47:45] Yeah. We Talked last episode, Dr. Ritner, about sometimes Christians or others being uncomfortable with penises and scratching them out. Right. I mean, this could be an example where the Mormons did that.

Robert Ritner [02:48:00] The examples I showed you from the temple of Dendera had that kind of damage in the Holy of Holies of the roof chapels, where Osiris is impregnating the bird form of Isis. And in fact, in many cases, the penis has been hacked out right there. Yep.

John Dehlin [02:48:18] And were you aware that maybe Mormons.

Robert Ritner [02:48:21] This is a common phenomenon that we find.

John Dehlin [02:48:23] And were you aware that maybe Mormons had hacked out men's penis as well?

Robert Ritner [02:48:28] No, I hadn't actually noticed that. In the hand copy, I did notice that Joseph Smith confused a Holy Spirit bird with a lizard. And the name of that lizard, the God is named Neheb Kau, one who yokes the Ka spirits, the manifestations of reality.

RFM [02:48:48] That's cool. Okay, so I think you'll agree with me that sometimes there's few things so satisfying as scratching a penis.

John Dehlin [02:49:00] Doctor Ritter, do you have a response to that?

Robert Ritner [02:49:02] No, I'm gonna let that one go by. I'm probably in enough trouble as it is. I'm just. I'm waiting for 8, 9, 10, 11.

John Dehlin [02:49:13] Okay, so going back so far, so Joseph's kind of really, let's just say 0 for 7. For all intents and purposes, figure 8, Joseph. So figure 8, if we look at the hypocephalus, it's on the kind of on the left hand side, in the middle, towards the bottom of a series of rows. It's just some basic hieroglyphics I'm seeing. And according to Joseph, it contains writings that cannot be revealed unto the world, but is to be had in the holy temple of God. Are you able to read figure 8 and tell us what can only be revealed unto the world in the holy temple of God? Dr. Renner.

Robert Ritner [02:50:00] Yeah. Let's take these as a group. I'm glad you're able to do that.

John Dehlin [02:50:05] So 8, 9, 10, and 11. It's those four rows on the left

Robert Ritner [02:50:09] hand side to note here. One is if you went to go, if you were to go back to that earlier slide that shows the refill and the damage. This is a section that is partially missing and has been filled in incorrectly with sections taken from the Book of the Dead of Tahsheret. Men in certain parts of is also misnumbered by Joseph Smith. So he doesn't. Not only can he not read it to spoil the ending, but he's read it backwards so that his number eight should, if anything, be 11, because it starts at the top and works its way down. You never go from bottom to top. You can go left to right, right to left. And the way you know that is you look at the face of the hieroglyph. Any figure that has a face, you read into the face. So it starts at the top in 11. And what it actually says is, o noble God, from the beginning of time, Great God, Lord of heaven, earth, underworld, waters and mountains. The. And mountains is missing because he substituted at nine a wrong phrase. That's coming from the. From the Book of the Dead of Tashir at men. That's where it's a patch. Caused that the Ba spirit, that's the bird spirit of the Osiris Sheshonq to live. And this is where the last bit of writing in the lower left corner of 8 is the personal name that survives of the original owner of this hoopacephalus. And that is what is missing that was broken out where they inserted the wrong script in the circle over by the Ra in his boat in the upper right. But here is where it's actually preserved the Osiris Sheshonq. And that lets us know that this piece belonged to a mummy that was completely different from Tah Sheret Min, which has the restorations inside it, and completely different from Whore, from which the flower altar is taken next to number two. So here's what actually lets us know who owned this. So one of the four mummies was named Sheshonq, and that is a name that's well known in the Bible, because in the Bible it is ascribed to a king, Shishak, which is a different pronunciation of the same name, Sheshonq. Sheshak are kings of Libyan descent who came to the throne in Egypt around 1000 BC, and it became a popular name after that. But it's of Libyan origin, and no one really knows what it means because it's not Egyptian, it's Berber. So that's what all of that is. Now, that corresponds to what you said for Figure 8 contains writings that cannot be revealed unto the world, but to be had in the holy temple of God. That corresponds to O noble God, from the beginning. No, I'm sorry, that's number 11, which is. Yeah. O, O noble God in the time. The second line, which is actually number 10, which he says is also number

John Dehlin [02:54:20] nine, meaning, I think ought not to be revealed at the present time. In other words. I'm just going to call you out on something, Dr. Ritner. A prophet of the Lord has clearly said that the meaning of 8, 9, 10 and 11 are not to be revealed at the present time unless it's in the holy temple. And Here you are, Dr. Riddner, revealing these sacred things to the world when a prophet has said they are not to be revealed except in the temple of God. What have ye to say for yourself about that?

Robert Ritner [02:54:53] My out is his Designation for Figure 11. If the world can find out these numbers, so let it be, amen. Does this make me a prophet?

John Dehlin [02:55:10] Oh, I mean, it's kind of hilarious that, number one, he's got the order wrong in terms of how you read these. But then it's also hilarious that. That when he can't see symbols that he can sort of extrapolate meaning from, like a circle that means the sun or a table that he'll call an altar or whatever, when he actually has to interpret actual characters that probably signify words.

Robert Ritner [02:55:42] His translation is they signify words? Yes. What's that in this case? They do signify words.

John Dehlin [02:55:48] And then he says, oh, sorry, it's

Robert Ritner [02:55:50] the chance to actually translate words, not just explain symbols.

John Dehlin [02:55:56] Then he's like, sorry, this is too sacred. It can't be revealed at this time, only in a special temple. Also. Also. Ibid. Etc. Etc. Rfm, do you want to add anything to that?

RFM [02:56:15] No, I think that's good. I'm anxious to find out what the rest of it means. Although down there on. Is it. Dang it, let me get my specs on.

John Dehlin [02:56:24] I mean, while you're getting your specs on RFM, it's probably worth noting. 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20 and 21. Again, a bunch of actual symbols that represent words that have actual meaning. Joseph Smith's interpretation is it will be given in the own due time of the Lord. So of course you. He knows what it all means, but the Lord doesn't want us to know what they mean. But, Dr. Ritner, do you want to tell us just quickly what 12 through 21 also say? I mean, it's probably not even worth reading, but.

Robert Ritner [02:57:03] Well, actually, I was just struck by the Similarity of his approach to that of John. Gee, I know what it is, but I'm not going to tell you.

John Dehlin [02:57:14] Sorry.

RFM [02:57:14] I think that's a really good comment that you make there, though, John, about the fact that wherever there is evidently actual script in need of translating, Joseph Smith begs off and he only interprets the symbols and the pictures.

John Dehlin [02:57:29] Yeah, it's really convenient.

RFM [02:57:32] Although in Facsimile three, he's going to trip himself up and actually translate some real script.

Robert Ritner [02:57:38] Yes.

John Dehlin [02:57:40] Okay, well, I mean, I feel like what we've talked about is important, but I also think we've beaten a dead horse. We know that this isn't part of the scroll like he said it was. It's a hypocephalus, not a part of the scroll. We know that the parts that he filled in were copy and paste jobs. We know that the characters around the circumference were. Were out of place. We know that none of the interpretations of the actual figures did he get right. And then whenever he had a chance to actually translate characters or words, he passed and said that these things are only to be read in a holy temple and that God doesn't want them revealed at this time. So it's kind of a joke, which shouldn't surprise us, but is there anything else worth saying about facsimile 2 in addition to that summary, Dr. Ritner?

Robert Ritner [02:58:39] No. The two baboons on either side of the central figure are just. The text there simply says praising God. The other text you can read in my translation if you want to. And again, those are partly refreshed, stored, so there's not much like. I mean, they're artificially fleshed out again.

John Dehlin [02:59:05] Okay.

Robert Ritner [02:59:05] I think we basically hit all the bases. I think the point should have been made. Okay, RFM has already gotten an A on this part, so.

John Dehlin [02:59:15] Okay, rfm. Anything else you want to say about Facsimile two before we jump to Facsimile three?

RFM [02:59:20] No, not at all.

Facsimile 3 and Joseph Smith's Identifications

John Dehlin [02:59:21] Okay. All right, well, it's now time. If we have any listeners who are still listening or viewers who are still viewing, it is time to. To reach the final portion of this presentation where we talk about facsimile 3. And here it is. Here is a. Here is the rendition of how members of the, you know, members of the early church would have seen Joseph Smith's depiction of facsimile 3. And what do you want to tell us about facsimile 3 before we actually read Joseph Smith's explanations and have you interpret them, or should we start there? Dr. Ridner.

Robert Ritner [03:00:11] Well, I can tell you what it basically is, and then let me just give a quick summation. Then you can go through his explanations and we can go through those point by point. What you have us is what most Egyptologists would recognize is the scene that typically concludes A Book of Breathings. So this would be the end of the Book of Breathing, which means we've got the whole manuscript, we've got the first part of it, and we've got the last part of it. Unfortunately, the actual papyrus does not survive. However, this illustration should normally be placed toward the end or at the end. And it is a good enough copy, which is really remarkable when you think of it, that you have people who are copying this, who are just trying to copy a picture, and they don't really know what the squiggles are. But it's generally good enough that I can read it. I got more out of it than earlier writers. Klaus Baer, my predecessor, only got parts of things. I was able to flesh out more. But what you have, and I'll be able to show you parallels, is we have the major figure is Osiris holding the shepherd's crook, seated on a throne with in front of him a table of offerings with flowers.

John Dehlin [03:01:42] Okay. And just for our listeners, pull out your facsimile 3. We're talking about Figure 1, which is the second figure from the left sitting down on the throne, right?

Robert Ritner [03:01:54] Yes. And whenever you have Osiris, as we did in facsimile one, at his head there will be an altar with flowers. So in facsimile one, there was an altar there which was not the bed, but in fact the stand with flowers. And we get the same kind of thing here. But this one doesn't have jugs on either side of it. That's number three. Standing behind Osiris is the goddess Isis, who is wearing a dress, not a kilt. She has long feminine hair. She has the crowns of cow horns and sun disc on her head, which is the distinctive crown of the goddess Isis. Now, coming toward the seated Osiris is the goddess Truth Ma', at, whose name is indicated by the ostrich feather on her head. In a sun disc, she is holding the hand of a man who has his hand upraised in adoration of Osiris. He has a cone on his head, one of these perfume cones that one wears at parties, and inserted into it is a horizontal ostrich feather, meaning true or one who is justified, who has been found true at the weighing of the heart. He is coming in to be received by Osiris, because he has now been found justified to live eternally in paradise. This is the moment of crossing into paradise, being accepted by the God Osiris. And the God standing behind the dark skinned figure, standing behind the dead man is the God of embalming, Anubis, who has prepared the body and has acted as witness at the scale. And who can verify that the man is now ready to join the underworld. This is the moment. Triumph. And that's what all the texts are about. So that in a nutshell is what this is. It is a pivotal picture representing the culmination of the journey through the underworld. And it is the last typical scene at the end of the Papyrus of the Book of Breathings. Which means we're at the end. Which also means there's no missing text.

John Dehlin [03:04:47] Okay, well, Dr. Renner, I'm sorry to tell you that Joseph Smith sees it differently. And what I'll now do is share with you what Joseph Smith, how he is reported to have translated these figures. And you can tell us, and it'll be a little bit repetitive, but you can tell us whether he got it right or wrong. So the figure sitting on the throne, Joseph Smith has as Abraham. So apparently Abraham convinces the Pharaoh to let him sit on the throne. So we've got Abraham sitting on Pharaoh's throne as figure number one by the Pilatus of the king with the crown upon his head, representing the priesthood as emblematical of the grand presidency in heaven with the scepter of justice and judgment in his hand. Did Joseph get that right, Dr. Ritner?

Robert Ritner [03:05:43] The scepter is correct. And the throne of Pharaoh is correct.

John Dehlin [03:05:48] You're saying it is a scepter. So Joseph was able. It's a scepter and a throne, you're saying?

Robert Ritner [03:05:54] That's what I'm saying.

John Dehlin [03:05:55] But it's not Pharaoh.

Robert Ritner [03:05:57] It is not Pharaoh. It is certainly not Abraham. It's the God Osiris who is the very distinctive form of the God Osiris.

John Dehlin [03:06:06] It's not Pharaoh. Okay, okay.

Robert Ritner [03:06:08] The crown is specific to Osiris. The king only wears that when the king is dead. And when the king is embodied as a form of Osiris.

John Dehlin [03:06:21] Right.

Robert Ritner [03:06:21] No living king, no living king would put that crown on his head. It would mean he was dead.

John Dehlin [03:06:29] Okay. And by the way, Abraham wouldn't get

Robert Ritner [03:06:33] to wear it either. Not even as a party hat.

John Dehlin [03:06:35] Yeah. If Abraham existed and if Abraham was given, you know, given audience to whatever Pharaoh would have been there at the time in 1700 BC. What's the likelihood the pharaoh would be letting shepherd Abraham sit on his throne?

Robert Ritner [03:06:57] That would be sacrilege.

John Dehlin [03:07:00] Right.

Robert Ritner [03:07:01] Then you'd have to sacrifice.

John Dehlin [03:07:09] Rfm. Do you want to say anything about figure one really quick?

RFM [03:07:13] No, not at all. I think you guys are doing great.

John Dehlin [03:07:16] Okay, so figure two standing behind

Robert Ritner [03:07:21] who

John Dehlin [03:07:22] Joseph Smith calls Abraham. Figure two? Figure two says that's Pharaoh giving up his chair. King Pharaoh giving up his chair to father Abraham. What's the problem with calling Figure 2 King Pharaoh, Dr. Ridner, or what are the problems with that?

Robert Ritner [03:07:45] Where to begin? Well, let's start with the fact that he hasn't gotten the gender correct. It's a female goddess. It is not King Pharaoh. And here you have King Pharaoh, which means he thinks king is the title and Pharaoh is the personal name. And he goes on in that quote. Can we get that full quote?

John Dehlin [03:08:12] King Pharaoh, whose name is given in the characters above his head.

Robert Ritner [03:08:17] Right. I want to emphasize that because we actually have the surviving text. And I'll be able to. Well, we'll be able to see it in just a second. But. What we've got there is a text that's completely legible that says Isis the Great, the God's mother. That's reading from top to bottom.

John Dehlin [03:09:03] That's top.

Robert Ritner [03:09:03] Literally, that's to the right.

John Dehlin [03:09:05] The text to the right above Isis

Robert Ritner [03:09:07] head, immediately in front of her head.

John Dehlin [03:09:10] Okay.

Robert Ritner [03:09:11] It's between her and Osiris.

John Dehlin [03:09:13] Right.

Robert Ritner [03:09:14] So the text goes from top to bottom and it says Isis, the great, mother of the God. The God being referred to mother of the God. This is one of her standard titles that represents Horus, the God who is born when she copulates with Osiris after his death. Now, I want to point out that this translation, Isis the Great, the mother of the God, is so well recognized that it was also recognized. Well, by Klaus Baer, by Hugh Nibley, by John Gee, by Michael D. Rhodes. All of them have recognized that this specific text can be read in Egyptian hieroglyphs by the signs by her head. It can be read and translated as Isis, the great mother of the God. Now, I point that out because in Smith's analysis, he specifically refers to this as a translation. That he's getting this interpretation by these signs, which means he's actually now admitting here he is translating the Egyptian. And what everyone in modern times has said is that is not true, that he cannot translate and that in fact, it doesn't say what he's saying.

John Dehlin [03:10:50] It doesn't say King Pharaoh.

Robert Ritner [03:10:53] The apologists in fact say, well, if it Said king Pharaoh. Pharaoh is one of the most common hieroglyphic groupings. Imagine on Egyptian monuments, which are all about kings everywhere. Do you know how many times you would find the word Pharaoh written? There are two different words for a king, nisut, bidhi, or para, which is the actual word for pharaoh. You don't need to know that. They're extremely common phrases. Well, this is neither one of those, and those are extremely common. So if you could read anything, my beginning hieroglyph students can pick out the word for king on day two. If you have no knowledge of grammar, only know about five words, you'll know the word for king. It's kind of hard to avoid. So he can't even get the most common word. So I want it to sink in. What exactly has happened here? Because when Guy Nibley Rhodes affirm that this does not say Pharaoh, King, Pharaoh, but instead says Isis, the great mother of the God, they are doing by their hand upon paper, witnessing that Joseph Smith could not translate Egyptian, nor could he understand by inspiration or any other means what these were. He could not read the text, he could not understand the symbol, he could not understand human versus divine. We'll soon see. He can't recognize human versus animal and he cannot recognize gender. So on every single point, he's wrong. And the apologists are in agreement that he can't do this.

John Dehlin [03:12:58] Anything you want to add RFM throw

RFM [03:12:59] in with a comment, John? Yeah, yeah. This has got to be the most troublesome aspect of all of Joseph Smith's translation efforts from Egyptian for the book of Abraham. Because when you're talking about symbols, even though apparently he got them wrong, wrong, wrong, still you can talk about symbolism and you can expound upon it and you can say, well, maybe he caught some aspect of the total symbolic content of some character, and he does that in facsimile one, Facsimile two. The only thing he translates are the symbols. And as you noted, John, he specifically leaves alone and does not attempt to translate those parts of facsimile 2 that are obviously written in Egyptian, that are not just drawings of symbolic characters or gods or baboons or whatever you may have, but it's in facsimile three. And this may be the most important part of this podcast. I don't know where Joseph Smith was, finally completely commits himself to having interpreted and translated from Egyptian into English specific characters which he identifies in facsimile three. And when he says that, he translates the name that's given in the characters above the head of Facsimile 2 and gets it completely wrong, as Dr. Ritner has just told us. That is the smoking gun. It's really hard to come back from that if you're an apologist, because as Dr. Ritner has said, if the Mormon apologists admit, as they have, that he got this wrong because they all know what it really says, and it doesn't say what Joseph Smith translated it as saying, then what they're affirming at one and the same time is that Joseph Smith could not translate from Egyptian into English.

John Dehlin [03:14:57] Right. All right, well, let's. Thank you, rfm. Let's finish out the other characters. So that little. We see that little figure three reappearing, it was figure ten, in fact. Simile one. Joseph, again, is saying that that little thing. I don't know how to describe it. He's saying it signifies Abraham in Egypt. How would you describe figure three? Rfm.

RFM [03:15:25] I think it's a lotus table.

Robert Ritner [03:15:28] Again, like what we had in facsimile one.

John Dehlin [03:15:32] And is there any reason to believe, Dr. Ritner, that that lotus table represents Abraham in Egypt?

Robert Ritner [03:15:40] No.

John Dehlin [03:15:41] Why not? Are we beating a dead horse if we made that point?

Robert Ritner [03:15:47] Because it's a table with offerings, that's why.

RFM [03:15:52] And something that maybe we haven't beaten is that that is actually the real image in all of these facsimiles that does represent a sacrifice, but it's a food.

John Dehlin [03:16:02] It's a food sacrifice, right?

Robert Ritner [03:16:04] Yes. Which is the normal sacrifice, which is what Egyptians do.

John Dehlin [03:16:09] Got it. Okay, well, Joseph has figure four, which I'm guessing he got gender wrong. Again, he's saying the figure four to the right of. You know what? He's calling Abraham in Egypt Prince of Pharaoh, King of Egypt, as written above the hand. What's wrong with calling that figure four, Prince of Pharaoh, King of Egypt, Dr. Ritner?

Robert Ritner [03:16:33] Well, it's a goddess, for one thing.

John Dehlin [03:16:35] It's got long hair. Like, even I'm not a freaking Egyptologist or prophet, and I can look at that and say it's a woman, right?

Robert Ritner [03:16:44] Yes.

John Dehlin [03:16:46] That doesn't take a rocket scientist. But Joseph's got it as Prince of Pharaoh. And what's wrong with calling it Prince of Pharaoh, King of Egypt? Anything?

Robert Ritner [03:16:56] Well, again, the implication is that Pharaoh is the personal name. And secondly, he's not. She's not a prince, she's a goddess. Not human, but divine, which is why she has a sun symbol on her head. If you have a sun symbol on your head, you are divine.

John Dehlin [03:17:18] And then again, Joseph makes the mistake of telling us that her name. I'll say his name because the Joseph is a dude, prince of Pharaoh, king of Egypt, that his name is written above the hand. So can you make out the hieroglyphs above his her hand to let us know if Joseph is translating those correctly or incorrectly, knowing that he got it wrong on the priest.

Robert Ritner [03:17:45] Correct in that it is her name. He's wrong that it's his name. It's her name. And it says Ma', at, the mistress of the West. She is a goddess of the West.

John Dehlin [03:17:59] So you can read those poorly reproduced hieroglyphics to know that is completely legible.

Robert Ritner [03:18:05] And you're sure it's not a good hand copy? My students would get a C if they tried to write that. But it's close enough I can figure out what was intended.

John Dehlin [03:18:19] But Dr. Ridner, are you absolutely sure that those characters don't say say prince of Pharaoh, king of Egypt? I just want to make sure

Robert Ritner [03:18:30] doesn't say that final answer.

John Dehlin [03:18:34] I'm being a little bit cheeky now. Okay, character five, figure five. Joseph says Shulem, one of the king's principal waiters, as represented by the characters above his hand. Do the characters. First of all, is that Shulem, one of the king's waiters? And is that what it says above his hand?

Robert Ritner [03:18:55] No and no.

John Dehlin [03:18:56] What does it say? Who is it and what does it say above his head?

Robert Ritner [03:19:00] It says the Osiris Whore, the Justified Forever. That is our tomb owner, the owner of papyrus. That's a picture of Whore.

John Dehlin [03:19:10] That's Whore.

Robert Ritner [03:19:11] That's him.

John Dehlin [03:19:13] Handsome guy, man.

Robert Ritner [03:19:14] Who is the owner of this text?

John Dehlin [03:19:19] Okay, and you sure it doesn't say Shulem? Can you look one more time?

Robert Ritner [03:19:22] I'm positive there's no Shulem. No Shulem.

John Dehlin [03:19:26] RFM do you see Shulem there?

RFM [03:19:28] Well, no, but is there a Shulem name in Egyptian at all?

Robert Ritner [03:19:33] That sounds Hebrew.

RFM [03:19:35] It does, doesn't it? Can I give you a question here? Granted that Joseph Smith cannot interpret these hieroglyphs correctly from Egyptian into English, does Joseph Smith in your mind get any credit for recognizing that these are names of the associated individuals in the facsimile?

Robert Ritner [03:19:57] Well, you know, when you have a label next to something, the chance of it being a name are pretty good. So that's a qualified half a point.

RFM [03:20:07] Okay, but you can see I'm struggling

John Dehlin [03:20:08] for something that is half a point. That's super generous.

RFM [03:20:14] It's that half a point that's going to bump me from an A to an A plus John.

Robert Ritner [03:20:18] Okay, before we get to the last figure can we do the bottom?

John Dehlin [03:20:23] Yeah, please. So let's. I'll show it on the screen again. Okay. What does the bottom say? Joseph doesn't translate the bottom.

Robert Ritner [03:20:33] So we don't know what it says is. And here's a case where there's is some issues, but I was able to figure out some parts of it that Klaus Baer couldn't. And I've got a full translation for it. O gods of the necropolis, gods of the caverns, gods of the south, north, west and east, grant salvation to the Osiris whore, the justified, borne by Tay Chebet, his mother's name. That's the whole thing. So what it starts with is an invocation. O gods of the cemetery, gods of the caverns, those are the underworld sections that the spirit has to travel through in order to get to the tomb of Osiris. Gods of the south, north, west and east, those are the gods of the cardinal directions. And you notice what we don't have in the picture.

John Dehlin [03:21:36] Tell us. Rfm.

RFM [03:21:37] I'm sorry, I was muted. Four sends of Horus, obviously.

Robert Ritner [03:21:41] Exactly. So if they are the gods of the cardinal directions, where are they? Grant salvation. That of course is the theme of the entire document. So what we're talking about now with this final picture, and that's why it's the final, final picture. He's now reached Osiris. He's gone through the caverns, he's in the cemetery. He wants justification so he can live like a blessed God among gods. Which may or may not be Mormon theology, I don't know, but that's certainly Egyptian theology. You join with Osiris as a God and part of his corporate personality. That's this little line under there is the complete major focus of the entire documents. That's why I wanted to point that

RFM [03:22:32] out

Robert Ritner [03:22:35] and well being to Osiris for justified. And then you give his mother's name because you need to specify which Horus you're talking about. So in John Gee's earlier book he remarks that this whole composition includes never an address to a God. Well, what's this? The whole thrust of it is here as an address to deity. This is explicitly an address to deity. And also before we leave and go to the last figure I have to tell you about, in that same book, John made an attempt to explain the Isis figure and it's fairly priceless. He says that it is understandable that the figure of Isis could represent Pharaoh in this scene, because in Rome in the Roman period, in a Roman adapted Egyptian celebration of the goddess Isis that is taking place through the streets of Rome. A Roman soldier who is a participant in the parade, not a priest, just someone going along in the parade, is dressed in drag, maybe is Isis, but because that's going on in Rome centuries later, in a different culture, an adapted ritual that just happens to be for Isis, and people are celebrating Mardi Gras like they would under any circumstances, that that means that Pharaoh would dress in drag back in Egypt, centuries before that, as Isis. If you want to believe that, you can.

RFM [03:24:32] That one doesn't even get half a point, does it?

Robert Ritner [03:24:35] Well, I quote that to my students just because I want them to hear it. It's a question of how you process logic. So when John does show his work, it can be a problem.

RFM [03:24:52] Do you mean you actually use this as an example in class for your students, as what not to do?

Robert Ritner [03:24:57] Exactly.

John Dehlin [03:25:02] I love it.

Robert Ritner [03:25:07] Well, I have received some benefits from the experience.

John Dehlin [03:25:14] Oh, I love.

Robert Ritner [03:25:15] Let's go to the last figure, shall we?

John Dehlin [03:25:17] Okay. So the last figure, according to Joseph Smith, Figure 6, this dark character on the far right with some sort of dark horn, Joseph says, is Olim La, a slave belonging to the prince. Surely that's what those characters to the top left of that character say, right, Dr. Ritter?

Robert Ritner [03:25:47] Well, none of that, actually. What it actually says is words spoken by Anubis, who makes protection lord of heaven, foremost of the Westerners.

John Dehlin [03:26:00] So is that Anubis again? Same from facsimile one.

Robert Ritner [03:26:05] Yes.

John Dehlin [03:26:06] Sadly, it's Anubis reappearing.

Robert Ritner [03:26:09] It is.

RFM [03:26:10] Well, it's like a new. I'm sorry. I think it's like Anubis finishing his job with Hoare, who, in fact, seemly.

Robert Ritner [03:26:18] What we see at the beginning is the embalming process, and at the end, he is conducting the now glorified spirit who has been embalmed, who has had the weighing of the heart, and whose spiritual form now, not the physical form, but whose spiritual form is being brought in to be received in heaven with Osiris. Now, the striking thing about all of that, and let's keep that picture up, we can deconstruct the analysis that

John Dehlin [03:26:54] Smith

Robert Ritner [03:26:54] did in order to make that interpretation. All right, first of all, notice that we have a goodly amount of text. So if he's trying to squeeze things in, there's three columns. The columns go from left to right, and they start behind the head of Hoare. Behind the back of his head, they go toward the face of Anubis. Now, Anubis is black, and because of that, Smith assumes he is a black Slave. His interpretation of Slave is based entirely on the color that the figure is depicted. He's racially profiling. He does not recognize that he had that the head is actually a jackal's head. And part of the weird thing sticking up from his head is actually one of his ears, one of his erect jackal ears. Now to prove my point, let's go to the next slide. So here we see a comparable end of a papyrus that's now in the museum of Tubingen in Germany. This is that same concluding scene from A Book of Breathing. And here we can see the left hand side we have the goddess Isis with the very same titles that she has in the Joseph Smith hand copy. You'll notice that I did not say that she was Pharaoh, King, Pharaoh. In front of her is Osiris, foremost of the westerners with his appropriate title. Then here we have elaborately an altar with all sorts of food, things that are stacked up, defying gravity. Then we have the Canopic gods but with no title saying that they have anything to do with the quarters of the earth. They're standing on a rising lotus petal coming out of the water now being led in front of all of this. If we can go to the next slide.

John Dehlin [03:29:39] So this is, this is the image continuing to the right on another page of paper.

Robert Ritner [03:29:45] Continuing to the right because I can't get it all in one picture, right? Yep. So then we get the God Thoth, who is not depicted. This has all these other figures who are not found in. So this is a fuller writing with more of the scene. So we then get Thoth, the ibis headed scribe who records the judgment of the weighing of the heart with his name. And after that we have a stand on which the swallowing monster Amiet is sitting. She's part lion, part crocodile and her purpose is to devour the soul of any deceased who fails the weighing of the heart. If your heart does not perfectly balance the feather of truth, the goddess Maat and Maat feather is present here sitting on her head, the two feathers. If the heart doesn't balance those feathers, this monster swallows the heart and you cease to exist. Your personality is destroyed, you have no afterlife. You are completely exterminated from all existence now and in the future. And you reach Buddhist nirvana, which for Egyptians would be absolute hell. Buddhism is the worst possible imaginative religion for the Egyptians because the point of Buddhism is to lose all trace of your personality and your identity. Because life is suffering. For the Egyptians, life is beautiful. You want to take it in every way except suffering into the next world, which is why you bring all your accoutrements with you, why you, why you want your family with you, et cetera. Egyptian is life affirming religion, not like Buddhism, which is life damning. Consequently, the loss of personality is the one thing the Egyptians fear. It's the one thing Buddhism wants. Here is an example of just how contrasting things can be. By the way, in a popular book on Egyptian mythology, I insist asserted that and my British editors struck it out for fear of insulting a Buddhist audience. So censorship is rampant everywhere. Even 30 years ago in England, I couldn't even speak the truth about the nature of how an Egyptian would view Buddhism. This is not to slander Buddhism, it's to tell you what the Egyptian point of view be and how radically different they are. Right, so again, adding to my reputation for bashing religions. And then we get Anubis, clearly shown with his dark skin and he is conducting the tomb owner here into Osiris. So here again, Anubis is acting as the guide, holding the hand and bringing them in. The order of them is reversed here from the other. But you'll notice we have mostly the same cast of characters. And you'll notice this is also what you get to cap off the scene. So then, let's look at the text. Now, the problem with this particular text, a problem now requires me to discuss something very unpleasant. It's something that I have pointed out specifically in my book and was even included in the press release of my book by Scholars Press. That is when we were talking about the image that I showed you from the wood cut facsimile three. I stressed that there were three columns in front of Anubis head. Here we have the description of the hieroglyphs as produced by Michael D. Rhodes in his competing book, which came out after my own translation first appeared in Dialogue, the Journal of Mormon Thought, where I read all of this. And by the way, you can see there he has to the right of Isis, for those of you who can see the SCRY the scene and it specifically has Isis, the great mother of the God in hieroglyphs. So he agrees with me as to how this works. You will notice also in the top line he has the inscription from the bottom which is missing parts and has this hatching. You see the diagonal lines. That's for what is broken or you simply can't figure it out. So when you put that, that means you can't read it. So he wasn't able to read a section up there in that line, which I did read, but which I had not read in the dialogue version. I was able to read it in my later book. Now we go down to the bottom and we get Anubis. And you can see that same hatching is there. But you will notice that there are signs above and to the right of that hatching. And we'll talk about that when we see the next slide. So here facsimile three on your left. Again, you will notice that there are only three columns, vertical columns in front of the face of whom we now know is is the jackal God Anubis. And column one, which is at the far left, ends at the shoulder of the man hor. And it contains only a limited number of signs. But according if we compare that with Michael D. Rhodes transcription of the hieroglyphs, converting those over into hieroglyphs, he ends his bottom column with that hatching, the same as he did in the top line where he couldn't read something, so he didn't know what to do with that clearly. And that's what he's indicated. And you'll notice that just in front of the hatching there is a long angular sign pointed at both ends. You can probably find that if you look in the inscription. You who are watching this podcast, for those who can see it can probably see there's a fully blacked in shape that's lozenge form, that's pointed at both ends. It's fully full, filled in with black. And it's the next to bottom. And it's the only thing that looks like that in that line. You will notice that there's no other example of something that's long and pointy like that in that line. There's only one of them. Now I would ask you to look back where it says in front of Anubis in the Michael D. Rhodes copy, he has just a top. The hatching scratch lines that same shape, not filled in. And as it's, as he has copied it, it looks like what is in Egyptian, the letter R. That's what it would look like. It's actually a mouth. But you will notice that immediately adjacent to it, to his right, there's another one of these long thin pointy things at the end. But this has a pupil in the middle because it's now been converted into an eye. The eye you see with. That's the Egyptian verb to do or make. Then you'll notice that something is filled in next to the shady sign. But if we match this up with the papyrus as copied in facsimile three, there's no room for that. That adds an extra column. If we go above the I sign on the Michael D. Rhodes column, we see a text that ends with two little lines. You can match that up in the picture. And that's where the top of that ends. So there is this thing that's down here with the eyeball. Cannot be part of that inscription because we can match it up. You too can match the hieroglyph to the hieroglyph and see that that's where the text actually ends. So how on earth did Michael D. Rhodes get a whole new column of text that isn't there? If the end of the first column is hatching, how did it sprout another column next to that? How did that happen? It's not in the facsimile, and that's the only facsimile there is. The papyrus does not survive. So it has to be coming from the facsimile. Right. Well, let's look at the next slide. Here is a close up of what I'm talking about. So, John, I don't know if you can do a cursor that can point some of this out. The hatching.

John Dehlin [03:40:14] I think we're talking about this.

Robert Ritner [03:40:18] The first column is the far left.

John Dehlin [03:40:19] So this. So here's what I'm getting. So this part that I'm circling in blue, right? I'll change it to red.

Robert Ritner [03:40:26] Actually able to see the blue. I don't know. Rfm. Can you see the blue?

RFM [03:40:34] Can you guys see what I can. And he just circled it with red too.

John Dehlin [03:40:36] So I'm circling it with red. This portion right here.

Robert Ritner [03:40:40] Oh, I'm sorry, I meant to circle the facsimile.

John Dehlin [03:40:44] So what I heard you say is that this part right here, I believe you called that a mouth. Is that right?

Robert Ritner [03:40:50] Just above what you just circled is the mouth.

John Dehlin [03:40:52] So this is represented here as hatching.

Robert Ritner [03:41:00] So what I want you to do is to draw a. Draw a line between the thing that's just above the hatching to the thing that's just above what you circled on the facsimile.

John Dehlin [03:41:14] I'm kind of thinking like that, right?

Robert Ritner [03:41:17] Take that and connect it over to what's above the facsimile one. The one sign above what you circled already. So those are the same?

John Dehlin [03:41:28] Yes. This is the same as that, right? Yep.

Robert Ritner [03:41:34] And so the hatching is the same as what's underneath that. These two things correspond by obvious logic and no other choice. Yep, that's what's there.

John Dehlin [03:41:47] And then this thing that I'm circling right here corresponds to this thing right here.

Robert Ritner [03:41:54] All right, so my question is, where does the other column come from?

John Dehlin [03:41:59] So there's a question mark here and that. Right. How did that extra column get there when there's nothing there in the actual image? Right.

Robert Ritner [03:42:11] Yeah. There is absolutely nothing there at that spot for him to put that.

John Dehlin [03:42:16] Okay, I get it. We get. I think we get it.

Robert Ritner [03:42:19] Well, I'm hoping that's really, really clear.

John Dehlin [03:42:22] I think it's clear.

Robert Ritner [03:42:24] This is a legal point.

John Dehlin [03:42:26] Yep.

Robert Ritner [03:42:27] Let's go to the next slide.

John Dehlin [03:42:29] Okay. Oops, looks like that's it.

Robert Ritner [03:42:37] Let's let. Oh, oh. Is that now permanently on the screen?

John Dehlin [03:42:42] Okay, it should be. It should be back now. Okay, here we go.

Robert Ritner [03:42:48] In 2002, at the time I was first asked to work on the Joseph Smith papyri, I was also asked to work on a papyrus for a very small museum in Tennessee, the McClung Museum. They had just bought a small papyrus. It was in tatters. I'm showing you a section of it here, and they asked me if I could read what writing there was. And there happened to be a figure of Anubis. And so I was able to read the inscription above his head. You can see perhaps, although his face is broken away, you can immediately recognize his very distinctive jackal ears, the pointy ears. And if we do a close up of that next slide. Here we have there's the general scene on the left. And what he's doing is he is conducting the tomb owner, who's shown in the right. This is the far left image. He is grabbing that person's hand, walking them toward the flower altar. And there you can see the legs of Osiris sitting on his throne. So this is the same scene we have in facsimile 3. Now, there is a text panel directly above the head of Anubis. And there you can see the whole text panel in the middle slide and the bottom epithet of Anubis after it says Anubis. There are some hieroglyphs that are just above the tips of his ears. And that is what you've got in the super close up of the third slide. And what I'm trying to tell you, although it's broken and hard to see, is the top sign is the eye with the eyeball. And the sign immediately underneath it is the looped and tied cloth, which is a hieroglyph of an amulet, which is the word for protection. It has the phonetic value year sa, and it means who makes protection. I hadn't seen this as an epithet of Anubis anywhere else, this is a rare epithet. It makes sense because in the text of the book of Abraham it actually says he makes protection. So this keys in this would key into something said in the text. However, no one had recognized it as being un facsimile. 3 It only occurred to me because at the same time I was working on the one papyrus, I was also working on the other. No one has seen this McClung Papyrus. It's a small papyrus in a small museum that had not been published until I published it, until I provided the information actually for Elaine Evans, the curator, to publish it in their local one sheet takeaway piece handed out in the museum. So basically none of my colleagues have ever seen this. No one could have seen this inscription on this papyrus, which is not common. There is no way you would come up with this reading or know about it without having seen this text, which, as I've said, no one has seen. So let's go to the next slide or back to the last slide. So what we've got in my book, I translated that sign, the blacked in sign before the hatching and Rhodes's as year saw. Who made protection? That's the my reading in my publication and and never done by anyone else. Previously in Michael D. Rhodes book, his English translation suddenly has my translation. Who makes protection. However, his hand copy, where he reproduces it in the plate, as you've seen in there on the right, has not the eye sign and the tide loop for the saying make protection, which he translates, but it has an R over hatching, which is what Nibley had and what he had copied and what he clearly had sent to the printer before he saw my manuscript, after the book was after the article was out and then rushed to make a correction. And when the press did so, they failed to remove the old reading, which was from Nibley, and they failed to put my new one, which they were taking, and they failed to put it on top of that. Instead they mistakenly put it side by side. So they stole it and then didn't cover their tracks. They put it side by side rather than replacing it. And what makes it particularly irritating is not only have they taken my reading, which was pointed out by me in my book, but they have never even acknowledged the existence of my article and my book anywhere in the Rhodes or subsequent publications of these texts. They have completely pretended I did not exist so that they could say they did this independently and pretending that Mr. Rose's book came out at the same time as my dialogue and later JNES article, and that's not true. Dialogue article was out before and it was circulating in copy from Dialogue and by irr well before that. So this is a clear case of poorly done plagiarism. And there are other cases like that which I have pointed out in the notes in my book.

RFM [03:50:13] What I would say is it's one thing to never mention you, even though that doesn't seem to be very professional or scholarly. It's one thing to never mention you, Dr. Ritner. It's another thing to steal your original research and still never mention you.

John Dehlin [03:50:27] And to get it wrong.

Robert Ritner [03:50:31] Well, and to do such a clumsy job of theft. It is a clumsy job of theft and I seriously consider getting a lawyer. But the bigger picture here is what they did is they clearly acknowledged that I'm right or they wouldn't have taken it. And they're also acknowledging at the same time that Smith couldn't read it because if he could, then they'd be having hieroglyphs that actually said what Smith's label said. And by doing what they did, they have basically confirmed, as I said, by their own hands upon paper that this is not a translation and the whole book of Abraham is a forgery.

RFM [03:51:16] So it's kind of like the last chance that they might have had to say that Joseph Smith could have been right was by saying that this part of the name can't be written and leave it as those scratches, those scratch marks.

Robert Ritner [03:51:28] Right, exactly.

RFM [03:51:30] But then when they look at what you wrote, they rob it from you. They put it in there in place of it. What they are acknowledging now without acknowledging you, they're acknowledging the fact that you can read all of the glyphs from top to bottom and the Joseph Smith's translation of them doesn't appear anywhere in them.

Robert Ritner [03:51:46] Correct. There are other cases that I have documented specifically within my book. I could even if necessary, cite chapter and verse, but there are places where they fail to recognize. In the first papyrus in the Book of Breathing, there are sections where they followed Hugh Nibley, where Hugh Nibley didn't know what to do and Rhodes simply follow that. Then he saw my reading where I had reinterpreted from Demotic, which is something that Rhodes can't do. And they adapted what I had in the body of Rhodes book, but they forgot. But Rhodes also included an index of all the words and they forgot to change it in the index. So for that passage in the index, it still gives Nibley's reading and an explanation by Nibley. And then you Go to the actual page where it's translated, and suddenly there's my reading. No footnote, no explanation. Why is it that the reading he gives in his translation doesn't match his own index, where he discusses the word, and the word in the index comes from the source that he could crib from. That was out, that had been out for a generation, and the one that's from me had just happened, and he had a limited amount of time to get it into the book and apparently couldn't do it. Well, there are multiple cases of really sloppy work as a plagiarist, not to mention sloppy work as a scholar. What do you mean in terms of that as a scholar and legal matters, this is simply inexcusable. He owes me a footnote and an apology.

RFM [03:53:56] So as I'm understanding you, this last example, he would have originally had it in the body of his work. He would have had the Hugh Nibley translation, which would, of course connected with the Hugh Nibley footnote. Correct?

Robert Ritner [03:54:09] Correct.

RFM [03:54:10] And then your piece came out. He changed the body of the paper to match your translation, but he forgot to change the footnote, which still went to Nibley, which had the different translation

Robert Ritner [03:54:23] and the index in the back where he actually cites all the words. So this passage is in the index, but under Nibley's reading.

RFM [03:54:32] Have you ever seen the movie Poltergeist?

Robert Ritner [03:54:36] Yes.

RFM [03:54:37] You move the headstones, but you left the bodies.

Robert Ritner [03:54:40] Yeah, right. But isn't that, in a nutshell, the approach taken by the apologists? You go for one little point and you don't sweat the details.

John Dehlin [03:54:51] Exactly. Exactly. And isn't it fitting that Mormon apologists would plagiarize when doing defense of a plagiarist, which we know Joseph was. Okay, just to close up, if we go back. This is so great, Dr. Ritner, thank you for helping us understand the quality of the work of these apologists, these Book of Abraham apologists. I'm still disgusted by the fact that Joseph Smith sees a dark figure and just assumes it's a slave with his 19th century worldview. I'm really curious. Why is the head of Anubis different than, you know, above? It looks more. Is it like a jackal? Kind of like a dog's head here? Why is the head down here looking less like a jackal or a dog, and it's looking more like some weird human head?

Robert Ritner [03:55:47] Rfm. You want to talk about that?

RFM [03:55:49] Absolutely. And I've got to reference Paul Osborne, who's made this significant discovery, and I think he's right. What he did was first off, if you look at that, the spike coming out of his head, Dr. Ritner already mentioned that that spike, which is very strange, is actually an ear. It's one of Anubis ears. That's why it's coming up out of his head, because it's a jackal ear, it's not a human ear. If you look at the eye, it's outsized for the head. You notice that the eye is outsized for the head as we have it. But what Paul Osborne noticed was that if you go back and actually look at the lead plate, apparently, at least this one was not a wood cut. It was printed from a lead plate that was constructed by Reuben Hedlock, who's the guy who did all of these facsimiles and did the plates for them for publication. Originally. In the lead plate, there is a jackal's snout on Figure 6. It goes out quite a ways and then comes back, of course, underneath and you can actually see the teeth in the snout. Now, you can't see it here in this reproduction, of course, but in the. Okay. What this is basically showing is that it was originally a jackal and that Reuben Hedlock did the lead plate Based upon Figure 6 with a jackal head. And I think that's somewhat significant. He didn't just make it into a human head in the lead plate. Originally Reuben Hedlock made it with a jackal head. In other words, he made it conform to the way it really looked in facsimile 3, which doesn't exist anymore. We don't have that one. That one's still lost. But if you look carefully at it as Paul Osborne has, and you can find this in the Joseph Smith Papers Project, you can actually see the outline of the jackal snout, which apparently was hacked out of the lead engraving, the lead plate, after the lead plate had been created. So somebody, perhaps Joseph Smith, likely Joseph Smith, directed Reuben Hedlock for some reason to take the jackal snout off of Figure 6. So it would no longer be a jackal headed figure, it would no longer be Anubis, but it would be a human head. But while he took off the jackal snout, he left the jackal ear. Now, when you go back to figure three, I mean, facsimile three, there's a speculation which I think Paul Osborne did, but it's only speculation. It can only be speculation. Between facsimile one and facsimile three and all the other facsimiles, there's only two black ones right Right. And in facsimile one, it's the priest of Elkinah which had the head gone and which was substituted with a human head. Right. And so now all of a sudden they get to facsimile three, they got another black person, which is a lot like the priest of Elkanah in facsimile one, except he's got a jackal head.

John Dehlin [03:58:58] Right.

RFM [03:58:59] So that might have been seen as counterintuitive to Joseph Smith. Why did I put a human head on the black figure in facsimile one? I've got a jackal head here. Well, I'll change the jackal head here after the lead plate is created, by the way. I'll change it here and I'll make this into a human head.

John Dehlin [03:59:17] Yeah, really quickly, gentlemen, the last thing I'll just note is as we read Joseph Smith's description or interpretation of facsimile 3, he writes at the bottom, Abraham is reasoning upon the principles of astronomy in the kingdom, the king's court. It's got to be that those little star leaking characters on the top, Joseph interpreted those as stars and then sort of then interpreted that Abraham is contemplating the solar system in the universe and astronomy. Is that fair to say? RFM and Dr. Renner?

Robert Ritner [03:59:55] Well, stars actually are stars. That is a representation of heaven.

John Dehlin [03:59:59] So we got that right. That's the 0.5.

Robert Ritner [04:00:02] Yep. The five pointed stars are still five pointed stars.

RFM [04:00:05] I had never even noticed the stars before. I was thinking too much that he just took the well known story out of Josephus where Abraham takes the knowledge of astronomy from Babylon to Egypt.

Robert Ritner [04:00:18] Now this is a regular scene where you want to indicate the global nature of this scene. You give a representation of the heavens just as you have a baseline which represents the baseline of the underworld earth here. So it's the frame. Well, gentlemen.

Closing Discussion and Reflections on the Evidence

John Dehlin [04:00:40] Well, gentlemen, this has been an amazing and important few hours. I can't thank you guys enough. Dr. Ritner, and then RFM, is there anything you guys want to say to kind of summarize? And then we'll just pick right back up with this the next time we all meet. First you, Dr. Ritner, any summary you want to make?

Robert Ritner [04:01:02] Well, I would just ask people to think about what we've covered and just whether this makes a coherent picture or not. And if you add it all together, is this text salvageable as a work of historical authenticity? I want to stress one last thing from me at this point is that it is not my role to comment on the religious nature of this. Whatever you want to believe, you are welcome to believe. And I have no right to tell you what not to believe, what your theology is. My only role is to answer the question, is this a historical document, does it reflect Egyptian ideas and is it translated properly? That's all that I'm trying to do and actually do the scholarship that goes with it. And I'll let you judge me on that.

John Dehlin [04:02:05] Thank you, Dr. Ritner. RFM, do you want to add anything?

RFM [04:02:08] Yeah, just briefly, John. First off, thanks so much to Dr. Ritter for making these things more. More clear and available to the ordinary guy like me. What I keep coming away from, John, as I study this more and more is the fact that the apologists, those with the Egyptological degrees and those who parrot what they say, which used to be me at one time, by the way, when I know what they're saying and I know what they're not saying, and I know and can recognize the pseudo scholarship and the deceptions that they are engaged in, then I can recognize that really what they're doing is the equivalent of arguing for a flat earth. What they're doing is taking a theory that is not accepted by anybody in their own academic community because it's considered to be ridiculous. And they're taking little pieces of evidence which aren't really even evidence until they change them, transform form them, make them something they're not, and then they present those little pieces of evidence in the face of overwhelming mountains of contradictory evidence and try and argue that the earth is flat when everybody knows it's round. Except what they're trying to do is argue that the book of Abraham is authentic and ancient when apparently everybody other than them knows that it's not.

John Dehlin [04:03:31] Well said, rfm. Well, that takes us through facsimiles one through three. What we still have to cover. We want to cover the 1912 New York Times article where Egyptologists analyze the three facsimiles and give their opinion. We'll talk about that next time. We still have to talk about the rediscovery of the papyra in, you know, 1966ish time period, the emergence of the Abraham Egyptian papers, thanks to the Tanners and others. And then we're going to talk about an analysis of the Abraham Egyptian papers and more evidence that Joseph Smith indeed either was attempting to or believed he was trying to, attempting to translate or believed he was translating or at least wanted people to believe he was translating. And we'll do an in depth analysis of the Abraham Egyptian papers and how they make it very Very clear, as I believe and many believe is a smoking gun that in fact, you know, we can't the view that Joseph Smith was just sort of using the papyrus as inspiration in the catalyst theory to receive the revelation that that doesn't hold water because in fact we have documentation that really demonstrates that Joseph was looking at Egyptian characters and then creating or manufacturing text to directly correspond with Egyptian characters that were on the papyrus. Is that, is that an okay summary of what's to come? RFM Plus a full analysis of a more in depth analysis of apologetic techniques by Guy Milstein, Rhodes and others, including some heroes in this story, which include our dear friend Brian and maybe some others. Anything you want to add in terms of what's to come?

RFM [04:05:41] RFM No, I think that covers it. And for those who don't know that Brian you're referring to as Brian.

John Dehlin [04:05:47] Brian Hagleet. I spaced for just a second. Shout out to Brian Hagled, who's kind of a hero in the story, I think.

RFM [04:05:55] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [04:05:57] Dr. Ritner, is there anything else you want to add for what is to come?

Robert Ritner [04:06:01] No, it should be exciting. I'm looking forward to it.

John Dehlin [04:06:06] All right, well, you guys are brilliant. Thanks so much for your time. And I do want to mention at the end, and I'll add this to the beginning as well, that as always, Dr. Ritner is facing kidney failure and is in need of a living donor to secure his life and continued research. If you can help, Please contact Dana McLean, Northwestern Medicine Transplant Coordinator,XXX-XXX-XXXX. Living Donor Save Lives. Lives. Let's please use this opportunity to help Dr. Ritner find a kidney donor and to continue his important work.

Robert Ritner [04:06:44] Thank you.

John Dehlin [04:06:46] All right, Dr. Riddner, you take care. We'll see you again soon on Mormon Stories and on Radio Free Mormon rfm. Thanks again for joining us and taking your time out.

RFM [04:06:55] Thank you so much for having me. It's been a great time.

John Dehlin [04:06:57] All right, we'll see you guys really soon.

Robert Ritner [04:07:00] Bye. Bye.

John Dehlin [04:07:01] Take care, guys.

Robert Ritner [04:07:26] The buzz on by the night got the money on a bed called crocodiles. Walk like an Egyptian. The bun witch resists Take their trays spin around and they cross the floor They've got the moves you drop your drink then they bring you more all the school kids so sick of books they're like the punk and the middle band when the buzzer rings they're walking like an Egyptian all all the kids in the marketplace say. Walk like an Egyptian.

RFM [04:08:42] Sa.

Robert Ritner [04:09:08] Slight feet of the street Bend your back shift your rum then you pull it back. Life's hard, you know Strike a pose on a Cadillac if you wanna find

John Dehlin [04:09:18] all the cops they're hanging out in

Robert Ritner [04:09:20] the donut shop they sing and dance, they spin the club Cruise down the

John Dehlin [04:09:26] block off the Japanese, Italian the party

Robert Ritner [04:09:29] boys call them Gremlin and the Chinese know they walk the line like Egyptian all the cops in the donuts upset.

John Dehlin [04:09:45] Walk like an Egyptian

Robert Ritner [04:09:50] Walk like an Egyptian. Sam.

Part Three Begins: Responses to Critics and Apologists

Part 3 of 3 · Ep. 1341

Robert Ritner [00:00:00] 1, 2, 3.

John Dehlin [00:00:18] Huge thank you to Bruce MacArthur for making today's episode possible. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. I am your host, slash co host, John Dehlin. We are here today for our third sit down with Dr. Robert Ritner, Egyptologist at the University of Chicago. We have had overwhelmingly positive responses to our two sit downs with Dr. Ritner. We're so grateful for his time. Our first interview, we talked about kind of the backstory of the Book of Abraham, and then we talked about facsimile one, and then in part two, we talked about facsimiles two and three. We are so excited to now go on to talk about other really important events and research in the history of the Book of Abraham. Of course, we are joined by the wonderful, the talented, the brilliant rfm. Rfm. Thanks for joining us.

RFM [00:01:16] Well, good morning to you too, John. Thanks for the compliments.

John Dehlin [00:01:20] My pleasure. You can check out RFM's podcast@radiofreemormon.org It's taken the world of Mormonism by storm. And yes, Dr. Ritner, thank you so much for joining us today on Mormon Stories podcast.

Robert Ritner [00:01:34] Happy to be here.

John Dehlin [00:01:37] Just a couple house cleaning items. First and foremost, we want to mention at the beginning of every episode that and at the end that Dr. Ritner is facing kidney failure and is in need of a living donor to secure his life and continued research. So if you're able to help, Please contact Dana McLean, Northwestern Medicine Transplant Coordinator, atXXX-XXX-XXXX and you will be required to give both Dr. Ritner's name and his birth date. The birth date is May 5, 1953. That's May 5, 1953. Phone number isXXX-XXX-XXXX. The person to contact is Dana McLean. We really, really want to come out of this series of interviews. A successful transplant and the extension of Dr. Ritner's life. So let's make sure and mention that at the beginning. I also want to mention at the beginning something we've mentioned before, which is most of you will be listening to this through audio. I want to remind everyone that, number one, we have two previous interviews, if you're joining us for the first time, that are phenomenal. But secondly, you will get so much more out of this discussion if you're actually looking at the images on YouTube. So if you go to the Mormon Stories YouTube page, you can pull up the YouTube videos of this interview or this will be streamed and included on the Mormon Stories Podcast Facebook page as well and you can look at the images to follow along. Now having said that, this is also available through RFMS podcast, which is amazing and and the Mormon Stories itunes or audio feed. So if you can only join us through audio. We still think we will do our best to describe everything we're seeing so that you get the full experience. But we just want to let you know to get the full experience, you'll benefit from the visuals on YouTube or the Facebook page. So with that, before we jump into the main substance of today's discussion, we have a few items to discuss in response to some reactions to our first two episodes. And I think Dr. Ritner, one of the first questions you were asked is what can you tell us about any or at least one of the paintings above or around you? Do you want to respond to that listener's question?

Robert Ritner [00:04:03] Well, the one directly over my head is a reproduction of Jean Andre Richien's painting the Death of Cleopatra, which is now in the Toulouse Museum in France. And the one over the door is one of my favorite mummy movies, Pharaoh's Curse, which has a one of Egyptian workers possessed by a mummy inside the tomb. And so you have a mummy walking around inside a galabea wearing one of the caftans that's typical of Egyptian peasants.

John Dehlin [00:04:36] Now I love it. Okay, I think the next item of business if I'm wrong, is to talk about the Fair Voice podcast. Is that right?

Robert Ritner [00:04:52] I think so.

John Dehlin [00:04:53] Okay, so if you're looking at the screen now, what we're showing you is a recent Fair Voice podcast. For those who don't know, FAIR stands for the foundation of Apologetic and Information Research. Fair Mormon is one of the main arms of Mormon apologetics for the Mormon Church. And this is episode number five of Fair Voices podcast, an interview with John Gee on the Book of Abraham. And what it is is about an hour long interview of John Gee by Hannah Siriak. S E A R I A C and I believe it's in response to interview that RFM did with our own dear friend and courageous scholar Brian Hagler. Do you want to give a quick background of that rfm just so people know what we're talking about and maybe just a tiny bit about the contents of the interview.

RFM [00:05:47] There's my mute button. Okay, yeah, absolutely. This appeared in where you said it appeared and it appeared shortly before our interview or at least part two of our interview with Dr. Ritner. Dr. Ritner responded to the allegation made in it about how his dissertation Dr. Ritner's dissertation about human sacrifice in ancient Egypt contradicted his current position that there was no human sacrifice in ancient Egypt. And we cover that in some detail in part two of this podcast. But it did appear that it might have been something done in relation to Brian Hauglid's interview on my podcast at Radio Free Mormon. And I say that because at the beginning, Hannah Cyriac, the host, references, she says, an article written by Brian Haugland. She actually uses his name, and I don't know if she's talking about the podcast. It seems likely it would have been about the podcast. And she even says that it has caused a lot of concern among a lot of members of the church that maybe the Book of Abraham is not true. And so therefore the balance of the interview with John Gee is showing how that's not correct. And actually the Book of Abraham is true and manifests many remarkable connections to the ancient Egyptian world.

John Dehlin [00:07:13] Give our listeners just a 30 second description of Brian Hauglet and why he's so important and why he's causing some consternation or concern up at byu.

RFM [00:07:23] Brian Hauglett is very important because he is a recently retired professor at BYU in the Religion department, and he has been involved, at least in the past, in the apologetic efforts relating to the Book of Abraham. As recently as 10 years ago, in 2010, he was writing apologetic articles relating to the Book of Abraham. And over the course of a number of years, as he investigated it further, he began to conclude that those arguments really did not hold water. And the additional things he was discovering as he researched the Book of Abraham actually in an attempt to prove it true. Sound like a familiar story, John? In an attempt to prove it true. It ended up kind of unraveling before his eyes.

John Dehlin [00:08:09] In other words, a hand grenade that he was juggling blew up. Is that basically what you're saying?

RFM [00:08:14] Yes, it blew up. It flew off into the audience and it blew up. Yes, we have reason to believe that it was Brian Hauglid that John Gee was referring to when he mentioned that in his Fair Mormon presentation a couple of years ago. Anyway, anyway, he has since made public his view about the Book of Abraham, and specifically calling out John Gee and Kerry Muhlstein by name, referring to their apologetics as abhorrent. And that's a quote unquote abhorrent apologetics. So he has rapidly become Persona non grata among John Gee, Kerry Muhlstein and the other apologists both at BYU and at FairMormon. And so he is now experiencing the wrath of guy.

John Dehlin [00:09:02] And in your wonderful interview with Brian Haggart, I just have to mention one of the most disturbing parts of that for me was hearing that in the final several years of Brian Hauglud's time at byu, where he must have worked close to John Gee, in the same building, maybe down the hall, I don't know their geographic locations from each other. Didn't he say in your wonderful interview with Brian Hagled that John Gee wouldn't speak to him for the final several years that he was at byu?

RFM [00:09:33] Yes, Brian is dead to John Gee

John Dehlin [00:09:36] just because they disagree on the historicity of the Book of Abraham, basically.

RFM [00:09:40] Apparently, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:09:42] Okay, so that's a lot of backstory. Now let's get in. Dr. Ritner, Dr. Ritner, what is it that you wanted to maybe discuss or respond to regarding Hannah Cyriak's interview of John Gee on FairVoice podcast in relation to you?

Robert Ritner [00:10:03] Well, I've actually responded to the podcast that we did last time, but there is an additional remark made by Hannah apparently on Facebook that was pointed out to me by one of the many, many, many letters I have received from fans of your show who've been listening in. And this particular writer informed me that on Facebook she had indicated that a problem with my interpretations is that I take a position and Egyptology is not monolithic. So what I'd like to do is just for a second, move over and look another alternative example of how to interpret facsimile 1 as done by one of my colleagues, the deceased. Now, Lani Bell, who was brought into this project at the same time that I was back in 2002 for a DVD entitled the Lost Book of Abraham. He subsequently published an article in a Festschrift, a celebratory retirement volume for the scholar Liter Lesco at Brown University. And this is Lanny's interpretation.

John Dehlin [00:11:19] So tell our listeners what we see here.

Robert Ritner [00:11:21] What you're seeing is the lion bed with the body of Osiris lying on it. He has upraised two hands. There is no bird flying directly above him. There is no phallus. And Anubis is simply holding out a cup in his hand. And Anubis head is white. Those are the distinctions. The bird is human headed. The issues here are questions of how do you restore a damaged text? Because everything that I've described to you are the parts that are actually broken away. No one is disputing what is there on the surviving papyrus. So when the remark is made is that Egyptology is not monolithic, it is in fact monolithic on certain basics. So that no one is disputing, none of my colleagues is disputing that the jugs that are underneath the lion bed are the four sons of Horus. No one is disputing that the bed is a bed, not an altar. No one is disputing that the body lying on the bed is Osiris. And no one is disputing that Anubis is the dark figure on the left hand side. So I would posit to you that what we're actually dealing with are fine points where it is possible to have disagreement, particularly where images are not preserved. So we move on to the next slide. Here we can see a whole series of examples of Anubis. These are all taken from actual Egyptian wall paintings or paintings on coffins. And you can see the posture of Anubis with Osiris in various different forms. Anubis can be holding an instrument in the middle, upper middle, where it looks like an adze, which is used to symbolically open the mouth of the mummy so he will breathe and eat. Again, you can see it sometimes with bob birds floating above, sometimes not. And in the lower right you can see him holding a cup like what Lani Bell restored in his example. So these are all reasonable possibilities. One can dispute them. The fact that it's Anubis hovering over the body, however, is indisputable. And the use of the four sons of Horus is pretty typical. Again, you can see that example on the lower right. So on the bigger image there is not disagreement, but the bigger issue is that there is nothing I can do if some individual wants to say, ah, well, at one point there was an Egyptologist who said, well, maybe this one tiny little detail might indicate it's okay. Because the issue here is not whether one tiny little detail is okay with what Joseph Smith did. The issue, as I stressed before, is that you have to interpret the entire picture, not just one tiny little aspect of it. And that brings us to the issue of the four sons of Horus yet again. Another reader suggested, oh, well. In a volume by Manfred Lucher out in Germany, the discussion of Egyptian religious symbolism, it is noted that the four sons of Horus can be linked the four directions. Well, I pointed that out last time. Yes, it is possible to link them to the four directions. They do not, however, represent the four directions. If you want to actually represent the earth in its four quarters, that is, what are the symbolic representations of north, south, east and west those I provided last time in extensive detail? The question is, can they not Represent it, but simply be linked to it. Yes, that's possible. And the bigger problem there is that the Canopic Jar specifically linked to Elkhena is linked to the direction west of Egypt, not west of Syria, but west of Egypt, in the one documented piece that John Gee indicates, where it shows the linkage between these four deities and the cardinal directions. So the bigger picture doesn't fit, because it would mean that Abraham going to Elkanah was going somewhere into Libya, modern Libya, and that's simply impossible. So it is the bigger picture that makes the issue. I'd also like to point out that it had a bit of revelation of my own while thinking about this material. If we could go to the next slide.

John Dehlin [00:16:29] Okay, let me pull it up.

Robert Ritner [00:16:37] This is just a remark about why the images that we have are really, really certainly understandable as Anubis leaning over Osiris. This is a statement I made back in 2002 for a documentary DVD on the Lost Book of Abraham. And I said, if you took a painting of Madonna and Child and you tore off the heads of both figures and you replaced them with a dog and a cat, it would be as obvious to us now that this is wrong as the replacing of the clearly jackal head with a human head on this Egyptian piece. Because we know what these images actually look like. So we have, in our own society, a knowledge of certain iconographic images to be redundant. Madonna and child. Everyone knows a Madonna and Child, whether you're Catholic or not. So. So we can recognize that because it's part of our common, shared culture, so that if we were to substitute the heads on that with something outrageous, we would all recognize it as a monolith, despite what Masuriak suggests, we would know that that didn't fit because of our own experience. And we can say the same thing about this Anubis figure. For Egyptologists who actually know what this material looked like, who've seen thousands of examples, there is no disputing those things. So the crux of this identification, that facsimile one represents human sacrifice, is destroyed if this image is proved to be fake news, because there is no sacrifice being depicted in facsimile one. There never was. And that means that it doesn't really matter whether there ever was or was not human sacrifice in Egypt, because it's not on facsimile one. It never was. And therefore there is no evidence to back up the notion that's taking place in the description of the Book of Abraham, which describes Egyptian use of human sacrifice in a Syrian city, not even in Egypt. And that is another fact which none of the apologists want to deal with, because why would Egyptian sacrificial rites be practiced in Syria? That would not happen. So first of all, they're rare to almost non existent in Egypt itself. As a normal practice, it doesn't exist and it certainly isn't being practiced by Egyptian priests who did not operate in some part of northern Syria, which apparently would be in Libya, according to Joseph Smith's designation of Elkena as being associated with Kebe Senuev, who only represents the West. So none of this works in the bigger picture. And that is what has to be understood. These sniping little remarks about, oh well, if we only look at one tiny little part of it, we can squeeze that into making sense. That's an act of desperation. But as I concluded in one of my writings that if you are willfully blind, there is nothing more than I can say if you choose to believe despite the facts, I cannot make you believe. And so the facts are what they are, and you have to deal with them as you will. If we can move on to the next slide.

John Dehlin [00:20:21] And this is not even just really quickly, not even to mention the fact that, you know, Joseph said that the papyrus were written by the hand of Abraham, but we now know that the Papyrus date to 1700 plus years later than when Abraham would have lived, and that even the church and all its apologists now admit that the word Abraham doesn't appear anywhere on the source papyrus. And so it's absurd on, on just all the levels.

Robert Ritner [00:20:47] On all levels.

RFM [00:20:49] What Dr. Ritner is responding to here, John, is something that actually has been going on a long time in Book of Abraham Apologetics for decades and decades. The argument is, and I know Dr. Ritter just responded to it, I'm just reframing it in another way that I'm familiar with it. The argument is that if Egyptologists themselves cannot agree in every detail that as to what these facsimiles represent, then there's room at the table for any possible anything goes at that point and Joseph Smith's interpretations could be correct.

Robert Ritner [00:21:27] Yeah, well, that's just a bridge too far. Yeah, yeah. If we can go to the next slide.

John Dehlin [00:21:35] Okay, next slide.

Robert Ritner [00:21:40] One of the interesting things about before we leave facsimile one, One of the interesting things about facsimile one is that there is at the bottom line of that facsimile something I have referred to as a dado, as niched bricking facade, as a wall relief motif, which Joseph Smith Thought was an indication of heaven. Well, it's a terrestrial, it's a land form. And it's one of the few examples of Egyptian and Sumerian interconnections. And the reason why that's actually important, it struck me is that it's not something you expect to find on these papyri. And I pointed this out in my book in 2011 that this was not typical of Books of Breathing. The full name, by the way, of the Egyptian text is the Book of Breathing that Isis made. And that particular book we'll see examples of what they look like with parallels. But in most cases, those books do not show a wall pattern at the bottom. Where they do show a wall pattern was pointed out by my predecessor, Klaus Baer at Chicago. And my beam, both in print, is that it's on the wall reliefs, for example, at the temple of Dendera, which you're looking at here. For those of you who can see the middle scene, this is taken obliquely, but this is a photograph in the temple now with even the modern lighting stuck down at the bottom. But you have the Anubis scene standing over the body of Osiris that I showed you in our very first of the podcast. And here, if you look at the bottom, you can see the running wall pattern. And I want to show you this same scene in line drawing as done by French expeditions currently. So if we move to the next slide, so there you can more clearly see that we have a whole series of scenes that refer to the rising up of Osiris in the Egyptian month of Koiak. And here in the center, the dead center, top row, you've got Anubis over the body of Osiris, and you have the erect Osiris on the right hand side. And you've got Anubis in two flanking scenes directly below that, ministering again to the body of Osiris on the lion bed. Again, all of these are parallels to facsimile one. And then underneath the bottom line of standing figures, you have this wall facade design which is used as a decorative design as the baseline of temple walls regularly in the Ptolemaic period, which is the time in which our papyrus is being done. And so, yes, I recognized it as a wall scene. Joseph Smith's interpretation is entirely incorrect. But what hadn't struck me before and came as a bit of a revelation as I'm thinking about it, is that the artist of the Joseph Smith papyri did something really quite special in that I think what we have preserved on the Joseph Smith papyrus is not merely what would typically get at the beginning of a book of breathings that Isis made, because there it shows the deceased being in some fashion introduced to the God Osiris

John Dehlin [00:25:41] here.

Robert Ritner [00:25:41] Instead, the artist of the Joseph Smith papyrus has shown Osiris, and by implication, Horus coming back to life in a scene that is extremely restricted in its usage. This is something that's only found in the special holy of holies of the chapels, like the ones that were at, that are currently at the temple of Dendera that I'm showing you now. This is almost a direct parallel with what you have at Dendera, though there are features that are different. There's no bird, for example, in the image I'm showing you right now. You're not seeing an example where there's one hand upraised, but there are other examples where that is true from this very temple. And I showed those to you two times ago. So what I'm actually saying to you is to simplify, when the celebration that you see depicted on this wall was celebrated in Egypt, it was actually celebrated in temples all across the country. There would have been a local celebration in the month of Kohiak in Egyptian, which is roughly about the month of October in the modern calendar. This was the celebration when the waters are beginning to receive seed, and. And this is when vegetation begins to sprout. And that is the rebirth of Osiris in the Egyptian understanding of symbolism. So all temples all around Egypt would have had relief scenes in which Osiris was coming back to life in the form of his erect penis, which corresponds to the erect grain that's coming up out of the new ground that rises up out of the flood waters in the month of October. Now, why this is significant is there would have been one in the Theban area. It would not have been exactly like what you have in Dendera, but it would have been close. And what I'm suggesting to you is the. The artist, he was only a sketch artist because it's not, you know, this is not the greatest artwork on earth, but what the writer of our papyrus did was to actually copy a relief scene off of a local temple wall. And I think we have on facsimile one equaling the actual papyrus. What the actual papyrus is a preservation of is a lost temple wall scene from the Theban area that is indicated as being a wall scene by having that dado that runs along the bottom and having a very specialized scene directly above it that you would only find in such a temple setting. So what we've got here is like a Kodak moment that's been taken of a now lost temple. And I think that makes this papyrus extremely valuable and should be for my colleagues. And I intend to announce this at a future meeting. But I think this is the witness to a lost text on a wall and that's why we have these decorative elements that we have. I notice also, by the way, by going through my own writings, that the link of the crocodile to a form of Horus and Sobek together is something I had pointed out in my own book. It refers to a myth about the gathering together of the body parts of Osiris. So that's probably who that is. And it had been noted also by Klaus Baer in his article which preceded mine. So I just want to point that out.

John Dehlin [00:29:21] RFM Any responses?

RFM [00:29:24] No, but I think what you're saying, I always say no and then I have a response. Have you noticed that? Do you have any questions? No. Except for these. Except for these five questions.

John Dehlin [00:29:34] No.

RFM [00:29:34] I think it's fascinating what you're saying about this. The Joseph Smith Egyptian papyrus facsimile one being a potential Kodak moment of a now non existent temple in Thebes, which is where of course the papyri came from in the first place, with the mummies, I believe. But the last comment you made, Dr. Ritner, were you saying that there may have been a connection between the Crocodile in facsimile 1 or any crocodile and it being a representation of the God of Pharaoh?

Robert Ritner [00:30:10] Well, this is the one that I. This is, this is the one hit that we've all agreed upon insofar as this is a deity that would have been worshiped by Pharaoh then. Yes.

RFM [00:30:20] Right. And I just want to add here, John, and for Dr. Ritner too, there's been a whole lot of research recently coming to light about Joseph Smith's reliance on the Adam Clark Bible commentary, which was very famous and very popular during the time period that Joseph Smith was living and writing and producing scripture. And, and actually in the Adam Clark Bible commentary, which has now been proven, actually he relied on, at least in some instances, and there's more research forthcoming on that. But in Adam Clark's Bible commentary under Exodus chapter 1, verse 11, where it talks about Pharaoh, he comments in there that the crocodile, excuse me, Pharaoh literally means crocodile and he's relying on another scholar, Bochart or B O C H A R T. Now that may or may not be correct and I think it's probably not correct that Pharaoh literally means Crocodile. The point of it being that in a noted Bible commentary that Joseph Smith did access and did use that there is that equation directly drawn. And so that might be a more direct link to Joseph Smith's identifying the crocodile in facsimile 1 as the God of Pharaoh.

John Dehlin [00:31:39] Yeah, and if I could just make sure I understand what I think I hear you saying, rfm, or at least partly is that even if Joseph made some sort of connection that has some meaning or significance, we can find a likely or a probable source for his interpretation in the Adam Clark commentary, which we've already demonstrated was a large portion of the source for his, you know, 1830ish translation of the New Testament. Did I get that Semi right?

RFM [00:32:13] Well, right when you're talking about proving a person actually has God given powers, that is of translation for Joseph Smith, it's always tempting as an apologist to want to go for an ancient connection that Joseph Smith Smith could not have known about and overlooked the contemporary sources that said the exact same thing. But really, logically speaking, that's really not fair. If there's a secular source that Joseph Smith could have had and actually did use, and it has the same information in it, then, well, all things being equal, it's probably more likely that that's where he got the idea than that he received it by revelation.

Robert Ritner [00:32:53] I should jump in here and say the word Pharaoh just so that people understand actually means the Great House. And the Egyptians used it the same way that Americans used the word White House, in the sense that the White House released a statement that X happened. It's only in much later periods that Egyptians begin to stick the title Pharaoh in front of a personal name. That happens around the eight hundreds. First with Pharaoh Si Amen. Something I discuss in my one of my books being period in Egypt, if you find a pharaoh used as a title, that's already indicating a late composition, by the way. And the other thing to note that the literal meaning of it is great House.

John Dehlin [00:33:47] Got it.

Robert Ritner [00:33:49] Okay, we can go on to the next. The next image.

John Dehlin [00:33:53] Okay, next image.

Robert Ritner [00:33:59] This is again mopping up some of the things we talked about last time in facsimile three. We were discussing the lead plate and I discovered in the interim that the lead plate has been put up on Wikipedia so we can actually see what was used to make facsimile 3. Again, this is a reverse of the way it's printed because that's what happens when you stamp them out. Your cut has to be inverted. And so here we have the figure we know to be Anubis on the left hand side instead of being on the right hand side. And if we go to the next slide, there should be a close up of the head of Anubis. And there you can see the pointed area which looks like the nose was clipped off and it was hacked off. And it was originally a snout. And you can see clearly he's got one ear of what may have been originally two, that it was being carved and understood as an Anubis figure. And then someone directed the plate maker to go in with the chisel and hack things out and adjust it from Anubis to a human figure who's got an odd point on the top of his head. But here you can actually, everyone can now see this for themselves and either

John Dehlin [00:35:26] Dr. Ritner or RFM, just for our listeners who maybe didn't listen last time or who don't get what. Why this might be significant. Why might this be significant? Who might, you know, why might this have been hacked out? Why would Joseph Smith or anyone else direct anyone to be hacking off Anubis nose? What might be the motive?

RFM [00:35:49] Well, I don't. All I can suggest is this, is that first off, in facsimile one, we have an Anubis figure, but because of wear and tear, that part from the punctuation had been broken off. So you've got a figure standing there with no head. It should be Anubis head. It's always Anubis head. Except here in the restoration that Joseph Smith did, where it puts a human head where Anubis should have been. That's what happens, where there was nothing there and it has to be reconstructed by Joseph Smith. But here in facsimile three, we have something else. What we appear to have is evidence that the original papyrus for facsimile three, once again, we don't have that anymore. We don't have the original for facsimile 3. We don't have the original for facsimile 2. It's only facsimile 1 that's preserved in the papyrus. But it would appear then, based upon this, that the original facsimile three did have an Anubis head there. It was not broken off. And more to the point, the production of the publication of this, which happened, I think, in the times and seasons in 1842, in March of 1842, starting then when it was published, it got far enough to where Reuben Hedlock, who I believe, yes, that's his name right down there at the bottom, engraving by R. Hedlock, Reuben Hedlock, he had actually reproduced it with the jackal head on the lead plate, so it hadn't been changed prior to that. He reproduces it with a jackal head. And then somebody, and one would expect that someone with authority to do this. It's not just going to be Reuben Hedlock doing it. His job is just to recapture this as best as he can. Somebody, and probably Joseph Smith, I'm guessing, directed him to cut off Anubis snout, make it into a human person. And my guess is just because, I mean, Joseph Smith doesn't know what to do with a guy with the jackal head. It doesn't fit into what he wants this to say, and therefore he makes it into a person, a black person, a slave with a strange horn on top of his head. Because when they took off the snout, they didn't take off that last ear. So that's all I can guess. But what it shows is that Joseph Smith will not only recreate parts that have been lost which require recreation, he will materially alter parts of the papyrus that were already there and still extant when he was viewing them.

John Dehlin [00:38:24] Brilliant. Thank you for that explanation, RFM

Robert Ritner [00:38:28] in fact, while we're discussing facsimile three, if we can go to the next. Yes, this is an example of what you're seeing is a full book of breathings that Isis made. So this is an example of what the Joseph Smith Papyrus one would have essentially resembled when it was complete. You'll notice there are only two vignettes, two pictures, one on the far right. And you begin, you write, you begin this from right to left. So there we have our illustration that showing the owner of the papyrus in front of Osiris. That's what's been replaced in the copy that Joseph Smith bought, because instead of the deceased owner in front of the enthroned Osiris, on the Joseph Smith one, we know from the surviving papyrus that instead you had the resurrection of Osiris, that I have now suggested to you is a copy from a lost temple wall. At the far other end is the final vignette, the final picture, which corresponds to what you have in facsimile 3. So this is an example of what you would have had. Now, the facsimile 3. Here is the deceased coming before the court of Osiris, enthroned as after the weighing of the heart, which indicates that he has now been allowed to enter permanently into the world of the living gods of the underworld. That's what facsimile 3 corresponds to. It's what's on the left. Now, anyone wishing to see this particular papyrus can do so. It's at Lafayette University in Pennsylvania. This is an example of an intact book of breathings that is available in the library in Lafayette University in the United States. And there you can see how long this document is because the dimensions, or written for you below. Now that's extremely important.

John Dehlin [00:40:59] 70 inches long. Is that. Am I reading that right?

Robert Ritner [00:41:02] It's just under 20 inches long.

John Dehlin [00:41:04] 20 or 70?

Robert Ritner [00:41:05] 20, isn't it?

John Dehlin [00:41:10] If I'm reading it wrong, I see 11 and 1. 16 times. 69.

Robert Ritner [00:41:15] 69, okay. It's almost. It's almost 70 inches long, which is

John Dehlin [00:41:20] a little more than six feet. Is that right?

Robert Ritner [00:41:26] Well, there's been a whole lot of discussion about how long the Joseph Smith Papyrus was.

John Dehlin [00:41:32] Yeah.

Robert Ritner [00:41:33] Well, I show you this because this essentially answers that question.

John Dehlin [00:41:37] This is probably how long Joseph Smith's papyri were correct.

Robert Ritner [00:41:42] In order to get in all the sections that are normally occurring in this very standardized book, all the chapters, it needs to be this long. And you'll notice that this has two vignettes. The first, the beginning and the end. Right. And so then the question is, how many vignettes does the Joseph smith papyrus have? 2. Beginning and the end. So since we have facsimile three, and we know facsimile three corresponds to the end of the papyrus, and we know how long it takes to get from beginning to end in terms of number of chapters, that tells us there's no room for any additional text anywhere. So the whole notion that the papyrus was somehow many, many, many, many feet long that had an extra text on it is highly unlikely because we have the beginning and the end. The beginning we have intact or largely intact that came from the Metropolitan, and the end we have the lead plate of. So we know Smith at one time had the whole papyrus, and there's nothing missing or was nothing missing in that. In large regard, it must have been in broken shape because he did not understand the difference. He himself didn't know the difference between papyrus, this papyrus, and the hoopocephalus, which he thought was part of the same document, which could never have been, that would have been a separate round piece of papyrus. So all sorts of explanations have been made to try to explain away why the surviving text of papyrus number one does not correspond to the book of Abraham, which everyone, including the apologetics, agree is not the case. But it can't be huge because you've just seen the examples of a Surviving link, and that's what they look like. And we have the beginning and the end. And since we have that, you can calculate exactly how long it can be. And the calculations that were made by Klaus Baer in his article in 1968 are still valid. And I don't have those committed to memory, but it's roughly the same size as what you have here because these texts all fit in a pattern.

John Dehlin [00:44:10] I love it. This is just all coming together for me now, and it makes perfect sense. So reading right to left, we can think of this as the scroll that Joseph Smith primarily used to translate from the image on the right. The beginning of the papyrus corresponds to facsimile 1. The image at the end on the left corresponds to facsimile three. And then the facsimile two that we have is merely the hypocephalus which was found, what, under the head, literally, of

Robert Ritner [00:44:41] one of the other mummies that Joseph

John Dehlin [00:44:43] confused and figured it was part of the papyrus, when in reality it wasn't even.

Robert Ritner [00:44:47] Which means the papyrus undoubtedly was broken up in pieces so that he wouldn't know what went with what.

John Dehlin [00:44:53] Yeah. Arfim, anything you want to add to this?

RFM [00:44:57] Yes, if I can just clarify the difficult. You said yes, I'm trying to learn from experience here. It's a slow process, believe me. But, no, I just want to clarify and underscore the problem this raises for the apologists for the Book of Abraham, because what they have been forced to do, at least in many respects, and I think John Gee has, along with Kerry Muhlstein, is the idea that they are by and large committed to this papyrus role. And the reason they're committed to it is because the Book of Abraham presents facsimile one and facsimile three as being translated as part of this scroll. It's a hard thing to say that the Book of Abraham text is on a different scroll from the same text, where facsimile 1 is describing the attempted sacrifice of Abraham, which is written out in chapter one of the Book of Abraham. You see the connection there? So having now being in that position and recognizing that facsimile one is the beginning of this scroll, this typical common funerary scroll that we have many, many examples of, including the one that's on the screen and that Dr. Ritner has been talking about, if you've got facsimile one at one end, facsimile three at the other end, writing in between, then number one, they have to start arguing that the scroll that Joseph Smith had was extremely long. It was much longer than any of these other examples of the same kind of role that has been found. And they have to further postulate that in the additional portion of the scroll beyond what is facsimile three, you've got writing beyond it, or maybe writing in between, who knows?

Robert Ritner [00:46:40] But.

RFM [00:46:41] But basically that the entire text of the Book of Mormon, excuse me, the Book of Abraham as we have it in our scriptures, was actually written in Egyptian in that additional portion of the scroll. So that's why John Gee has to write articles arguing for mathematical calculations about the scroll and trying to argue that the scroll was actually much longer than a common scroll. Maybe up to 20, even up to 40ft long are some of the guesses that he makes or some of the assertions that he makes anyway. And the reason he has to do that is because he has to find room in this scroll for the Book of Abraham to be present when we know that it's not in the text. That's between facsimile one and facsimile three in the customary scrolls that we have so many examples of.

John Dehlin [00:47:34] Love it.

Robert Ritner [00:47:36] Thanks, rfm If I could point one other thing. That guy has, in one of his earlier books, tried to indicate that this could be as much as 30ft long. And the reason why he picked that number is that that is the length in which scrolls were manufactured in the royal factories that had a monopoly over the making of papyrus in ancient Egypt in the Ptolemaic period as well. The problem is that, yes, at the manufacturer's workshop, they might have made a scroll that is that long, but no private document would ever have used up that much papyrus, which was extremely valuable. It was a royal monopoly. It is a. It was one of the most valuable things in ancient Egypt to be able to purchase. That's what drives up the cost of books of the dead, for example. So no one is going to have something as long as he remarks on. And so the idea of saying, yes, well, they manufactured rolls in this length is not the same as saying anyone actually used that amount. So that's again, a form of specious argumentation that is just totally unreasonable.

John Dehlin [00:48:57] So just to restate, if I were to ask you, Dr. Ritner, how common is it to find an Egyptian scroll that's 30ft long with writing on it for 30ft, what would your answer be?

Robert Ritner [00:49:08] You wouldn't find it.

John Dehlin [00:49:10] The average length of a papyrus is much shorter.

Robert Ritner [00:49:14] Well, it's not easy to give you an average figure because sometimes what you do is you Cut off sections of it. So for a will or a private document, it might only be a few inches wide. For a longer per property document, it could be several feet, 30ft.

John Dehlin [00:49:33] No, but for an average book of breathings.

Robert Ritner [00:49:36] Well, an average book of breathings I just showed you.

John Dehlin [00:49:39] Right. About 6ft or a little shy of 72 inches exactly. Yeah, that's really example.

Robert Ritner [00:49:48] Because it's an intact example with beginning and end and it tells you what the size would be.

John Dehlin [00:49:55] And if an apologist said, well, Dr. Ritter, you just picked a short scroll to prove your point.

Robert Ritner [00:50:00] It's got all the chapters in there.

John Dehlin [00:50:01] What's that?

Robert Ritner [00:50:02] It's got all the chapters in there. And I should point out that Lafayette University is in Easton, Pennsylvania, so it's available for consultation by anyone in the US who wants to drive to Pennsylvania.

John Dehlin [00:50:15] Right. Brilliant. Thank you, Dr. Ritten. This is really important, valuable stuff. Thank you.

RFM [00:50:21] Well, it is. Because once again, this is just an example, just one example of how it is that Mormon apologists will go outside their field of expertise, general consensus among Egyptologists in order to argue for a 30 foot scroll when there's absolutely no basis in the historical record or the Egyptological record for a role that long. But they do it for one reason and one reason only, because they have to find room to. For the Book of Abraham to be true.

John Dehlin [00:50:56] Yeah. And so they always have to move the discussion to the possible or the plausible in their minds because the evidence is continually destroying their extant, you know, existing positions.

RFM [00:51:12] Right. The only. I was saying the only reason John Gee would ever make this argument is is because he has to find room for the Book of Abraham to be on that scroll. And in doing so, he comes out in contradiction to all the discoveries in Egypt in the profession that he has a doctorate in.

John Dehlin [00:51:32] And I think this is unless, Dr. Whitner, you have more to say about this. I think that's a great segue into kind of discussing now the history of the papyrus and the Book of Abraham post Joseph Smith's life. Is there anything else you want to say, Dr. Ritner, before we move to the history of the Book of Abraham?

Robert Ritner [00:51:49] I think my preliminary comments are done.

John Dehlin [00:51:52] Okay, so. RFM. Thank you, Dr. Ritner. RFM, if you don't mind, can you now give us sort of a. Tell us. Tell our listeners chronologically what happens. At some point Joseph Smith stops translating the Book of Abraham. It gets published, you know, in the times and seasons. Wherever it gets punished. Take us through the late 19th century and early 20th century to tell us how the story of the Book of Abraham continues.

Historical Overview of the Book of Abraham Controversy

RFM [00:52:22] Okay, I'm going to do this so quickly because I really want to focus on what Dr. Ritner has to contribute to this discussion. Very briefly, historical, wise, the papyri themselves end up not going west with the Saints with Brigham Young, but staying east in Illinois with his mom and with his wife Emma. And they end up being sold. They go through a number of buyers. They end up in Chicago, Illinois, which really isn't that far from Nauvoo, where they were, I think, still located at the time, ends up there just in time for the 1871 fire in Chicago. And it had forever been presumed that the papyrus scrolls had been lost and burned up in the great Chicago fire of 1871. But I do have to bring up, we all know that they get rediscovered again in the New York Metropolitan Museum of art in 1966, I believe it was, or 67. But in between this time, there's something else that's going on because even though the papyrus themselves are no longer available for examination, the fact is that evidence has been left in the published version of the Book of Abraham because all three facsimiles have been reproduced and published there. I think it was canonized in 1880 in the LDS Church previously. I may have misspoken and said 1860, but it's part and parcel of the LDS lexicon later, the LDS scripture that we have these three facsimiles. And those three facsimiles, because they are reproductions of actual ancient Egyptian vignettes, together with their interpretations that were given, are able to be looked at by Egyptologists and be evaluated by Egyptologists. So you don't have to actually have the papyri. You've got the reproduced facsimiles themselves and RFM.

John Dehlin [00:54:19] Let me pause you, Dr. Ritner. Tell us, you know, when Joseph Smith gets these papyri in 1835, you have already told us from episode one that the understanding of the ability to read Egyptian, the. The Rosetta Stone had been discovered, but there had not been a mature ability to translate and understand. Fill into RFM's timeline. And just tell us, Dr. Ritner, in the 19th century, when do we start seeing an emergence of the ability to truly read Egyptian and tell us how that kind of when that emerges?

Robert Ritner [00:54:55] Well, Champollion was able to make his major discovery with the Rosetta Stone in 1822.

John Dehlin [00:55:01] Right.

Robert Ritner [00:55:03] So that knowledge was beginning already in Europe in 1822, well before Smith acquired the papyri. But that information was not available in the Western hemisphere. So no one in the United States knew that. And by the time that we're reaching the 1840s, it would be well known in Europe. And so you had the beginning of explanations of standing Egyptian monuments. There was an obelisk that's in Britain, Banks obelisk, which had the name of Ptolemy's on it. And that was recognized and was deciphered about this time. So when the Book of Mormon is published and copies are received abroad, then they can be compared with what the Europeans knew about Egyptian. And then you're going to get a European reaction. And I think that's what RFM is going to tell you. That we have a reply from a French scholar, Theodore de verrier, in the 1850s. His book was published posthumously in 1881, where he gathered together documents from the Louvre, the major collection in Paris. And there de Verrier had noticed parallels to the anubis over the bed, which are a regular feature of books of the dead. And consequently he concluded that Smith's explanation was, as you see on the screen here, that Smith's ideas were rambling nonsense, quote unquote, roughly 1857 when he first examined these.

John Dehlin [00:56:51] So 1857, legitimate Egyptologists in Europe can actually make sense of the facsimiles and they're calling Joseph Smith's interpretations rambling nonsense, correct.

Robert Ritner [00:57:06] To the best of my knowledge, De Varias was the first person professional Egyptologist to actually take notice of the Joseph Smith book. And yes, by 1850s, it was already well known in Europe that this was nonsense.

John Dehlin [00:57:25] Okay, take it away, rfm. Keep going. Thank you for letting me jump in.

RFM [00:57:29] Oh, sure. I was just gonna say that this quote from Deveria ends up being picked up in a rather popular book called the Rocky Mountain Saints, which I think was published in the 1870s. The author was Stenhouse. And this brought de various opinion about the facsimiles in the Book of Abraham to a public in the United States, including the Latter Day Saints. By the way, what I find out is that the Book of Abraham has been a bugaboo for the Latter Day Saints almost since its first publication. It's just that we don't know about it very much because believe it or not, it's not talked about a lot in Sunday school at church. But this was brought up and a pamphlet was apparently issued by the church in response to de various comment published in that book, Rocky Mountain Saints. And basically what it said was, well, look, there's two kinds of ways to interpret Egyptian. There's the common kind, the kind you can just read through scholarship, but. But then there's also this esoteric kind that's only available through revelation. And Joseph Smith obviously didn't do it the scholarly way. He did it through revelation. He did this alternate kind of interpretation and translation. That was their position at the time. So this dies down for a while. And then 1912 comes along. 1912 comes along and Reverend Spaulding, who I think we mentioned before, I honestly am getting confused as to what we've actually recorded and what we've talked about off camera. But Reverend Spaulding, who was, what kind of minister was it?

John Dehlin [00:59:13] A Presbyterian?

Robert Ritner [00:59:14] He was the Episcopal bishop of Salt Lake City.

RFM [00:59:17] Yeah. He got this great idea once again, involved the facsimiles, and he decided he would approach and get the opinions of eight prominent Egyptologists and I think also Semiticists. One of them, by the way, being Breasted, who I know has a special place in Dr. Ritner's heart.

Robert Ritner [00:59:36] Well, he's the founder of our institution and it's because of Breasted's involvement that I am involved myself.

RFM [00:59:42] Right. So he gets all of their opinions and basically, believe it or not, none of them agree that Joseph Smith got it right. And all eight of them, to one degree or another, pooh, pooh, lambast, and disagree with Joseph Smith's facsimile interpretations. And then Reverend Spalding published this or brought it to the attention of the media. The New York Times picked it up, had a big front page paper, excuse me, newspaper headline and front page article about this, this fact. These eight Egyptologists and Semiticists. And it was a big news among the world. It was big news among the Mormons as well.

John Dehlin [01:00:24] Let me just, let me read. Let me read the headline. RFM if it's okay.

Robert Ritner [01:00:27] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:00:28] It says, museum walls proclaim fraud of Mormon prophet. Sacred books claimed to have been given divinely to the first prophet are shown to be taken from old Egyptian originals, their translation being a work of the imagination. What a comparison with Metropolitan Museum treasures show. And I read through this this morning when I woke up, and you could literally take 20 or 30 of the main points Dr. Ritner has made to us over the past nine or 10 hours of a recording, and they are mentioned in this article. Dr. Ritter, do you agree with that? And is there anything you would want to say about. About the substance of this article and the importance of it?

Robert Ritner [01:01:19] Well, the article is extremely important and it was accompanied by a booklet that Reverend Spalding made. We have a copy of this in our research archives. It was part of the Breasted papers. So I know that Spalding actually published this in booklet form. The only thing that's essentially different between what we would say now and what my predecessors said back in 1912 is that we now know that the text that represents Joseph Smith's Papyrus Number One is not, technically speaking, what we would call a Book of the Dead. It's a funerary document. But we now know it's a subset of that organization of texts called the Book of Breathings. So in these early 1912 discussions, it's lumped together with the Book of the Dead because they didn't know that fine distinction between those texts.

John Dehlin [01:02:16] But what did they get right?

Robert Ritner [01:02:18] Everything else, basically. And that is not wrong either, because the Book of Breathings is a late development from the Book of the Dead. So it is a version, a slimmed down version of the Book of the Dead. And the four sons of Horus were recognized clearly, as is indicated in the illustration that you showed. They're on the photograph of the New York Times exhibit with photographs of four sons of Horus from the Metropolitan Museum collection. So basically all of their interpretations were correct.

John Dehlin [01:03:04] Osiris, Anubis, all that stuff is discussed. Correct.

Robert Ritner [01:03:10] Largely, what I've been telling you now is. Exactly. So all this was known in 1912, and most of it was already known to De Varia even earlier than that.

John Dehlin [01:03:23] Yeah.

Robert Ritner [01:03:24] So it's an unbroken chain of everyone saying the same thing.

John Dehlin [01:03:29] And just like we talked about this in the BH Robert episode with Shannon Caldwell Montes, this is really important to the discussion because for so many decades, or even over a century now, one of the big questions is, what did the Brethren know and when did they know it? And now we see a second major instance that achieved international recognition where major scientific scholars and professionals lay bare the truth about the inaccuracies and, and the lack of credibility of Joseph Smith's translation. And it's global news. And the Church does not choose to do the honorable thing, which is to acknowledge the credibility of the scholars and thus the inaccuracy of the translation. But instead, what do they do?

RFM [01:04:27] Rfm well, they find different ways of responding to it. In fact, this. This created such a sensation among the Latter Day Saints that a special issue of the Improvement Era was published which had, I believe, a number of different articles in it by a number of different authors responding in a number of different ways to this finding. I'm saying the newspaper article, but also this brochure by Reverend Spaulding, this huge explosion. I mean, I. I was around in 1984 and 85. And I know you were too, John Dehlind, when all of a sudden those Hoffman letters are appearing and people's testimonies are suffering body blows. I've been through that myself in the Church because of those Hoffman letters, the Salamander letter, those other letters he had. I can only imagine that the members of the church in 1912 were feeling the same kind of things and they were having severe doubts. So the Church wants to respond to it, the Church has to respond to it. And basically what they end up doing is without saying that these guys don't know what they're talking about, they say a number of things. Two of them I want to mention here. The first thing is they resurrect the idea that, look, these guys are experts, okay? But they still disagree on certain details of what these facsimiles mean. And in fact, in their reports that each of these eight fellows did, they have places where they differ as to what they mean. And so it's the differences that are latched onto by the Mormon apologists to say, if they can't agree amongst themselves as to what they mean, how can they give judgment on whether Joseph Smith's translations were correct? So that's one thing they say, and that sort of plays into that monolith argument that Hannah Syriac was talking about earlier. If they don't agree in everything, then Joseph Smith still has a seat at the table because any possible interpretation. Yeah, the other thing that was said, which was really interesting to me, is that one of the writers who actually falsely presented himself as a PhD unfortunately. But one of the writers said, hey, look, this is not based upon the originals. This is just based upon Reuben Hedlock's attempt to. To copy the originals. And who knows how many mistakes Reuben Hedlock made in copying from the originals onto the facsimiles and getting them published. And therefore, because these experts, while giving them all due deference as experts, they're not going off the originals. We don't have the originals and they can only go off of the copies. So therefore, we have to defer our final judgment on whether these are accurate translations until such time as we find the actual originals.

Robert Ritner [01:07:28] Well, of course, the originals have now been found. That happened in 1967. So then you had Hugh Nibley do a series of articles, I think, also in the improvement era.

John Dehlin [01:07:43] Dr. Ritter, can I ask a question before that just.

Robert Ritner [01:07:46] Yeah, but I want to. This is directly relevant to the Spalding material, because what Nibley does in the 60s is to do an ongoing series of articles going one by one through the authors of the Spalding book and disparaging them in an ad hominem way. In other words, one of the people involved was Petrie. And I will never forget that one of the criticisms that Nibley made about Petrie was that he didn't like poetry and that because Petrie didn't like poetry, he was somehow disqualified from making an assessment of the visual image which he saw in front of him and which he had excavated from the ground thousands of times on papyri and on coffins. The whole point of Nibley's art articles was ridiculous. I mean, it was horrendous scholarship that we will try to tear down what you say by attacking you personally. But that, of course, has been the signature methodology used by all the Mormon apologists. It is their first line of defense.

John Dehlin [01:09:01] And it started with Fawn Brody. When she releases no Man Knows my history in 45 or whatever, Nibley releases a response to that. No, ma', am, that's not history. Doesn't deal with the substance of the biography which Richard Bushman is now vindicated, but instead he just attacks Fawn Brodie. And so really, Nibley, we're getting ahead of ourselves. But Nibley sets the course for what becomes Modern Mormon Apologetics 1.0, which is to attack the scholar who's credible and thoughtful and earnest with disingenuous arguments and with personal attacks.

Robert Ritner [01:09:36] But what's notable is at the time of the rediscovery of the papyri in the 60s, that Nibley has to still be arguing against all of those opinions expressed in the Spalding book. So that is his first action, is to start trying to tear apart the reputations of these well known individuals.

RFM [01:09:59] Yes, you could have called that series no, ma', am, that's not Egyptology. But by the way, I think we all would agree that when a person gets to the point of having to actually try and attack the character of somebody, the ad hominems, instead of addressing the merits of the argument, that generally that's a sign the person has lost the argument. I just wanted to bring this up in terms of the fact that I understand, Dr. Ritner, that you've received a lot of really, really positive emails over the last few days. But there's one you shared with me on the phone that did not fall into that category and that may have been considered somewhat ad hominem. And perhaps in the tradition of Hugh Nibley, could you share that with our audience?

Robert Ritner [01:10:40] Yes, it was the only negative out of. I don't know. 40 or so replies that I have now received. Let me while you're looking for it,

John Dehlin [01:10:55] I just want to thank our listeners for writing Dr. Ritner. I promised Dr. Ritner that the ratio of positive to negative emails would be 100 to 1. So many of you listeners have responded and sent Dr. Ritner positive emails. Our ratio is now 40ish to 1, which is good. But I'd like to, I'd like to come for. I'd like to make good on my promise. So that means listeners about 60 of you at a minimum need to email Dr. Ritner. His email address can be found on the MormonStories.org post for this episode. Email Dr. Ritner. Please send him effusive praise and gratitude for his willingness to do these episodes and we can get that ratio to be 99 to 1. Now, have I stalled enough to allow you to call up that email?

Robert Ritner [01:11:46] I found it.

RFM [01:11:47] I hope so.

Robert Ritner [01:11:48] John, you look like a bitter fool hanging out with two clouds.

John Dehlin [01:11:54] Nice.

RFM [01:11:56] So we do not escape calumny either, John.

John Dehlin [01:12:00] No, but I mean, it just goes to show, Dr. Ritner is a world renowned, top notch Egyptologist at the number one Egyptology institution in the Western hemisphere. His reputation is beyond reproach. Then we've got people like Guillen Muhlstein and others that have little to no credibility. And yet the followers of the Mormon apologists are willing to defame and smear and malign a true world class scholar just because he gives his honest, earnest, unbiased, with no monetary compensation motive at all. He gives his opinion on what is obviously false and fraudulent documentation and what he receives in response by apologists is personal attacks, which is the example Hugh Nibley set that Daniel Peterson continued. And you know, it's continued on from there. And it's really sad and deplorable in my opinion. So rfm, do you want to take us back? I think it's worth mentioning what happened with the Tanners in 65 before we talk about the emergence of the papyrus in 66. Is that okay?

RFM [01:13:19] Oh sure. But by the way, I don't know if you've selected the closing music for this podcast, but can I suggest something that has the line in it, clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right. Here I am stuck in the middle

John Dehlin [01:13:32] with you Steve Miller band. I love it.

RFM [01:13:35] Okay, absolutely. By the way, as a world renowned clown, I kind of object to that email as well. So what ends up happening is everybody knows about the fact that this was discovered at the New York Metropolitan Museum, these papyrus, at least fragments of the original Joseph Smith papyri, including facsimile one. What I did not realize until relatively recently, when I was closely reading Dr. Ritner's response to the Church essay which he produced in 2014, is that the actual. The Abraham Egyptian papers. Right, The Abraham Egyptian papers, the churches had possession of continuously. They got to keep the Kirtland Egyptian papers, but the papyrus stayed behind when they went out west under Brigham Young. They've had those. They've had those in a safe. They've had them very, very carefully kept. Very carefully. I would even say hidden to the point where really quick rfm, just so

John Dehlin [01:14:35] our listeners who aren't familiar can understand. I know we're going to actually show them, give our listeners a brief description of what they actually were, which will help us understand why it's significant that the Church was hiding them for over a century.

RFM [01:14:49] Okay. Well, there are a number of different things, including apparently an Egyptian grammar and Alphabet that Joseph Smith was working on, modeled after a more secular scholarly approach, though apparently the interpretations were being given by Revelation or some source other than a secular approach. But the main thing about them is that they pretty much prove, I would say conclusively, at least to your average person, not to John Gee or Kerry Muhlstein, but they sure look like the Abraham Egyptian papers show that Joseph Smith was producing the text of the Book of Abraham from characters that were on the papyri. And the reason we know that is because in the papyri that was recovered, we have the fragment with the characters on it in sequence that then show up in the margins of the Abraham Egyptian Papers, together with translations from the Book of Abraham to the right.

John Dehlin [01:15:47] And we're going to show that in just a second. But my summary would be these are the working documents that Joseph Smith and his scribes were using to do the quote. I have to always use air quotes, the quote translation. It's basically the documents that were in front of these gentlemen as they were, quote, translating the Book of Abraham. And, you know, I just want to make this point that the church had these documents in their possession for over a century, and as you mentioned, rfm, they were keeping them in a vault or hiding them from the membership and not acknowledging that they even existed. I would only assume, just like Joseph Felix Smith ripping out pages from Joseph Smith Journal of an inconvenient 1830 account of the First Vision. That doesn't correspond with the later accepted, what was it, 1838 version of the first vision, we've got Joseph Smith hiding Joseph Fielding Smith hiding evidence that could ever destroy faith that's actually factual, just like Joseph Fielding Smith or others did with the first vision account. 1830 version of the first vision, 1832 version of the first vision account. We also have these same sorts of people hiding evidence about the Book of Abraham was when they've known for almost a century that the Book of Abraham is deeply fraught and problematic. They've got source documentation that is likely, and we'll show in a second, in fact does prove deep problems with the Book of Abraham. They're sitting on it and hiding it. And it isn't until the Tanners heaven bless or clowns bless or whoever you want to say, bless the Tanners for. Ironically, coincidentally, a year before the papyrus are rediscovered. What can you tell us about the story of how the Tanners found out about the Abraham Egyptian Papers?

RFM [01:17:43] RFM well, it appears that the good ship Zion has leaks in it like a sieve. Because once again, somebody inside the church at a relatively high level with access to these documents made two successive leaks to the Tanners. The first was a leak that purported to be a transcript. So in other words, like typewritten out a transcript of the Abraham Egyptian papers and saying, this is what the church has, this is what they are. But it wasn't an actual copy. That was for the second leak. And the second leak was on this ancient thing they used to have. John, I don't know if you've heard of it before. It's called microfilm. And so they had images on the microfilm that purported to be from the actual Abraham Egyptian papers themselves, and that was leaked out. And the Tanners made the hay out of it that they could. And then in the following year, the discovery was made in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. So, like you say, serendipitously, all of this happened the year before they actually found the papyri. And so I see you're doing something there with the screen. Yes. So anyway, the whole thing is this. And the reason this came to my understanding was through Dr. Ritner's paper, because even though the Tanners came forward with this information and made it public, the Church did not yield to it. They did not disclose the actual Abraham Egyptian papers at that time. Instead, they continued to keep it under wraps and continue to keep it under wraps until Even as of 2014, six years ago, John, when Dr. Ritner is writing his response to the church's essay, Dr. Ritner cannot get access to actual copies or Photographic images of the Joseph Smith, or I should say the Abraham Egyptian Papers, because the Church is still holding on to it. In fact, Dr. Ritner, I think will tell us. He. He specifically requested the Church to allow him access to view these so he could write his paper. And that access was denied. It's only within the past six years and recently that the Church has allowed images of the Abraham Egyptian Papers to be published as part and parcel of the Joseph Smith Papers Project. Take it away, Dr. Ritner.

John Dehlin [01:20:06] And just really quickly, Dr. Ritner, before you jump in, what I'm showing now on the screen is an article again written around 1970 timeframe by the New York Times that's headlined Mormon's Book of Abraham called Product of Imagination. Can you tell us about the involvement of your mentor in this 1960s sort of discussion with Hugh Nibley and anyone else who was involved?

Robert Ritner [01:20:34] Well, Klaus Baer, my own professor, was the next Egyptologist who was consulted regard after rusted on the. On the veracity of the Book of Abraham and the translation from these papyrus documents. He was called in the 60s after the rediscovery of the papyri in 67. Klaus Baer was originally, like myself, working entirely with photographs. How he got them, I don't know. And eventually when he had completed his work, he was allowed, by virtue of his friendship with Hugh Nibley, he was allowed to see the originals. And that confirmed some of his readings. I've never been able to see the originals. Unlike Klaus, I did apply. When I first began my work in 2002, I wrote to Brigham Young and to the keeper of the museum there in order to be able to make use of the papyri and I was denied permission. So I have never actually seen the Priory. I've only worked for good quality photographs.

John Dehlin [01:21:53] Dr. Ritter, I'm curious. How would Hugh Nibley and Dr. Behr have had a relationship? What would have been the reason for and or history and or nature of that relationship?

Robert Ritner [01:22:04] I don't know all the details except that Hugh Nibley was a student of Klaus's and took hieroglyphs with Klaus Baer.

John Dehlin [01:22:12] Where would that have been?

Robert Ritner [01:22:14] In Chicago, presumably. Klaus would also regularly spend his summers in Utah and so perhaps they encountered each other on social occasions then. I don't know.

John Dehlin [01:22:27] Do we know? Do you know RFM was Hugh Nibley's PhD from UCLA or California?

RFM [01:22:34] Oh, I think so. I think it was in something having to do with classics. I think his dissertation was about something to do with Roman Greco culture of some respect.

John Dehlin [01:22:46] Okay. But he had a relationship with Dr. Baer and that's how he gets brought.

Robert Ritner [01:22:53] That's Claus Bear for a time taught at Berkeley. This was all when I was a child. So I don't know the details for this.

John Dehlin [01:23:05] Tell us about the 1968 article by Klaus Baer.

Robert Ritner [01:23:08] In 1968, Klaus did. It was part of a series of articles that were done for the new journal Dialogue. There were articles that were done by all of the major Chicago Egyptologists at the time of the rediscovery of these papyri. Hugh Nibley was also part of this process. It is when Hugh started doing his personal ad hominem attacks that only the Mormons saw. Dialogue might have had a slightly broader audience. I don't know. I found these articles in Klaus Baer's papers, which we have in the Oriental Institute. But there were articles by John Wilson, there were articles by Richard Parker and by Klaus Baer, also by the Tanners, all part of the dialogue sections that came out in 1968.

John Dehlin [01:24:05] Would it be accurate to say that

Robert Ritner [01:24:07] theirs was the most important of them in terms of the translation? He actually went thoroughly trying to give a complete translation of Papyrus one. He it didn't work with any of the others. John Wilson made some attempts at the Book of the Dead of Tahsheret Men, which is also included among the sections. And Richard Parker only had a few remarks on the papyri collection. The Tanners were able to point out what was wrong with the hoopocephalus. And we've talked about that last time. And the year before any of this happened in 1966, the Tenors had come out with their microfilm volume that RFM was just discussing. And that volume is still available, I believe. At least it was available to me because when I worked on trying to understand these papers which go by multiple names, we'll talk about that, too. The only access I had for those was what's in the microfilm volume. And they've been reproduced now in full size. But they're extremely faint. They're hard to work with. And obviously seeing the originals would be better. Microfilm is not a very good quality material. And you make a Xerox off the microfilm, it's even less valuable. But that's what I had to work with was the Xerox off a microfilm that was so called perfect binding, which is just slapped together with some glue. And that was my source for these. These are extremely difficult texts to work with because they are faint and because they are many, many hand copies. So I wasn't sure initially what to do with them. They also included one other thing that was in the Church's possession. It had lost possession of the papyrus except for one sheet. When the papyrus was broken apart, what the Mormon holders did was to glue pieces back together again, usually in the wrong place, upside down and sideways. I've got all the patches indicated in my book, showing exactly where they go and highlighted with color, etc. So that you can see them. It's a really complicated crossword puzzle, but there is one plate known as the Church Historians Fragment that was maintained by the Church because it was separate from the rest of the papyri. And that example of actual papyrus bits that were pasted onto a sheet that survived, together with these initial scribal attempts at translating the Book of Mormon, the Book of Abraham, all of that was together in the Church archives and it's in the tanner material. And so I was able to work at things through that.

John Dehlin [01:26:59] And sometimes they're referred to as the Kirtland Egyptian papers. We're going to refer to them as the Abraham Egyptian papers. I have a real quick question for you, Dr. Ritner. You hear the story as a Mormon or as a questioning Mormon, that when the papyrus were first rediscovered, that the Church was excited because they thought, wow, this is great, now we can read Egyptian. Now the papyrus have been discovered. Now the Egyptologists can read the papyrus and prove that Joseph Smith in fact did an accurate translation. Now, I wonder about that because we already have 1912, you know, all the, all the criticisms re emerging. But do you. Is it your understanding that when Dr. Baer got involved, that the Church was excited with the prospects of Dr. Baer or others vindicating Joseph Smith as indeed having the power to translate Egyptian?

Robert Ritner [01:27:59] I think probably so. But already in the same dialogue articles, Nibley was beginning to back off of that and trying to find multiple explanations. So the idea that this was not really a translation, that the word translation that was printed by Smith didn't mean what we all think it means, that there was some sort of inspiration that was coming through the heavens, despite what the Egyptian text actually said. So that was already beginning in the 60s because you had then in the 60s arguments by the Egyptologists, Wilson and Parker and Bear, the most devastating, as I pointed out, being Baer, who gave a thorough translation. And Bear says in his article specifically that the surviving papyrus fragment one and some of the other fragments are the source of the Book of Abraham. He makes that explicit and he was the first to make that claim that we can now say without a shadow of a doubt that the translation was coming from the surviving papyrus. He did, however, leave wiggle room at the end of his article for saying that, well, in the eyes of Egyptology, it would be this, but the faithful might, through some other means, come out with a different meaning. So he allowed Nibley to have his translation by faithful inspiration. The problem with that, of course, is that you might as well be reading a telephone book, because then there's nothing special about the papyrus, right? And then there's the problem with the word translation, which is used explicitly to mean translate from one language to another several times in the facsimiles. Facsimile one, it's referred to specifically in the body of the text, and it's said again in facsimile three. And we've talked about all of those examples in previous recordings and not just that.

John Dehlin [01:30:10] In the Doctrine and covenants in April 6, 1830, when the church was restored, I think it's Section 21 of the Doctrine and Covenants. It says Joseph Smith is a prophet, seer, revelator, and translator. So it uses that word in Scripture. It doesn't say revelator. It doesn't say inspired syncretist, as Terrell Gibbons wants us to believe. Now, it literally God uses the word Translator in section 21 of the doctrine and Covenants. And something that I'm realizing, and I got this from the New York Times article, it was really important for Joseph Smith to make people believe he had special powers. So this power to translate isn't just some side hobby that Joseph Smith was engaged in. It was part of the lore of the Book of Mormon that he had the power to translate reformed Egyptian into the Book of Mormon. Unfortunately, inconveniently, the plates were withdrawn. But then again, with the Book of Abraham, he's claiming these special powers to translate. And as I understood from the New York Times article, when Chandler shows up in Kirtland with the scrolls, it's because he had heard about Joseph Smith's special powers and he was excited to find a buyer in the papyrus and the mummies because he knew that Joseph Smith had claimed to have the power to translate Egyptian, because, again, that was part of what made Joseph Smith famous and sought after in those early 1830 years. Correct me if I'm wrong, if I

Robert Ritner [01:31:35] could just throw in something here. The Church has recently released a statement now, to which I replied some years ago. But in their statement, they tried to point out that Joseph Smith was not known as a translator, that he hadn't claimed to know Egyptian. And I have rebutted that because in Smith's earlier work, he actually pretended to speak Egyptian. And there is an oration to the Green Mountain bore, Vermont in which he claims to speak Egyptian and gives an Egyptian word that's gibberish. And John Gee has even gone into print attempting to justify that Egyptian translation. And that's pre book of Abraham. So Smith has been doing this all along. In that same oration to the Green Mountain Boys, Smith also claims to be able to translate most of the multiple other languages that he clearly couldn't have known. So the idea of Smith as a translator is something that he made use of falsely from the very beginning. That's contrary to the explicit church statement, and it's contrary to the express publications by Guy where they tried to justify these things.

John Dehlin [01:32:53] And we have just on the screen, for those interested really quickly, just a mountain of corn, quotes from church history, history of the church. As Mr. Chandler had been told, quote, Joseph Smith, I could translate them. He brought me some of the characters and I gave him the interpretation. You know, there's eight or nine, at least 10 different quotes in the history of the church where it's basically saying over and over again, you know, with W.W. phelps and Oliver Caldera, scribes I, Joseph Smith commenced the translation of some of the characters or hieroglyphics, and much to our joy, found that one of the rolls contained the writings of Abraham. And it's just history of church quote after history of church quote, where in fact, it's not just saying, using the word translation, but it's literally talking about translating the characters of the hieroglyphics. And it just leaves no room for someone to then try and walk that back and claim that translation wasn't an accurate word that was being used. Some other word should have been in its place. God, angels, Joseph Smith and everyone around him all called it a translation referring to hieroglyphics and characters. And we're about to prove to you all that even the Abraham Egyptian papers confirm the same thing. So let's talk about.

RFM [01:34:16] Before you go there, John, I'm sorry, please, can I mention something here and could you. Thank you for doing that with the screen. This letter to the Green Mountain Boys is very important on this issue. I'm not going to belabor this point very much, except it is available on the Joseph Smith Papers Project where I have pulled it up. Just have to do in Joseph Smith's letter to the Green Mountain Boys. By the way, professor, this was actually written in December of 1843. So this does post date the production in print of the Book of Abraham, but this is where he's appealing to different people to come and help him out with the Nauvoo Legion because they're getting so much flak and persecution and things are looking kind of precarious. But as part of this appeal and trying to get them to come join the cause, he, Joseph Smith, decides that he is going to show the recipients of this letter his abilities as a translator in a number of different languages, including Egyptian. And he gives the translation along with these. And I'm not going to go into a whole lot of these, but basically he says, first off, were I a Chaldean, I would exclaim, ki ed nau ta merun le le hoam olau hayah det semayah ve. And then it goes on for a little bit further and I'll let you read it for yourself if you want to look it up. But then it gives a translation for this, saying, thus shall ye say unto them the gods that have not made the heavens and earth, they shall perish from the earth and from under these heavens. And then he gives a quick snippet from Egyptian, by the way. He'll go on to Greek, French, German, Syrian, Samaritan, Hebrew, Polish, Western Indian and Roman, doing the exact same thing in this one lengthy paragraph where he gives a brief snippet in these foreign languages which he presents as being a master of, or at least enough to be able to throw off translations willy nilly. So here's what he says in Egyptian, su e ni. And he writes that out. And this is for you, Professor Ritner, so you can compare this with your knowledge of Egyptian. S U E h ni. That's what he presents in the letter to the Green Mountain Boys as Egyptian. And he gives the translation in parentheses after it, saying, what other persons are those? Question mark. So I've got to ask Dr. Ritner, is sue eh ni Egyptian, first off? And if so, does it mean what other persons are those?

Robert Ritner [01:37:01] The answer is no and no.

RFM [01:37:04] Okay.

Robert Ritner [01:37:06] I believe both John Gee and Michael D. Rhodes have attempted to create an Egyptian creation for it. Kiwi oo za ooh nai would be Egyptian. And that didn't sound alike. You have some s sounds, you have some n sounds, but there's no k sounds in the Smith version.

RFM [01:37:38] No, there are not.

Robert Ritner [01:37:38] He doesn't have a word that would. And that's critical because that's the word for other kiwi u others. So if you don't have the word for others, you can't translate it as others. So the simple answer is no.

John Dehlin [01:37:54] Do those words that Joseph Smith uttered mean anything in Egyptian that you're aware of?

Robert Ritner [01:37:59] Not to me.

John Dehlin [01:38:00] So it's, again, gibberish. Is that fair to say?

Robert Ritner [01:38:03] It's gibberish.

RFM [01:38:04] Okay. And the reason I went into such detail, John, is, I think you'll understand, is because this is a place where it's pretty hard to argue that Joseph Smith is doing anything other than stating, number one, here's an Egyptian word, and number two, I can translate it into English.

Robert Ritner [01:38:19] Right, right. Well, if this was published in the 1840s, I don't remember the context because I think I got this. I think I got this out of the Brody book. That's where I read it. It may not have had the full context for it there, but I actually refer to it in my response back to the church statement because it's an example of him claiming that he can, in fact, translate, as you say, a wide variety of language. And if it's in 1841, you say, well, that's at the time that he's still putting the finishing touches on the Book of Abraham. He began writing in Kirtland and finished off elsewhere.

RFM [01:38:58] Yeah, this one's 43, actually. So it's after.

John Dehlin [01:39:02] It's done a year before he's dead,

Robert Ritner [01:39:04] but it's within that same time period.

RFM [01:39:06] Right, right. By the way, I just want to say this other thing, because now we're talking about 60 and the coming forth of the papyrus, and we're going to talk about how they show that apparently Joseph Smith was using the papyrus to translate the Book of Abraham as we have it today. But it does occur to me, as I was reading that New York Times article that you had up there on the screen, John, that we have a church. And by the way, Dr. Ritner, I'm sure you know this, too, but we have a church in the LDS Church that unfortunately, for over 100 years, had a priesthood ban on men who were of African American, or I should say American descent, is sometimes called the priesthood ban on blacks. It included their being able to go to the temple or black women being able to go to the temple as well, frequently just abbreviated as the temple ban. You were aware of that, correct?

Robert Ritner [01:39:56] I was. I pointed this out in my own first article in Dialogue. Oh, that's one of the side effects of the Book of Abraham, because in the story that Smith has created, he disparages the sons of Ham. And in there, that is the origin of the ban.

RFM [01:40:17] Right. That's exactly what I was getting to. So trying to put myself back in 67 when all this is happening. I mean, it would have happened to a lesser extent, maybe in 1912, but in 67, you were right in the middle of the United States of the civil rights movement. And the church is getting untold amounts of flak from non Mormons, obviously, for continuing its priesthood ban on people simply because they are black. And so this is the 1960s. All this is happening. The fact is, is that the main basis that the LDS Church has for restricting the priesthood from black men is found in the Book of Abraham. And so in the context of all this going on, here comes this discovery and these scholars analyzing the papyrus, and it is looking like the main basis that the Church has for restricting the priesthood from blacks is looking more and more like something that Joseph Smith made up out of whole cloth. And it's not a translation from the Egyptian.

Robert Ritner [01:41:19] That is followed not long thereafter by a revelation at the top of your church's leadership in which they decided to

John Dehlin [01:41:27] change that rule 10 years later.

Robert Ritner [01:41:30] Well, yeah, but that's fast for a

John Dehlin [01:41:34] church, but I think it's super cool. So I'm showing this 1970 New York Times article now and paragraph five of this new York Times article. It begins with the headline. And again, this article is entitled, headlined Mormon's Book of Abraham called Product of Imagination. And paragraph five starts with the title Negro Resentment. And it says, the growing social impact of Negro resentment of the Utah Mormons. Exclusion of them from full participation in the church has served to focus further attention on the credibility of the Book of Abraham. This is because there's one short phrase among its thousands of words that is cited as the reason for prohibiting Negroes from entering the priesthood orders to which all Mormon males of other races are readily admitted. The phrase says that persons with Negro blood are barred from the priesthood. Then it goes on to say black athletes at the University of Wyoming have refused to play against teams from Brigham Young University. The Utah Mormon School, Stanford University, has served notice of intention to sever athletic relationships with the school, which is in Provo, Utah, as a protest of Negro exclusion practiced by the Church. So this is something that I just am now putting together, that the Book of Abraham figures prominently in the discussion about the black priesthood ban and its lifting between the mid-1960s and 1978, when eventually the priesthood ban was lifted. Thank you for calling that to our attention, rfm. That's super important.

RFM [01:43:16] Sure thing. Sure thing. And I think, I guess it's obvious from history now that the church, when it had a really good reason, both sociologically as well as Egyptologically, to distance itself from the Book of Abraham as being scripture, chose not to. They maintained the Book of Abraham as scripture, but then received the revelation in 1968, like Dr. Ritter said, lifting the ban, 78. The book of Abraham. Did I say 68?

John Dehlin [01:43:42] Yeah.

RFM [01:43:42] Okay, 78. That's when I graduated high school. I should remember that. So lifting the ban, but the Book of Abraham is too much with us late and soon. It's not going anywhere fast.

John Dehlin [01:43:54] Because it strikes to the core of Joseph Smith's credibility.

RFM [01:43:58] Yes. And his prophetic translation ability.

John Dehlin [01:44:03] Right. So, Dr. Ritter, should we now jump to how you got involved in all of this?

Robert Ritner [01:44:09] By all means.

John Dehlin [01:44:10] Okay, let's hear it.

Robert Ritner [01:44:12] In 2002, I was approached by Gary Bergara of the Institute for Religious Research out of Grand Rapids. And I didn't know.

John Dehlin [01:44:24] Wait. I think Gary was with the Smith Pettit foundation, and he could well be. So I think that's a separate group than the evangelical group. So I don't mean to correct you. I just. I don't want Gary, who's of Signature Books.

Robert Ritner [01:44:38] My correspondence now, it's all in my office where I'm.

John Dehlin [01:44:41] Yeah, yeah. So Gary's with Signature Books, Gary Bejera, and then there's this evangelical group out in Grand Rapids. Right.

Robert Ritner [01:44:48] Well, I was contacted to see if I would be interviewed on regard to the textual validity of Klaus Baer's translation.

John Dehlin [01:45:00] Got it.

Robert Ritner [01:45:01] So I was asked because I was now back in residence at the Oriental Institute again in Chicago. I had come back from Yale and I was the direct successor of Klaus Baer. I was working on religious topics. And so I was an appropriate person to ask because Baer had been there before and all those antecedents that we talked about in the 60s, John Wilson had been there, who had dealt with it, Parker had dealt with it, and before him, Breasted had dealt with it. So all of the Egyptologists in line basically had dealt with this subject. And so I was asked, would you look at the Klaus Baer translation, look at photographs that we can supply, and tell me what is your evaluation of it? And so I looked at it, and so I was able to give a reply. Which was filmed as part of a documentary entitled the Lost Book of Abraham, A Remarkable Mormon Discovery that was in 2002 and later in the same year.

John Dehlin [01:46:10] And so that's a DVD, is that right?

Robert Ritner [01:46:13] That's now a DVD. It was originally a VHS, which was widely distributed, but also in DVD. And you're showing the DVD.

John Dehlin [01:46:21] It's on the street. That's 2002.

Robert Ritner [01:46:24] Right. And I already quoted from that at the beginning of the lecture today where I referenced the taking off the head of the Madonna and Child and replacing with a dog and a cat. That. That's a clip from my remarks back in 2002.

John Dehlin [01:46:39] What was. What was the reception of the VHS tape in the dvd? Do you have any recollection of that?

Robert Ritner [01:46:45] I have no idea, because this was simply something that I did for them. And by the way, they did not in any way influence my remarks or ask me what. Or suggest to me what I ought to say. And I was not unique because Lanny Bell was also involved as well, and he had been at Chicago also. So they asked out to Chicago people, basically.

John Dehlin [01:47:09] And did your involvement in that DVD slash videotape make you a wealthy man?

Robert Ritner [01:47:15] No, I was not paid for that.

John Dehlin [01:47:17] You weren't paid at all?

Robert Ritner [01:47:18] Nothing.

John Dehlin [01:47:19] So you. You didn't have some sort of monetary incentive or some ax to grind?

Robert Ritner [01:47:25] No. I've done a number of recordings and I've. For various groups on historical religious matters. I have never asked for payment for any of them.

John Dehlin [01:47:37] That's amazing.

Robert Ritner [01:47:40] I've never received an honorarium for any recording I've done. Not once.

John Dehlin [01:47:44] You should have. That's my opinion. Okay. What came next?

Dr. Ritner's Published Scholarship on the Papyri

Robert Ritner [01:47:50] Well, within the same year, I was asked if I would consider doing this in print. Basically responding to. Now, more specifically responding to the issue of what was The Klaus Baer 1968 translation still valid? And so I said I would, but I decided to do it only on one condition. The condition again was. Well, the condition was that I would make this analysis for dialogue, which is where I was requested to do it. This would be the same journal that Klaus Beer had published in. So it would be a logical place to put response. I had the manuscript finished. It was actually done. I've actually been contacted. My chronology is off. I'd been contacted at least in 2000, because I had looked. I had done a full translation of it by 2000. It didn't get printed until 2002.

John Dehlin [01:48:58] And how similar was your translation from Dr. Behrman?

Robert Ritner [01:49:02] Very, very similar. There are only a few words here and there and some changes in column designation, but in terms of content, no difference. And in terms of conclusions, we are essentially the same. That the Egyptian text is very specific. And I would rule out an inspirational reading because I don't think this is the same thing as translating the phone book. So my Ending is not the same as his. But it was a 2002 publication. I did it for dialogue, but I insisted that it also, if I was going to go to all this work to read the papyrus, that I would also do a corresponding one that would reach the scholarly community and not just Mormons, because I don't think any of my colleagues have read anything that's in dialogue. So the work by Bear and at the same time by Wilson and Parker was only seen by people who would be reading the journal Dialogue and that would be Mormons, but not Egyptologists. So I did another version at the same time that would be published in the Journal of Near Eastern Studies, which is our in house journal for our department, Chicago. And it took an extra year for that to appear in print.

John Dehlin [01:50:26] That's called the Breathing Permit of Horror among the Joseph Smith Papyri.

Robert Ritner [01:50:30] Exactly. And so they are essentially the same articles with only with some minor improvements in the later one.

John Dehlin [01:50:39] The first article was called the Breathing permit of horror 34 years later.

Robert Ritner [01:50:43] Right. And the 34 references, the time between that and the appearance of the bear article.

John Dehlin [01:50:54] Wait, 34 years from what to what? I'm sorry, I'm missing that.

Robert Ritner [01:50:59] The 34 years is from the time of Bears article to the time of this one.

John Dehlin [01:51:05] Okay. Oh, right, right, right, right. Because we're in 2000. Got it. Okay.

Robert Ritner [01:51:11] So in other words, it was just a, that was just a specific reference back to the, the bear article.

John Dehlin [01:51:17] The 67.

Robert Ritner [01:51:18] Yeah, because it's in the same journal that the Bear article is published in. And that was my original charge. It was, the only charge was that, would you please take a look at this translation? And would you from there compare it with Bear.

John Dehlin [01:51:34] Perfect. Okay.

Robert Ritner [01:51:35] I had to read the entire document and that produced. That was complicated. And so I want, if I was going to go to all that trouble, I wanted to make sure that there was an edition available also for scholars, because this text actually has some interesting features about it. And I had even cited this papyrus in an earlier article by myself on the three times greatest Thoth. I had referenced a passage in the Joseph Smith papyrus where it refers to Thoth, Hermes, the three times greatest. And the problem I had was that there was no good edition of it. And I wanted to be able to cite an edition that had an inclusion of the pictures of the papyrus. And so I was forced to use another version we haven't talked about, and that was the Hugh Nibley version. And so Nibley had done a version in, in which he reproduced images of the relevant sections of papyrus number one. And he then had some strange and wonderful interpretations. And his translation was word for word, which produced an odd result. It wasn't grammatically fluid and he used his own made up transliteration system which no one would actually use. So it was problematic. But I cited it in an. Was the only place where you could actually see the image. It wasn't an attempt to approve of Nibley's scholarship in general. I was approving his photograph.

John Dehlin [01:53:25] Got it.

Robert Ritner [01:53:28] So when I was asked in 2002 what I had to work with, or 2000, actually I keep forgetting that I had written this earlier, before it was actually printed. The print date officially on dialogue, by the way, is 2000, but it didn't appear until later. But they had the manuscript in their hands by 2000. So I was actually asked this before the videotape, although I don't remember now when the filming was, the lag time between the filming and when the video actually appeared because it had to go through the editing process.

John Dehlin [01:54:01] Okay, so you receive the call from Gary Bergera, you do the translation, you write the article, but then it doesn't come out for a couple years later because it takes time for these things to get published. In the meantime, you do the videotape and the dvd.

Robert Ritner [01:54:17] Right, Got it. And so then there was the option of possibly trying to do a book on the subject, because I had, I don't know the backstory of how these individuals had the photographs, but I was told that they had the photographs, they would supply them, would I consider doing a volume? And I would be paid if I did a volume.

John Dehlin [01:54:43] Let me ask you about that, Dr. Ritner. You're at the most prestigious Egyptological sort of institution in the Western hemisphere. There are all sorts of important things you could be researching. There's this scrawny little, what some would call kind of cultish religion in Idaho and Utah that's got this absurd claim about a prophet, slash, some say charlatan from 100 plus years before. When your, let's say department head or your colleagues or whoever else finds out you're engaging in this subject of Joseph Smith's, I have to use air quotes, translation of the Book of Abraham, I imagine at least two possible responses might emerge. One would be, this is silly. Why are you wasting your time? And then a second would be, religion is scary, volatile, sensitive territory. Why would you want to wade into kind of people's sacred, weird, sensitive religious beliefs? There are all sorts of, I would imagine there'd be all sorts of academic pressure to run from not just avoid this work. So I'm curious, what made you decide to do it and how it was received by your peers, by your department chair, by the tenure committee, by other scholars, and even board chairs or the university president, or anyone who might be worried about offending the Mormons.

Robert Ritner [01:56:12] Well, it's an interesting story. I should back up and say that I didn't know anything about the Mormon religion to speak of when I began this project. So when I was reached out to it was there were no preconceptions on my part or on the part of the people who reached out to me because they didn't express any specifics to me except they had these papyri and would I be willing to. To work on it. Working on Egyptian documents is what I do. And I had already cited it in an earlier article I had done, because of an unusual title of a God, that I had to cite Nibley's work. So I had shown I knew of the existence of it. And I knew that we had the papers of Klausbert that included some of these complex matters in regard to past interpretations, because one of my colleagues, John Larsen, had done an article for a memorial volume after the death of Klaus Baer that specifically concerned the papers that he had in the Bayer archives. John Larsen was our archivist who was the keeper of our personal records. And so he had all of these files from Klaus Baer that included copies of the improvement era and correspondence with Nibley, etc. So it was a huge amount of material there. So I knew if I was at. When I was asked, would I be willing to do it, I knew that there were resources I could go to within our own building that would help. And I was now being offered extraordinarily useful digital images which could be blown up to where you could see in tiny pixels the high quality of the papyrus, just as if I was working with the original. So it was hard to turn down. There were no restrictions placed on me. So what I did is I put together a proposal and I submitted it to our press, which had to be approved by our director. And it was sent out for peer review, which is a thing we regularly do. And we got back word from colleagues in Germany who had looked at the manuscript that this was a silly waste of time. So exactly what you're saying is that it was treated as being. It wasn't worth my time to do something like this, as I've tried to suggest, it's actually an interesting papyrus and even my own feeling about the first illustration that's to say the real papyrus illustration that underlies facsimile one was changed even today when I made my announcement that I think this is a unique witness to a wall scene that we don't have otherwise preserved. So. So this actually is an important papyrus, and it's a rarefied category of Egyptian religious documents from the latest periods, which is when I specialize. So it's a natural fit for me. It was a natural fit for me because I was the next in line for Egyptologists at Chicago who had worked on it. So that seemed to be reasonable. But the word coming back was, don't bother. It's a waste of time. And our director at the time immediately pulled me aside and said, we're not going to publish it, and did not give me any reasons. I had been warned by John Larsen when he published his small article that if you get involved with this, it's a very complicated matter and you will be wading into problems. But I don't apparently pay attention to good advice, because I went ahead and waded into it anyway. So the book project was then turned down.

John Dehlin [02:00:24] Was there a moral or an ethical motivation for you?

Robert Ritner [02:00:28] I was simply interested in understanding what the papyrus had to say. It was an intellectual task. The religious aspects of it were entirely aside. I should point out here that I had a student who was Mormon, and I had more than one, and the most famous of these is John Dee. But I had a female student who was Mormon before John ever appeared at Yale. There were also two advanced students who were Mormon who were in Chicago when I was a graduate student there as well. One of them is Ed Ashmund. So I knew not the existence of Mormon, but it was not something that impinged on my existence. I knew that my professor, Klaus Baer, had worked on the Mormon papyri, and I knew that my colleague John Larsen had talked about these after Klaus's death. I knew that we had papers on the subject, but basically that's all I knew. When I was in elementary school, there were a couple of individuals who were Mormon, but they seemed to be normal like everybody else, and so we were not close friends and they didn't stand out.

John Dehlin [02:01:43] And you weren't trying to take down the church or attack the church?

Robert Ritner [02:01:47] No, no. On the contrary, the most forceful Mormon I had was John Gee, who made a point of expressing this. Unlike all the other students, he would regularly wear to class a Hugh Nibley Fan club T shirt, which had the name Hugh Nibley prominently inscribed across the front of it. And I knew who Nibley was because I had cited his book in an article I had done before John ever came. I found out later that John was actually quoting my reference to that to Nibley in my article as an attempt to say that I was justifying Nibley's scholarship by citing Nibley's article when I was only citing it for the photograph. And so in an article subsequently in my dialogue article, I pointed out that my sighting of Nibley through John

John Dehlin [02:02:51] was

Robert Ritner [02:02:52] not a validation of Nibley's work or of John's work, because I also referred in that dialogue article to other strange publications that John Gee had done justifying things that I was disagreeing with. And I wanted to point out in the article that although his professor I had not seen when he was a student, he didn't show them to me. That was normal for most students before they would print something. They would show it to me before putting it in print. John never did that. So I had no knowledge of these except from John. I did, however, get occasional emails from people like Ed Ashman who told me, do you know that your student is publishing a strange article on fill in the blank? So I knew John was doing things of this sort, but I didn't interact with him on those. They didn't come up in class. I taught the required religious seminar for all graduate students in the department of religion one year at Yale University. John was one of those students. I'm sure he wrote on a Mormon themed topic, and I didn't criticize him for it. And I probably gave him an A. He got nothing but support and good grades from me.

John Dehlin [02:04:13] Okay, so no axe to grind?

Robert Ritner [02:04:15] I still don't.

John Dehlin [02:04:17] Okay, excellent. Rfm. Do you have any quick questions before we jump to his book?

RFM [02:04:27] No, I don't.

John Dehlin [02:04:28] Okay, so here is. Here is a view of the COVID of the books that were published around, you know, nine. Nine years later. Is that right?

Robert Ritner [02:04:42] Yes. Well, the problem is that my book project with the Oriental Institute Press failed. And so then I got correspondents asking me would I be willing to let another press do it. And that was the Smith Credit Press. And they would give me a small honorarium if I work together to put the book. But I would have to do all the work to make it as a book. And I would have to go out and find the someone to act as the book manager to actually do the press mock up. And they would pay for the printing and they would give me a small honorarium for the book. And because I had already pulled the material together, I was happy to do it. And the honorarium was fine. It was what I'd get for, you know, I've made more for a lecture that I made for making that book.

John Dehlin [02:05:32] For a single lecture?

Robert Ritner [02:05:34] Yes, for one lecture.

John Dehlin [02:05:36] So the amount of time, I'm not

Robert Ritner [02:05:38] going to retire on this book. And this book was only limited to a very small number of copies, I think 500 copies maximum.

John Dehlin [02:05:48] But the number of hours or years

Robert Ritner [02:05:50] you would have spent was a huge amount of time. But a year, two years. This is something that I do. This is part of, normally, part of my experience that the Oriental Institute was supposed to be a co sponsor of our Cleopatra exhibit that we had in Chicago. Chicago was the only venue for this major exhibit coming from the British Museum. Chicago pulled out, or rather the Oriental Institute pulled out, but our Field Museum still wanted to do the exhibit, was still going to sponsor it, and they had no Egyptologist who was willing to work for them. So I volunteered and I spent all of my time for a full year rewriting all the labels, coming in through the exhibit, coming in regularly to do the mock ups, all this. And I didn't get. I was paid a lunch, so I didn't do it for the money. When I'm asked why or why did you become an Egyptologist? You had asked me this in our first interview, but my usual stock answer is poor financial sense. I do things because I have interest in the topic. I think Cleopatra is an amazingly wonderful queen of Egypt, which is why there's a painting of her death in my study room here. But for the same reason, I was fascinated by the issues of the ancient Egyptian religion in this period. And I wanted to do the book. And I had already tried through my own press. They turned me down. So here was an option to do it. No one had an axe to grind. No one was saying you have to prove X, Y or Z. I could say anything I wanted to. They would still pay me the tiny sum and I would get the book out of it that I had tried to do already. And this book was such a success in 2013 that since 2011 that I was asked in 2013, could we do a paperback version? And so the paperback version there, as you see, has a mock up of facsimile one there on it, showing you the actual papyrus with the restoration. And it's essentially the same as what was in the earlier hardbound version. It's sold a lot more copies because the paperback is far cheaper and it's in wider distribution. So none of these were motivated by a desire for profit, since there isn't any. I'll not be retiring on these.

John Dehlin [02:08:28] Got it.

RFM [02:08:29] Right. And Dr. Ritner, even though this seems to have been beating a dead horse, maybe in some respects about your pecuniary interests in pursuing this line of research, I think the reason that John is asking you these questions is because it is very typical and customary to find apologists for the Church attacking you and saying, well, the only reason you don't agree with their arguments and you continue to be critical of the Book of Abraham is because A you've got an axe to grind and you're an anti Mormon or B because you're doing it for the many.

Robert Ritner [02:09:05] Well, let me respond to both of those. If I were doing it for the money, I would have retired long ago and I'm not getting anything on this that would actually influence my life in retirement. This is not a money gaining experience and it's been extremely time consuming. My most important comment on the subject is, I suppose the statement I made in response to the Church's statement, which we will get to in a moment, that's not been published in anything except on my Oriental Institute website. It was then picked up by Signature Books and repeated on some of their websites. But for that I was paid exactly nothing by anyone, never have been, because it's not even in book form. And once again I encountered opposition. There was resistance from our director for my posting that on our website because it linked my name to the Oregon Institute. And my suspicion, although never explained to me, my suspicion is that there is a fear or there was a fear of losing donations. So money is a factor, but it's not a factor for me. Money is a factor for Guy and Muhlstein, who are full time employees of a fundamentalist branch of the Church which supports the Book of Abraham. They are paid to make these statements. I get no money to make my statements. So I am monetarily at an extreme disadvantage because I get exactly nothing, I mean, I mean nothing to do all this work that I have done in terms of a monetary reimbursement for my time and efforts. So I'm doing this entirely out of interest. And the issue of being anti Mormon, essentially for John, anyone who is not pro his variety of Mormon is by definition anti Mormon. I'm Mormon indifferent. My background is a wide ranging of religions. I teach religion. I don't as a point disparage the essence of religion. Which is why I'm not going to say that people should believe X, Y or Z. People can believe what they like. All I can do is Point out the facts. It's the old remark about you can bring a horse to water, you cannot make them drink. And if people want to take my facts and see what that does for their understanding of the Book of Abraham, fine. If they don't want to do it, fine. Also, that's a personal decision one has to make, right?

RFM [02:11:48] So let me just ask you this question. I understand how you got brought into this subject, why it's a matter of professional interest to you, being based upon legitimate papyri that were discovered that deal with your time period of interest and focus and your book that you wrote, which was then made into paperback form, which you just talked about. Then 2014 rolls around and I'm not going to get too much out of chronological order, John, but the Church puts out its essay on the website and then you write the response, that response that you were just talking about that you did not get paid any money for. Right?

Robert Ritner [02:12:23] That's correct.

RFM [02:12:24] So you don't get paid any money for it. You're not doing it because you're an anti Mormon or because you have an axe to grind. So what is your motivation in writing a paper in response to the Church's essay and specifically those claims about how Egyptian the Book of Abraham is? I know you must have spent many hours writing that you didn't make any money off of it. What was your motivation in writing that response to the Church's essay? Well,

Robert Ritner [02:12:54] the reason why I wrote the reply is that the Church had basically denied the conclusions that were in my book. They had also, in the meantime, co sponsored a series of additional volumes that failed to do me the dignity of acknowledging the existence of my work. So they had published volumes by Michael D. Rhodes on the initial papyrus, on the breathing permit of horror. And as I pointed out last time, they had plagiarized aspects from my book without actually ever acknowledging its existence. Not even my articles in dialogue or jnes. They had used them, they had appropriated portions from them and they didn't even cite them. They pretended I didn't exist. Rhodes would go on to do a version of the Book of the Dead of Tasheret Min, which was also part of the collection, and the Papyrus of Amenhotep, which is only found in the surviving scribal hand copies from the Abraham documents that were always in the Church possession. He did all this in multiple volumes and he never cites any of my work. So I was genuinely irritated that my conclusions were being disparaged, my work was being pillaged, and I was not even being acknowledged. So that's major motivating factor. In addition, there was the intellectual feature that I had encountered as I did my. My initial book, in that I was asked, as I said, to work with papyri. But that was different from the earlier articles because this was the first time anyone had ever decided to work with all of the surviving Smith material. That's to say, not only the Propyri, but also the sheets that were in the Church's collection, the. Whatever you want to call them, the Kirtland Papers, otherwise known as the Egyptian Alphabet and grammar, which is how the Tanners call them, as we shall see in a moment. I call them valuable discovery because that's how they're listed in some of the documents that are in that group. So these, this then allowed me to do a complete reconstruction of the Book of the Dead, which required hours and hours and hours to try to figure out and reconstruct from pieces that were wrongly placed elsewhere in the text. And having invested all that much energy in it, I wanted at least the. The response to acknowledge my work, because that was huge amount of work. I didn't want money for it. What I wanted recognition for the work that I had done. I mean, it's nice to see my work being used even without my name. When they ape my conclusions about what's on the missing facsimile three and they borrow an epithet of Anubis that on alone had found. And yet there it appears in an extra column, as I pointed out last time. But my motivation was I wanted recognition. And by looking back again at what I had done, as we shall see in a second with some of those surviving papers from the valuable discovery, I realized that the methodology that Smith had used to create the story of Kah Tumin was exactly the same methodology he had used to create the book of Abraham. So between the time of the publication of my book and the new article that I did on my own website, I made a major discovery. And that is, I could actually now understand what Smith's scribes were doing in those pieces of paper that the Church had held that I had only seen in photograph. And I had. I realized this was a. This was a new discovery from what I had put in the book. And so that was the crux of my discussion online, that I had now a new explanation. I could go one step further and I could actually say this is how Smith did it. Not merely that he had made up a translation, but I could tell you how he made up a translation. And unbeknownst to myself, I had Shown he had done exactly the same thing with the Kahtumin material, which you can see by looking carefully at the Smith papers that are part of this collection. So it's because I had something new to say and I had a motivation to say it that I wrote this other article. It was what I should have put in the book if I had realized it. The problem with the Kirtland papers, or however, whatever you want to call them, is that there's so many of them. And some of these had even been worked with by Klaus Baer. I look back again recently at The Klaus Baer 1968 article, and at the end of his article he says what the Egyptologist says is as follows. And he gives an Egyptian translation from the actual Egyptian and what Smith would say. And he gives that. And what I realized by looking at it again recently is that Bear had made probably the same recognition that I had, but he hadn't explained it clearly that what Smith was doing was to take one little bit of a sign and creating an entire paragraph of it. Now, in Bearer's 1968 article, instead of using the sheets of the scribes which recopy the hieratic Egyptian, he's using sheets where Smith's interpretations are there, which are. So it will have the Egyptian and it will say the third degree of blah, blah, blah. I forget now what it. What the wording actually is with Smith had all of these comments about the X degree of the something or another astronomical things. But these are comparable. These are complementary sheets that are to the ones that I would use. Because what happened is if you look carefully at all these extra sheets that Smith would go again and again back to the same few hieratic signs. So some of them are explained astronomically and others are explained with the text. Kahumin Bear picked up on the astronomical ones. He didn't go far enough in the group to talk about the ones that actually link up the translation in the same way that I did with the Egyptian sign. But he was on the right track. But I was directly on the right track when I did the Qatar Min, where I could see that the hand copy of what Smith or Smith scribes was recreating out of the now lost Amenhotep Book of the Dead. We have just the beginning of that and just the initial phrases, words said by or the saying of words by is spills out an entire paragraph about Katumin and Oneitas before Smith decided to quit.

John Dehlin [02:21:19] So as we're about to launch into a discussion of this in detail and actually view the images that would help our listeners understand what you're saying. I just want to set this up to let listeners know and viewers know why this is important. And RFM and Dr. Ritner, I want you both to either, you know, I want you to correct me or confirm what I'm about to say, which is that there are certain arguments that apologists make to try and save the Book of Abraham. One is that the papyrus that we have weren't the ones that Joseph Smith used to translate what we now have as the Book of Abraham. Another is that the scroll was so super long that he must have been reading from other parts of the scroll. Scroll. And then another is that he didn't use the papyrus at all, but instead it was just a catalyst. So he just needed the scroll there. Like the Book of Mormon, incidentally, coincidentally, like the golden plates. He didn't actually translate from them, but he needed them there to inspire him to reveal through revelation what ends up becoming scripture. Are those the main arguments we're about to address and or destroy RFM, Dr. Ritner? And are there others?

RFM [02:22:43] No. I think really what we're going to talk about here is the position held by John Gee and Kerry Muhlstein that in fact, what Joseph Smith was doing was translating from an actual ancient Egyptian document that really had the Book of Abraham on it. And actually, John, the reason why I think this is different from the Catalyst theory is the Catalyst theory, it doesn't make any difference what's on the Egyptian documents. It recognizes that there's no Book of Abraham on the ones we have. There didn't have to be a Book of Abraham on anything that Joseph Smith had because it was totally revelation being beamed down into his head. Even though he thought he was translating, he wasn't really translating. But what Dr. Ritner is about to point out to us is how he discovered the fact that the documents themselves, the Abraham Egyptian papers, which are so damning and so explosive from an apologetic point of view, because they do appear to show to an unbiased mind that what Joseph Smith was doing was he was using the characters that were on the scrolls, in fact, the scrolls that have been recovered in some instances in order to translate the text of the Book of Abraham as we have it today.

Robert Ritner [02:23:59] Today.

John Dehlin [02:24:02] Okay, well, should we take it away, Dr. Ritner, and have you talk to us about the documents themselves?

Robert Ritner [02:24:08] Okay, well, we go to the next

John Dehlin [02:24:09] slide, and I'll encourage listeners to jump to YouTube or Facebook for the visuals. They'll help you understand what we're about to talk about much more readily than if you're just trying to imagine in your mind what we're talking about. So what do we see here, Dr. Ritner?

Robert Ritner [02:24:26] So here we see one of the sheets that was microfilmed. This is directly out of the Tanner publication that I, that I worked with. And you have the document itself is up the top in handwriting. Now this I would leave up to Michael Marquart to decipher whose handwriting that is. I think it's Smith's, but it might be one of the so called scribes. It contains, by the way, a number of spelling errors. So it is labeled the valuable discovery of some hieroglyphic texts.

John Dehlin [02:25:05] Sorry, the writing is valuable discovery of hidden records.

Robert Ritner [02:25:09] Hidden records that have been obtained from the ancient burying places of the Egyptians. Burying is misspelled. Egyptians is misspelled, Hidden is misspelled and then signed Joseph Smith Jr. So it is actually signed as being in the handwriting and terrible spelling of Joseph Smith. So let me read that once again. Valuable discovery of hidden records that have been obtained from the ancient burying place of the Egyptians, Joseph Smith Jr. So this is the title page that he has written that includes various hand copies as he is figuring out what the translation is and creating the book of Abraham. This is the written witness of the translation process. Now one of the remarks made to me in some of the letters that I've gotten back from emails and again, thank you for all of those. I've enjoyed reading them, including the clown one that there's that Ritner has no evidence proving this is the translation process. Well, I think actually I do have evidence that this is the process. This is one of the motivating factors. To go back to John's comment, you asked me why did I write the long rebuttal and the reason I did it. Dr. Ritter in the church, real quick,

John Dehlin [02:26:44] can you have your camera is pointed up a little bit and your head's kind of out of frame. Thank you. Sorry for our listeners. I don't want them just to see the top of your head.

Robert Ritner [02:26:54] Sorry.

John Dehlin [02:26:55] No problem.

Robert Ritner [02:27:00] In the church statement it says that there is no witness to the translation process. Therefore we can dismiss basically my book, which of course is never referenced specifically by name. My name isn't mentioned. I have Persona non grata. I can't be mentioned ever by any of these people except when they're questioned at a session. So anyway, what I was looking for then was was there a witness and this document which says here's the valuable discovery, here's the title page. Here's Smith's own handwriting, his own signature leading into the next pages that we will see. So let's go to the next pages.

John Dehlin [02:27:51] Can you see it?

Robert Ritner [02:27:53] Not yet. So we go from the COVID sheet.

John Dehlin [02:27:58] Okay, here we go. There it is.

Robert Ritner [02:28:02] So there we have a sheet and you can see this is the same size as the COVID This is part of a group, which is why I refer to these in my book as the name valuable discovery. Since I've never seen the originals, I'm assuming that these is a small packet that's part of a larger group. And so the so called Kirtland papers or Abraham Papers include a variety of different documents. And this is one of the subsets. And here we have a sheet that has in the upper left hand corner some doodles that are attempting to copy Egyptian hieroglyphs. They are on the left hand corner on both sides. And then to the right of it you get the transcription, you get a handwriting. You notice it's marked as page three. And you got the transcription in Joseph Smith's handwriting still. This is still part of that same document. This is the third page after the title page signed by Smith himself. So here we can look. If you have trouble making out the handwriting that presumably is Joseph Smith's, we can go down to the actual writing that is put by the Tanners where they have made a transcription. So this is out of their microfilm book. Katumin Princess, daughter of Oneytas Pharaoh king of Egypt, who began to reign in the year of the world 2862. Katamine was born in the 30th year of the reign of her father and died when she was 18 years old.

John Dehlin [02:29:55] 28. I think it's 28.

Robert Ritner [02:29:57] Sorry, 28. Okay, well, if you see the problem, I've moved my screen to accommodate my viewers, but now I can't see the screen.

John Dehlin [02:30:04] No problem, I can read it too.

Robert Ritner [02:30:07] So anyway, it says which Was the

John Dehlin [02:30:09] year 3020 after that?

Robert Ritner [02:30:11] All right, so what you got down at the bottom, for those of you who can see the screen at whatever angle you like, that is the. It's a direct equation of what you've got up above it. And if you look up above what we've actually got are the Egyptian, which I can recognize as being garbled words that are the beginning of the Amenhotep Papyrus. And we have the corresponding Egyptian English next to it. So what Smith has done is say, has taken three words in Egyptian. That means what? The saying of words by that's what it says in Egyptian, and the entire paragraph that I gave to you, that's in English and available both in Smith's own handwriting and in the Tanner transcription beneath it makes a correspondence between those few hieroglyphs and an entire paragraph spun out. And so when I went back and found these other sheets I had mentioned, I had ignored the sheets that Bear had looked at that talked about the nth degree of something because I didn't know what to do with those. But Michael Marquardt, in his large chapter in my blue bound book that's also in the paperback book, talks about the scribal copies that are also among these group of papers. And he could distinguish different handwritings. That explained to me for the first time why there were so many copies you had. Smith had different scribes who were engaged in copying the same things over and over again. And so that's why the same hieroglyphs kept appearing over and over again in order on these sheets and little chunks of the text. And then I realized, well, of course that's why. So that explains why there are multiple copies, because now I know from Barquart there are multiple scribes which I didn't know. Now I can distinguish what's difference between them, and I can even see the variable abilities of the different scribes. And I can see they're all attempting to produce Smith's narrative by making the hieroglyphs correspond to the narrative. And I'm saying hieroglyphs, but technically they're hieratic, it's cursive form at least. And the form that is taking place in these manuscript sheets, which are a witness of dictation, Smith is telling him, write the next hieroglyph. Now here is the corresponding definition of that is just what Smith himself personally did in this small subsection of text that's called valuable discovery by his own hand with his own signature on it. So there was the working mechanism and having the sign next to the full flung discussion of it. Definition of it is no different than a Webster's Dictionary where you look up something now and there is the word, and adjacent to it you have the definition. So any reasonable person seeing the one language on the one side and adjacent to it, the English translation would put those two and two together and say the one is a translation of the other. And so it's a smoking gun. I think there can be no question. And as you look at the pieces and we can do that, I did that in my online posting. You can see the individual signs and how they correspond directly to surviving pieces on the papyrus.

John Dehlin [02:34:15] Should we do that, or do you want to pause RFM and ask questions or add something to what's been said so far?

RFM [02:34:23] I think we should just continue with what you're talking about here so that Dr. Ritner can more fully flesh this out for the viewing audience.

John Dehlin [02:34:31] All right, should we go to the next image, Dr. Ritner?

Robert Ritner [02:34:34] Sure.

John Dehlin [02:34:35] Okay, so the next image is now on the screen.

Robert Ritner [02:34:42] So we're still working with Katumin just before we finish this off. And it shows you that what he is doing, what Smith is doing is looking back through his papyrus jumble and deciding what is possible to make this work with Katamin. So here is his hand copy of the Book of the Dead Papyrus of Amenhotep iv. This is all that really survives of it There. You'll notice there's no English in the main text. It's all the hieroglyphs. But you see there are figures that are also there. There is a woman with an unusual snake that has legs. There is a bird flying figure, and there is a pot with a bird's head. Now, some of those our viewers will have recognized from having seen before. The figure of the girl with or the woman with the snake is actually from the Book of the Dead of Tahsheret Min, which was also part of of the collection that Smith bought. But Smith clearly had no idea which sections went with what, and he didn't know how many papyri he had because they were undoubtedly in pieces. So he has copied onto the Amenhotep piece, which was completely separate, an illustration that actually comes from Tasharet Min, which is another papyrus. And it's so clearly another papyrus that if you go to the next slide, you can see it used by Michael Rhodes as the COVID design on his publication of the Papyrus of Tahsheret Men. Now, I have the same illustration that's within the photographs that I was provided that are in the back of my hardbound book and also in the paperback book. But it's clearly a different papyrus. But my point is that Joseph Smith didn't know what he had, and so he's gobbling together images that are from a separate one stuck on here. And if we can go back to the previous slide, again, if we look in the upper right of this slide now, I'll remind you, Smith is in the process trying to make up a story for Tasharet men. So he's got a fragmentary Egyptian document that no longer survives. The only witness to we have it is the hand copies of Smith and his scribes. So this again from valuable discovery. And he recognizes that the figure here is a woman. Well, that's correct for once because the woman in the Tasheret Min papyrus is in fact a woman. So here Smith is pulling it from a different papyrus in order to illustrate what Katumin would have looked like. But in the upper right hand he's also got images and we've seen those before as well. And John, I'm going to ask you if you could go back and find facsimile one.

John Dehlin [02:38:11] Absolutely. I. Let me jump to it right now and here it to resize my windows. Here it is, facsimile one.

Robert Ritner [02:38:31] So the bird that we saw in the upper right hand is the bird that's flying up above the head of Osiris on the bed. And the falcon headed pot which we saw in the upper right hand of the Katumin story is the Canopic jar that's on the far lower right under the head of Osiris under the bed. So again, Smith is copying together with one papyrus bits and pieces of other things including facsimile one and papyrus number two on papyrus number four. So he is mingling all these things together, creating the story. And it's done in the booklet that's in Smith's own handwriting, signed by him, where he puts the signs that you can find on the sheet I just showed you, which was all hieroglyphs. Then he extracts a couple of them and he makes his first paragraph of Katumin. Then he gets bored or whatever reason and he quits. My suspicion is that this Katumin story would have developed into being the story of Joseph that he claimed that he saw when he first bought the papyri, that he recognized that there was a story of Abraham and one of Joseph and the Abraham one he finished. And the Joseph never, never was completed.

John Dehlin [02:40:11] There's a scroll of Abraham and the scroll of Joseph. Right.

Robert Ritner [02:40:14] I suspect that this, this Katamin thing, what was, what would have become Joseph had he completed it. But here you can see the beginning of his work on the Joseph Gospel. And it uses exactly the technique that you find, as we shall see in a moment with the book of Abraham. I hope I've made that clear.

RFM [02:40:39] You have. Can I just say a couple things here? First off? Yes. That connection with the book of Joseph was made clear by Oliver Kelly Cowdery who actually described in words the image of the woman standing in front of the serpent with two legs. And also there's another figure on There, but I won't go into that. But Oliver Cowdery was struck by this, said this is on the roll. That is the book of Joseph, which he would have learned from Joseph Smith, of course, and that this is a representation of Eve standing in front of the serpent in the Garden of Eden before he had been cursed by God to crawl on his belly. So of course, he actually had legs prior to the curse. So that's one thing. And John, John, if you could put up on the screens that. Okay, the image that has the first image on the book of Kah Tumen with that translation that we looked at a couple before this.

John Dehlin [02:41:36] So I'll pull it back up and then you tell me whether to go forward or back. Is that okay?

RFM [02:41:42] I'll try.

John Dehlin [02:41:43] Okay, so here's the first Katamin image

Robert Ritner [02:41:49] that I have.

RFM [02:41:51] Next one. There you go. Because this is so interesting that this is the first thing that appears in this booklet or whatever it is, these papers that Joseph Smith has this valuable discovery and he takes those two Egyptian characters you see up in the upper left hand corner, and this is what Dr. Ritner's already described. But I want to focus on the text that he comes up with because he talks about a princess named Kah Tumin who is the daughter of Onetus, who's the pharaoh king of Egypt. Right. Doesn't say much about her in the second paragraph. It just says when she was born and she died when she was 28 years old. Well, it appears that there's a distinct connection between this mysterious character Katumin and the book of Abraham as we have it. Because if you look in Abraham, chapter one, verse. Excuse me, verse 11, you remember the three virgins that Abraham talks about being sacrificed before him because of their purity and their righteousness. Well, here's what it says. Now, this priest had offered upon this altar three virgins at one time who were the daughters of Oneita O n I T a h one of the royal descent directly from the loins of Ham. So it appears, if you put the connection there, that this Kahtomeen is a princess, a daughter of Oneitos Pharaoh, king of Egypt. Right. It looks like what Joseph Smith is doing is, is either making a backstory or an aside about one of these three virgins and giving us her name. One of these three virgins name is Katumin. She's a princess, which means she's of royal blood and she's a daughter of Oneitos in the Abraham Egyptian papers. And it's Oneitah O n I T A H as it comes to be published in the Book of Abraham. So there's this fascinating to me connection between this piece, this couple of paragraphs, and a character who does appear, although very much in the backstory, in the Book of Abraham itself.

Robert Ritner [02:44:01] I think they're the same characters and he was certainly working on these things at the same time.

RFM [02:44:05] Yes, I agree. And then you've got those two characters that Joseph Smith is translating, two paragraphs from which you talked about. And then you're gonna follow this up with how it is that Joseph Smith appears to be to do the same thing with paragraphs that end up becoming the text of the Book of Abraham, at least in the early chapter.

Robert Ritner [02:44:24] Right. Can we go to the next slide?

John Dehlin [02:44:26] Absolutely. So the next slide meaning this slide?

Joseph Smith's Translation Process Under the Microscope

Robert Ritner [02:44:35] This slide. So what we've got here, just as a reminder, this is an overview of all the papyri that Smith owned. So the top line is a reconstruction of the breathing permit of Hor. That's papyrus number one. The second one is the Book of the Dead of Tahsheret Men. That's the one in which the tomb owner actually does confront the snake with two legs, which is one of the chapters of the Book of the Dead. The other example is we have a Book of the Dead of Amenhotep and that is only preserved in those valuable discovery sections. And they're all the sheets, they're a total of four sheets. And you can see them there, four sheets with the text copy alone. And then we have the Hoopocephalus of Sheshonq. And then our last papyrus is a Book of the Dead of Nefer Nebu. So that's everything. And the problem is that those are all distinct documents and Smith is jumbling his copies, assuming that the Sheshonq one can be stuck in with number one to make the Book of Abraham. And also pieces of number two can be used to insert in the now lost Book of Abraham to make a second scroll. So he has jumbled all the pieces together of things that were originally quite distinct. So now let's look and see how he actually worked with the Book of the Dead, the book, the breathing per metaphor.

John Dehlin [02:46:29] And for me, this is one of the most important things anyone can ever see related to Book of Abraham. Veracity.

Robert Ritner [02:46:37] Well, this is the thing that struck me as I was looking again through these microfilms after the church statement, and that was if you lined up these scribal copies, this is on the far right of the screen and you put them in comparison with the actual papyrus, what you saw is that on the upper left hand corner, Smith's scribes would copy a small section of Egyptian. You could put that next to the papyrus and there that section of Egyptian would actually be. But what Smith's scribes had done is they had copied that bit of Egyptian and then they had spilled out a full paragraph. In other words, they had used the same format on these sheets that I hadn't looked at previously, as they had on the ones that were in the valuable discovery, which was a subset of those pictures. So this manuscript is a different one, different group of papers that are within this same large corpus. I hope I've made that clear. So the valuable discovery is its own small subset about the Joseph Papyrus, really, Whereas these manuscript pages are bigger, they're part of the same collection. They were always in the church. I hadn't looked at them until after the church statement. But using my own working mechanism for how I understood the Joseph story to have worked, I could now look at these with new eyes and understand exactly how they worked. And I could recognize the hieroglyphs in or hieratic here, and I could line them up one for one with words or parts of words that were in the corresponding statements. And so I got. Half of his manuscript only corresponds to two lines of Egyptian text. And you can see it all here. So in the far right, the scribe has attempted to copy what is a rectangle that's got some hatching inside with a straight line underneath it and a little tick below that. The copy done by the Smith scribe is really bad. It's in the ballpark. But you can see in the middle, adjacent to it, what the sign really would look like. And then to the left of that, you can see where that sign is in the papyrus. It's in the surviving part of line one of the horizontal text.

RFM [02:49:38] Dr. Ray, Dr. Ritner. John, just to complete this loop, is it possible to see what the text is on the manuscript page next to that first character? I'm just

John Dehlin [02:49:54] so to blow up. Kind of to blow up the text from the handwriting, is that what you're saying? Rfm.

RFM [02:50:01] Right. And all I mean is that from my view, our pictures, our head boxes are in front of that because that's actually the text from the Book of Abraham, is that right, Dr. Ritner?

Robert Ritner [02:50:12] It is.

John Dehlin [02:50:13] So let me blow that up.

Robert Ritner [02:50:15] There are multiple copies in these papers. Some I've seen, some I've not looked at. We'll get to the ones I actually worked with in just a moment. But it's important to note that the scribes, when they were copying the Egyptians, didn't know what they were doing. And that's one of the reasons why I didn't make this connection immediately, because if you notice, the set of squiggles copied by the scribe don't really look much like the actual Egyptian. They're off. The fact that I can recognize them all is, I guess, a testimony to my reading hieratic.

RFM [02:50:55] Now, the first one's pretty.

Robert Ritner [02:50:56] We have them in multiple copies, which is why I was able to see the same sign over and over again. And some of the scribes, as I pointed out, are better at what they're doing than others.

RFM [02:51:07] Right. That first character is kind of sketchy to me, but the second, third and

Robert Ritner [02:51:12] fourth, the lower ones are clearer.

RFM [02:51:14] Yeah, even I can tell those are supposed to be the same.

John Dehlin [02:51:18] Was this what you wanted to see, Arthur?

Robert Ritner [02:51:19] That's perfect. Yes.

John Dehlin [02:51:22] So we've got their attempt at re.

Robert Ritner [02:51:26] You know, it should be a rectangular box over a stroke with an angle. And here it's. It's. Oh, the box has been opened up and you see there are signs that look like, I don't know, fingers or something with a line coming down below. And then you compare it with the actual hieroglyph that's on the surviving papyrus, and you can see it's different, but it's close enough,

John Dehlin [02:51:53] sort of, for those who want to follow kind of this. Right?

Robert Ritner [02:51:57] This is right. And for those who want to know, that's the word lake.

John Dehlin [02:52:04] So we've got the word lake, right?

Robert Ritner [02:52:07] That's the spelling of it. It's the word shu, which is word lake. But Egyptians don't write simple spelling out of words, so instead there's an extra sign. So contrary to Hebrew and contrary to Joseph Smith, Egyptian actually is more cumbersome to write than Hebrew. The next sign is a stroke of three horizontal lines, and those are the determinatives of water to let you know you're dealing with the world with something that has to do with a body of water. So that's actually part of the same word as the shot line above. But you'll notice on the Abraham manuscript, he's divided, the scribe has divided one Egyptian word into two. So the phonetic part gives us paragraph number one, and the determinative, which is part of the same word, is paragraph number two.

John Dehlin [02:53:19] And rfm. If you want to. If you want to read to us what he makes of the word lake. What would you do? You want to read that? Can you read it?

RFM [02:53:33] Well, I Think it's important to note that these occur in the margins immediately next to the beginning of a new paragraph each time. They are very carefully placed in that location relative to the English translation. Apparently. The translation, I've got to say, and what it looks like we have here, opposite Lake in Egyptian is the text of Abraham, chapter one and verse 12.

Robert Ritner [02:54:03] And it was done after the manner of the Egyptians. And it came to pass that the priest, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera,

John Dehlin [02:54:11] it's directly violence upon me that they might slay me also as they did those virgins upon this altar, and that you might have a knowledge of this altar. I will refer you to the representation at the commencement of this. What Record all of that. That whole sentence, just to kind of drive this home. That whole sentence that we just read was Joseph Smith's attempt to translate the word lake.

Robert Ritner [02:54:49] Exactly. And he only got part of it because he has part of the word lake. The rest of the word for lake, he gives another whole paragraph to. And of course, that's a critically important passage in the translation because it refers to facsimile 1, which we know is the Book of Hor.

RFM [02:55:12] Right. And which the character that he's ostensibly translating is right next to in the papyrus.

Robert Ritner [02:55:18] It's part of the adjoining text that goes with that picture.

RFM [02:55:22] Right.

John Dehlin [02:55:23] So should I show that. Should I show a close up of that really quick? Will that be helpful?

RFM [02:55:27] Yeah. What these four characters on this page are basically going to do is interpret or have the text of the Book of Abraham, chapter one, verses 12, 13, 14 and probably 15 right next to them.

John Dehlin [02:55:43] So here RFM is the second paragraph, which is the second half. Tell me if I'm wrong, Dr. Ritner. The second half of the word lake. Right.

Robert Ritner [02:55:57] That's it. That's the determinative.

John Dehlin [02:55:59] And Joseph's translation, I have to always say, quotes Joseph translation of the second half of the word lake. He translates it into. It was made after the form of a what? Rfm Bedstead, such as was had among the Chaldeans. And it stood before the gods of who?

RFM [02:56:29] Elkanah, Livna, Mamakra, Koresh. It's a lot easier for me because I'm just reading out of the book of Abraham in my scripture. Yeah, it's easy for me because this is verses 13 and 14 together in

John Dehlin [02:56:40] this one paragraph in the actual published version of the book of Abraham. Keep going.

RFM [02:56:44] Right. And the reason it's significant is because it says it stood before the gods of El. El Kena, Libna, Makrakoresh, and also a God like unto that of Pharaoh, king of Egypt. And then it says in verse 14 that you may have an understanding of these gods. I have given you the fashion of them in the figures at the beginning, which manner of figures is called by the Chaldeans, rawlinos, which signifies hieroglyphics. So in other words, here at the very beginning of the text of the Book of Abraham, it's referring you Back to the four Canopic figures, figures in facsimile 1, which are identified as those same gods as the text identifies them as. And it says, I'm going to refer you to the figures of them at the beginning of this record. So goodbye to the theory and the apologetic that the facsimile, I.e. facsimile 1, was someplace far and distant away from the Text of Abraham, chapter one. Because they've got to say that, right? Because obviously we don't have the Book of Abraham right next to the recovered papyri that contains the vignette of facsimile 1. It's just not there. So therefore the apologetic is put forward. Well, we have occasions when illustrations in the papyri don't occur immediately adjacent to what it is they're describing, and in some cases they're really far away. So that's what they want to have to preserve their argument for the Book of Abraham. But the Book of Abraham itself confutes that argument, because here, the text of the Book of Abraham says, here's figure one. It's right at the beginning of this record, and I'm going to refer you to it. So it's not someplace distant from Figure 1, the text of Abraham. The Book of Abraham is represented by the Book of Abraham as being right next to facsimile one of the Book of Abraham.

Robert Ritner [02:58:33] I want to point out also that here we have something that's very clearly an example of the working out of the translation. Because if we go back to the handwriting, you put that back up on the screen. This is in the writing of the scribes who are working under Smith's direction, under his dictation. This is a live witness to how it was actually being done. We can continue on down the line and look at other words. The word great. So it's the great lake. That's the third grouping, which spells out its own paragraph. And then it. Then the next group is for the isu, the God of the moon. That's the last paragraph. So all this is part of one sentence that says in my translation, What have we actually Got here. We have a broken part that's missing and it says, osiris shall be towed. And then we've got, starting off of what's preserved into the great lake of Khonsu and into the great lake of Khonsu, or just the great lake of Khonsu has produced all of those paragraphs,

John Dehlin [02:59:55] has produced how many verses in the book of Abraham?

RFM [02:59:58] 5.

John Dehlin [02:59:59] So into the.

Robert Ritner [03:00:01] I want to point out something else is that this is not just one man's handwriting because we have these over and over again in this collection. I don't know what the status of is of the publication of these documents, whether the Church has produced all of them, but I think if you go to the next slide, you're going to find there are duplicate hand copies of the same thing. So it isn't just one scribes reproducing of it, but the next one and the next one and the next one. So here we have even more. This is by a different hand than the one we had before.

John Dehlin [03:00:40] It says page two of the Book of Abraham manuscript.

Robert Ritner [03:00:43] So this manuscript at the top is of the three water signs. So you can tell this is by a different scribe which is producing the same paragraph. So it's not a question that we've got only one copies of this. We have many, many, many copies done over and over again by these scribes that all pair up the same Egyptian next to the same English paragraph. And that's what I began to see, is that, oh my God, they're doing this over and over again. That's why we have a consistent example of this is a definition of that. So there is no question that that's what this is that we have now by multiple writings, by multiple writers, all of whom are taking dictation from Smith. So we can see a live witness to the actual process, which was denied by the Church, but was held by them in their own collection, whether they realized it or not. And so that is the most important thing that I pointed out in that article that I did on my website, is that we can actually recover the witness to the process and that it's understandable because for reasons we've now talked about, that's how Egyptian was understood at the time. In the stage, in the ages before the decipherment of hieroglyphs by Champollion, people

John Dehlin [03:02:12] thought that one character of Egyptian could be a paragraph.

Robert Ritner [03:02:17] And that's clearly what Smith had done. What we've seen examples of him doing it himself with the Katumin story. And his scribes are following his dictation, doing it in multiple hand copies that are in these other documents that make up the Abraham Alphabet or whatever you want to call it. All this. This group of papers. I have no idea how many papers are in there. And I also don't know what. As I said, I don't know what the stage is of the publication. I know that Brian Hoglid was involved with issuing those in book form. I don't know if I've ever appeared in print.

RFM [03:03:02] By the way, Dr. Ritner, that very first page with the scribe that we talked about having five verses of the Book of Abraham, chapter one in it, translated from those four characters. Did you notice who the scribe whose handwriting it is?

Robert Ritner [03:03:19] I don't remember off the top of my head. I'm sorry. Michael Marquardt probably does know.

RFM [03:03:24] It's okay. It was on the screen.

Robert Ritner [03:03:25] It's Warren Parish. It's actually labeled as being Parish. Yes.

RFM [03:03:29] And of course, Warren Parrish is extremely important in this discussion because he is, I think, the only one of the scribes in this process who talks about what happened. And this is in 1830. What is it? It's from a couple years later. Warren Parish had left the church by this point, but he's relating what happened when he's actually writing these words that we can see on this paper as they're being dictated by Joseph Smith. Here's what he says. Quote, this is Warren Parrish. I have set by his side. That's Joseph Smith's side. I have set by his side and pinned down the translation of the Egyptian hieroglyphics as he claimed to receive it by direct inspiration of heaven. Period, end of quote.

Robert Ritner [03:04:24] Well, that's again, a direct witness to the process. And here is the written equivalent of that. This is what Parish said he was writing.

RFM [03:04:31] Yeah. It's just so fascinating to me that here we have one of the few witnesses and maybe the only scribes who talks about what happened and doing it. And here we have the piece of paper that he must be talking about.

Robert Ritner [03:04:42] Exactly. You can line them all up. This is a smoking gun, as I've said. I don't know how you can fail to recognize that. That that's what's going on here.

RFM [03:04:56] Well, here's how you can.

Robert Ritner [03:04:58] Here's another copy, by the way. You can see. Here's yet one more.

John Dehlin [03:05:01] Okay, let me pull the screen up. Go ahead.

Robert Ritner [03:05:05] So here on two sheets of papyrus. So here we can see this X form. You can see in the lower left hand corner. That's the word where great. But if you look directly above it, up at the top on the upper left there you can see the three horizontal signs that are part of the writing of determinative for water. So here and again, I don't know which, I don't remember which scribe did page Q which has been labeled that way to keep them separate. But this one begins with the end of the word lake. Then it has great. Then you have Khonsu at the bottom, which has produced its own paragraph and the scribe has copied it twice, once at the bottom on the left and again at the upper right. And you can see this is a different hand copy than the one we've seen before. So there is no way you can disassociate these hieratic pieces from the corresponding English because they keep turning up in multiple hand copies in different formats over and over and over again. They must have been spending vast amounts of time recopying and recopying and the same thing. Why they kept doing it over and over, I don't know. But it's enough to establish beyond the shadow of a doubt that these Egyptian pieces are the corresponding signs to the long Egyptian to the long English text. And again, every single one of these that's on the left hand side of the Smith copies correspond to something that can be found in just the first two lines of the Egyptian text. There they all are highlighted in red.

John Dehlin [03:06:54] And then here's a slide, basically taking the characters from the papyrus, mapping them to the handwritten translation, transcription symbols with the corresponding paragraphs next to the symbols.

Robert Ritner [03:07:11] And you'll notice this is yet another hand manuscript on the left hand side of the English.

John Dehlin [03:07:18] And again those characters actually say,

Robert Ritner [03:07:22] it says the great Lake of Khonsu.

John Dehlin [03:07:25] Yeah, right. And it says on the slide the selected Egyptian text from column 2, line 1 begins with the end. The determinative of the word for lake reads the great Lake of Khonsu. And he's getting three paragraphs of Book of Abraham text from that.

Robert Ritner [03:07:49] And you'll notice it's quotation from me. This is taken directly from my publication. So the reference to me there in that line above the picture is me talking about myself, because this is a direct quotation of me.

John Dehlin [03:08:05] All right, you are the selected. Yeah, right, yeah.

Robert Ritner [03:08:09] But again, the English translation for these hieratic lines is also directly quoted as being the words I say it is by Michael D. Rhodes, by Nibley, by John Gee. So we're all in agreement how to read the Egyptian that is on the right hand side. The only one who is not in agreement with how to read the Egyptian on the right hand side is Joseph Smith. We have his reading on the left hand side. So when I did my book, if I had made this understanding previously, I would have added it in for each of those sections when I did Book of the Dead, the Book of Breathings, because that's how Smith was actually translating. So that's the new revelation that I had in the online publication, is that you could actually match up these manuscript pages with the surviving papyrus. And it explained everything.

John Dehlin [03:09:18] And here's one more photograph of page N from the Book of Abraham manuscript. And it's basically just we're beating a dead horse at this point.

Robert Ritner [03:09:27] Tell us what they see more parts of the. I think that's the end of Horace's wife's name. I'd have to go back and look at it more carefully. But again, it's from the beginning part of that text.

John Dehlin [03:09:39] And it's just more examples of the character in the left hand column. That's an Egyptian character followed to the right by large paragraphs of the Book of Abraham.

Robert Ritner [03:09:51] Correct.

John Dehlin [03:09:51] Here's the handwritten version and then here's the typed written version. And it tells you again, what are these? Some of these words mean. I think you probably mentioned that.

Robert Ritner [03:10:03] Well, there you're born of.

John Dehlin [03:10:07] So he'll take the word born of and rfm. What do we get from the word born of in the Book of Abraham?

RFM [03:10:14] Well, I can't tell from this, but we get several more verses. And I think this is an important slide because it shows that not only are those four glyphs from immediately above and to the left repeated a number of times with interpretations that are the Book of Abraham, but it continues into this box with the red, the line immediately below it. It does appear that Joseph Smith, from his learning in Hebrew, understood Egyptian to be read from right to left. And that's why when they appear from top to bottom in the margins, these characters, when you see them on the papyrus scrolls themselves, they are actually being copied from right to left.

Robert Ritner [03:10:59] Well, I will give Joseph Smith a hint. There he is reading it in the correct direction.

RFM [03:11:04] Okay, can you give him another one? I don't know. I just got to bring this up and I apologize because I did happen to notice that there is an actual scroll that Joseph Smith had in his possession of a woman whose real Egyptian name was Tahsheret. Men. Did I get that correct?

Robert Ritner [03:11:22] That's the Book of the Dead Papyrus number two. That's the long, complicated one.

RFM [03:11:27] Right. And the min. The m. I n the end of her name is a theophoric suffix for the God men, is that correct? The creator God.

Robert Ritner [03:11:36] Yes, the name means the daughter of men.

RFM [03:11:39] Okay, So I can't get around the fact, or at least the impression I have that Joseph Smith comes up with a made up Egyptian name for a woman which he gives as Katu Min, which appears to have the same actual Egyptian theophoric suffix as a real Egyptian woman's name. What do you think about that, Dr. Ritner?

Robert Ritner [03:12:03] Well, the last syllable is. Okay, unfortunately he appended it to the wrong papyrus. He put it on the Papyrus of Amenhotep,

RFM [03:12:14] but still.

Robert Ritner [03:12:19] So he's used the word min somewhere in his discussion of the papyrus, but on the wrong one.

RFM [03:12:24] Okay, I'm getting John Gee on the phone over this one. I think we got something.

Robert Ritner [03:12:28] But by the way, see that kind of argument that, okay, he's got men, that's in there somewhere, but you'll notice it's not in the Book of Abraham text.

RFM [03:12:38] No, it's not. But I think there's an interesting connection which maybe never got developed by Joseph Smith or. I have no idea. It just seems an obvious connection, but I can't tell why it's there or what it's doing. And I'm talking about that paragraph describing Kah Tumen and obviously it being one of these three virgins. Okay, leaving that to the side, I'll try and be a little more serious here. If that's not serious. I do have to present to you and allow you to respond to the apologetic argument related to the Joseph Smith papers that you've just gone over because it appears to be very damaging to the idea of Joseph Smith's ability to actually translate Egyptian, where it looks like he's taking these partial words and translating them into full paragraphs of text that end up in the Book of Abraham. And therefore it has been popular for apologists, John Gee primarily among them, and I think he was preceded in this by Hugh Nibley to have to come up with some other explanation for these papers. And the explanation that I've heard is that Joseph Smith is not involved in this in any way. Joseph Smith has already produced the translation of the Book of Abraham by revelation. Some way he's done this and now that he's gone, now that the translation is complete, now that the papyri's still hanging around, his scribes get together on a rainy Sunday afternoon or something and they decide that separate and apart from Joseph Smith, they want to engage in a project whereby they are going to reverse engineer the text that Joseph Smith has already received by revelation that is this part of the book of Abraham and try and connect it to certain Egyptian glyphs in the papyrus. And that that is really what is going on in these Kirtland Egyptian papers or Abraham Egyptian papers. Not Joseph Smith translating from the glyphs into the book of Abraham, but scribes separate. And apart from Joseph Smith trying to reverse engineering the translation back into the glyphs themselves. I'm sure you've heard that argument before.

Robert Ritner [03:14:46] Actually, I hadn't heard that argument before.

RFM [03:14:50] Well, what do you think?

Robert Ritner [03:14:51] It's ridiculous. Particularly since you have the surviving descriptions of the scribes themselves, such as Mr. Phillips, who says that he took dictation as Smith was telling him what they said. And we have writing that has been matched to be in his own hand. And we have the copy of the hieroglyphs. So it's clear we have Smith a recording. We have a stenographer's report from a recording session where Phillips was acting as a stenographer taking dictation from Smith along with various other scribes. We have these things in other hand copies. There is no reason for the scribes who to all professed ignorance of Egyptian and all recognized that Smith alone among them could quote, unquote, understand Egyptian, could read it. They didn't attempt this. They never attempted it. All they did and all they said repeatedly is they deferred to his understanding of this. The only people they thought could read Egyptian, who were around them in their ignorance was Michael Chandler, who gave them the ideas in the first place, and Smith. So there is no way, none, zero, absolutely excluded that. This is random musings on the part of the scribes who would have no goal in making multiple copies of this with the Egyptian corresponding that had to be coming from Smith, as they themselves witnessed in their own autobiographies, or Phillips. At least this is how it worked.

RFM [03:16:29] And I think anything. You mean Warren Parrish there, you're saying Phillips Parrish.

Robert Ritner [03:16:33] I'm saying Phillips. I'm sorry.

RFM [03:16:35] Right. And I've got to tell you that from my own point of view, I think that Katumin, as an argument in favor of the Book of Mormon, as weak as it may be, is miles ahead of this argument about the reverse engineering theory because it seems to be a theory that's based not on any evidence, but actually in contradiction of the evidence. And it's obvious to me at least to be created out of whole climate cloth as an explanation for why it is that These Abraham Egyptian papers do not represent what they seem to pretty clearly represent.

Robert Ritner [03:17:10] Well, it's again example of where the facts which are stubborn things are in the way of the interpretations the Mormons would like. Essentially over the years all the facts that have come out have shown that the Book of Abraham is a forgery. One can call it a pious forgery if you like, but nothing has ever come out in support of it. And so the desperate and really rather pathetic attempts to expand the link of the stroll to try to explain how it wasn't there that the word translate doesn't mean what we know. It means that even the internal references can't be internal references. When it says right next to the beginning, oh, they didn't really mean that because maybe they could have put the illustration somewhere far, far away. You know, anything possible to discredit it and no supporting background. And as I mentioned at the beginning of last time, we have modern traditions about Abraham's sacrifice that were being celebrated recently by Islamic nations. And I misspoke. The Islamic tradition changes the sacrifice of Isaac into the sacrifice of Ishmael. One of your viewers pointed that out to me and I stand corrected on that. But the Jewish and the Christian tradition have it as Isaac, which is why I said what I said. But what the point there, and the reason I'm bringing it up is you have multiple traditions about Abraham that are alive now. A Jewish tradition, a Christian tradition, an Islamic tradition. Islamic tradition is one of the most important in all of Islam. So if there were a tradition in late antiquity about Abraham himself being sacrificed, it would survive in some manner. And attempts by Milstein to say that, well, there are some medieval Jewish speculators who linked Egyptian gods to the patriarchs. This is just nonsense that doesn't survive as an ongoing living tradition in which Abraham was sacrificed in Elkinh or attempt was made. None of that is justification. No reasonable person can believe these piddly little attempts. They are really, really sad. So here we have over multiple hot copies by attested witnesses who describe their own activities as the stenographer of Smith. And there it is in signature there next to his piece of paper with the Egyptian next to the translation. I don't know how you can reasonably argue against it if you wish to be willfully blind. As I have said before, obviously no amount of reason can make you change your mind. But if you ever open a dictionary and find an English word in the upper left hand corner and its definition on the right hand side and you decide those two don't necessarily come together Then you can accept the reasoning that you just explained to me. Because we in our society, even back in the 1800s, knew to put the left, the word on the left hand side and the corresponding English on the right. Any translation of any 1800s dictionary would have done that. And that would have been known to Mr. Parish and all the other copyists as well. And so if you're going to lay out a dictionary, you would follow that format and you would put your word you were translating in the upper left and the English would be on the right, just as we do in our Webster's and every other dictionary to this day. To this day, anyone knows how to work with a dictionary. I have six year old relatives who could figure out that that's how that would work. And Mr. Parrish could have done the same. There is no possibility under heaven that Mr. Parrish thought he was doing something else. And if, in fact, since English works the way it does, if it were a whole paragraph corresponds to Egyptian, if he were starting off with the English and then trying to make it fit with the Egyptian, he would put the English first and the Egyptian second. That's not how he did it. He did it the way we make a normal dictionary, which is why I and anyone else with a reasonable brain would understand it as the Egyptian word corresponds to the following paragraph. And it was done at the dictation of Smith, as Mr. Parish himself witnesses. And here in the discussion of by your own hand upon paper here we have Mr. Parish's own hand there specifically writing out the Egyptian, writing out the corresponding English translation. I don't know how anyone reasonably can deny this. It seems an open and shut case. It's done. I mean, I will not return to it again in another published form because any article that's made against it is just not worth the time and trouble. If Gee can't accept that, then he can't accept anything. In his recent on screen interview, when he's asked at one of these sessions, is he going to respond to the article that I wrote, he said no, he thought it was in poor taste and who cares? Well, it's not in poor taste when I've given the reasons why I did it. There are good academic reasons for exploration, explaining why this was done, that it follows a pattern that people had used before the understanding of how hieroglyphs works. So I will give Smith credit for understanding that that's how people thought it could be done. He got nothing right, not a single word. But his understanding was what it was. In agreement with the Renaissance, not with the 1800s. Consequently, he was outdated in his approach. He was not inspired. He did not produce an accurate translation in any way, shape or form. There's no way to justify that. And as for the question, who cares? Well, I know a lot of people care. I know that from all the letters I have now received by email from people reaching out about how the Book of Abram has had such an unbelievably large impact on their lives, both for good or ill. And it certainly impacted them. So it certainly should care. And it must care to Mr. Gee, because he wouldn't have devoted 100% of his career to producing works on this subject. He has never written on it. Well, he has written actually a few other minor articles, but those are simply done in order to give himself a patina of scholarship so that he could then do his primary work, which was to enunciate his beliefs about the Book of Abraham. It has now become clear to me over the years that John Yee did not come to me to Yale to get an education which I provided him, but which he rarely uses. He came to me to get an imprimatur so that he could put on his curriculum vita, on his statement of his life's work that he had a Ph.D. from, from Yale University. So he came for the piece of paper. He didn't come for the information, because he's using the information. Not at all. He's using the piece of paper to justify why he did what he did. And it must be very disappointing to him to have his own professor who taught him all of the ways in which one actually reads hieroglyphs and hieratic, to find out that someone like me basically disagrees with his apologetic writings because they fit none of those standards. But I wish to separate myself, as I have before, from his apologetic writings. I know that he could do scholarly work. I know it because I've graded it. And unfortunately, when it comes to the Book of Abraham, he clearly has a different viewpoint. And so he cares very deeply, regardless of what he says. And I know there's another factor on which he cares, because that is his sole source of employment. He is paid, unlike myself, he is paid for the purpose of propping up the Book of Abraham. So the Church is sending him to vast numbers of conferences where I have to pay my own way. So I go to a conference, and there's John Gee yet again, talking about something else, about the Book of Mormohan, yet again, these conferences that he has used to inflate his standing as his curriculum data are in many cases the result of an open casting call being given out to the scholarly community. We are hosting a conference on topic, so. And so anyone who wants to come is welcome. You're hearing my dog barking in the back because mail delivery is coming.

John Dehlin [03:26:50] He's supporting you in your feelings about John G. Your dog feels passionately as well.

Robert Ritner [03:26:56] So these, these conferences, these casting calls, basically, or anyone who wants to come and pay their own way, you're welcome to come and give a talk and we will publish it afterwards. So there's not necessarily much in the way of quality control here. In order for them to put on the conference, which are usually state supported, they have to have a certain number of warfare bodies. So a large number of people will turn up. John Gee has gone to a remarkably large number of them because the Maxwell Institute can pay his way. I only get a limited amount of travel and I have shepherded it in a way that I can keep using it over the years and not run out of funds. So I'm not even attending all of these conferences. But just because he's attended the conferences doesn't mean that his performance is particularly good. And it also means it was well received. And it also means that the remarks that he has made, even in some of his on screen performances, the recordings of his discussions, of his books, where he was at conferences, he says in one he was at a conference in Warsaw and there he presented to the audience Facsimile one and he told them it was an ancient document and that this he then linked in his discussion before this Polish argument, this post Holish audience, he explained how this correlated with execration texts and these were surviving ancient Egyptian practices. And his only remark to his audience of the the faithful was that he wouldn't go into detail, but the response from the Egyptologists in the audience was oh, that's amazing. Do they do this for animals too? Now let's move on to my next book. So what he's basically told us in that brief little clip that I watched recently because I was asked if I would please do that for these interviews, is that he a assuming he's telling the truth and not lying to us, to the audience he presented to his Polish audience, Facsimile one, that's the way he described it, as an ancient document. Now that means he lied because we know that Facsimile one is a reworked cut, either a wood cut or a lead cut, whatever the original production was to make a modification of an ancient document. So Facsimile One is not ancient. It is not. The surviving papyrus is ancient. So if he presented Facsimile one to his Polish audience as ancient, he has committed egregious scholarly malpractice. That should get him fired. That is inexcusable. He then talks to an audience who are Polish, who don't know anything about these Mormon engravings. They've never seen Facsimile one, According to his comments, what guy then says the reaction is he implies they are all Egyptologists, which is not necessarily true because these conferences are open to the public usually. So there will be many people in the audience who've never heard any of this, who come in simply for information or entertainment. He says they responded with a silly question about, oh, do they slaughter animals? That's not the comment that a professional Egyptologist would make. So it is highly unlikely that his Polish questioner was a professional Egyptologist, despite what John Gee had to say. So he's misrepresented them to his American audience at one of these fair Mormon meetings in an August meeting. So he's misrepresented the papyrus, he's misrepresented the facsimile, he's misrepresented the Egyptologist in the audience, and that's what he tells his Mormon faithful audience, that here I have hoodwinked to the Egyptologists because I was able to show that this was a legitimate ancient Egyptian document and I got away with it. Ha ha ha. That's my scholarship. That's a quick synopsis of John Gee's own performance in front of a group of questioning Mormons on a session devoted to the Book of Abraham. And this was his presentation entitled Book of Abraham. I presume he began that talk by remarking, I believe it was in that one that he was, quote unquote, comic relief for this session. Well, from a point of view of scholarship, he was comic relief, but comic in very bad taste. So if there's a question of poor taste, it's there. It's John Gee's performance that was simply inexcusable, bad representation of scholarship. And in that, he doesn't actually explain how or how in so what way the image that he showed, doctored or not, is related to execration magic. I wrote the book on execration magic, quite literally. That is my dissertation that he has referred to. He studied execration magic with me at Yale. He knows what execration magic is. He didn't bother to explain any of that to his Mormon audience. I can only hope he tried to explain it better to His Polish audience, they undoubtedly didn't understand it. If they made questions like he reports that they did. Clearly his Mormon audience couldn't possibly have understood it because John wouldn't do them the favor or the dignity of even explaining what he was talking about. I don't know. Does everyone know what the term execration magic is? That's a very complicated term. We talked about it a bit last time when I talked about human sacrifice. So if you've asked me about Hejan Ghi's performances and vis a vis this particular paper, there's his response. It was in poor taste and he doesn't care. Actually, it was in good taste. Mine was in good scholarly form. I pointed out what I was talking about. I explained it carefully to the reader, and I let them draw their own conclusions, which people will do.

RFM [03:33:36] Dr. Ritner, thank you for that. I have to ask you this question because, as I think you know, there has been a story that has circulated widely within the relevant community of Mormon studies and scholarship having to do with John Gee when he was your student at Yale University. And the story that circulates, although there are some variations to it, has to do with John Gee's dissertation, that he was in the process of writing his dissertation, that you were, of course, on his dissertation committee, and that there erupted some kind of controversy between you and John Gee over the subject matter of his dissertation to the point where you were actually removed from his dissertation committee. Have you heard that rumor?

Robert Ritner [03:34:32] I have heard that rumor. In fact, I've seen clips online of that. I was notified about this some years ago. I even went to our legal department at the University of Chicago, and I strongly considered an active lawsuit for slander. A man by the name of Peterson, whom I've never met, who was not at Yale, nor was he in any way involved in any of this, is making statements to this effect.

John Dehlin [03:35:01] This is Daniel C. Peterson, I'm assuming. Rfm.

RFM [03:35:04] Yes, that would be Daniel C. Peterson, I presume,

Robert Ritner [03:35:09] if you. We were holding this slide in advance, but we can pull it up now, because I'm ready to answer that question right now.

Academic Credentials and Professional Disputes Discussed

John Dehlin [03:35:18] Okay. And by the way, before we jump to that, I just want to ask you to confirm something, Dr. Ritner, which is, I was informed that John Gee was at Berkeley before he was at Yale. And I actually corresponded with someone who was a colleague of Guy's at Berkeley. And what I was told by this person is that Guy was sort of washed out of Berkeley with just a master's because they did not feel like his scholarship was worthy of, on, you know, continuing status towards a PhD. So I don't want Yale to feel bad that it was like John Gee's second attempt at a PhD. But have you, have you ever heard anything to confirm this idea that he was sort of pushed out of Berkeley before he went to Yale?

Robert Ritner [03:36:17] I don't, I don't know anything about that, honestly. I do know that he was a transfer student from Berkeley. Berkeley to Yale. We accepted him.

John Dehlin [03:36:25] Well, I'll just say that someone who.

Robert Ritner [03:36:27] That was a group decision. I don't know more than that.

John Dehlin [03:36:34] Okay, I'll just say someone has corresponded with me who was with him at Berkeley, who said he was washed out of that program intentionally with the masters. So having said that, now that we've

Robert Ritner [03:36:43] recorded so many hours, I don't even remember all of the pertinence what I've talked about. I do know that when I first arrived at Yale, not long after I was there, I received an anonymous letter from a correspondent, or at least I can't recall who the cinder was, which included the so called characters of Joseph Smith from the golden plates. And I was asked if any of these things could be Egyptian. I responded back to the, to the effect that some of them looked vaguely Egyptian because as I've think I pointed out in this commentary before I could look at cloud patterns and imagine some Egyptian in those as well, so that none of that is Egyptian, but I could imagine some of it sort of looks like Egyptian. Well, apparently that remark was sufficient to make it seem that I was sympathetic. So instead of being anti Mormon, I think someone was chest, was testing the waters to see if I would be pro Mormon. And so when John was sent to me, there was not, as I recall, any particular big deal made about what his religious background was. And we took him just as we would any student because at that time we already had a female Mormon student who was making A's. I don't know what she has done subsequently. She's now, I believe, married and I don't know what's happened to her in her career subsequently. But having Mormon students was not an issue. So we accepted John from his master's program into our graduate program. With regard to the graduate program, he then took all the years of classwork in which I gave him A's with no problem. And I had been getting information that he was doing things on the side, but they never came up in class, so that wasn't a problem. His dissertation topic was on Dr. Ritner.

RFM [03:38:39] When you say doing things on the side. I mean, are you talking about selling drugs or what?

Robert Ritner [03:38:43] Oh, I'm sorry. He was writing articles for Mormon publications that were defending the book Abraham in ways I did not know about.

John Dehlin [03:38:54] That would be farms at the time, right?

Robert Ritner [03:38:56] That would be. Yes. I disassociated myself from those when I first found out about them in the Dialogue I article. And it is only then when I wrote the dialogue article and I pointed out that I was disavowed because I just. Because I had cited Nibley when I was doing an earlier article and I needed to cite a passage and because Guy was my student. Those two things didn't. Did not in and of themselves mean that I was endorsing Geese approach in these farms related articles that in the 2002 publication I had just found out about Gee's work on these things and Guy in these articles was using my name to justify his odd interpretations. And he was using my citation of Nibley to justify Nibley's scholarship when I was basically just citing it for the photographs, which were all that was available at the time. So my note in the dialogue article and I just said the same thing in the Journal of Near Eastern Studies article the following year for Egyptologists was that in his. And I would have to pull up the article to be precise. But I said in John Geese apologetic writings, he is not following the practice that was customary at Yale and that I had not seen or authorized these or endorsed these them when he wrote them. That's all. I did not say that John was a bad scholar. I did not say that John was incapable of scholarship. I did not say anything particularly negative at that time. And that was after I had already withdrawn from the dissertation because the dissertation had already been published by them.

RFM [03:40:45] Can you tell us about the circumstances surrounding your withdrawing from the disservice dissertation?

Robert Ritner [03:40:49] Absolutely. Let me do that now. And this is the read. I'm waiting for John to pull up the next slide.

John Dehlin [03:40:55] Okay, I've got it ready. I was just letting you guys.

Robert Ritner [03:40:58] So what. What you. What I can't show you at this point is the letter that I wrote at that time. When I. When I left Yale in 1996 to take up residence at Chicago, having to move all of my equipment, et cetera, I had a whole new set of duties, a new set of students that I had to deal with. I had at that time a chapter from John Gee, his first chapter of his dissertation, which was on the requirements of ritual purity in ancient Egypt. And I knew at that point already in 1996 that the reason he chose the topic of ritual purity was because it related in some way, shape or form to the book of Abraham. Because of all of his classwork. Related in some way, shape or form to the book of Abraham. Always, yeah.

RFM [03:41:53] The three virgins who are sacrificed because of their purity.

Robert Ritner [03:41:56] Exactly. So this was a topic that was brought up. And we had no problems with it because it's a totally legitimate topic. Ritual purity is a feature one has in ancient Egyptian thought and cultic practices. Before you go into a temple space, you have to fast for a period of time. You have to gargle your mouth with natron, which is what the Egyptians use as a mouth cleaner. It's a naturally a carboning bicarbonate. And you had to undergo other privations of various sorts in order to be pure of mind and body before you would go into holy space. So studying that was completely legitimate. And there was no pushback by myself or my colleague, Kelly Simpson. Committees are never composed of one person. Because John had done the bulk of his work with me, and because I worked with religion, I was the logical person to do it. And I agreed. Not a problem. However, when I got the first chapter, I could see that there were all sorts of issues of dealing with the evidence that were complicated. Not that they were necessarily bad, but that they required a great deal more explanation. And that these would have to be spun out into a much larger chapter with more footnotes. And perhaps separated off into other issues and other chapters. And I could see this was going to be an incredible amount of change. So I wrote him back a very detailed, annotated document. In which I pointed out all the mistakes, changes and expansions that had to be made. With many changes, many mistakes, many, many things that could be tweaked or otherwise improved. And said, all this needs to be done in chapter one in order for this to be a workable document. But for me to be able to keep going over this shift number of changes I would make in your document, which is my job, by the way, as dissertation supervisor, I am supposed to point out corrections and improvements. But for me to be able to do this properly and to give you the attention that you would need to have a successful completed dissertation for your own benefit. You need someone who is with you in New Haven, Connecticut, not in Chicago, and who can work with you to find the appropriate sources and do close work on this manuscript. And therefore, because I have all of these new complications now in Chicago, and I cannot provide the surface that you clearly need to do an acceptable dissertation that will get you a proper job that I recommend that you find someone at Yale who can take over my responsibilities. And I am sorry, but I am withdrawing from your committee and you need someone you can work with, and that person isn't me. Now, I have the original letter I wrote. I kept a copy. It's in a folder that's in my office now. But unfortunately, my office is still sealed away thanks to the coronavirus, and I cannot get into it to spend the time to find my John Gee file. But I have the original letter there with that proof that that's what happened. I withdrew from John Gee's dissertation. I was not forced off what was John. So my colleague, Kelly Simpson took over my duties as being the chief reader and shepherded the dissertation on to its completion. At no point was John ever told by me or by anyone else he couldn't do that topic. At no point was it said the topic was bad. The problem was that the citations and the way it was discussed were problematic. And I went point by point saying all the things that needed correcting and he would need it to work with someone who could handle it. And it was just going to be overwhelmingly time consuming with me taking on a new job with a new group of students, a new set of problems that I couldn't do it. And so I was withdrawn. And there's no dispute about that's the way things happened. And now if we can pull up the following slide.

RFM [03:46:34] And while we're doing that, Dr. Ritner, was John Guy upset by the corrections you gave him?

Robert Ritner [03:46:40] No.

RFM [03:46:41] Was he upset by the fact that you had to withdraw from being his advisor in his dissertation?

Robert Ritner [03:46:47] Well, here's what he says in the published form of his completed dissertation. That's the next slide. So you can't. Anyone who wants to read John Gee's dissertation can find it on university microfilms, which comes out of Michigan. So yesterday afternoon, I asked one of my colleagues, our bibliographer, to please pull up a copy of John's dissertation and the acknowledgments. So here is the beginning on page one of his dissertation. And you'll notice at the beginning of his acknowledgments, right at the very beginning. Now, I want to quote for you John Gee's own explanation of what happened in the many years that have passed before reaching this point. Many have contributed financially and materially to the person production of this dissertation without whom I would not have been able to produce it. Robert Ritner, as my initial dissertation advisor, provided helpful comments on the early drafts of this work and prevented me from going in several wrong directions. When Professor Ritner was unable to complete the task of advising the dissertation, Professor William Kelly Simpson kindly moved in to help senior the dissertation to completion the end of that section. He goes on to thank others. But this is the point that I am discussed and praised and thanked for that bit of work in the very first paragraph. So there was no bad blood between John and myself until 2002 when I went on record as opposing the Book of Abraham. And then with ever increasing frequency and unpleasantness, John began attacking my work. So this is a double edged sword for John. You have to realize, because to the extent that John attempts to discredit me, he discredits himself. Because if I am bad as an Egyptologist and I am his teacher, what does that say about his work? Bad teacher, bad student. So it's a problem for John. But John's livelihood is based entirely on being employed by the church to defend the Book of Abraham. He has no choice. He is paid to go to conferences to defend the Book of Abraham. So what can I say?

RFM [03:49:21] So for our chronology, John Gee's dissertation was published in 1998, is that correct?

Robert Ritner [03:49:28] I believe so, yes.

RFM [03:49:30] And if I'm understanding you correctly, there was no bad blood that you were aware of between you and John Gee throughout his being your student?

Robert Ritner [03:49:40] No. I gave him excellent grades all the way through. I encouraged his work, I encouraged the dissertation topic. I had no problem with that and I signed on. It's only when I suddenly found myself in a new job in a new place with new responsibilities that were just really overwhelming. And all the problems I saw with John's initial chapter, and that's not unusual, by the way, for someone's initial chapter to have problems with people who've never written a dissertation before. It's a complicated thing, but I realized that this was not. That it was not to John's benefit for me to be a long distance, you know, it's a long distance relationship. And trying to trade, you know, minutia back and forth over a long period of time when I had other demands on my time would have been bad for him. And we both realized it. And so that's why he had someone local to take over.

RFM [03:50:37] So that's the chronology. He thanks you in his dissertation, which is published in 1998. Everything's fine as far as you're concerned. You've gone your way. John Gee has gone his 2002. You appear in that video in which you say some things that do not support the. Well, let's just say the LDS apologetic version of the translation of the Book of Abraham from the papyrus, correct?

Robert Ritner [03:51:03] That's correct. And I don't know when the slander actually starts about being forcibly removed.

RFM [03:51:09] But it was sometimes after that. Correct. That you started hearing rumors and emails being sent your way containing the story about you being removed from the dissertation.

Robert Ritner [03:51:19] I've heard those only relatively recently,

John Dehlin [03:51:23] within

Robert Ritner [03:51:23] the past 10 years, I think.

RFM [03:51:26] Okay, so that would definitely be after 2002.

Robert Ritner [03:51:29] Oh, yeah, absolutely.

RFM [03:51:32] And those came to you by email, people sending you emails about what other people were saying. And this Peterson fellow, I've heard it

Robert Ritner [03:51:40] thirdhand and now I've actually seen clips.

RFM [03:51:44] When you say clips, you mean audio and video?

Robert Ritner [03:51:47] Yes.

RFM [03:51:48] Can you tell us about those?

Robert Ritner [03:51:51] Well, I think you may have them. We can put them up. It would take me a few minutes to find them, but I received an email which included a link.

RFM [03:52:03] That's okay. And to give credit where credit is due, there's an individual who goes by the name Tom who posted the Mormon Discussion message board who had accumulated several instantiations of this story. Most of them were told by Daniel C. Peterson, who's a professor at byu. And I think one of them was told by John Gee. Presumably John Gee initiated the story and then Professor Peterson, who was a good friend of John Gee, has simply been reiterating it.

Robert Ritner [03:52:31] Well, I don't know who Mr. Peterson is. He's never. He's. I may have cited him as producing some attempt to prop up the Book of Abraham. The name is familiar. I think he's somewhere in my bibliography, my book. But he wrote a very trivial article at some point, reacting. I don't know what he's a professor of.

RFM [03:52:52] He's a professor. He's a professor of Islamic studies at BYU who does really very little in Islamic studies and does a whole lot in Mormon apologetics.

Robert Ritner [03:53:03] Well, he's no authority on ancient Egyptian material and has no right to comment. And certainly he wouldn't be part of any discussion that had to do with John Geese dissertation, which would be internally the case at Yale University. And I even contacted Yale and asked them if they would like to release any of the material about the hearings of. And by hearings, I mean the oral defense that would have taken place with John Geese dissertation. Was there any paperwork about the change of. Me as a director? And what I was informed is that they would not, as a university release any of these papers until all of the participants were dead. So basically I can't do anything for as long as John is alive, as long as I'm alive, we can't release any of these papers. However, I have the smoking gun, which is to say I have the letter that I wrote to John in my own possession. If I could get to my office, I could reproduce that at any time. I can reproduce that. I considered putting it up on my own website the same way that I put up my reaction to the Church. But I don't know whether I wanted to go into an ad hominem attack because it goes into all the details of everything that's wrong with John's initial chapter of his dissertation, which is neither here nor there.

RFM [03:54:36] Right. Well, it's obvious to me that you took this quite personally. You considered a lawsuit based upon this.

Robert Ritner [03:54:43] I went to our legal department at the University of Chicago because Mr. Peterson, whom I've never met, has no justification for making claims that are completely inaccurate. I mean, I don't know how, in the strongest possible language, to say that this is inexcusable and Mr. Peterson should be ashamed of himself. I really probably should sue him. I don't know on the Internet whether that counts, if you're recorded, whether that counts as slander or libel, because slander is when spoken and libel is when it's recorded in some other manner. So with audio and video recordings, I don't know where those are fit. But it's disparagement through the Internet, and that's now illegal, and people are suing for that all the time. There are lawyers who make their living doing precisely that. But I'm not in this for the money or anything else, but I would like to correct the record that at no point, at no point did I disparage Mr. Gee's work or the validity of his dissertation topic or his right to carry out such a topic. Nor did I in any way find myself forcibly removed from his dissertation. I was the one who came up with the idea of removing. He went along with it, and he thanked me in his published dissertation explicitly, which no one would do if in fact I were a source of problems. Also want to point out that when John actually got the job at BYU years later, years later from my leaving him, that he wrote me by email to provide me with his new name and address. I mean, his new address. Not his name, but his new address and contact information, and he. And his new title. So he would not have done that if there was some sort of bad blood between us over the years. He would hardly have let me know. Here's how to reach out to him. So once again, Guy's own actions with his contact me, with the way he describes me in his dissertation, which for which I thank him because I did put in an awful lot of effort on that initial chapter, but I withdrew from it in good faith and for his own benefit and clearly it worked. He got a degree and he got a job. So he has nothing to complain about from me for that. Now his problem obviously is what I've done subsequently.

RFM [03:57:23] Right. And that gets into my, what hopefully will be my last question here, John. But Dr. Ritner, taking everything you said at face value, which makes sense to me, you've got especially that dissertation acknowledgment by John Gee, thanking you, corroborating your version of events, which is basically this is a big nothing and nothing happened. Why is it, do you think that John Gee would create a story which he must know is made out of whole cloth, that that puts you in such a negative light?

Robert Ritner [03:57:56] Well, I can't answer that. He has attempted to denigrate my own work. I pointed out how that's a double edged sword on his curriculum vita, on his statement of his life's work. He claims that he was the editor of a journal that did peer review, that is the journal of Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities, JSSEA out of Toronto, Canada. For a time, that small organization was having trouble finding administrative staff and they were looking for people to edit the journal, which is something that no one wants to do. We've had problems with this in Chicago. We've had problems with editing journals for the American Research center in Egypt, which is the bigger version of that, the thriving institution on which I sit in the board of directors, actually, that's based in Alexandria, Virginia. But John was able to volunteer and be accepted to be the overseer of their little magazine. And in it he decided that he would produce an editorial while he was handling the little magazine, which, by the way, no one else wanted to do. So it's a thankless task. So he put out an editorial in which he claims that it's a waste of time for things to be peer reviewed, that he does not believe in peer review. Now this is during his time, brief time as the head of a magazine of a struggling society. Jssea at the same time he's bragging that when he was as part of that organization he was head of a peer reviewed journal. So it says on his bio at Brigham Young University. Well, which way is it, John? Are you going to accept peer review and put it in your bio? Or in your actual document that you edited, you denigrate peer review. So he doesn't believe in scholars looking at his work because if they did, they would be highly critical. So I know he has defensive issues with anything I would have to say, because they're necessarily critical, because he's not using the standards that I required at Yale. And that's what I pointed out in my dialogue article, that's what I pointed out in my Journal of Near Eastern Studies article, is his apologetic articles did not follow Yale standards. And so he was hurt by that. And that's part of the problem. So much so that one of my subsequent books that has absolutely nothing to do with Mormon issues, this is a book on Libyan period Egyptian inscriptions from 1000 to 600 B.C. this I produced in a special series that's on translations of Egyptian texts. John Gee, as editor of this small Canadian failing magazine, decided to do a review for this article, even though it hadn't been properly sent to them for review. And it was when editors get books for review, it's supposed to be sent out to other writers to do a review. John did not inform anyone that he was doing this, but he chose to write a review all by himself that was not seen by anyone, but published by himself, completely unseen and unpeered, reviewed at the same time. He's saying peer review is unnecessary. And so what did he do? In that review of my book on Libyan period inscriptions, he produced what I can only describe as a savage hatchet job, accusing me of all manner of mistakes, most of which are incorrect. There are some typographical errors that he caught, but there are a large number of errors that he claims I committed and wrote a terrible, incontinent, incompetent book. It was a savage destruction of my book, attempting to attack and ruin my own status before my peers. That, to me, is a far greater problem than what John Gee has done about my being a dissertation chairman or not, because that was inexcusable. My book was an extremely important book. It remains an important book. His review was inexcusable. And after he printed this review, he then got, as did I, letters out of the blue from other scholars who had read this review, reacting to it, some canceling their membership in the Canadian Society, others writing an apology to me. People who are on the board of directors of the Canadian magazine pointed out they had never seen this review, did not authorize it to be printed, and that it was inexpensive, excusable. And they then followed it up with the very next issue with a formal Retraction. My scholarly associates put in that little magazine a formally formal retraction of the editorial that John Gee had published. You don't do that in my field. There is no such thing. Ever heard of. That is not just a slap on the wrist. That is a statement that your work is totally unacceptable. And we as editors are stepping in to say this was wrong. So that's the worst thing that John's done. I considered a reply. I've decided that the retraction is good enough. It's not worth my trouble to deal with this. But what John did was completely inexcusable by any scholar and it violates the standards of that journal, as they themselves said when they had to retract it and were forced. And they give me a lifetime subscription free to this magazine as a result of what John improperly did when he had this moment of power grab. And yet he still tries to boost his standing by saying he was the head of a peer reviewed journal when he not only didn't use peer reviewed, he actually denigrated it and then defied it by producing a hatchet job on my book. Totally unacceptable, as the editors subsequently said in an editorial printed critiquing John's work on my book, his review. So that's really all I have to say about that. And I thank you for letting me get that off my chest.

RFM [04:05:09] You're welcome. I will let you know that the leopard doesn't change his spots. And I don't think John Gee has either. Because when you're describing his hatchet job review of your book, it sounds very much like the review that John Gee did, the Interpreter, a Journal of Mormon Thought, whose editor is, by the way, Daniel C. Peterson, in which he did a similar hatchet job on Brian Hauglid and Robin Jensen's book, the fourth volume in the Joseph Smith Papers Project dealing with Joseph Smith's Revelations. Basically it dealt with the Abraham Egyptian Papers and he did a total hatchet job on it so bad that he impugned not only Brian Hauglett and Robin Jensen, but the entire staff of the Joseph Smith Papers Project, which is an arm of the LDS Church, and ended up getting himself called down to Salt Lake to a very tall building in a very high up office and yelled at for probably about an hour over what he had done. So it appears that he has a hard time learning his lessons not only from you, Dr. Ritner, but also about writing hatchet jobs and getting in trouble for it.

Robert Ritner [04:06:24] Well, I have heard from spurious commentators who have written to me that John Gee was quote unquote marginalized at Brigham Young. And I did not know the details. And I assume, maybe I'm assuming now that maybe that's linked, I don't know. He seems still to be a spokesman for Brigham Young, but there are serious problems with his work and he, the example that I mentioned to you is the most egregious example. But he's done a number of articles that critique my interpretations of various points just for the purpose of trying to say and written your scholarship isn't any good over and over again on really minor, minor, minor points. But the sum total of it all is to undercut my reputation on the basis of what I've had to say about the Book of Abraham. Because every time he has a foray into proper scholarship, it's all merely a veneer for a covering for what he does with his Book of Mormon material, which is his primary focus. He only works with Egyptian material so that he can say, look, I'm an important Egyptologist, therefore you have to believe what I say when I say talk about the Book of Abraham. That's his driving motivation. It's his one and only motivation. It always has been. So I'm simply a stumbling block. But as I pointed out repeatedly, it's a two edged sword because the degree to which he claims I'm incompetent merely makes himself look bad on multiple fronts. So it's a sad situation.

RFM [04:08:06] Yeah, you're like the Catholic Church and he's the Protestant Church. That's an old argument about the great apostasy.

Robert Ritner [04:08:17] While we're on that subject, let me briefly remark that in that fair Mormon presentation, when he was asked about my writings and my reaction to the church statement, he also said that it was in poor taste because would a Protestant write a letter of objection to a Papal bull? Well, that shows a remarkable.

John Dehlin [04:08:47] What does that term mean? Papal bull?

Robert Ritner [04:08:49] What does that mean? That's an official document released by the Pope speaking ex cathedra from the throne. So what he's saying is, would a Protestant ever critique the actual theological statements being emitted by the Catholic Church? Well, the answer to that is very easy and it's yes, if you know anything about world history, that's how the Reformation came apart came about was that Martin Luther made an objection to the papal bull, the papal announcement about indulgences, and he nailed his objections to a church door. So yes, people have arguments over theological distinctions all the time. It's not in bad taste. It's normal. Catholics have arguments amongst themselves over the legitimacy of papal doctrines. Protestants disagree with each other. And of course, Protestants and Catholics have been disagreeing for as long as they have been disagreeable. So to say that it's bad taste for one to do the other and be shocked suggests that John Gee has absolutely no sense of world history whatsoever. And how can you not know that that's.

John Dehlin [04:10:12] That.

Robert Ritner [04:10:12] That. That's pretty shocking in and of itself.

RFM [04:10:15] One of the things that struck me about that comment, and I know he was speaking off the cuff, these were not prepared comments, but in response to the question that was asked him at the end of that fair Mormon presentation as to whether he ever intended to respond to your essay, which itself was a response to the Church essay, was to characterize the church essay, in which, of course, John Gee was very, very deeply involved in writing it, especially the connections with the Egyptian world, the apologetic part of the essay, to characterize an essay by the Church that he was deeply involved in as a papal bull, and that you would be criticizing something that was really beyond criticism and it had this high and holy station of being the equivalent of a papal bull. I thought that was an interesting insight into his self awareness, his self conception.

Robert Ritner [04:11:09] Well, what he's saying is that I'm an outsider, and as an outsider I have no right to talk about the legitimacy of the Book of Abraham as a historical source. So I am certainly an outsider, and I've repeated it many times in the course of this set of interviews, I have no right to say anything about the legitimacy of the theology that was taught to the faithful in contexts that I know nothing about, that are, that take place in the temple or wherever they take place. I don't know those, so I can't critique them. What I can tell you is the statement that this document reads X, that I can answer. And to the extent that Smith published and made available to the broader public a text which he claims to have translated and which apologists are continuing to defend as being somehow valid translations, that then not only allows me, but requires me, as the one and only professor of Egyptology in the United States and the Western Hemisphere, to respond. I have a unique position. My predecessors never had the title professor of Egyptology. I have a chair in that specific position field. They were professors of Egyptology, but they did not have a chair in it. And I do. And therefore, if there's an Egyptological matter of such great import, and I think this is, it would be inexcusable for me to fail to have an opinion on what are the Egyptian elements in it that are being portrayed as being truthful, particularly when all the antecedents of me at Chicago commented on it. So my predecessors, Klaus Baer, who taught me Egyptian, basic Egyptian, was Klaus Baer. I knew about the existence of these papyri at the table of Klaus Baer. After Klaus Baer, there had been Richard Parker, who had left Chicago to go found the school at Brown University. So everyone at Brown University is a descendant of the work done by Richard Parker, who also condones Paul Pary. John Wilson was the former director of the Oriental Institute and who was the head of Chicago before Klaus Baer. So he had commented on it. And Wilson was the student, the prized student of James Henry Breasted, who founded our institute. And you can't get any farther back than that in the United States because Breasted was the very first Egyptologist in the US to have a position. Breasted had studied in Germany and in Europe. The understanding of Egyptology had already begun much earlier, which is why Breasted was sent there. But you have the example of Theodore de Verrier working with the materials that were in the Louvre Museum that have been collected because of the discoveries made by Champollion, which go all the way back to the French invasion by Napoleon into Egypt. And that is the actual beginning of modern Egyptology. And so he had access to two pieces that, for all I know, were looked at also by Champollion, which are parallels to what are relevant to the Book of Abraham because they are these same kinds of books. A pirate. So all of my professional forebearers worked on things of this sort, had gone into print discussing them, and every right to do was appropriate for me to do it. There were issues, and I had a new discovery to make. In my announcement, I was not merely critiquing the Church, but showing something new that I had found, which is that there was witness to the actual production. And that's what's different about that article than my printed books. If we ever did a new edition of the books, I would add that into the book itself. But that is a new development where you can draw a line between the manuscript copies from these Abraham Papers, the Kirtland Papers, and the surviving papyrus. That's a new development, and that's. That's what motivated me, and that's why it's legitimate for me to do it. And that's why it matters. And I'm not working with whatever theology is being propounded by the Mormon Church. I don't know, because I don't know it. And that, I agree, is my aspect as an outsider. But I have every right to discuss what is the historical legitimacy when it is being made by apologists, some of whom I've trained, And if in fact the Egyptian material is entirely irrelevant, and if he could have gotten it from, if Joseph Smith could have had this revelation by looking at a phone book, then why does Brigham Young even have a program hiring multiple Egyptologists spending vast amounts of money trying to back up the historical legitimacy of this document? If they don't care, why are they doing it? Because it seems to be a unbelievably expensive with multiple people on staff and sending them around everywhere to flesh up their CVs by sending them across the globe to participate in conferences, all at the Maxwell Institute's expense, and be unproductive. Because in all of this, I mean, John can gloat that he's made some ignorant Egyptologists, if in fact that's what they were, momentarily impressed by his remarks about a misrepresented facsimile one. But no serious Egyptologists are going to take it seriously for long. And so all of that money, all of that effort has not actually convinced anyone of standing. So it's a waste of money on both counts. It's a lot of expense for what they claim is not even a goal. We don't care whether it's true or not. Well, then why spend the money on it? And you're not convincing anyone that it's valuable, so why spend the money on it? I mean, the United States has many issues today, particularly today, where the Church could be spending all sorts of extremely valuable money producing wonderful benefits for the citizens of any of our states. And it would be greatly appreciated, I'm sure, by multiple communities. But instead, they are wasting it trying to prove something that's been so ridiculous, been recognized as being ridiculous almost from the time that it was completed in the 1800s. Bavaria is already dismissing it as nonsense. By 1912, the New York Times is already dismissing it as nonsense. And as proved by the objects on the Metropolitan Museum's wall, I think it's pretty inexcusable actually, of the Met to have discarded the papyri when they had actually the ability to show how those papyri actually worked with pieces they had in their own collection. They could have disproved a major aspect of American culture by doing their own exhibit, putting up the papyri with four sons of Horus, etc. They could have done that. Why did the Metropolitan not bother? That's pretty inexcusable if you look at it in A broader sense, it's particularly inexcusable that Thomas Hoving, who wrote popular books on making the mummies dance, would trade these papyrus fragments back to the church for an undisclosed benefit. I don't know what that is. Presumably the Met made a profit on getting rid of these items, but they should have done an exhibit. They should have followed it on the New York Times and let the people of the United States actually see the documents in conjunction with actual Egyptian objects, which they will never be able to do now that the pieces have been unfortunately, wrongly, irresponsibly sent back to Brigham Young, where they're locked away and no one can see them. So when a scholar like myself asks to see them to do scholarly work, I am told instead, not available, that you may not have authority to see them. How does that benefit anyone? I see I'm getting a whole series of messages that are coming in. I don't know whether to deal with them or ignore them for the moment.

John Dehlin [04:20:56] Rfm, is it okay if I jump in here? Did you have any final thing you wanted to ask about? Just about this line of questioning?

RFM [04:21:03] No, I think it's been said very well by Dr. Ritner, and I turn it over to you for the winding up scene.

John Dehlin [04:21:09] Well, I don't want to necessarily say that my words are going to wind things up, but let me just follow up on a couple things, if it's okay. Dr. Ritner, when we go back to this. Really, I thought it was a really catty, kind of unprofessional, disrespectful comment that John Gee made in the Q and a in 2018 at a fair Mormon conference in response to someone asking a very credible, legitimate question. Do you plan John Gee on responding to Robert Ritner? Obviously, he. We've already addressed him saying, why would a non, you know, does a non Catholic scholar feel it's in his purview to criticize a papal bull? He says that you're out of line, which you've already addressed, because you are literally in line with all the. Your predecessors, all of which you have commented on the Book of Abraham. So you are literally in line with them. And then, you know, John Geese says, why does he care? Obviously, you care about the book. You know, you care about Egyptology, you care about honesty, you care about credible scholarship. So for all those reasons, you care, you don't like people being misled. But then he goes on to say, I don't really have any intent on responding because I thought his review was beside being in Poor taste, rather weak. So he's basically saying, number one, it was in poor taste for you to comment on a matter of Egyptology. I don't know where he gets that. But then he says, your response was weak. And we've just reviewed the core of what that response was, and I want to know on what planet he comes from saying that your response was weak. How do you respond to him saying what you just showed us about the Abraham Egyptian papers tying, clearly directly tying the characters on the papyrus all the way to attempts at translation, all the way to the actual text that shows up in the book of Abraham, and that somehow that's weak. How do we. I'm sort of speechless to say. To explain how he could call that a weak response.

Robert Ritner [04:23:37] Well, the first thing that I've noticed is it's dismissing things again without actually going through the steps. It's the issue of show your work, John. If he's going to say that my argumentation is weak, then he needs to respond to explain how it's weak point by point, in the same way that I have repeatedly done him the kindness of acknowledging his work. When I did my book, I went out of my way to track down every podcast that he was on or every article he had written that was in any way relevant to this material because I wanted to be thorough. And so if there was something that was vaguely relevant, I cited it and I either agreed with it or I didn't agree with it. And I explained why John has never done that in the same way. I mean, basically, it's just dismiss it out of hand, because, of course, you can't deal with the minutia because my finer points are correct. So you can't dismiss him except by saying, I just won't. I won't bother with that. So that's his fallback answer. Because it would be far too complicated and far too difficult and he would lose. There's no winning. There's no good argument against what I've shown.

John Dehlin [04:24:57] It's kind of like a middle school kid in a schoolyard saying he could beat Michael Jordan. Michael Jordan is a lame basketball player saying he could beat him. Then Michael Jordan shows up and says, all right, let's play ball. And the kid says, no, you're weak. Your arguments are, you know, you're not that good. You're weak. Why should I even bother? Who even cares? I mean, that's the best analogy I can come up with on the spot.

Robert Ritner [04:25:23] Well, thank you for that comparison, John Delinquent.

RFM [04:25:28] Yes, Angelin. You sent out an invitation to Professor Gee, didn't you?

John Dehlin [04:25:33] Yeah, just a couple days ago. You know, you've mentioned this before, like, and I'm getting this from you. Rfm, you correct me if I'm saying it wrong. On the one hand, John Gee or Daniel Peterson or whoever, if anybody comments on the Book of Abraham in a way that they don't, like who's not an Egyptologist or what's the response that they give?

RFM [04:25:58] Rfm, you're not an Egyptologist.

John Dehlin [04:26:01] So only so you know Brian Hauglet can't comment on the Book of Abraham. Actually, let's go back. They're cool with Brian Hoglit's commentary on the Book of Abraham as a non Egyptologist when he agrees with their position. And they'll let that go for years. As soon as. Now Brian Hoglit goes against what they want to be said about the Book of Abraham, then their response is, well, Brian Hoglid's not an Egyptologist, so he can't comment. And we're not going to consider as relevant anyone who's an Egyptologist. By the way, this Michael Rhodes. Tell us, Dr. Ritner, is Michael Rhodes an Egyptologist?

Robert Ritner [04:26:42] I think he had something to do with aviation engineering.

John Dehlin [04:26:46] Aviation engineering. But somehow his work's okay. But Brian Hoglands is it. Anyway, getting back to this, I believe

Robert Ritner [04:26:54] that Michael Rhodes, when he was stationed in Germany, may have had some classes with Karl Theodor Zauzig. He may have.

John Dehlin [04:27:01] Does that make you an Egyptologist?

Robert Ritner [04:27:04] No. Having had some extension classes with an Egyptologist does not make you a professional Egyptologist. And Michael Rhodes, I didn't show you the COVID of his book of the Breathing Permit of Horror, but the design that was used by BYU for, for that volume was the lion bed. A gilded image of the lion bed. And Michael D. Rhodes came to the conferences for the American Egyptologist to give himself also a patent of responsibility some years ago when the conference was held. This is the conference on which I sit on the board of directors. This was held in Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, and he came to give a talk about the lion bed. As he began his talk, he misspoke and he instead described it as the Lion Altar. Because he is so much not an Egyptologist, he can't get his terminology straight. And of course, the lion altar is the way it's described on facsimile one. And we now know it's not an altar. So of course, as he made this gaff in front of a room, only some people who knew anything about Mormon studies recognized what he was talking about. And we laughed. He is not a scholar and he's never been at another one of these meetings subsequently. And it was not well received.

John Dehlin [04:28:38] Right.

Robert Ritner [04:28:39] I should point out he was being escorted by John Gee, who was bringing him everywhere, because again, the point was he was trying to make him into an Egyptologist. But this is like the, you know, I'm not an Egyptologist, but I play one on TV or something like that.

RFM [04:28:58] Right. And John DeLand, you're doing a great riff here and I don't want to interrupt it, but you may throw into the hopper this, this amazing fact. Hugh Nibley was not an Egyptologist.

John Dehlin [04:29:09] That's right.

Robert Ritner [04:29:10] Also true.

John Dehlin [04:29:12] Yeah.

Robert Ritner [04:29:12] So although he had had more, he had more studies with Klaus Baer, the only one who subsequently had more than Hugh Nibley would be John Gee. And Kerry had an abbreviated program at UCLA on which Kara Cooney has commented. I'll leave it to her to discuss that.

John Dehlin [04:29:32] Yeah. And so they'll accept the words of non Egyptologists like Rhodes, like Nibley, like Brian Hauglit, if their arguments agree with their position. But then if anybody utters anything that counters their position, then they'll respond by saying, why should I listen to them? They're not Egyptologists. Then when, let's say one of the top, if not the top Egyptologists in World the gives a detailed, thoughtful series of published responses to their position, then their response is, well, that's in poor taste. That's rather weak. It doesn't even rise to the level of being worthy of my response. Even though he's paid full time to be an Egyptologist apologist, it's just absolutely ridiculous. He, he hides behind, he puts on a CV that he believes in peer review and was the editor of a peer reviewed journal, yet his works aren't peer reviewed and he won't engage in scholarly dialogue with you. And then he ends by saying kind of rude and dismissive talk about poor taste. His final sentence was, I don't have any plans on responding formally because as far as I can tell, who cares what type of rude, insensitive, snippy response is? Who cares what Robert Ritner has to say about the Book of Abraham?

Robert Ritner [04:31:02] Well, all I can tell you is that's not the case with all the people who've been writing to me. And again, I thank them for having done that.

John Dehlin [04:31:09] No, And RFM and I, between us,

Robert Ritner [04:31:12] if I can make one other point, you notice that Brian Hoglett, of all people, has changed his opinion over the years. Brian Hoglid is a reasonable person with whom I had A brief exchange of emails. He always struck me as quite reasonable. He very kindly sent me images of the seer stones after those had been released. I hadn't stuck struck up a conversation with him for him to do that. So that was a kindness on his part. But the important thing to note here, and the reason I bring it up is that what Brian Hoglid was doing was in the act of editing these Abraham Egyptian papers, the so called Kirtland papers, the valuable discovery. So he was looking on a daily basis at the documents that I had made this inspirational discovery about how they linked up. Brian probably made that discovery by himself already. If you're looking at them over and over again, I suspect that that would have revealed itself to you. You would have figured it out by logic of deduction. So it's not at all surprising that someone whose primary work is in these papers could have made an independent deduction. I don't, I've not talked to Brian. I don't know, maybe he only thought of it after he read my paper, maybe he didn't. But he could compare it in any case with what he had in front of him every day. And if my argument made sense to him, that could explain why he had a change of heart. Because what I was pointing out was what was available to him to look at in the papers he had, which he was paid to work on. And it's not surprising that someone working with those papers, with that group of papers would reach the conclusion I had. Which is to say it's entirely reasonable. It's the logical conclusion. I don't know how it's even escapable as a conclusion. So if you, if you wish to refuse to acknowledge anything, you can, you can stay in your ignorance if you like. But if you're working with the actual documents that provide the smoking gun, I think it's unavoidable. The irony is the church could have figured this out on their own, I suppose long, long before because they never lost those papers. But they didn't have Hippo virus, obviously. Yeah.

John Dehlin [04:33:38] And something that I've written, you know, just briefly elsewhere that I think is important. The Book of Abraham, you know, clearly is yet another example of, you know, fraudulous translation on the part of Joseph Smith. We knew the Book of Mormon was a fraudulent translation because of all the anachronisms and problems with it. We knew that. We've established through Haley, you know, Lamont, that the Joseph Smith translation of the Bible is fraudulent. We know the Kinderhook plates was a fraudulent translation. And you Know, of course, you've demonstrated through multiple slam dunk after multiple slam dunk that the Book of Abraham is probably the most egregious and ridiculous and preposterous fraudulent translation of all Joseph Smith's fraudulent translations. But what I think is even more important is that there is a pattern here that's a systemic pattern, which is number one, that Mormon apologists malign. Whether it's Fawn Brody, whether it's Juanita Brooks, whether it's Brent Metcalfe, whether it's Michael, Michael Quinn, me, Jeremy Runnels, whoever it is, rfm, anyone who stands up against the church, like with Scientology, you know, anyone who stands up against the Mormon Church and his truth claims gets personally maligned. And Hugh Nibley did it and Daniel Peterson did it and does it, and it's so disgusting and sad to see John Gee do it. To you, someone who deserves respect and admiration for your work. But it's not just that. It's not just ad hominem maligning of sincere, honest, thoughtful critics, but it's also this systemic period. So we know that it, starting from the mid-1800s to then 1912 to then beyond, the Mormon Church was put on notice by expert Egyptologists worldwide that the Book of Abraham was a fraud. And instead of like informants members own up to it and acknowledge it. What it's done over a hundred plus years is invest in scholars to go through the process of getting accreditation or you know, their degrees so that they could, like you say, have the imprimatur of credentials, but then to be funded by the church to make a mockery of scholarship and academics by creating fraudulent, specious, irrelevant, non credible scholarship to produce to the members so that they can go, oh wow, Hugh Nibley's smart. I don't understand Egyptian. John Gee went to Yale. And so I guess, you know, smart people can disagree. Okay, we've got Robert Ritner, who's he? But then we've got Hugh Nibley or John Gee, they're at byu, they're smart. You know, I guess we can just side with, side with them. And this goes back to Elder Oaks own acknowledgement that historicity cannot be abandoned. And it's not the role of an apologist to provide credible answers. They just need to provide some answers because if we don't provide answers, then we lose the argument. And so that's what we have is decades and decades of Nibley and Gee and Molstein and Peterson and Rhodes providing specious, irrelevant, completely refutable and non credible, quote, scholarship to Defend Joseph's quote, translation. And then anyone who stands up against them gets maligned viciously, whether it's you or Hayley Wilson Lemon, them trying to retract her status as a student from Notre Dame after she leaves byu. It really is, you know, and we're not trying to hurt John Gee, here. We're not trying to, you know, he's a human being. I have friends who are friends of his. He's a dad, he's a grandpa. He has feelings. It's not that we're trying to pile on and make him, you know, seem like a horrible, terrible, awful person, but he is knowingly and willingly participating in a system which has been deceiving its members for over a century, knowingly and intentionally, in ways that allow people to spend their money and spend their time, their reputations and their very lives committed to an organization where if only they had the full information, the full, accurate, credible, scholarly backed information, they might make very different decisions with their lives. And for me, I don't know about RFM or you, Dr. Ritner. For me, that's where this gets really serious and personal. When lives and families and marriages get destroyed because of Mormon teachings and leadership and principles and doctrines and policies, then it becomes. And when the church claims to speak for God, and when the church claims authority from God, then it becomes egregiously irresponsible and immoral to financially employ these apologists to deceive and gaslight its members so that the fraud and the manipulation of people can be continued generation across generation. So it's you, Hugh Nibley, who's passed away, it's Guy, it's Muhlstein, it's Terrell Givens, it's Richard Bushman, it's Mason and Fluman. It's any of these former apologists or neo apologists who perpetuate the deception and the misleading and the gaslighting of the members. And I'm sorry to soapbox, but that's where I stand and that's what I'm passionate about. And that's why I'm upset. It goes way beyond the Book of Abraham to a systemic pattern of corruption and misleading and gaslighting of the membership through fake. Through fake scholarship. Am I out of bounds here, Dr. Ritner, or RFM?

Robert Ritner [04:39:49] Well, if you'll let me jump in for just a second. And that is, if you look at the long view, the Egyptological approach has been essentially the same. It's been unvarying all the way back to the 1850s. The general remarks that made are still valid. Now they are the same ideas that Wilson had, that Parker had, that Bear had, and that I've had, that Lanny Bell had. We differ on minutiae. So the objections that are coming out of the apologists necessarily have to be nibbling around the edges. Now this little, this little thing over here is wrong, and this little thing over here is wrong with what the Egyptologists are saying. But they can't object to the whole picture. They would like to, but they can't. But what's remarkable is while the Egyptologist position has been the same for centuries now, since Back to the 1850s anyway, the apologist position has varied constantly. As I pointed out in my, in my work. I think it was in the book, just surveying the work that I had with Nibley, he himself tried out about four different possibilities of way to interpret what the problem was with facsimile one. And others have come along and offered other solutions. And you've mentioned some of these. At this point, the, the idea that it was not actually a translation. What, what does translation mean? Then you have a discussion of what the English word means, even though it's being used. Do they really mean translation, et cetera? Does it inspiration? I mean, all sorts of things have been posited, but none of them work well. And so that over the years the apologists have been twisting and turning in the wind, coming up with explanation after explanation after, and settling for the moment now upon the magical lost large chunk of papyrus, which is unlikely to have ever been there. The Egyptologists have had the same unvarying interpretation all the way along. So in contrast to how we began this discussion today with the audio podcast with the Hannah, the host, who described the Egyptian position as not being monolithic, in point of fact, it has been monolithic. It's only been non monolithic on tiny little irrelevant details. If she's concerned about lack of being monolithic, she should look to herself. Because the explanations that have been offered by the church to account for the, the deficiencies, the irregularities, the internal inconsistencies and internal anachronisms that are in the text, which we've already talked about of the Book of Abraham, even if you give the apologetics, okay, we'll accept this and this and this and this. How do you account for the reuse of the word Aegyptus in the text? That's totally wrong. How about Potiphar? Totally wrong. How about Ur of the Chaldees being in the wrong place? How do you explain that? How do you explain Egyptian sacrifice being In Ur of the Chaldees, where the Egyptians were not and wouldn't have had any control on the local sacrificial patterns. In any case, no one has done that. Where's the work on that? Why is it you have John Gee retrofitting a well known saint's life in Coptic, which describes the life of a medieval saint, Abraham under the sainted empire with a known Persian ruler? Why does John Gee try to pretend it's instead the patriarch Abraham of much, much earlier, when everyone knows who's worked with the text and has known since 1908 that that's the way it's to be interpreted? John has actually put us back earlier than 1908. He's reversed science, not improved it. I mean, this is what John has done with that text, which is still being cited with approval not only on the church document that I refuted and had to disagree with it specifics, but I noticed he also alluded to it again in the fair Mormon radio broadcast from last week. Whatever the Mormon voices, whatever it was called, he alluded to the very same text without any compunction about what the problems are with it. That would be like our saying, well, George Washington and George Washington Carver both have the same names and therefore we can say that the first Washington also had something to do with peanuts because they had the same last name. No one would take, no one would confuse George Washington and George Washington Carver, the modern individual who worked on peanuts and therefore, and no scholar who actually knows these ancient records would confuse Abraham of the Middle Ages with an Abraham from the time of the patriarchs, wherever you want to put that. And John's flummoxing together these two completely disparate texts, when the texts are so specific that the text about Abraham, the medieval individual specifically say that he's living in Mesopotamia. You can't possibly confuse these. All John has to go on is the fact that it has the name Abraham in it. That is such horrendous scholarship that it's inexplicable. But it shows the kind of grasping at straws that the apologists do. And it doesn't strengthen their argument. It's really just pathetic.

John Dehlin [04:46:17] Amen. Rfm Would you like to add anything?

RFM [04:46:23] Yes, just briefly, I would say that I understand why you're upset about this, John, and I can I feel the same way from time to time. I know a lot of people are even more upset than you, but really all this boils down to is the fundamental problem of deciding that you know the answer before you start studying the facts. And once you know that the church is true and that Joseph Smith was a priority, and once you know that the Book of Abraham really was a translation of ancient Egyptian, then you have already set the paradigm that you are going to focus only on those things that match your paradigm and even become quite creative. Perhaps that's the main contribution that John Gee has, is not so much his Egyptology, but his creativeness in coming up with these connections and ignoring everything else, ignoring all the things that don't match. And one listener to the program had commented, made a very good comment that as soon as Egyptologists make the critical mistake, and by that I mean Mormon Egyptologists, apologists make the critical mistake of counting connections between the Book of Abraham and the ancient world as evidence in favor of the Book of Abraham, as soon as they make that critical mistake, they immediately acknowledge and have to logically recognize all the misses that the Book of Abraham has with the ancient world as equally as important as any purported hits. And because on average, you might have five potential hits, even taking them at face value, and I know that based on our discussion, that might be a stretch at this point, but even taking the five proposed hits at face value and looking at maybe the 95 misses, which, as Professor Ritner has just said, they don't get mentioned, right? Potiphar doesn't get mentioned, these other things don't get mentioned that is significant. And those are earmarks of something that is made up just statistically speaking. If you have 100 darts that you throw against a wall and you're creative enough, you're going to get four or five of those that you can make potentially into some kind of hit, especially when you're looking not only at Ancient Egypt, but also including Mesopotamia and the Hittites. I mean, the world is your oyster as far as John Gee goes. And trying to find connections between the Book of Abraham and the ancient world, it's not restricted just to Egypt, where it's located, or over there in Syria, where it's reported to have occurred. But he can go anywhere, anytime, any place, pretty much in order to find these connections. So really, it's not surprising that there would be these five potential connections. What would be surprising and what would be much more persuasive is if those statistics were reversed, and if there were 95 potential hits with the Ancient World and Five Misses, that's what we would expect to have if indeed Joseph Smith could translate Egyptian as he claimed to be able to do. But having said all that, once again, going to John Gee now here's the deal, okay? He has said in basically these words in talking to the fair Mormon crowd, that he knows lots of information about Egyptology. He knows lots of stuff that is very damaging to the Book of Abraham. That's why he characterizes it as juggling hand grenades and why he tells other people, don't you be trying to do this yourself? Because then the hand grenades start flying off and going off in the audience. This is for professionals only. But it's significant that he calls this information and knowledge. He has hand grenades. What does that mean? That means stuff he's not going to talk about. And he even cites approvingly Boyd K. Packer's talk, the mantle is far, far greater than the intellect from 1981, where Boyd K. Packer says the same thing and that not all truths are useful and that Boyd K. Packer knows negative things about the church that he's not going to tell the members of the church because it might negatively impact their testimony. And he's going to tell the church education system, professors and teachers, you better not tell any of this negative information either, because it's going to affect your job and it's going to affect your standing in eternity if you disobey me on this. So John Gee is following that same pattern and citing it approvingly. And what it all means is we know the answer from the beginning. The answer is the Church is true. Therefore, anything that might lead you away from the Church is something that you should not know. Therefore, if I know it, I'm not going to tell it. I'm going to tell everybody else who might know it not to tell it. And then they become justified in doing everything that we see them doing. That's how they justify it. In their minds, the end justifies the means. And what end could be more beneficial or desirable than the eternal salvation of the members of the Church? That's what they're after. And unfortunately, then they end up in a situation where they have the short end of the argument. They know they have the short end of the argument. They know they can't respond on an intellectually even field. And therefore, when it comes to people like Professor Ritner and others, their only response is to try and call them names, to be dismissive, to not respond, to act as if they're not worthy of response, because they know if they try and actually respond, they're going to get their clock cleaned. And that's about all I have to say.

Robert Ritner [04:52:24] Well, John has said in those same set of broadcasts, I think it was Fair Mormon, that if you engage with secular individuals over issues like this, that you risk losing your faith and therefore you should not. And that's his operative principle. And I think you've identified it

John Dehlin [04:52:46] really quickly. Rfm, I don't want to leave this conversation without making this one point. And Dr. Ritner spoken to this indirectly, but RFM, do you mind just quickly outlining the problems with. With the Catalyst Theory? So, you know, we see that what Mormon Apologetics is trying to do is they're basically starting to sideline Gee and Peterson. They've been, you know, moved out slowly and marginalized from the Maxwell Institute. They brought in Phil Barlow and Spencer Fluman and Terrell Givens, and, you know, they're promoting on the side people like Patrick Mason and others, and they're basically trying to maintain the traditional historical view of the Book of Abraham and the Book of Mormon so that they don't alienate the orthodox membership and so that they can follow the mandate of Oakes and others. But at the same time, they're financially and materially supporting a new line of thought through the neo apologists, I call them, like Bushman, Givens, Barlow, Mason and Fluman, which basically is saying, what's a translation? What's a revelation? Like, maybe the Book of Mormon wasn't a translation, but it was Joseph Smith trend as revelation. And maybe, maybe Joseph Smith didn't translate the papyrus, but maybe God just used the papyrus to inspire Joseph to reveal. Can you just outline for us briefly what the problems with the Catalyst Theory in terms of it being internally consistent, consistent with the history, and a credible alternative for where Apologetics, Mormon Apologetics is heading?

The Catalyst Theory and Final Conclusions

RFM [04:54:30] Yes, I'd be happy to do that, and I'll try and keep it brief. First off, when you talk about translation, it depends on what the meaning of is is. And we've talked a little bit about that before, twisting and expanding upon the normal usage of the word translation in order to try and make it fit the facts. And the facts are what keep coming back again and again to any honest seeker of truth and understanding as it relates to LDS history. By the way, about the word translation, this is a very important fact to keep in mind when trying to say that Joseph Smith, when he said translation, was not talking about translation in the customary sense. And this is from History of the Church, Volume 1, page 71, when he's talking about his translation of the title page to the Book of Mormon. And you probably remember that John, it has like two paragraphs. It appears in the first part of the Book of Mormon. And Joseph Smith is taking pains to say, hey, this is part of the Book of Mormon. It was actually from the last of the plates, remember? And here's what he says about his translation of that plate. The title page of the Book of Mormon is a literal translation taken from the very last leaf on the left hand side of the collection or Book of Plates, which contained the record which has been translated, the language of the whole, running the same as all Hebrew writing in general. And that said title page is not by any means. Notice this. And that said title page is not by any means a modern composition, either of mine or of any other man who has lived or does live in this generation. Period, end of quote. So that's Joseph Smith talking about his literal translation of the title page to the Book of Mormon. Going back to your main question about the. Oh, the. Thank you. So here's the deal. You've got two main schools of thought which, within faithful Mormon views of the Book of Abraham and its translation. The first is represented by John Gee and Kerry Muhlstein, who hang on tenaciously like a little terrier with a bone. They will not let go of this idea that somewhere, somehow, the text of the Book of Abraham appears in on the scrolls because Joseph Smith really did translate them. And by the way, in so doing, they're arguing against the evidence that Dr. Ritner's already presented very thoroughly in these podcasts that obviously that's what Joseph Smith was doing, right? He was translating from these scrolls, he was getting it all wrong, and he's translating the facsimiles and getting it all wrong. But nevertheless, they want to maintain the idea that Joseph Smith really could translate Egyptian. And in doing so, what they're doing is they're believing what Joseph Smith said about the translation and his ability, but they're denying the textual evidence that seems to contradict that. So what happens then is what happens when you're a person who believes that. But finally, even though you haven't really wanted to, and you've been drugged there, kicking and screaming like Brian Hauglett and myself, by the way, and probably you two, John Dehlin and thousands of people by this point, many of whom are listening to this program, they're finally dragged to the conclusion that, yes, Joseph Smith didn't know what he was doing when he was translating Egyptian, he really did not know Shiny Ha from Shinola. So what do you do at that point? Well, you can either say, well, apparently he was a fraud, he was making it up, he was duping people he managed to dupe me. And so I'm going to stop believing that his special calling is a prophet. Or. What do you do if you still feel compelled to believe that he was a prophet? Well, in the face of this evidence, what you have to do is you have to go to a backup theory. And the backup theory is the collateral, excuse me, the Catalyst theory. Because under the Catalyst theory, you accept the idea that Joseph Smith could. Could not translate Egyptian, that the Book of Abraham doesn't appear in the recovered papyri. It never occurred on the papyri, almost certainly, but that it was the papyri themselves that separate and apart from anything that was written on the papyri, that Joseph Smith now catalyzed this idea in his head of a book of Abraham. And that catalyzation ended up in a revelation coming from God to Joseph Smith's head, separate and apart from what was written on the papyri. And that's what he used to translate. Now, the Book of Abraham, it has nothing to do with what's written on the papyri. It's just the idea of the papyri itself, which stoked his prophetic juices, so to speak. So the Catalyst theory has the huge benefit of not contradicting the manuscript evidence. It takes care of that problem in a very convenient way, I must say. But of course, the Catalyst theory also has the drawback of it contradicts what Joseph Smith said he was doing. You see, both of them have their strengths and their weaknesses. The missing papyrus theory ignores the textual problems, but favors what Joseph Smith said that he was translating. The Catalyst theory goes with the text and acknowledges the textual problems and accounts for it, but it has to ignore and contradict what Joseph Smith said he was doing when he was translating. So the Catalyst theory then says, well, Joseph Smith, he really wasn't translating the papyrus. And this is where the Catalyst theory gets really, really bad. Because then you have to acknowledge that Joseph Smith thought he was translating the Egyptian characters, that that's how he presented his translation. That's how his scribes understood and acknowledged what it was that Joseph Smith was doing. But that at one and the same time that Joseph Smith thought and claimed and presented as translating Egyptian characters into English, he was actually, unbeknownst to him, receiving a revelation from God that he mistook as a translation that then has to become part and parcel of the Catalyst theory. And by the time you get that far down the road, it takes an awful lot of faith to stay in the boat and not just throw up your hands and say, you know, this Catalyst Theory idea is kind of indistinguishable from an intentional fraud on Joseph Smith's part.

John Dehlin [05:01:26] Yeah. And it just strains all reasonableness. I would say, you know, for us to think that Joseph would be sitting there looking at an Alphabet, looking at Egyptian characters, having a scribe write paragraphs next to the characters and that he could produce, you know, through revelation, all these strange, very, very detailed technical names and words like the ones that we've already mentioned, and concepts, but names like Elkanah and Libnah and Machmara and Koresh and all these different names, yet God wouldn't bother to say to Joseph, hey, Joseph, you think you're actually translating, but you're not. I'm inspiring you.

RFM [05:02:16] But.

John Dehlin [05:02:16] But go ahead and waste the time of these scribes and play around with the grammar and the characters and think that you're actually translating, but, you know, I'll reveal to you the name of Elkanah, but I'm not gonna actually let you know that you're kind of, you know, deluding yourself into thinking that you're actually translating anything. And it also requires us to think about, again, Doctrine and Covenants, Section 21, where God calls Joseph a prophet, seer, revelator, and translator, that God would let Joseph Smith run around telling everyone that he was a translator because it was in Scripture and in Revelation, and yet, in fact, he wasn't translating. And again, I'm belaboring this point, but so much of the early years of the church, Joseph Smith got a lot of his power from fooling people into thinking he had special powers in. It started with the Seer stone, the rock in the hat, the treasure digging. When that jig was up, then he moved to claiming he could translate languages into Scripture. And would he have been able to amass a bunch of followers if he hadn't have claimed to have these special powers to translate? Maybe he wouldn't have. So it's problematic in so many ways to me.

RFM [05:03:37] Right. The predicament of the Catalyst Theory in a nutshell is this. If Joseph Smith thought that he was translating, but he was mistaken, what else might Joseph Smith have claimed he was doing that he was mistaken about?

John Dehlin [05:03:55] Right. Yeah. Well, Dr. Ritner, this has been so far, and it may be a conclusion. We'll see. This has been an epic series that immediately was nominated as one of the top, if not the top interview in Mormon stories history, which is, you know, 1400 hours of interviews. You have done such a phenomenal service to our people and our community, and I don't know how we could adequately thank you and or repay you other than, and I'm going to let you respond, but I do want to get this in other than to make an open and an explicit and a direct call to listeners, you know, anyone who feels like they're in the position and have the ability to do so. We're going to repeat, as we started, with the acknowledgment that Dr. Ritner is facing kidney failure and is in need of a living donor to secure his life and continued research. If you can help, please contact Dana McLean, Northwestern Medicine transplant coordinator. Phone number isXXX-XXX-XXXX. They will ask for Dr. Robert Ritner's birthday, which you need to give as May 5, 1953. And let's help find Dr. Robert Ridner a kidney as one small way we can repay him for his altruistic and highly full of integrity, scholarship and efforts around, you know, the narratives that our people are being taught. But Robert Ridner, what else can we do to repay you and thank you for your time with us?

Closing Remarks, Gratitude, and Farewell

Robert Ritner [05:05:44] Well, the very nice comments that have been coming in by email are much appreciated, so I thank you for those. There are simply too many of them now for me to reply individually. I was doing that for a while and then I became overwhelmed. One of the things that was pointed out in one of the notes was that unfortunately, 95% of the people who ought to see this program won't. So I hope that the podcast stays alive and that it will be seen in future years. What I would like it to be able to do is to serve as a training purpose, to serve some training purpose for my own students so they understand how it is. One should probably reason and make sense of arguments that are as complex as something like this. So I would like the series to live on and I hope that it does have continued impact. Not because I'm trying to take membership away from any particular group. It's because I would like this to be seen as an example of how you can actually work with dealing with ancient materials and how one properly deals with them. One thing I note, it hasn't been brought up, I think, is that the one branch of the LDS Church I know takes this as gospel canonized back in 1880, but other branches less so. The branch that stayed back in Missouri, which has split off and now had two subsequent names. I forget the current name.

John Dehlin [05:07:17] Community of Christ.

Robert Ritner [05:07:19] Unity of Christ. Yeah, they're not very. You would never know they were Mormon with a Name like that.

RFM [05:07:23] I think that's the idea.

John Dehlin [05:07:24] That's the idea.

Robert Ritner [05:07:26] Well, they take the work as strictly a matter of speculative fiction by Smith. And in that regard, they're not inaccurate because it is a document of historical importance for the United States because it tells us the ways in which Egyptian elements were being used as a way to authenticate culture, even in the 1800s. So there was a value that Egyptian material had to contemporary society, and it could be exploited in different ways. We now study this as a separate field called Egyptomania. It's something that I find very, very interesting, but it's an example of an important incident that took place in American history in which Egyptian elements were used. And my students and people like me, in the future, we'll be looking at different ways in which Egyptian elements are used to either shore up or to denigrate ideas that come through in philosophies, in architecture, in various kinds of design. All things Egyptian have come in and out of fashions, depending upon what's happening politically, how many new discoveries are being made. There was a certain burgeon of new Egyptian themed elements in the 1920s, 100 years after Champollion was the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb. And you have many Egyptian themed elements. Then you had another burst of Egyptomania in the 1970s with the Tutankhamun exhibits coming through the United States. So Egyptian interactions with American culture is its own topic of interest. And so the Book of Abraham will not cease to be an important document, regardless of whether it is an ancient document or not.

John Dehlin [05:09:35] Love it. And rfm, how do you like the idea of our. Of this series being used as part of the curriculum for students at University of Chicago in the Egyptology program?

RFM [05:09:47] I think that would be absolutely fantastic and just another reason why it's a good thing my face is not showing.

Robert Ritner [05:09:55] Oh, wow.

John Dehlin [05:09:57] Well, rfm, anything you want to say to close before we close out?

RFM [05:10:01] No, John, just from one clown to another, it's been a great time. And by the way, that was a reference. John, are you there?

John Dehlin [05:10:08] Yeah, I'm here.

RFM [05:10:09] You're getting that, right?

John Dehlin [05:10:10] Yep. Yep.

RFM [05:10:11] Because you're not smiling.

John Dehlin [05:10:12] No, I get it.

RFM [05:10:13] Okay. Dr. Ritner, it's been an absolute joy and privilege getting to know you and to participate in this. I've had a wonderful time, and I wish you the best, and I don't want to lose contact with you either.

Robert Ritner [05:10:28] Well, I thank you both. I really appreciate it. And obviously it's been beneficial for me in order to get some things off my chest in order to explain some things and in fact to clarify my own thoughts, including the revelation of a new interpretation I had of facsimile one as being an actual copy of a lost wall scene, which I announced at the beginning of this session, something I hadn't actually thought of before, before these started. So it's proved valuable to me.

John Dehlin [05:11:00] And thank you, Dr. Ritner. RFM, I just want to tell you, you've been such an important, essential contributor to the series. I'm so glad I reached out to you. I'm so grateful you would take time out of your work and your busy schedule to come on your. You are a celebrity within the Mormon circles now. Your podcast is incredibly important and I'm just so grateful you would join me on this. I can't imagine it being anything like it has been without you. So thank you. I want to thank you. I want to thank Bill Real, that did a lot of the groundwork to help you do what you do. You and him together did an amazing series on Abraham that I used to prep. So shout out to Bill Real, shout out to Brian Hauglid, who is super courageous in coming clean or being honest and open about his evolutions as a BYU faculty. And now after having left, I see him as a hero in this story. Everyone should be grateful and praise Brian Hauglid for his courage and integrity. There's so many other people. Brett Metcalf for his work on the Book of Abraham. Dan Vogel has an amazing series on YouTube about the book of Abraham. You know, Dan Vogel, I don't even know if you know that name, Dr. Ritner, but Dan Vogel is doing very, very important work.

Robert Ritner [05:12:27] None of the individuals I've seen who've written in, in fact, I mean, there's so many names that have been written in, and a number of these individuals whom you've mentioned, I've only interacted with directly or indirectly through email or having them referenced to me in other emails. Again, I am particularly thankful if anything that I've had to say is of benefit to anyone. I know some of the notes that I have received have been very pleasant, some have been humorous, some have been extremely anguished. So I had no idea that this simple 15 pages of text, the Book of Abraham, could have such a major impact on people's lives in so many different ways. And I hope that I've managed to provide something of use. And if I have, then it was worth all this time. But this is without question the longest sense of interviews that I have ever given and probably ever will give. So I hope that it's been of use.

RFM [05:13:29] Welcome to the world of Mormon Stories.

John Dehlin [05:13:31] That's very fitting for Mormon stories stories podcast. Dr. Ritner, we don't, you know, if an interview is in 12 hours, it's not worth doing on Mormon Stories, so thank you.

Robert Ritner [05:13:42] Well, we've done at least 15 now, I think.

John Dehlin [05:13:45] Yeah. Well, you've been a good sport, especially because you're not, you know, in tip top health right now. Although we were going to hope to change that just really quickly. I just want to thank, you know, Michael Brown for his essay Book of Abraham essay on the Mormon Stories podcast page. We have truth claims essays on MormonStories.org, michael Brown did a great essay there. Jeremy Runnels for his work on Letter to a CES director, the author of Letter from My Wife that's got a great series of essays about the book of Abraham. Mormoninfographics.com, missed in Sunday School. Is there anyone else that I'm missing that has done really groundbreaking work or summarizing work, rfm, that we all sort of rely upon to help do what we do?

RFM [05:14:28] No, not that I know, but I will say that in a lot of those respects of people you mentioned, and it's all very important to get the word out, I think a lot of those do ultimately derive from the work of Dr. Ritner.

John Dehlin [05:14:41] Yeah, but yes, yes, and Sandra Tanner and Gerald Tanner. None of us. A lot of this would not exist without them. And then of course, you mentioned the other scholar that that helped you identify the various scribes, Michael Marquardt, another crucial component of this research, is that right?

Robert Ritner [05:15:05] Yes, absolutely. He wrote a primary chapter in my book and also Mr. Kernan, the primary work on the genealogy of the text. And I also want to thank my director, my current director, who Christopher woods, who contributed the chapter on Ur of the Chaldees and has been sufficiently moved by some of the feedback that I've received from doing this podcast, which I forwarded on to him, that I am now doing for the very first time an official lecture for the Oriental Institute on the Smith Papyri. I've never been allowed to do that before, and now I'm doing it as a formal presentation.

John Dehlin [05:15:45] I love it. You mentioned a name after Michael Marquardt and your Internet connection broke up. I don't want to lose that name. Who else did you thank besides Marco Marquardt?

Robert Ritner [05:15:57] Mark Tennant, who let me give you his. He's in Belgium again, a gentleman. I Never met, but he did primary work together with Jan Clageborn. His name is Mark Kuenin. C O E N E N. He was a student of Kogmore Clagmore. I did know. And he and Kunin together did a study of an example of a papyrus of this sort, and that led Mark to go on to do a work on the genealogy of these people. So he wrote a rather pivotal chapter, which caused me to read. That's one of the major changes, by the way, in the Egyptological understanding of this document, in that early Egyptologists assumed it was Roman in date, which is why you get the hundred AD examples of people writing. Our more nuanced understanding of the people involved in it lets us make it earlier. So the handwriting is a little odd, but you can't date precisely based on somebody's handwriting style. And so that's the problem. So that's one of the revisions I made in the Bear interpretation. I made it late Ptolemaic rather than early Roman. That's due to the work of Mark Kernan. And you can read his full discussion. It's really quite good in my book.

John Dehlin [05:17:27] All right. And of course, by naming people, we're going to leave people out. And if we left you out, I really apologize.

RFM [05:17:34] But like Ed Ashman.

John Dehlin [05:17:36] Yeah, yeah, of course. Yeah. Anyone else? Rfm.

RFM [05:17:43] No, that's it.

John Dehlin [05:17:44] All right, check out. So, rfm, do you want to give a plug for your podcast really quick?

RFM [05:17:50] No, that's okay. It's radiofreemormon.org everybody.

John Dehlin [05:17:54] And Dr. Ritner, is there anything you want to plug for how people can support you in your work, aside from finding you a kidney?

Robert Ritner [05:18:01] Well, I think if they find me a kidney, they've done their. They've done more than enough for me. That would be great.

John Dehlin [05:18:06] But your work can be found at the University of Chicago, right?

Robert Ritner [05:18:09] Yeah. For those who want to find any of my publications for the Oriental Institute, that's downloadable for free. So if you want to learn more about execration magic or ancient Egyptian magic, you can find that easily. My paperback book is available once lightly from Scholars Press, and it's cheap.

John Dehlin [05:18:30] And your response to the LDS Church's essay on the Book of Abraham, that's

Robert Ritner [05:18:35] on the Oriental Institute webpage, and that can be found, downloaded for free. Again, you simply have to find the Oriental Institute, University of Chicago. Look under individual research, you'll find my name and a whole series of articles I put there, including that one.

John Dehlin [05:18:53] And we were going to cover that point by point, but is it fair to say that we covered the substance of your response to the church's Book of Abraham essay.

Robert Ritner [05:19:02] I think we did. I have a marked up copy here with even more things to say, but I think we've covered the basis.

John Dehlin [05:19:09] Okay. All right. Dr. Ritner, Dr. Robert Ritner, we salute you. We thank you. You take care and let's find you a kidney. Okay?

Robert Ritner [05:19:18] Thank you much, sir. I appreciate it.

John Dehlin [05:19:20] Rfm, we love you. Keep up the great work. You're awesome.

RFM [05:19:24] Roger that. You're the man, John.

John Dehlin [05:19:27] You're the man. And listeners, thanks for joining us on Mormon Stories. If you want to donate to Mormon Stories podcast, go to MormonStories.org, click on the donate button. Become a monthly donor. Your donations will keep this podcast alive so we can bring you other scholars like Robert Ritner, like Michael Koh, like Bart Ehrman and others. Please donate to radio freemoronadiofreemormon.org a percentage of that goes to RFM and also supports Bill Real and his good work. And just keep in touch with us, comment, send us email like us on Facebook and stay in touch and we hope to provide you great content in the weeks, months and years ahead. Mormon Stories Podcast. Take care, everybody. Thanks again. See you. See you, Dr. Ritner.

Robert Ritner [05:20:15] Bye bye.

John Dehlin [05:20:15] Take care, RFM.

RFM [05:20:17] Bye bye. Came here tonight I got the feeling

Robert Ritner [05:20:38] that something ain't right I'm so scared

John Dehlin [05:20:41] in case I fall off my chair

RFM [05:20:44] and I'm wondering how I get down

Robert Ritner [05:20:47] the stairs Clowns to let me Chokers to the right Here I am stuck

John Dehlin [05:20:54] in the middle with you yes, I'm

Robert Ritner [05:20:57] stuck in the middle with you and I wonder what it is I should

RFM [05:21:02] do it's so hard to keep the

Robert Ritner [05:21:05] smile from my face losing control yeah

John Dehlin [05:21:09] I'm all over the place Clowns to

RFM [05:21:13] the left of me Jokers to the

Robert Ritner [05:21:15] right Here I am stuck in the middle with you when you started out with nothing and your palate you're a

John Dehlin [05:21:23] self made man

RFM [05:21:27] and you feel.

John Dehlin [05:21:48] Make some sense of it all but

Robert Ritner [05:21:51] I can see it makes no sense

John Dehlin [05:21:53] at all Is it cool to go

Robert Ritner [05:21:56] to sleep on the floor?

RFM [05:21:59] Cuz I don't think that I can take anymore Clowns to the left of

Robert Ritner [05:22:04] me jokers to the right Here I am stuck in the middle with you. When they. Please. Yeah I don't know why I came

RFM [05:23:03] here tonight I got to feel something

John Dehlin [05:23:08] right I'm so scared in case I

RFM [05:23:11] fall off my chair and I'm wondering

John Dehlin [05:23:14] how I get down the stairs Clown

Robert Ritner [05:23:18] still left me Jokers to the right here I am Stuck in the middle

RFM [05:23:23] with you

Robert Ritner [05:23:25] Stuck in the middle with

RFM [05:23:27] you

Robert Ritner [05:23:29] Stuck in the middle with you you ain't. When I take a look around me I wonder how the sun so show he knows the way why he doesn't stay and if he spends the day looking for another meaning.

Transcript © 2026 John P. Dehlin. All rights reserved. Brief quotations are welcome with attribution and a link to mormonstories.org; all other use requires written permission.