The Kirtland Egyptian Papers: a window on Joseph's method

Manuscripts in Joseph's and his scribes' hands set characters from the Hor papyrus beside the English text and build an 'Egyptian alphabet' unrelated to Egyptian.

What the Church claims

Joseph translated the Book of Abraham by revelation; the 1835 'Egyptian Alphabet' and 'Grammar' papers were a side project (or the scribes' project) that tells us nothing about how the scripture was produced.

Once the evidence is in, this claim: Weak. The physical documents, in Joseph's and his scribes' hands, tie the English text to the Hor papyrus and to a bogus decipherment system; only the precise drafting sequence remains debatable.

The record

  • The 1835 Egyptian-language documents comprise character copies, three 'Egyptian Alphabet' manuscripts (A in Joseph Smith's own hand with Cowdery and Phelps contributions; B and C by Cowdery and Phelps), an 'Egyptian Counting' document, and the bound 'Grammar and Alphabet of the Egyptian Language' (GAEL) in the hands of W. W. Phelps and Warren Parrish.
  • Joseph's journal for 1835-10-01: he 'labored on the Egyptian alphabet' with Cowdery and Phelps, and 'the system of astronomy was unfolded'.
  • Three 1835 Book of Abraham manuscripts (Williams: Abr. 1:4-2:6; Parrish: 1:4-2:2; Phelps/Parrish: 1:1-2:18) carry Egyptian characters in the left margin beside blocks of English. The JSP says most were copied from the papyri; Cook & Smith identify them as sequential characters from the Hor Breathing text's 'instructions column' beside the Fac. 1 vignette.
  • JSP editors on manuscripts A and B: they 'were created and revised simultaneously', partly by taking down dictation and perhaps partly by copying; A's heading ('sign of the fifth degree of the first Seccond part') uses the GAEL's degree system.
  • The system assigns each character multiple meanings across five 'degrees'; one hieratic sign can stand for a paragraph of English. Egyptologists, LDS and not, judge it worthless as Egyptian. The editors find no evidence Joseph or his associates had read Champollion-era scholarship.
  • The JSP introduction accepts 'some evidence' (citing Christopher C. Smith, 2009) that GAEL material was incorporated into at least one portion of the Book of Abraham (Abr. 1:1-3), while noting most of each corpus is independent of the other.
  • Baer showed in 1968 that where the papyrus was already broken, the margin characters for later verses are invented 'restorations' bearing no resemblance to what stood on the papyrus.
  • Brent Metcalfe showed that all 1835 manuscripts name Ham's wife 'Zeptah' and her daughter 'Egyptes'; 'Egyptus' first appears when the text was revised for the press in 1842 - evidence of a text still being composed and edited in English.
  • On 2018-11-08 volume co-editor Brian Hauglid wrote publicly that he now rejected a missing Abraham manuscript, agreed that two manuscripts were simultaneously dictated and that 'the Egyptian papers were used to produce the BoA', and that he no longer agreed with Gee or Muhlestein, calling their apologetic scholarship on the subject 'abhorrent'.
  • The Gospel Topics essay says only that the relationship of these documents to the Book of Abraham 'is not fully understood' and that the grammar's rules do not correspond to Egyptology.

The moving target

  • 1835-10-01: Records personally working on the Egyptian alphabet with Cowdery and Phelps.
  • 2014-07-08: Relationship of the grammar documents to the Book of Abraham 'is not fully understood'.
  • 2018: Publishes all documents; treats the Egyptian-language documents and the Book of Abraham as interrelated products of Joseph and his associates; declines to fix their sequence.

The exchange

Hugh Nibley (BYU Studies, 1971); John Gee (Interpreter 42, 2021); FAIR

Reverse-engineering: the English text came first by revelation; the scribes (chiefly W. W. Phelps) afterwards tried, without revelation, to work out an alphabet by matching the finished translation to characters. The margin characters were added after the English was written.

The answer: Alphabet A is in Joseph's handwriting, his journal has Joseph laboring on it, and the JSP editors think he likely knew and approved of the GAEL and used it in 1842-43. The alphabet's content (Kolob, degrees, astronomy) appears before the corresponding Book of Abraham chapters existed in any manuscript (Abr. 3 is first attested in 1842), which is the opposite of derivation from a finished text. The Kinderhook episode shows Joseph himself consulting the GAEL as a working lexicon in 1843. If subordinates had produced a bogus alphabet from his revelation, he is never recorded correcting them.

What they get right: Nibley and Gee are right that most of the GAEL is in Phelps's hand and that Joseph's precise role in the bound volume is undocumented (the JSP says so too).

Jeff Lindsay (Interpreter 47, 2021); John Gee

The 'twin' manuscripts were not live dictation: a dittograph of Abr. 2:3-5, spelling and punctuation patterns show visual copying from an earlier, now-lost text, so the margin characters cannot show the moment of translation.

The answer: The JSP editors, who examined the originals, conclude A and B were created and revised simultaneously, with dictation and possibly some copying. Even if an earlier draft existed, the scribes' layout - characters from the Hor Breathing text, in papyrus order, each governing a block of Abraham text - shows what Joseph's closest associates understood the source to be, in documents made under his eye. Hauglid, once a defender of the copying theory, abandoned it after editing the documents.

What they get right: Lindsay's dittograph point is real evidence that at least part of one manuscript was copied; the sequence of drafts is genuinely uncertain.

John Gee, 'Prolegomena' (Interpreter 42, 2021)

JSP vol. 4 is biased: its editors misdate the Alphabet documents (they belong to 1 Oct 1835), contradict themselves, and tilt toward 'an anti-Mormon translation theory'.

The answer: The volume was produced and published by the Church Historian's Press after internal review. Dating every alphabet document to a single afternoon rests on one journal entry that says Joseph 'labored on' the alphabet, not that it began or ended that day. The charge of bias does not address the physical facts all sides accept: Joseph's handwriting, the papyrus-order margin characters, and the GAEL-style heading on manuscript A.

Both cases at full strength

The skeptics' case

These papers are the closest thing to a lab notebook for any of Joseph Smith's translations. They show Joseph, in his own hand, assigning sounds and expansive meanings to characters copied from the papyri. They show three scribes setting successive characters from the Hor 'breathing permit' against successive paragraphs of Abraham 1-2, with invented characters where the papyrus was broken. The ratio - one squiggle to a paragraph - is exactly what the GAEL's 'degrees' theory predicts and nothing like real Egyptian. The documents also undercut both modern rescue theories. If the source was a different, lost roll, why did the people in the room pair the English with characters from this one? If the papyri were only a catalyst, why build a grammar? The Church's own editors concluded the two projects were intertwined, and one of them publicly abandoned the apologetic reading as a result. The name 'Egyptus', changed from 'Zeptah' in 1842, and the dependence of Abr. 1:1-3 on GAEL wording show an English composition in progress.

The apologetic case

No witness says Joseph translated by consulting the alphabet; the bound Grammar is Phelps's and Parrish's handwriting; the JSP itself says Joseph's role in it is unknown and that most of the Book of Abraham is textually independent of the Egyptian-language documents. Phelps had his own prior interest in a 'pure language'. It is therefore reasonable to see the KEP as a parallel, human, failed attempt - perhaps with Joseph's curiosity and participation - to reverse-engineer a language from a text already received by revelation.

What would change this

Discovery of a pre-July-1835 or otherwise earlier English manuscript of Abraham without characters, or contemporaneous testimony that the scribes built the alphabet from a finished text without Joseph.

Closely related

Sources

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