Cecil
Andrews, a very ignorant Reformed critic of the LDS Church in Northern Ireland,
has a new post attempting to critique the Book of Abraham:
Andrews’
misinformed comments (largely based on the works of the Tanners and James
White[!]) notwithstanding, the name “Kolob” in the Book of Abraham is actually
a “hit” vis-à-vis the authenticity of the volume.
And the Lord said unto me: These are the
governing ones; and the name of the great one is Kolob, because it is near unto me, for I am the Lord thy
God: I have set this one to govern all those which belong to the same order as
that upon which thou standest. (Abraham 3:3)
There is a potential wordplay here, as “Kolob” is said to be near God. The Hebrew for “near” is קרב *QRB, and R (ר) and L (ל) can oftentimes be interchangeable (they are two “liquid consonants”), thus a play on QLB or KLB with QRB (cf. facsimile 2 figure 1: "Kolob, signifying the first creation, nearest to the celestial, or the residence of God).
Additionally,
Hebrew כֶּלֶב keleb “dog” is a plausible etymology of Kolob.
“Sirius,” the chief star in antiquity, was known as the “dog star” due to its prominence
in its constellation, [Alpha] Canis Major (“Greater Dog”), evidenced by
texts from antiquity. E.g.:
Sirius rises late in the dark, liquid sky
On summer nights, star of stars,
Orion's Dog they call it, brightest
Of all, but an evil portent, bringing heat
And fevers to suffering humanity. (Homer,
The Iliad, Book 22, lines 33-37)
Commenting on Sirius (the dog star) and its important role in Egyptian
cosmology, we read the following from sources representative of the scholarship
on this matter:
It was discovered quite early on in their
civilization that at their capital, Memphis, the Nile began to rise at the heliacal
rising of Sirius, the brightest star in the sky, that is, at the time when
Sirius first became visible in the morning twilight above the eastern horizon.
The Egyptians therefore took Sothis (as it was called) to be a divine star
responsible for or signalling the Nile’s rising. The great Sothis period of
1,460 years, used by the Egyptian priests, is a consequence of the fact that,
whereas the heliacal rising of Sirius occurs every 365.25 days, the calendar
they used contained 365 days. Thus the heliacal rising of Sirius occurred one
day earlier every our years with a return to the same calendar date in 1,460
years. (Oxford Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Universe, ed. Archie Roy
[Oxford University Press, 1992], S.V. “Egyptian astronomy”)
The dog star Sirius that was deified as a
goddess and shown as a woman with a star on her head . . . Sothis, represented
as a large dog, was later associated with Isis; she is shown rising side-saddle
on the animal as Isis-Sothis on some of the coins from the Greek Imperial (i.e.
Roman colonial) mint of Alexandria. (Manfred Lurker, The Gods and Symbols of
Ancient Egypt, [trans. Barbara Cummings; New York: Thames and Hudson, 1982],
114)
“Let us go for him
to the maimed apple tree
in the Kullab desert!”
To the maimed apple tree
in the Kullab desert
they followed in her footsteps
to the maimed apple tree
in the Kullab desert!”
To the maimed apple tree
in the Kullab desert
they followed in her footsteps
Dumuzi had dressed
in a grand garment
and sat seated in grandeur. (Thorkild Jacobsen, The Harps That Once . . . : Sumerian Poetry in Translation [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987], 225)
in a grand garment
and sat seated in grandeur. (Thorkild Jacobsen, The Harps That Once . . . : Sumerian Poetry in Translation [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987], 225)
It should be clear that the name "Kolob" and how it is presented in the Book of Abraham, far from being a mark against the volume, is a "hit" for its antiquity and authenticity. For more on the onomasticon of the Book of Abraham, see, for e.g., the slides of a presentation I have on this issue in Dublin back in October 2018:
This is not
the first time Andrews has embarrassed himself on the topic of “Mormonism”; for
others, see: