Kirtland Egyptian Papers
Encyclopedia
Book of Abraham
The Book of Abraham is a 1835 work by Joseph Smith, Jr. that he said was based on Egyptian papyri purchased from a traveling mummy exhibition. According to Smith, the book was "a translation of some ancient records....purporting to be the writings of Abraham, while he was in Egypt, called the Book...
during the Kirtland period of early Mormonism
Mormonism
Mormonism is the religion practiced by Mormons, and is the predominant religious tradition of the Latter Day Saint movement. This movement was founded by Joseph Smith, Jr. beginning in the 1820s as a form of Christian primitivism. During the 1830s and 1840s, Mormonism gradually distinguished itself...
(early to mid 1830s). The papers include an "Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar" written in the hand of Joseph Smith, Jr., and other ostensible Egyptian language
Egyptian language
Egyptian is the oldest known indigenous language of Egypt and a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. Written records of the Egyptian language have been dated from about 3400 BC, making it one of the oldest recorded languages known. Egyptian was spoken until the late 17th century AD in the...
materials and early manuscript versions of the Book of Abraham in the handwriting of Oliver Cowdery
Oliver Cowdery
Oliver H. P. Cowdery was, with Joseph Smith, Jr., an important participant in the formative period of the Latter Day Saint movement between 1829 and 1836, becoming one of the Three Witnesses of the Book of Mormon's golden plates, one of the first Latter Day Saint apostles, and the Second Elder of...
, W. W. Phelps, Warren Parish, Willard Richards
Willard Richards
Willard Richards was an early leader in the Latter Day Saint movement and served as Second Counselor in the First Presidency to church president Brigham Young in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from 1847 until his death.Willard Richards was born in Hopkinton, Massachusetts, to...
, and Frederick G. Williams
Frederick G. Williams
Frederick Granger Williams was a leader in the early Latter Day Saint movement and served in the First Presidency as Second Counselor to church president Joseph Smith, Jr. from 1833 to 1837...
.
The papers have been a source of controversy, because according to Egyptologists they show a lack of understanding of the Egyptian language
Egyptian language
Egyptian is the oldest known indigenous language of Egypt and a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. Written records of the Egyptian language have been dated from about 3400 BC, making it one of the oldest recorded languages known. Egyptian was spoken until the late 17th century AD in the...
, and cast doubt on the Book of Abraham as a literal translation of the Joseph Smith Papyri
Joseph Smith Papyri
The Joseph Smith Papyri are eleven Egyptian papyrus fragments which were once owned by Joseph Smith, Jr., the founder of Mormonism...
. Mormon scholars have argued that many of the papers may have been produced by Joseph Smith's scribes without his involvement, and that they may have been intended as a speculative or naturalistic effort rather than a product of revelation.
Content
The Kirtland Egyptian papers are housed in the newly-constructed Church History LibraryChurch History Library
The Church History Library in downtown Salt Lake City, Utah houses materials chronicling the history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints...
of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, along with over a dozen other documents produced ca. 1835 and 1842 in Kirtland, Ohio
Kirtland, Ohio
Kirtland is a city in Lake County, Ohio, USA. The population was 6,670 at the 2000 census. Kirtland is famous for being the early headquarters of the Latter Day Saint movement.-Origins of Kirtland:...
and Nauvoo, Illinois
Nauvoo, Illinois
Nauvoo is a small city in Hancock County, Illinois, United States. Although the population was just 1,063 at the 2000 census, and despite being difficult to reach due to its location in a remote corner of Illinois, Nauvoo attracts large numbers of visitors for its historic importance and its...
. Due to controversy about the order of production, there is no generally accepted manuscript numbering scheme. The numbers reported below refer to the folder numbers under which the manuscripts are catalogued in the Church archives. These folder numbers were assigned by Hugh Nibley ca. 1971. Although they were intended to reflect the order of production, there is general agreement today that the manuscripts were not produced in exactly this order.
- Egyptian Ms. #1, 1 volume, 31 x 20 cm, titled "Grammar & A[l]phabet of the Egyptian Language," in the handwriting of W. W. Phelps, with brief addenda by Warren Parrish.
- Egyptian Ms. #2, 21 x 20 cm, titled "Egyptian Counting," in the handwriting of W. W. Phelps. Containing characters with English interpretations.
- Egyptian Ms. #3, 32 x 30 cm, titled "Egyptian Alphabet," in the handwriting of W. W. Phelps.
- Egyptian Ms. #4, 33 x 20 cm, titled "Egyptian Alphabet," in the handwriting of Joseph Smith.
- Egyptian Ms. #5, various sizes, in the handwriting of Oliver Cowdery. Title is unreadable, but probably read "Egyptian Alphabet".
- Egyptian Ms. #6, 1 volume, 20 x 13 cm, titled "Valuable Discovery of hiden [sic] records..." in the handwriting of Joseph Smith. English contents in the handwriting of Oliver Cowdery.
- Egyptian Ms. #7, 1 volume, 20 x 16 cm, English contents in the handwriting of W. W. Phelps. "F.G.W." and "William" are written on the back cover.
- Egyptian Ms. #8, 32 x 40 cm. Egyptian Characters and hieroglyphics.
- Egyptian Ms. #9, 39 x 19 cm. Characters by an unknown author.
- Egyptian Ms. #10, 33 x 20 cm. Egyptian papyrus attached to a sheet of paper.
- Book of Abraham Ms. #1, 10 pages, 32 x 20 cm. Translation of Abraham 1:1 to 2:18 in the handwriting of W. W. Phelps and Warren Parrish.
- Book of Abraham Ms. #2, 4 pages, 33 x 19 cm. Book of Abraham 1:4 to 2:6 in the handwriting of Frederick G. Williams.
- Book of Abraham Ms. #3, 6 pages, 32 x 19 cm. Book of Abraham 1:4 to 2:2 in the handwriting of Warren Parrish.
- Book of Abraham Ms. #4, ca. 1841, 29 x 20 cm. Book of Abraham 1:1 to 3:26 in the handwriting of Willard Richards. Explanations of Facsimile No. 1 appear on p. 2, obverse.
- Facsimile No. 2, ca. 1841, various sizes. Includes explanations in the handwriting of Willard Richards.
- A Facsimile from the Book of Abraham No. 2 ca. 1843. 32 x 19 cm. Engraved by Reuben Hedlock. On the back is a letter dated August 1, 1843 to Clyde Williams & Co. of Harrisburg, Pa. signed by Joseph Smith & W. W. Phelps.
Publication
The LDS Church has been accused of suppressing the Kirtland Egyptian Papers because they were considered potentially damaging to the credibility of Joseph Smith, Jr. as a prophet. The Papers have been in the Church Historian's vault in Salt Lake City since 1855, and there are indications that the Church Historians have been aware of the documents' whereabouts since 1908. Their existence was denied until 1935, when James R. Clark and Sidney B. Sperry were informed that they were in the vault. Even then, Clark and Sperry were not permitted to inform the public about the discovery until some time thereafter. When the documents' existence was finally revealed, Clark stated that he did not believe the Alphabet and Grammar should be submitted to scholars. He preferred to "depend on our testimonies of the gospel."Jerald and Sandra Tanner
Jerald and Sandra Tanner
Jerald Dee Tanner was an American writer and researcher who, with his wife Sandra McGee Tanner spent nearly fifty years annotating and publishing archival and evidential materials which, the Tanners claim, accurately portrayed the history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints...
, critics of the Church, obtained an unauthorized copy of a microfilm strip containing images of the documents in 1966, and published them as Joseph Smith's Egyptian Alphabet & Grammar. This publication was criticized in a BYU Studies article by Hugh Nibley in 1971 because it did not contain all of the manuscripts, and included no critical apparatus to aid readers in distinguishing one manuscript from another. Nibley's article included images of ten of the manuscript pages. The Tanner publication was revised and updated by H. Michael Marquardt in 1981. Marquardt added a critical apparatus and some interpretive material. A new critical edition of the Book of Abraham manuscripts by Brian M. Hauglid appeared in 2011, with a second volume planned to publish the remainder of the KEP.
Authorship controversy
Egyptologist I. E. Edwards stated that the Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar was "largely a piece of imagination and lacking in any kind of scientific value." Hugh Nibley commented that the Grammar was "of no practical value whatever." In part because of this Egyptological inaccuracy, there has been some controversy as to the authorship of the Alphabet and Grammar and its relationship to the Book of Abraham. The Tanner and Marquardt publications of the KEP assumed that Joseph Smith was the author of the whole collection, but this has been challenged by some believing Mormon scholars.In 1968, Jay Todd suggested that the Grammar may have been reverse-engineered from an inspired Book of Abraham translation. In 1971, Hugh Nibley expanded on Todd's argument, explaining that the Alphabet and Grammar materials were largely an uninspired production of Joseph Smith's scribes, who had turned against him and were working independently of him at the time. This view is also accepted by John Gee. Samuel M. Brown has argued for a slightly more nuanced version of this view, attributing to W. W. Phelps a "major" role in authoring the Alphabet and Grammar, while at the same time conceding that the project was carried on under Smith's direction. Brown asserts that it is "unlikely, though not impossible, that the Grammar was actively used in producing the Book of Abraham." William Schryver argues that the KEP served as a cipher for encoding, not decoding, the English text of Joseph Smith's revelations, citing the presence of not only non-Egyptian characters but also phrasing from the D&C in the KEP.
In 1970, Richard P. Howard proposed the opposite view: that the Alphabet and Grammar was the modus operandi of the Book of Abraham's translation. Edward H. Ashment has also adopted this view, arguing against Nibley that the scribes of the KEP were all loyal to and in good standing with Joseph Smith at the time the manuscripts were produced. More recently, Christopher C. Smith has argued at some length that Joseph Smith was the primary author of the Alphabet and Grammar documents, and that those documents served as the source or modus operandi for the translation of at least the first three verses of the Book of Abraham. According to Smith, "This undoubtedly accounts for the choppiness and redundancy of these three verses, which stylistically are very different from the remainder of the Book of Abraham. Verse 3, for example, reads as though it has been cobbled together from a series of dictionary entries."
See also
- Book of AbrahamBook of AbrahamThe Book of Abraham is a 1835 work by Joseph Smith, Jr. that he said was based on Egyptian papyri purchased from a traveling mummy exhibition. According to Smith, the book was "a translation of some ancient records....purporting to be the writings of Abraham, while he was in Egypt, called the Book...
- The Joseph Smith PapersThe Joseph Smith PapersThe Joseph Smith Papers is a project researching, collecting, and publishing all manuscripts and documents created by, or under the direction of, Joseph Smith, Jr., the founder of the Latter Day Saint movement. The documents will be published with transcriptions and annotations online and in...
- Joseph Smith PapyriJoseph Smith PapyriThe Joseph Smith Papyri are eleven Egyptian papyrus fragments which were once owned by Joseph Smith, Jr., the founder of Mormonism...
- Joseph Smith HypocephalusJoseph Smith HypocephalusThe original of the Joseph Smith Hypocephalus or Hypocephalus of Sheshonq, was found in the Gurneh area of Thebes, Egypt around the year 1818. From translation of the text, its owner's name was Sheshonq. Three hypocephali in the British Museum are similar to the Joseph Smith Hypocephalus both in...