The Restoration Theory

Where I left off in my last post on the subject, the reader may have felt a little overwhelmed by all the ideas and info. 

The Restoration Theory is an alternative to the Missing Roll and Catalyst theories. 

To simplify, I’m proposing that the Hor vignettes/facsimiles did not originate with Hor, and, moreover, they were originally drawn by Egyptian-Jews, for a non-funerary purpose. You might recognize the Jewish influence idea from the Semitic Adaptation Theory, although the Jewish role is a little different in my theory. I'm proposing the figures in the vignettes, despite being outwardly recognizable Egyptian characters, were used by the Egyptian-Jews to represent different characters. I'm proposing that their original purpose was to accompany the Book of Abraham (this is in Ptolemaic times), probably on a wall in the temple of Onias, and Joseph Smith was thus able to use the vignettes, which were physically on the papyrus, as a window through which he accessed the original text. Because he was penetrating something that was physically on the papyrus, this falls under the umbrella of translating the papyrus, making statements to that effect true. 

And I’m saying there’s actual evidence to support this theory. Because, we would expect/predict different things about the vignettes, based on what purpose they originally were intended to serve, and we can assess how well they align with expectations. 

By analogy, suppose a certain restaurant serves only  Mexican food, but a friend claims he used to get Greek food from there all the time. Is your friend lying? You come up with a theory that the restaurant originally served Greek food. You discover the owners are Greek, and the basement has Greek recipes, and old pictures on the wall show people eating what appears to be Greek food. All of that is evidence in favor of your theory. 

Okay, so how did the illustrations end up in Hor's Book of Breathings? Well, for one thing, Hor's "Book of Breathings Made By Isis" is the oldest known and possibly the very first of the "made by Isis" genre. So, if Hor invented the genre, he would have had liberty as well as an apparent desire for novelty, so we shouldn't be surprised to see him look for and find something unique and then adapt it to his purposes. 

The Restoration Theory is of course inspired by the Semitic Adaptation theory, but instead of proposing that a Jewish scribe took Egyptian funerary scenes and assigned new meaning to them, the Restoration Theory proposes that the scenes originally had Jewish meaning and Hor took them and assigned new meaning to them. This means we would expect the illustrations to be distinguishable from vignettes originally made for funerary papyri, rather than adapted for funerary use, which I’m proposing Hor did. 

Under this theory, we don't need to account for any characters Hor had his scribes write on the vignette for Facsimile 3. Joseph Smith is likely giving us what was originally written on the original version of the illustration. And part of the reason why the characters on Facsimile 3 are so illegible may be because Joseph Smith partly restored what was originally written, purposefully leaving hybrid characters, sort of like scratching out Hor's changes. Of course, if the illustration was originally a larger scene on a temple wall, a lot more could have been written and we wouldn't expect Joseph to be able to carry it over to a small papyrus version of the scene. 

This also means we don't need to reconcile why a Jewish redactor would append a Book of Abraham onto an Egyptian funerary text, since the vignettes themselves were the window into the text. 

This also means we can look at the witness statements through a new lens. For instance, Joseph Smith III said that the papyrus from which his father was said to have translated the Book of Abraham was found “with other portions” in a roll, singular. This seems to either suggest that multiple different documents bundled together can be considered a roll, or that on one single piece of papyrus there was both the content from which Joseph translated the Book of Abraham, and also unrelated content (i.e. the text of the Book of Breathings?).

This may also help us understand the reference to Abraham's own hand. In light of apocryphal stories of Abraham which had circulated anciently, when Joseph restored Abraham's original version it would be fair to make that distinction by pointing out that the version he is giving us is the one written by Abraham's own hand. Or, alternatively, if the Ptolemaic version was faithful to Abraham's original, or claimed to be, it would be fair to point that out by saying it is purporting to be the version written by Abraham's own hand. At no point did Joseph claim that Abraham had touched the papyrus (assumptions of others notwithstanding).

Now, let's take a look at some of the evidence.

As others have pointed out, although this is rarely talked about enough, Joseph Smith received the only lion couch scene in the world where the figure on the couch is in the prayer position. Early critics tried to say the top hand is a bird wing, but that has proven not to be true, as the dots are not dapple marks but are the remnants of finger lines after   ink flaked off. 

Unexpected presence of the goddess Bastet on Facsimile 3. This leads us right to Bubastis, and the Jewish temple of Onias. Claims that the printing plate shows that an Abubis snout was originally on the facsimile are misguided. The sharp cut and the area where lead was dug out are not in the shape of an Anubis snout. And I’ve demonstrated that the cut was made after that area was already cut lower than the printable portions. 

Unexpected Abraham in Egypt - the name Abraham is literally spelled out on the vignette. This is not like seeing things in the clouds where an unlimited number of shapes are possible, but these are actual distinct shapes representing Upper Egypt and the spelling, in order, of the name Abraham. 

Unexpected elaborate falcon on standard  this is not expected to be there, nevertheless the evidence is strong.