Seekingtime

January 2024

Hello, I'm AgisdeSparte. Wikipedia is written by people who have a wide diversity of opinions, but we try hard to make sure articles have a neutral point of view. Your recent edit to Criticism of the Book of Abraham seemed less than neutral to me, so I removed it for now. If you think I made a mistake, or if you have any questions, you can leave me a message on my talk page. Thank you. AgisdeSparte (talk) 04:34, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

Hi AgisdeSparte, thanks very much for your thoughtful feedback. That was my very first edit on Wiki, and, I do feel you've made a mistake : ). Will you please provide additional information on why you removed my edit? I agree, it's very important to maintain accuracy and neutrality, especially when discussing people's religious beliefs. This is why I made the edit. The edited statement, as was (and now is again), seems less than neutral to me:

"When Smith examined the scrolls, he said that they contained the writings of Abraham and Joseph (as well as a story about an "Egyptian princess" named "Katumin" or "Kah tou mun")."

The wiki editors are making a claim that "Smith" said something. The two references are to pages 1 and 2 or Ritner's book. If we are to be neutral and honest, this is truly what Ritner says on those 2 pages. However, Dr. Ritner seems to be expressing an opinion that Joseph Smith said something, but he doesn't support that with anything said by Smith.

The first statement may be a reference to June 30th-July 6th, 1835 reports made in hindsight; however, Dr. Ritner doesn't tell us why he's making this assumption about what Smith "said." The second claim in the sentence "(as well as a story about an "Egyptian princess" named "Katumin"..." may be an assumption by Dr. Ritner, we don't really know without a reference to his reasons for making the claim. There may be a great reference somewhere in his many writings, but pages 1 and 2 do not provide. Assuming that anything said by Dr. Ritner is true isn't really neutral. Seekingtime (talk) 05:02, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

Hi Seekingtime, I just wanted to chime in and explain a few things and explain the revision.

• First, Wikipedia reports what reliable sources say, with reliability being based on a number of things. Among those are reputation of publishers and authors. Signature Books is cited in various articles and seems to be understood as a reasonable source for books on Mormonism; likewise, Robert K. Ritner was a distinguished Egyptologist from UChicago. Given these facts, I think it's safe to say that Ritner's book qualifies as one such source. If you would like to contest either of these sources, I'd recommend taking the question to Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard.
• Second, various LDS scribes mention Smith saying as much (Ritner outlines a few of these on pages 15-17). In other words, this isn't Ritner's claim, but rather a simple reporting of what appears to be a historical fact, based on several independent LDS sources (which Ritner does in fact cite).
• Finally, neutrality refers to how we report things on the site, not how the sources report things. If we remove all sources that we (subjectively) believe have a hint of bias in them, we'd likely be left with nothing to work with. (I would also argue that rejecting an otherwise reasonable source because it "isn't really neutral" veers into original research territory, but that might be a different conversation.)--Gen. Quon_[Talk] 18:49, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

EDIT: Oops, I think I assumed the worst. My mistake!--Gen. Quon_[Talk] 18:10, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Hi Gen. Quon thanks a ton, I really appreciate your help. I do need it! Still learning.

You may have misunderstood, my edit wasn’t disagreeing that Smith said the papyrus “...contained the writings of Abraham and Joseph…” As you note, this is implied in the contemporary handwritten and published documents recorded by Whitmer; it was also recorded by Richards who, as per current BoA criticism published by Signature Books (Vogel, Marquardt, etc.), relied on Phelps and/or JS for the hindsight 1843 JS History entry (for July 6th, 1835). It’s also likely, but, as far as I know, not yet verifiable, that JS dictated something about Katumin. Still, I don’t see any reason to leave the parenthetical mention of Katumin out, but I do feel we should add a reference to Ritner 2013, pp. 15-17, where Whitmer and Phelps are cited by Marquardt. I’ll leave that up to you though, since you seem to disagree that those pages are a better reference?

Second, my edit wasn’t a complaint that Ritner 2013, is biased. Wikipedia acknowledges that we can’t eliminate bias, but, as I understand, we’re to report on, or describe disputes, and not defend or oppose the views of UChicago, Robert Ritner, Vogel, Larson, Signature Books, YouTube, IRR, or so on. In fairness, we are likewise not to oppose or defend Givens, Gee, Oxford Press, BYU, the JSP project, etc.

In that light, when I said: “There may be a great reference somewhere in his many writings, but pages 1 and 2 do not provide. Assuming that anything said by Dr. Ritner is true isn't really neutral,” I wasn’t pointing out any natural biases that Ritner, UChicago, etc. may have. My original feelings were that, by referencing Ritner’s uncited introductory notes (to be built upon), we were asking readers to just believe such and such (in this case, that "Smith said" something) simply because someone distinguished, accepted, or published, or so on, said so. I guessed other readers would have experiences similar to mine. I checked p. 2 of Ritner 2013 expecting to find Ritner quoting Smith saying such and such, and I found only Ritner saying something a bit different (some seriously disputed by current critics, but that’s a different subject). The issue was that, without searching beyond your reference to p. 2, readers who question authority, and so on, might wonder about Wikipedia’s balanced treatment of the dispute, as well as Ritner. In my opinion, we’d better represent Ritner by citing one of his “great references somewhere” else, e.g. p. 15-17. However, since my attempts were twice reverted, I’ll mentally note that this is accepted practice, and try to proceed with updating the article to include more recent developments in the always intriguing subject of Book of Abraham criticisms.

Thanks again so much for your help! Seekingtime (talk) 06:14, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

Hey Seekingtime! I thought I'd chime in here, too. After reading your response (thanks for taking the time to write that out, btw, and once again, sorry that I jumped the gun there), I went ahead and ordered a copy of Vogel's work. I'm excited to see what he has to say about this topic. If you have any ideas about how the "Criticism" article can be improved, I'd be more than happy to hear them/work with you to make the article stronger. One thing that your comments got me to think about was maybe including primary sources (e.g., letters) in the article alongside secondary sources, to more clearly establish who said what.--Gen. Quon_[Talk] 18:09, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Great ideas, I've been very busy of late, but primary sources would add much! In addition, since Ritner's book was published, many, if not all, of the original documents have been made available in high resolution, for anyone to double check. He seemed to look forward to their publication in his last interviews with Dehlin. Seekingtime (talk) 04:17, 1 February 2024 (UTC)