Talk:Book of Abraham

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Book of Abraham has had a peer review by Wikipedia editors which is now archived. It may contain ideas you can use to improve this article.

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Talk:Book of Abraham/Archive 1 2003 - 2005

Contents 1 Edits to External Links 2 Most, all, how many 3 Qwasty's changes 4 Book of Jasher 5 Citations needed 6 Egyptologists' translations of the scroll and facsimiles 7 Chart of Egyptologist vs Joseph translations 8 Cited source - LDS Egyptologist 9 Criticism & Response section is unfair and biased. 10 More citations 11 Incorrect removal of entry 12 Good Article candidacy 13 over-PC?

[edit] Edits to External Links

Just so everyone is clear on what edits I made in this session, I wanted to describe them all. Most of the changes had to do with the "External Links" section, which seemed very disorganized and unclear. This is the detailed list of what I did:

• Combined the two "external links" sections into one.
• Took out link to http://www.isitso.org/guide/papyri.html because that page seems to be little more than a sales letter for Larson's "By His Own Hand" and therefore doesn't provide any real value for the Wikipedia visitor.
• Replaced link to http://www.buchabraham.mormonismus-online.de/index.htm?slcmsgn82.htm with the actual newsletter that it reproduced (http://www.utlm.org/newsletters/no82.htm)
• Removed link to http://www.bibleman.net/Joseph_Smith_inventing_book_of_Abraham.htm because the page no longer exists.
• Collapsed two Book of Abraham Project site links into a single link.
• Removed link to http://www.foxgrape.com/deveria.htm as the site is no longer available.
• Removed link to http://mormonwiki.org/Book_of_Abraham as the article is essentially an incomplete polemic version of what is in the Wikipedia article.
• Removed link to http://nowscape.com/mormon/kolob-defined3.htm because it doesn't add anything of value to the reader. (The page says "This translation was shamelessly pilfered from 'By His Own Hand Upon Papyrus.' Pick one up for a friend!) -Awyatt, 26 April 2006

[edit] Most, all, how many

Besides the above, I also added the word "Most" to the caption under the image at the top of the article. I did this because it is my understanding that not all Egyptologists agree with the assessment. See, for example, works by Gee and Rhoades, both from BYU. -Awyatt, 26 April 2006

Rhoades has written that the Book of Abraham is "Divinely Inspired Scripture". This suggests that his opinion is not particularly based in Egyptology. Have we actually identified any non-Mormon Egyptologists who hold that Facsimile No. 1 depicts human sacrifice? I suspect we have not. - Nunh-huh 21:10, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

I am unfamiliar with more than a half-dozen egyptologists that have even treated the primary documents in research. It is a mistake to say "the majority of," or "all," as most egyptologiest are not even familiar iwth the documents, let alone have attempted to interpret. As far as I know, only Baer, Parker, and Wilson are the only true non-Mormon egyptologists who have commented on the matter, and although they agreed on multiple things, they disagreed on many others. Three or four is a far cry from most or majority. Of the research I've read disagreements range from Osiris/bird to embalment/resurrection/sacrifice, which undermines the statement to begin with. What other works about these have been done by what other egyptologists? I'd love to study them if available. Or if push comes to shove we could be cite specific research and say, "Egyptologists Parker and Wilson believed that..." Perhaps that's the direction we should go? -Visorstuff 21:45, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

How about an exhaustive list of Egyptologists who confirmed Smith's translation? That would be more informative, and shorter. - Nunh-huh 21:47, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

HAHA! I like your style. Point taken. What do you think we should do then about the terminology? We only have three non-LDS egyptologists (one mormon one who hasn't commented on it publicly), a handful of archaeologsts and other academicians (almost all Mormon) and a bunch of hobbyists such as the Larsons. Should we be more specific or more general? Incidentally, the image of the hypocephalus, which does have some support for, doesn't share the same terminology as the others. -Visorstuff 22:38, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

My feeling (for what it is worth) is that you should not use absolute terminology if you can identify even one Egyptologist who doesn't fit the characterization, regardless of the religious affiliation of that Egyptologist. Rhodes is not an Egyptologist (my bad; see his vita here), but Gee is. There may be others; I don't know. But showing just one, to be precise, takes the terminology out of the realm of absolutes and makes it more precise to say "most." -Awyatt 26 April 2006

actually, no, it doesn't. "Most" to mean "one" is deceptive and misleading. The facts seem to be that no Egyptologist supports Smith's interpretation on the basis of his knowledge of Egyptology. What, precisely, has Gee said, and has he argued on a religious basis or a scientific one? The fact, if it is one, that one person voices an opinion different from all other opinions on the subject should not be overemphasized by making it seem that the disagreement is more significant than it is. And that's what "many" would do. - Nunh-huh 00:38, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Whether an Egyptologist (Gee) makes his interpretation based on religious conviction or his knowledge of Egyptian is besides the point. Either way, the blanket statement "Egyptologists interpret this as an enbalming procedure" is demonstrably untrue. Please note that I am not arguing that "most" is the best qualifier in this instance. In fact, both "almost all" or "the vast majority of" (as the caption is stated when I wrote this) would be equally acceptable in my eyes; they remove the absolute phraseology that was previously used and make the caption more correct. -Awyatt, 27 April 2006

"With one identified (and Mormon) exception" would be a better qualifier if there is one identified Egyptologist who demurs from the otherwise unanimous view, though either of your two qualifiers is better than "many", which is deceptive. In fact, if most of a field hold a viewpoint, it is fair to say that that field holds that view: Scientists find HIV causes AIDS (even though individual scientists may demur); Doctors treat a ruptured appendix with an appendectomy (even if one of them may opt for Bach's flower remedies instead. So "Egyptologists interpret this as an enbalming procedure" is in fact not disproven by cherry-picking a dissenter, as it is not equivalent to "Without exception, Egyptologists interpret this as an enbalming procedure"- Nunh-huh 16:07, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Nunh-huh's argument here (using the HIV/AIDS analogy). It does not make sense to put "overwhelming majority" or "99% of" or whatever on a point like this. Standard college textbooks on ancient Egyptian history shows this as an enbalming procedure. Pictures and explanations of this are in tourism brochures. If one accepts one or two dissenters within a field is enough to trigger these adjectives, I suspect an overwhelming majority of editors would have to republish an overwhelming majority of books. RelHistBuff 15:01, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Qwasty's changes

So which of Qwasty's changes are objected to; i.e. are verifiably incorrect? Aren't most of the changes just mainstream Egyptological views? --Michael C. Price ^talk 12:00, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

I don't object to any of Qwasty's changes. In fact, it would be great to put in some of the changes. However, Qwasty tended to use language to push a POV rather than staying NPOV. Rather than editing the additions, I thought it would be better to discuss the changes here, then implement later.

For example, in the intro section, "Egyptologists invariably say that the..." sounds like WP:WEASEL words. Better to state a quote or give a reference.

Another sentence, "The fact that Smith's copies (as published in the Book of Abraham) are exact matches is meticulously ignored." Firstly, the "meticuously ignored" is a strong POV which should be neutralized. Also, I believe Qwasty is referring to the facsimiles. But the only facsimile that is in the original papyrus is facsimile 1. So in fact the statement is not quite true.

The sentence "Smith mistakenly identifies a female figure (figure 4, facsimile 3) as a male prince" needs additional info. I, myself, recognize the figure as female as well, but that only comes from my own knowledge. We need a quote or reference, otherwise it seems like the sentence is pushing a POV.

I think it's the feather on her head that convinces Egyptologist that she is Maàt. --Michael C. Price ^talk 23:22, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

RelHistBuff 13:04, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

No problem with making it NPOV, but the "facts" seem OK. Getting cites for them would take awhile. I suggest making it NPOV and then sticking ^{[citation needed]} all over them (and perhaps elsewhere). BTW I recognise the female figure as Maat, female Egyptian goddess of truth, justice and order, but I'm just an amateur as well. --Michael C. Price ^talk 13:47, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea. If you would like to go ahead and put back the changes in a NPOV way that will be fine. I have already started some digging and found some sources and then I can complete the job. RelHistBuff 15:01, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

OK, I'm done. I may have missed some stuff, though. --Michael C. Price ^talk 16:27, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

OK, thanks. The changes will probably be spread out over the week. RelHistBuff 20:47, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Good work. I'm puzzled, though, why did you delete

* None of Joseph's fascimile translations, are in fact, correctly translated according to mainstream, non-LDS Egyptologists^{[citation needed]}.

Isn't it accepted by mainstream, non-LDS Egyptologists that JS's translation of the facsimile hieroglyphs are incorrect? --Michael C. Price ^talk 22:24, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

It is redundant with the second bullet point: "Joseph Smith’s translation of facsimiles, which are included in the Book of Abraham, do not bear any similarity to modern Egyptologist’s understanding of these figures". I may need to add another subsection of text anyway, looking at the non-LDS source I found (an article from an University of Chicago Egyptologist). Then I will add some of the needed citations. Hopefully this will be a lot better article in the end. RelHistBuff 22:40, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Let me clarify on this as well - only a few egyptologists have attempted to translate or interpret them (see archived and above discussions). The current popular "translation" circulated on the internet was done by Charles Larson, himself no more than a history buff (at best). Since only two or three non-Mormon egyptologists have gone on record discussing if it is correct or not, I agree it should be left out. That said, most egyptologist don't spend their time with petty, "is this real or not" squabbles. In fact, as discussed above your osiris explanation on the article page is in dispute among the various translators of the document, whether egyptologists or not. you may want to read this already hashed out argument above when discussing Klaus Baer versus Larson's work. Talk:Book_of_Abraham#Most, all, how many -Visorstuff 22:57, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Interpreting them is one matter, but translating them should be straightforward. Hieroglyphic dictonaries are available (I have some to hand) -- there should a consensus on the translation "out there". --Michael C. Price ^talk 23:18, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

You would think that - but there are not a lot of actual glyphs on the facsimiles to translate (and what is is listed above) - I still need to scan in my copies of the church archive photos and post them here. And you are dealing with two differing "layering" theories of glyph writing that Baer outlines. Posting one glyph at the begininning of a sentence can completely change the translation. Many of those deciding glyphs are missing from the papyri. Larsons - the most available "translation," is a mess. Parkers is better. Baer's (suprisingly the least referred to) is the most accurate, followed by Tvedtnes's. Nibley's later translations are also desent, but his early ones show many of hte same errors as Larsons and Parkers - this is one reason why the Tanner's don't go down this path, as noted above - the various translators interpret figures and meanings with the glyphs so differently. For example, the numbers section of they hypocephalus are really numbers acording to Baer and Tvedtnes. Larson of course doesn't attempt to discuss that issue as it doesn't support his thesis, but parker disagrees with the findings. And because no two exact copies of these docuemnts exist (as part of the book of breathings, they were highly individualized for the specific deseased person), you can't (as larson tries to) compare the documents to similar ones. It is interesting that the only impartial egyptologist that continued any study of the book of abraham, Baeuer, is the least referenced, but the most accurate. We should try to reference his work as much as possible, due to his credentials and as a non-Mormon egyptologist who actually studied the issue. Incidentally, the person sitting on the throne is probably the deceased - in this case Sen-Sen, whereas Larson points to it as being a woman, the text alludes to it being a young man. Just an interesting tidbit, as we'll probably never know much more about the accompanying text.

On another note, I really think that this entire talk page is very interesting - and very educational. I wonder if there are anyway to incorporate sections of it into the article. I know I sound like an apologist in some sections (which was not my intent), but I tried to stick to what is actually known about the book of abraham papyrus rather than what is passed along sloppy scholarship and folklore. thoughts? I'm glad to see interest in the article again. -Visorstuff 23:51, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

One final thing - I've added in some sources that were requested during the cite requests - need to have them formatted, but tried to at least correlate where they go. -Visorstuff 23:57, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Book of Jasher

Concerning the parallels with the Book of Jasher and Apocalypse of Abraham, the citations I was wondering about is whether there are sources of the statements of the existence of the parallels (not just the reference of the text). If there are no citations, then it would look as if an observation was made and hence it looks like original research. Or are the parallels considered to be undisputed? I don't know this area too well. RelHistBuff 21:27, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Its been written about by folks from non-Mormons Baer and Parker to Mormons Nibley and Lindsay, and even both Larsons. I thought it was pretty common knowledge for those who studied this issue, but then my "common knowledge" probably is in from academic circles rather than the general casual reader. I beleive that Book of Abraham Clearinghouse references these parallels as apologetic views (may be another critical site, as I couldn't see it today) and has been written about in sunstone, dialogue and others. Its been used by critics to support the idea of joseph smith somehow coming into contact with Gnostic or Kabbalistics legends which influenced the Book of Abraham, and apologists use it to demonstrate that these documents which were not generally available until 50-100 years after Smiths death to show that he was a prophet. I see them as striking parallels, but don't think it proves anything. Just interesting, especially when discussing what Smith "guessed" or "translated" right and definitely needs to be pointed out. Plus a google search for "jasher and "book of abraham"" [1] results in about 1500 pro and con links discussing this one issue. So my circle is definitely not the only one who see's this as interesting. Study of the BOA has been a bit of a hobby of mine, but so have many other things, so I reserve judgement on drawing conclusions as to what the similarities mean. Just my 2 cents. -Visorstuff 01:14, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

For the sake of avoiding problems, could you cite the Sunstone or Dialogue reference and put it in the footnotes? Otherwise it looks like original research. RelHistBuff 07:55, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

The info is in the further reading section. To be honest, creating citations in the format used in this page is not my forte - I struggle with it. But will find page numbers when I can. -Visorstuff 22:52, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Citations needed

I noticed that two additional citations are needed in the items under the defense of the authenticity of the Book of Abraham (in the "Criticism and response" section). While most of the items are easy to understand, those two statements are not clear. For these, a reference should be cited. Readers who are interested could look up the sources to get more information. RelHistBuff 09:57, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Egyptologists' translations of the scroll and facsimiles

Over the past few days, I have made several major additions including three different Egyptologists' translations of the scroll and facsimiles. I have also added citations of missing sources using the ref tag method of putting footnotes together at the bottom. The update today includes a more recent paper by Ritner as a source. I had initially used Rhodes' translation for facsimile 3, but I replaced it now with Ritner's. The main reason is that Rhodes is not really an Egyptologist. But even so he is noted that his translation is consistent with Ritner's. There are, in fact, more published translations by others that support the Egyptologists, but I think the references that are there are enough. As the translations of the scroll and facsimiles are now included, I believe the article covers the subject of the Book of Abraham better than previously. Comments and suggestions for improvement are welcome! RelHistBuff 09:57, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Very valuable additions. I've also added a bit more commentary to the Egyptologist's explanation, re the sons of horus, canopic jars, Maat. --Michael C. Price ^talk 10:05, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

I just added some content on the role of the editors of the journal, Dialogue. It was due to their efforts that the papyri was translated by Egyptologists. RelHistBuff 09:16, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Over the past few days, I made many changes as one can see in the history. It was mostly to improve the quality. I merged redundant information, moved some paragraphs and images to relevant sections, added blockquote formatting to some text, and added a few more citations. RelHistBuff 08:29, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Chart of Egyptologist vs Joseph translations

I think this article could use a chart of Egyptologist vs Joseph translations to clearly illustrate the stark differece between joseph's version, and the egyptologist's version. Qwasty 05:17, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

I think the differences are pretty clear already.  :-) --Michael C. Price ^talk 06:39, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

You know, I think for some people it will never be clear enough. I'm always amazed at people who claim they don't have enough time to read an excerpt from an article like this...They spend hours each day reading their scriptures though! Qwasty 09:38, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

You're absolutely right that it will never clear to some people. But for the open-minded the information is there. That's all we can do. --Michael C. Price ^talk 09:46, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cited source - LDS Egyptologist

I have put back the footnote of Thompson's article that ties the recovered papyrus to the Book of Abraham. It is relevant and important to this article and it is a cited source.RelHistBuff 15:21, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Criticism & Response section is unfair and biased.

Critics always get the last word. In the Critics' section, their assertions stand alone. In the Response section, apologists sections are often instantly rebuffed with critics remarks. I have tried to clean up both sections, letting critics assertions and apologist assertions stand on their own merits. But two have quickly removed my changes. I then need to know what is considered acceptable by others. Which of these is it?

1. Critics will always get the last word, and any attempt to change this will be removed.
2. Apologist responses can be added after every critics argument to keep it balanced.

Perhaps the title of the section was misleading. If there is a response with a cited source from an apologist to a critics item then go ahead and put that in. That is the point of Thompson's response to the apologist's item. The citation of one of the response to the other apologist's item is still missing so I will put a "citation needed" on that. RelHistBuff 07:31, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

I have done as you suggested, and added a couple of the most commonly heard apologist responses to a couple of critics points. Overall, this makes me think this section would be better off changed it into a table format titled "Book of Abraham Issues", where each row covers a particular issue, and the left column would contain critics arguments while the right column would contain the apologists responses. It might clean that section up a little more so you don't get these constant battles where one side always tries to get the last word in. 24.10.152.241 06:34, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

The formatting could be better, but for the moment there are not many counter-responses. The key to keeping this at a higher quality level is to allow only one level of counter-response for each side and to require citations. --RelHistBuff 20:47, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] More citations

Recently I have been adding missing citations, at least in the subject areas that I am aware. While looking for citations for the apologist's point concerning Smith translating from another scroll that is missing, I noticed that the first two items in the listing of apologists' arguments to be effectively the same. The first stated that he did not use the remaining papyrus and the second stated that he used other papyri. Hence, I combined the two, covering both items with one citation (Gee and Rhodes). I removed the uncited critics response for Smith's unusual translations of the facsimiles as I could not find the source for the moment. Once I find it, I will place it back. --RelHistBuff 19:04, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

While you are on the topic of two points being essentially the same, I noticed another still remaining. They are these:

• Within a series of documents written by Joseph Smith's scribes, the "Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar", also known as the "Kirtland Egyptian Papers", some manuscripts support the notion that the Book of Abraham was wrongly translated from extant papyrus.[38]
• Critics note that the existence of the “Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar” shows that Smith did attempt a direct translation.

These are both discussing the exact same thing. Only one should remain. However, since they were both referenced and both fit well in the section they are included, I didn't yet fix this problem. Any suggestions on what should remain? 24.10.152.241 06:38, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

In fact I already noticed two items in the critics section. I reduced them to one noting the two different titles. I more-or-less used your text. In your examples above, however, the first item is the newly merged critics item and the other is a response to an apologist item. Although they both mention the Alphabet and Grammar documents, the footnotes are different. The first is a reference to the documents themselves (showing the wrong translation). The second is a reference to an argument that the existence of the documents proves another point (the argument being made by the author, Milan D. Smith, Jr.). Hence the second footnote refers to the Dialogue article. --RelHistBuff 21:02, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Incorrect removal of entry

MichaelCPrice removed one of my referenced points for incorrect reasons. I originally posted:

while other translations agree with modern Egyptologists' translations. (For example, Joseph Smith correctly identified the four Sons of Horus as "this earth in its four quarters".)

MichaelCPrice removed this saying "The only connection between "the four Sons of Horus" and "this earth in its four quarters" is the word "four": hardly a "correct" translation)"

This is flat out incorrect to say the only link is with the word "four". Below are some references to help explain the original position.

"In the pyramid texts we find a group of four gods with whom the deceased in closely connected in the "other world": these are the four "children of Horus" . . . originally they represented the four pillars which supported the sky, or Horus. Each was supposed to be the lord of one of the quarters of the world, and finally became the god of one of the cardinal points." E. Wallis Budge, The Egyptian Book of the Dead, (New York: Dover, 1967, originally published 1895). pp. cxxiv-cxxv]

"These jars were under the protection of Isis, Nephthys, Neith, and Serqet, and represented the south, north, east, and west respectively" [Budge, 1904, 1:210].

Wilkinson's glossary entry for the Sons of Horus explains that they "were four genii or minor deities connected with the cardinal points and which guarded the viscera of the deceased. Originally human-headed, they were regularly portrayed with the heads of different creatures: Imsety, human-headed (south); Duamutef, jackal-headed (east); Hapy, ape-headed (north); Qebesenuef, falcon-headed (west)" [Richard W. Wilkinson's Symbol and Magic in Egyptian Art [Wilkinson, 1994] p. 213] "Frequently the number [four] appears to connote totality and completeness and is tied to the four cardinal points...The four cardinal points are certainly an ancient concept.... Usually ... the four areas represent the four quarters of the earth alone. This is the case in most religious rituals which find representational expressions" [Wilkinson, 1994, pp. 133-134, emphasis mine]

"These four standing, mummy-like figures are the four Sons of Horus.70 They were the gods of the four quarters of the earth and later came to be regarded as presiding over the four cardinal points.71 They also were guardians of the viscera of the dead, and their images were carved on the four canopic jars into which the internal organs of the dead were placed.72" See http://home.comcast.net/~michael.rhodes/JosephSmithHypocephalus.pdf for the references to these.

Because of this, I have restored and cleaned up my original entry. (unsigned post)

Please sign your posts.

Sorry, the phrase "this earth in its four quarters" does not appear in Josepth Smith's "translation" of facsimile 1. It appears in facsmilie 2. Wrong facsimile. Bad luck, but nice try. --Michael C. Price ^talk 18:58, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

MichaelCPrice, I never said they phrase appears in facsimile 1. Further, my original reference to the argument discusses only facsimile 2. I don't see why you imply I said this has to do with facsimile 1. Also, MichaelCPrice, drop the mean-spirited condescension please. It does no good around here.

Next, the four Sons of Horus appear both on fascimile 1 and fascimile 2. In facsimile 1, they are canopic jars, and Joseph Smith translates them as representations of four specific gods. In facsimile 2, they are mummy like figures, and Joseph Smith translates that as "this earth in its four quarters". (Further note, I should get a login, but for now, my signed posts will consist of my home IP and my work IP address  :) 166.70.155.27 22:04, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

I agree that to put the quote from Rhodes' article as a parenthetical element would have been misleading because his explanation of the four sons of Horus as the four quarters is not related to the canopic jars. However, what I have done is to add an explanation and place this element into the footnotes. This agrees with the article style. I have done the same for all of the other citations, i.e., noting a sentence and then putting longer explanations into the footnotes. This should be acceptable to all. --RelHistBuff 19:26, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

OK --Michael C. Price ^talk 19:31, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

I also corrected the other entry to fit with what the original article said, i.e., the author did not say "many". Actually the author made the quote referring to John Gee's work and Gee noted six papyri plus some others. --RelHistBuff 19:58, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Good Article candidacy

This article has gone through the peer review process, although there were not many human reviewers (there was one software filter pass). No comments were made (maybe that is good?). As the bulk of the article has been relatively stable, I would like to submit this as a Good Article candidate. This will require that missing citations to be completed. Could anyone with knowledge in these areas please add the missing citations to the text? I will let the article stand as is for a few days and if the sources cannot be found, the text will be deleted, at least during the candidacy process. The text can be brought back at any time by anyone who found the sources. --RelHistBuff 21:47, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Heh, as I'm still somewhat a Wikipedia newbie, what constitutes a "Good Article"? There are still many finer points in this article I could nit-pick, but I don't have any big issues with the overall layout. Is Good Article status just that the major structure is stable and references are completed? Or does it mean something else? 166.70.155.27 22:28, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

See WP:GA. If you have comments, please note it here. Clearly if there are problems that need to be resolved, then let's get them resolved. --RelHistBuff 23:12, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

The uncited statements have been removed until the original sources can be found. To retrieve the text, the old version of the article can be found here [2]. --RelHistBuff 11:04, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Hi! I'm a Good Article reviewer. I commend you on a very good job at maintaining NPOV on a very controversial topic. I'm also impressed with the inline citations. For me to promote it, however, I'd like to have the lead expanded a little (one to two paragraphs more) along the lines of WP:LEAD.

Not related to the GA issue: I've noticed that book titles are not consistently italicized. This would help to make the article look better. I'd suggest using tags, which allow web search engines to know that the italicized portion is a title and thus improve the indexing of the page. As you move towards FA status, I would also suggest spinning a lot of the detail off into subarticles and move to summary style here.

Anyway, I'll put the nom on hold to allow the change in the lead. --CTSWyneken^(talk) 18:27, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. I made a first attempt to expand the lead section, dividing it into three paragraphs which follows the story in the article and adding some text. During the next few days I will expand it some more. Your comment on italics triggered me to check the Manual of Style. Surprisingly, it seems that titles of scripture are not supposed to be italicized nor placed in quotes! I will eventually change that in this article (as well as others I work on). The cite tag unfortunately renders italicized characters as well. I will check if the cite tag has attributes that can change the style. RelHistBuff 09:08, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! I'll have to take a look. I tend to live in Chicago Manual of Style! In any case, I think if its consistant no one will quibble. --CTSWyneken^(talk) 00:20, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

OK, there are now three paragraphs that I believe can stand alone by itself. I have also removed italics from all titles of scripture (Book of Abraham and Pearl of Great Price). I made sure the titles of books in the footnotes are italicized though. RelHistBuff 17:21, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Nicely done! I've promoted it. --CTSWyneken^(talk) 00:57, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] over-PC?

Let's not be over-politically correct here. This books is quite clearly not a translation of the original Egyptian manuscripts. Even the Mormon arguments in favour of it are extremely tentative and quite clearly clutching at straws. Let's just be frank and grown up about it.