ph ban paper

Congrats!

Have someone else review it. I wonder if Blair Hodges would be interested.

That’s really cool. I agree with letting someone else do the review. That probably works better. Keep us updated!

You can send it out via email. You can also post it as an attachment in this thread via a reply (which would keep it here in this private forum section). I think everyone has that ability in the settings.

Thank you for your eagerness to read my paper. I appreciate the interest, and hope that you all can keep this in strict confidence. I am including some comments from reviewers; in some cases, I have revised my paper to include their suggestions, but I’m not sure if it meets their goals for me, so please let me know what you think. This paper is slightly different from the one they read because I’ve incorporated many suggestions. Here’s some things I would like feedback on specifically (but I would like other feedback as you see fit).

Page 1 introduction: I added some more information about geography and race per Mark Staker’s comment #1 on the last page. Is this better?

Page 6: I left Bush’s comment there–I need to do some more research on Asian intermarriage. If you can point me in a direction, I’d appreciate it.

Page 7: is a note that “need Bringhurst citation.” I received an advance copy of a chapter of a new book on polygamy, but since it hasn’t been published yet, I have no idea what page the citation will be on. It was supposed to come out in May, but I just checked Amazon, and it isn’t even a thought there yet. (Vol 1 is there, but not Vol 2.) I’m not sure how to cite this properly until the book officially comes out.

Page 16: Bush wrote a note, and I agree with him, but I don’t think there’s anything I can do about it. Any suggestions here would be great.

Page 18: same thing

Page 24: same thing

Page 32: I added a sentence here, but not sure if it is satisfactory for Bush’s note. What do you think?

Conclusion: Definitely where I need the most work. All reviewers had different suggestions. I have tried to incorporate Bush and Staker’s suggestions, but not sure if I should make it a footnote as Bush suggested. I hope the conclusion is better than the one they read–I tried to clarify church leaders vs members. Does it look better from Staker’s comments (at end)?

I know Connell O’Donovan reviewed it, but he forgot to include the attachment. In the email, he told me to cut the Van Meter stuff, which I really don’t want to do, but I think I had better. Connell also told me to cut it down to 15 pages for Sunstone, but I don’t want to do that because my real goal is Journal of Mormon History, not Sunstone. I plan to do a PowerPoint, so I know I’ll have to do a lot of cutting to fit into 30 minutes anyway.

I would ask Bush to clarify, but he hasn’t given me his email address, and I don’t want to bother the “go-between” too much. I’ve left “Track Changes on”. It may be better to read without that, so you may need to turn that off for better readability.

Wow, I somehow didn’t see that you posted the document in this thread. I’m reading it right now.

One thing struck me, as a totally unrelated side note, that the Book of Abraham has a story of a woman named “Egyptus” being namesake for the land of “Egypt.” Her daughter discovered the land:

The land of Egypt being first discovered by a woman, who was the daughter of Ham, and the daughter of Egyptus, which in the Chaldean signifies Egypt, which signifies that which is forbidden; (Abraham 1:23)

It stuck me that “Egypt” is probably a modern, European word. I knew in the back of my mind that it wasn’t the original name for that region. So I looked up some info on that. Egypt is a middle ages French word that morphed from Latin, which morphed from Greek that was borrowed from a late Coptic word for the city of Memphis … well, it has nothing to do with Chaldean. It doesn’t mean “forbidden” at any point in the word’s history. The ancient word for that region was Kemet, which means black earth, named for the rich, dark farming land along the Nile.

This story is a glaring anachronism that Joseph had to have made up. 😥 You could possible take a kinder view and see it as a break in his inspiration, as an error in the “channeling” of the revelation. But in the end, it makes no sense at all. Unfortunately, it also becomes the basis for a whole racist theological speculation related to the priesthood ban. It’s a major foundational underpinning for the idea.

My presentation is this Friday July 27 at 3:45 pm at the U of Utah. I don’t know if any of you are in SLC, but I’d love to have you come. Marguerite Driessen will be the respondent.