Appearance
Facsimiles
The claim:
"Respected non-LDS Egyptologists state that Joseph Smith's translation of the papyri and facsimiles are gibberish and have absolutely nothing to do with the papyri and facsimiles and what they actually say."[1]
"(Joseph may have gotten 1 out of 21 translations correct!)"[2]
The CES Letter devotes pp. 38–46 to a figure-by-figure scorecard of the three printed facsimiles, paired with three blocks of Egyptologist quotes from F.S. Spalding's 1912 pamphlet on p. 49.[3] The CES Letter also names Robert Ritner — the leading modern critic — on p. 50, though without quoting him.[4] The implicit argument is that Joseph misidentifies almost every figure, therefore he was not a translator, therefore the Book of Abraham is a fabrication. The "1 out of 21" parenthetical on p. 44 is the section's headline statistic.
The "1 out of 21" framing is a popularization. The strongest critical case — the one that has to be answered if the apologetic case is going to mean anything — is not the scorecard but Robert Ritner's methodological claim: Joseph and his contemporaries described what Joseph was doing as translating Egyptian, the surviving fragments do not yield his English text on any defensible philology, and the apologetic frameworks (catalyst, Semitic adaptation, presentation scene, J-redactor) are 20th-century reframings of a 19th-century translation claim.[5] [6] This article walks through the three facsimiles figure by figure, engages Ritner's methodological critique, names the matches modern Egyptology actually credits, and is candid about what the apologetic case cannot resolve. The Facsimile 3 gender mismatch, several Facsimile 2 figure names with no Egyptian etymology, and the Kirtland Egyptian Papers translation-method question are real and remain in view throughout.
A note on scope. The cosmological "encircling = governing" argument and the broader 19th-century sourcing case (Newtonian cosmology, KJV Genesis paraphrase, anachronisms, Thomas Dick) are treated in Anachronisms & Source Texts. The Hor Book of Breathings papyrus, the missing-scroll question, the catalyst theory, and the Kirtland Egyptian Papers manuscripts are treated in detail in Papyri. This article's distinctive scope is the three printed images, figure by figure, plus the methodological question of how to score Joseph's interpretations against modern Egyptology.
Context and background
Three pieces of context shape any honest evaluation of the facsimile scorecard.
First, what the facsimiles are. The three illustrations canonized in the Pearl of Great Price are woodcuts produced by Reuben Hedlock for the Times and Seasons in March and May 1842, based on vignettes in the Egyptian papyri Joseph Smith and the Church purchased from Michael Chandler in July 1835.[7] Facsimile 1 reproduces a vignette from Joseph Smith Papyrus I (the surviving fragment of the Book of Breathings made for Hor, a Theban priest of Ptolemaic-era Egypt, c. 150–100 BC).[7:1] [8] Facsimile 2 reproduces a hypocephalus — a circular amuletic disc placed beneath a mummy's head, of which approximately 158 are now catalogued worldwide.[9] Facsimile 3 reproduces a scene that no longer survives in the recovered papyrus fragments. Where lacunae existed in the original (especially in Facsimile 1's upper left, where the head of figure 3 was missing), restorations were supplied by Joseph and his associates as part of the woodcut process.[10]
Second, the surrounding hieroglyphic Egyptian text says what Egyptologists say it says. The hieroglyphs adjacent to Facsimile 1 and the labels above the figures in Facsimile 3 are part of a standard Ptolemaic funerary text from Hor's Book of Breathings.[5:1] The Gospel Topics Essay concedes this directly: "Of the small fragments of papyri that remain, none mentions Abraham's name or any of the events recorded in the book of Abraham."[11] A faithful response engages what role the surviving Egyptian text plays in evaluating Joseph's facsimile interpretations rather than disputing the philology of the labels themselves.
Third, the framing question. The CES Letter's scorecard assumes a single rubric: Joseph's identification of each figure must match the literal Egyptian iconographic identification given by modern Egyptologists. By that strict rubric, much of Joseph's reading does not match. The faithful literature has proposed three alternative interpretive frames:
- Strict translation. Joseph mapped Egyptian characters to English meanings; modern Egyptology evaluates whether those mappings are philologically defensible. By this standard, most of Joseph's specific identifications do not work.
- Catalyst. The papyri served as an "occasion for meditation, reflection, and revelation" — a prompt for revealed Abrahamic content rather than a source-text being literally translated. The Gospel Topics Essay names this as one legitimate framework.[11:1]
- Semitic adaptation. Kevin Barney has argued that the facsimiles entered the Joseph Smith Papyri as part of a Greco-Roman period Egyptian-Jewish synthetic tradition, in which a Jewish redactor ("J-red") adapted standard Egyptian funerary vignettes to illustrate Abrahamic content. On this reading, the figures retain their Egyptian iconographic identities at one level and carry adapted Abrahamic meaning at another.[12]
A skeptical reader will note that the apologetic case as a whole uses different frameworks for different figures — strict-translation when it works (figure 6 of Facsimile 2), catalyst when the surviving Egyptian text doesn't say what Joseph said, Semitic adaptation when the hieroglyphic labels explicitly name Egyptian deities. That is a fair observation. Each framework should be evaluated on its own merits. What this article does not do is treat all three as part of a single watertight system; what it does do is consider, figure by figure, which framework (if any) the evidence supports.[13]
Facsimile 1 — the lion couch scene
Joseph identified Facsimile 1 as Abraham fastened upon an altar, with the idolatrous priest of Elkenah attempting to sacrifice him; the figures around the scene depict idolatrous gods of Elkenah, Libnah, Mahmackrah, Korash, and Pharaoh; the angel of the Lord delivers Abraham. The CES Letter's column on pp. 39–40 identifies the same figures as Hor's ba (figure 1), Hor as deceased (figure 2), Anubis (figure 3), a funeral bier (figure 4), the four sons of Horus as canopic jars (figures 5–8), Horus the falcon-god (figure 9), a libation table (figure 10), a serekh (figure 11), and water for the crocodile (figure 12).[14]
What standard Egyptology says
The standard reading of the Joseph Smith Papyrus I vignette is a funerary embalming/resurrection scene from Hor's Book of Breathings — the deceased Hor lies on a lion couch attended by Anubis (or an Anubis-masked priest), with the four sons of Horus depicted as canopic jars and protective elements arranged around the scene.[5:2] [6:1] This is the reading Robert Ritner defends in The Joseph Smith Egyptian Papyri: A Complete Edition (2011) and in his earlier Dialogue and JNES work on the facsimiles.[5:3] [6:2]
The reading is well-supported. The hieroglyphs surrounding the vignette are part of a recognized funerary text genre, and the iconographic elements (lion couch, jackal-headed attendant, canopic-jar figures beneath the couch, falcon hovering above) are common features of Egyptian funerary scenes.[5:4] Joseph's reading does not align with this standard funerary identification on a literal-figure-by-figure basis. The remaining question is whether the standard funerary reading exhausts the iconographic possibilities, and whether specific elements of Joseph's reading point to features 20th-century Egyptology has made more plausible than they appeared to 1912 critics.
The lion couch — embalming standard, sacrificial range documented
The "lion couch" (Egyptian nmỉt) is, in the dominant Egyptological reading, a funeral bier on which the deceased is prepared for mummification or resurrection. Joseph's "altar of sacrifice" reading does not match that standard identification. But the lion couch type ranges across iconographic registers in ways the CES Letter's "common funeral bier" framing does not allow.
In Dendara temple texts, the word for the lion couch (nmỉt) is homophonous with words for "abattoir, slaughterhouse" (nmt) and "offerings" (nmt); these temple texts pun on the homophony, with enemies consigned to the lion couch/slaughterhouse "so that he will no longer exist."[15] John Gee has argued that excluding a sacrificial dimension from the iconographic range of lion-couch scenes is un-Egyptian — even where, as with Facsimile 1, no single definitive reading can yet be pinned down.[16] The lion couch type therefore appears across embalming, resurrection, and sacrificial iconographic registers depending on context.
The Mirgissa execration deposit, excavated by Jean Vercoutter at the Middle Kingdom Egyptian fortress of Mirgissa during the 1962–1969 campaigns, contains a decapitated foreigner buried with a flint knife, melted wax figurines, and execration objects — accepted across the field as ritual human sacrifice in an Egyptian religious context.[17] [18] [19] Kerry Muhlestein's UCLA dissertation Violence in the Service of Order (2003), and its published reformulation (Archaeopress, 2011), establish that ritualized killing was part of the Egyptian religious system in specific contexts.[18:1] [20]
This evidence does not overturn the standard reading of Joseph Smith Papyrus I specifically as a funerary scene from Hor's Book of Breathings, nor does it prove Joseph's "altar of sacrifice" reading correct.[21] What it overturns is the broader 1912 Egyptological denial that human sacrifice ever occurred in Egyptian religion at all — the denial on which much of Spalding's 1912 case rested. Mirgissa documents a category Joseph asserted (sacrificial register in Egyptian context) that 1912 scholarship considered impossible. That widens the iconographic possibility-space; it does not by itself vindicate Joseph's reading of this particular vignette. For the same evidence framed against the textual setting of Abraham 1:7–15, see Anachronisms & Source Texts.
The figure 3 head — masked-priest reading
The CES Letter's pp. 38, 41 visual argument shows Hedlock-restored sections circled in red, comparator lion-couch scenes with jackal-headed Anubis, and the assertion "the jackal-headed Egyptian god of death and afterlife Anubis is consistent in every funerary scene."[22] The visual rhetoric is effective.
The honest position has two parts.
First, FAIR concedes the underlying factual point: the original head of figure 3, in the lacuna of Joseph Smith Papyrus I, was probably the jackal head of Anubis.[10:1] The Hedlock woodcut supplied a human head where the original was missing. The CES Letter's specific factual claim about the restoration is correct on the underlying papyrus question.
Second, the "always Anubis, never a priest" framing is narrower than the iconographic record allows. Egyptian iconography includes documented examples of priests wearing Anubis masks in ritual contexts. The Temple of Hathor at Dendara contains a "false transparency" relief showing a bald priest wearing an Anubis mask.[23] An actual Anubis-priest mask survives in the Pelizaeus-Museum Hildesheim (today the Roemer- und Pelizaeus-Museum).[23:1] Papyrus Jumilhac (Ptolemaic, c. 300 BC) depicts masked-priest iconography. First-century CE Herculaneum frescoes show masked priests/priestesses in Egyptian-derived rites. As Smoot, Gee, Muhlestein, and Thompson summarize from the Egyptian embalmment-ritual textual record, a stolites priest wearing the head of Anubis would sit in the place of the god during funerary preparation, and lector-priests were enjoined not to approach him while he embodied the role.[23:2] Priestly impersonators of Anubis in such ceremonies are styled simply Inpw ("Anubis") or rmt-Inpw ("Anubis-men").[23:3]
The masked-priest scholarship does not vindicate Joseph's "idolatrous priest of Elkenah" identification in any positive sense — the original figure was Anubis, a god, and the Hedlock woodcut produced a human head where the original was jackal. What the scholarship does is rescue Joseph's "priest" reading from outright contradiction with the iconographic record: a priest impersonating Anubis is a documented Egyptian ritual category, so a figure who appears human at the woodcut level can defensibly be described as a priest. From an Israelite/Hebrew religious standpoint of the kind Abraham 1 frames, an Egyptian priest in an Anubis mask presiding over a sacrificial vignette would be an "idolatrous priest." The masked-priest reading post hoc accommodates Joseph's identification rather than confirming it — the difference between "consistent with" and "confirmed by," and the apologetic case here rests on the former.
The figures themselves can be examined directly: Joseph Smith Papyrus I and the Hedlock-printed Facsimile 1 are available on Joseph Smith Papers, and the masked-priest comparators from the Temple of Hathor at Dendara and the Anubis-priest mask in the Roemer- und Pelizaeus-Museum Hildesheim are documented in the Smoot et al. BYU Studies 2022 study "The Idolatrous Priest" and the underlying Sweeney 1993 Göttinger Miszellen piece on the Dendara false-transparency relief.[23:4]
The crocodile — Sobek and the chronological caveat
Joseph identified figure 9 (the crocodile beneath the couch) as "the idolatrous god of Pharaoh." The CES Letter's modern column reads "the god 'Horus.'"[14:1] The crocodile in this iconography is conventionally identified as the god Sobek, though some Egyptologists have read figure-9-style crocodiles in funerary contexts as a form of Horus (the Horus-crocodile is documented in some Greco-Roman period funerary settings); the underlying iconography is divided rather than unanimous.[24]
What is well-documented is that in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Dynasties — one common chronological reconstruction for Abraham, though far from the only one — Sobek was prominent in royal cult. Pharaoh Amenemhet III was a major Sobek devotee. Many Twelfth- and Thirteenth-Dynasty rulers bore Sobek-theophoric names: Sobekhotep I–VIII, Sobekneferu, and others.[25] Smoot, Gee, Muhlestein, and Thompson summarize the relevant Egyptological literature: Edda Bresciani's standard treatment notes that "with Amenemhat III, Sobek of Shedet became the best example of the success of the crocodile-gods in the Twelfth Dynasty," and the same volume documents that "many names from this period contain the name Sobek as a theophoric element ... no less than seven different rulers of the Thirteenth Dynasty."[26] [25:1] [24:1] A Sobek hymn for Amenemhet III reads: "May thou be merciful to King Amenemhet, through whom thy face is happy on this day."[24:2] Ebla ivory plaques depict Egyptian-influenced palatial furniture with crocodile imagery linking the crocodile to royal cult in this era.[24:3]
The match needs careful framing. Sobek was one of several gods (Amun, Re, Horus among them) tied to Middle Kingdom royal cult; he was not the only "god of Pharaoh," and Abraham's chronology is not settled.[27] With those caveats: the defensible claim is that Sobek was tightly bound to royal cult in one common Middle Kingdom dating for Abraham, that calling the crocodile "the idolatrous god of Pharaoh" fits the Sobek register if that dating holds, and that this association was unavailable in any 1835 source Joseph could have consulted.[13:1] That is a useful piece of evidence for the apologetic case, weaker than "Sobek was literally the god of Middle Kingdom pharaohs" but stronger than coincidence.
The four idolatrous god-names
Joseph identified the four canopic-style figures (5–8) as "the idolatrous god of Elkenah," "of Libnah," "of Mahmackrah," and "of Korash" — divine names the CES Letter implies are invented. The CES Letter's modern column identifies them as the four sons of Horus (Qebehsenuef, Duamutef, Hapy, Imsety).[14:2]
These two readings are not strictly mutually exclusive — Joseph applies the names of four idolatrous gods to figures Egyptology identifies as four sons of Horus. The underlying question is whether the four divine names Joseph supplied have ancient Near Eastern attestations in Abraham's cultural neighborhood.
| Joseph's name | Ancient parallel | When parallel became available | Strength |
|---|---|---|---|
| Elkenah | Canaanite ʾel-qoneh-ha-ʾareṣ ("God who created the earth"); Hittite Elkunirsha | Karatepe inscription discovered 1946; Hittite Elkunirsha published 20th c. | Documented |
| Libnah | Possible link to Northwest Semitic Labana (Ugaritic) | Ugaritic discovered 1928, deciphered 1929–1930s | Possible |
| Mahmackrah | Possible link to Mkr (attested at Beth-Shan) | 20th-century excavations | Possible |
| Korash | Possible link to Hittite Kursha (a divine hunting-bag/object in Hittite ritual) | Hittite deciphered 1915 | Speculative |
Kevin Barney has documented "Elkenah" specifically as a shortened form of Canaanite ʾel-qoneh-ha-ʾareṣ ("God who created the earth"), with worship documented from the Hittite capital Hattusha to Karatepe to Palmyra to Jerusalem to Leptis Magna over a span of approximately 1,500 years.[28] The Hittite form Elkunirsha appears in a Canaanite myth preserved on Hittite tablets. As Barney notes, "no deity of that name is mentioned in the King James Bible, but in the last century archaeologists have unearthed evidence of his worship."[28:1]
Frame this carefully. Stephen E. Thompson's 1995 Dialogue article raised phonological objections to several of Joseph's name-derivations in the Book of Abraham, including Egyptus and Raukeeyang; the critique overlaps with the broader question of how strict the proposed phonological matches are.[29] The honest read is that Elkenah is the strongest of the four. Korash-as-Kursha is a parallel to a "divine hunting-bag/object" rather than a deity in the standard sense — calling that a parallel for an "idolatrous god" requires interpretive generosity. Libnah and Mahmackrah are described in the apologetic literature itself as "possible" rather than documented. The cumulative case is therefore: one solid hit (Elkenah), one strained hit (Korash), and two speculative hits — not "the convergence of four independently-attested ancient Near Eastern divine names," but not nothing either. Elkenah alone is striking; the other three modestly strengthen the case if they hold and do not falsify it if they don't.[13:2]
Lion couch + Abraham association in ancient Egyptian sources
Greco-Roman period Egyptian magical papyri preserve traditions in which Abraham's name appears in ritual and magical contexts.
The Greek Magical Papyri (in Hans Dieter Betz's standard translation) contain spells invoking Abraham; the Smoot et al. survey lists references at pp. 8, 125, 164, 171, 191, 194, 262, 276, 300, 310 of Betz's edition.[30] Papyrus Leiden I 384 (the Demotic Magical Papyrus of London and Leiden, c. 3rd century AD) contains magical texts that include invocations of Abraham among other names.[30:1] [31] The Smoot et al. argument for an Abraham-on-lion-couch register draws on a broader Greco-Roman pattern in funerary and magical iconography rather than on a single papyrus.[30:2] [13:3]
The Institute for Religious Research (Edward Ashment) presses a substantive counter-reading: the Abrahamic invocations in the Greek and Demotic Magical Papyri are magical name-power uses, in which "Abraham" appears alongside names from many traditions (Jewish, Egyptian, Greek) treated as having generic syncretic efficacy. On this reading, the papyri preserve the use of the name "Abraham" as a power word in late-antique magic rather than substantive Abrahamic content.[32] Ashment is correct that magical-name use is not the same as preserved tradition, and the question of which kind of use the papyri instantiate is contested. The Smoot et al. case rests on quotation of specific Demotic and Greek text passages they read as substantive (an Abraham-and-Pharaoh narrative arc, lion-couch contextual elements). The article does not claim the Smoot et al. reading settles the matter.
The Gospel Topics Essay describes the broader pattern in measured terms: "A later Egyptian text, discovered in the 20th century, tells how the Pharaoh tried to sacrifice Abraham, only to be foiled when Abraham was delivered by an angel" — the same narrative arc as Abraham 1 / Facsimile 1.[11:2] The chronology matters for both readings: Demotic was not deciphered until the late 19th century, Papyrus Leiden I 384 was not edited and translated until F.Ll. Griffith and Herbert Thompson's 1904–1909 edition, and the broader Greco-Roman period Egyptian-Jewish Abraham material was unavailable to Joseph in any pre-1842 form.[31:1] On either reading (substantive tradition or syncretic magic), the existence of these texts is a feature of the priestly milieu (Theban Greco-Roman) from which the surviving Joseph Smith papyri come, and it is a feature 1912 critics could not have known.[33] [8:1]
Facsimile 1 figure-by-figure summary
| Fig | Joseph's reading | Standard Egyptological reading | Independent ancient parallel |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Angel of the Lord | The ba (spirit) of Hor | Apocalypse of Abraham 8 (angel delivers Abraham from sacrifice) |
| 2 | Abraham fastened upon an altar | The deceased Hor on a lion couch | nmỉt/nmt homophony; Mirgissa execration |
| 3 | The idolatrous priest of Elkenah | Anubis (jackal head likely in original; restored as human) | Anubis-masked priest iconography |
| 4 | Altar for sacrifice | A lion couch / funeral bier | Sacrificial register documented for lion couch type |
| 5–8 | Idolatrous gods of Elkenah, Libnah, Mahmackrah, Korash | Four sons of Horus (canopic jars) | Elkenah = Canaanite El qoneh; others speculative |
| 9 | The idolatrous god of Pharaoh | Crocodile (Sobek; some readings: Horus-crocodile) | Sobek prominent in Twelfth/Thirteenth Dynasty royal cult |
| 10 | Abraham in Egypt | A libation table | (no clear thematic alignment) |
| 11 | Pillars of heaven, as understood by Egyptians | A serekh (palace façade) | (no clear thematic alignment) |
| 12 | Raukeeyang / firmament | Water in which the crocodile swims | Hebrew rāqîaʿ ("firmament"); Joseph's Hebrew study began January 1836[34] |
Joseph "got Facsimile 1 right" in a strict-Egyptological sense is not a claim this article makes. The narrower claim is that several specific elements (the sacrifice register; the masked-priest possibility; Sobek prominent in Pharaoh's cult in one common Abraham chronology; Elkenah as a Canaanite divine name; Abraham's name in Greco-Roman magical/funerary papyri from the same priestly milieu) are features of 20th-century scholarship that no 1835-resourced fabrication theory predicts.
Facsimile 2 — the hypocephalus
Joseph's Facsimile 2 explanation includes terms with no Egyptian etymology that contemporary scholarship has confirmed (Oliblish, Kae-e-vanrash, Enish-go-on-dosh, Hah-ko-kau-beam, Kli-flos-is-es). It also contains the section's most rhetorically striking critical move — the identification of figure 7 as the ithyphallic god Min, with the CES Letter's framing that Joseph called this figure "Heavenly Father with an erect penis."[35] And it contains the section's clearest single positive match — figure 6 as the four sons of Horus / four cardinal points of earth.
What hypocephali are
A hypocephalus is a circular amuletic disc placed beneath the head of a mummy. The textual basis is Spell 162 of the Book of the Dead, whose instructions specify that the amulet was to be placed under the head (ẖr tp) of the mummy. The genre's purposes were "to protect the deceased in the afterlife, to provide light and heat for the deceased, to make the deceased 'appear again like one who is on earth' (that is, to resurrect them), and to ultimately transform the deceased into a god."[36]
The genre is not generic Book of the Dead material. Hypocephali were "exclusive funerary equipment reserved for the high clergy and for the members of their families who occupied" high-ranking temple positions — particularly in the temple of Amun at Karnak, the temple of Min at Akhmim, and the temple of Ptah at Memphis.[36:1] John Gee and Stephen Lyon have catalogued 158 known hypocephali in their typology study, classifying them into Types I, II, and III; the Joseph Smith hypocephalus is consistent with the Type III pattern.[9:1] Hypocephali "or objects that served the same purpose as hypocephali were used as divinatory devices in the Egyptian temple and as astronomical documents."[36:2]
This contextual fact is itself one of Joseph's correct identifications. He said of figure 8 that it "contains writings that cannot be revealed unto the world; but is to be had in the Holy Temple of God." Joseph called the hypocephalus temple-restricted. Modern Egyptology says hypocephali were exclusively reserved for high clergy and their families with temple positions. Whatever the score on individual figures, Joseph's claim about the function of the artifact is what 20th-century Egyptology has confirmed.
Figure 6 — four sons of Horus / four quarters of earth
Joseph's explanation reads: "Represents this earth in its four quarters." The CES Letter's modern column reads: "The four sons of Horus, they can represent the four cardinal points of earth."[37] The match between Joseph's reading and the modern Egyptological reading is direct.
The Egyptological consensus on this point is documented across non-LDS scholarly sources. James P. Allen's translation of the Pyramid Texts treats the four sons of Horus as "representing the cardinal directions"; Coffin Text Spell 158 (precursor of Book of the Dead chapters 112–113) explicitly assigns the four sons to cardinal points.[38] [39] Geraldine Pinch's Egyptian Mythology (Oxford UP, 2002) writes that "the four sons were also associated with the four directions (south, north, east, and west)."[40] E.A. Wallis Budge — a non-LDS Egyptologist — wrote that they "represented the four supports of heaven" and that each was "god of one of the four quarters of the earth."[41] Maarten J. Raven's Egyptian Magic (AUC Press, 2012) calls them "the four corners of the universe and the four supports of heaven."[42] Michael Rhodes summarizes: "They were the gods of the four quarters of the earth, and later came to be regarded as presiding over the four cardinal points."[43]
The textual evidence is direct. Ramesses III's mortuary temple at Medinet Habu shows each son of Horus traveling to a specific cardinal direction: Imsety to the south, Hapi to the north, Duamutef to the east, Qebehsenuef to the west.[44] They are depicted "as birds flying out to the four corners of the cosmos."[44:1]
The Gospel Topics Essay's body text aligns with this reading: "Joseph Smith represented the four figures in figure 6 of facsimile 2 as 'this earth in its four quarters.' A similar interpretation has been argued by scholars who study identical figures in other ancient Egyptian texts."[11:3] (The essay's footnote 40 attached to that statement cites Maarten J. Raven on Egyptian body-orientation theory rather than naming the four sons of Horus directly; the Raven citation is consistent with the four-quarters reading without itself making the four-sons identification.)[42:1]
The CES Letter's own modern column on p. 42 says exactly this: the four sons of Horus "can represent the four cardinal points of earth." The match is conceded in the scorecard text itself. The CES Letter's parenthetical "1 out of 21 translations correct" on p. 44 reflects a strict-name-only standard that does not award the conceded thematic match — a defensible methodological choice, but a reader who comes to the scorecard expecting "Joseph got nothing right" will be surprised to find the modern column itself documents a real point of agreement with Joseph's reading on figure 6.
Other thematic alignments on Facsimile 2
The CES Letter's "1 out of 21" rubric treats every figure other than figure 6 as a complete miss. FAIR's compilation of agreement points documents that this is not the consensus reading even among non-LDS Egyptologists.[45] Several of Joseph's identifications align thematically with the modern Egyptological identification, even where the literal proper name differs.
"Thematic alignment" is a different metric from "literal Egyptological identification," and it has to be specified narrowly enough to distinguish real matches from coincidence.[46] [13:4] The defensible apologetic claim is the following: Joseph supplied a category-level description for each figure, several of those descriptions match the standard Egyptological category for the underlying deity in ways the strict-name rubric ignores, and that pattern is more interesting than zero hits. It is not "six confirmed matches"; it is "more than the rubric reports, less than the strict-translation standard would recognize as a translation."
With that caveat:
Figure 1 (Joseph: Kolob, residence of God; modern: Khnum or Atum-Re). Khnum is an Egyptian creator-god, and Atum-Re is "one of the primordial gods." Both readings place the central figure as creator/primordial divine. The Semitic etymology of "Kolob" (qlb: heart, center, near) and the Egyptian "encircling = governing" cosmological frame are treated in Anachronisms & Source Texts.[47]
Figure 2 (Joseph: stands next to Kolob, Oliblish; modern: Amun-Re). Joseph's "next grand governing creation" with "the key of power" reading places this figure as a high governing deity. Amun-Re is "the chief god of the Egyptian pantheon" representing power and governance, "appearing in most hypocephali."[45:1] The thematic alignment is real even though the term "Oliblish" itself has no clear Egyptian etymology (see below).
Figure 3 (Joseph: God sitting on his throne, clothed with power and authority; modern: Horus-Re in his boat). Horus-Re is a high deity riding in a divine boat with the was-scepter ("dominion," per Faulkner and Gardiner) — matching Joseph's "clothed with power and authority."[45:2] Ritner himself dismisses the match as a trivial inference — anyone looking at a figure seated on a throne with royal regalia would naturally call the figure enthroned — rather than as a substantive translation success.[5:5] Ritner's dismissal cuts both ways: it rules out the match as significant philology, but it also concedes that Joseph's category-level reading is the obvious description. This is a modest hit, not a strong one.
Figure 4 (Joseph: Raukeeyang; the measuring of time of Oliblish; modern: Sokar-boat). The Sokar-boat is associated with celestial navigation and the Sokar festival's astronomical timing function. Joseph's "measuring of time" reading is a thematic match.[45:3]
Figure 5 (Joseph: Enish-go-on-dosh, a governing planet, said by the Egyptians to be the Sun; modern: Cow of Hathor). In Egyptian theology, Hathor in cow form is a solar deity, called "the Sun of the Two Worlds," "closely connected with the sun god Re," and "sometimes identified as a fiery solar deity."[48] Joseph's "the Sun" identification is thematically defensible. The term "Enish-go-on-dosh" itself, as a name, has no clear Egyptian etymology (see below).
Figure 7 (Joseph: God sitting on his throne; modern: Min). See the Min discussion below.
A defensibly narrow reading: figure 6 is a direct match, figure 5 is a real thematic hit (Hathor really is solar), figure 7's "throne" register holds against modern Min scholarship (creator-god, "Great God" epithet — see below), and the others are more debatable. What survives even the narrow reading is that the strict "1 out of 21" headline is not what the CES Letter's own table actually shows — figure 6's match is conceded in the modern column.
The Min difficulty (figure 7)
Facsimile 2 figure 7 visually depicts the Egyptian deity Min in ithyphallic form. Joseph identified this figure as "God sitting on his throne, revealing through the heavens the grand Key-words of the priesthood." The CES Letter's framing — "Joseph interpreted that this figure with an erect penis is Heavenly Father sitting on His throne" — is rhetorically pointed.[35:1]
The faithful response cannot deny what is visually present in the figure. What it can do is engage Min's actual role in Egyptian theology, which is more specific than the popular "Egyptian god of fertility or sex" framing.
Min in Egyptian theology is a creator-god. In the words of the BYU Studies 2022 cluster, Min is "regarded as the creator god par excellence in ancient Egypt, as fertility and (male) sexuality was subsumed under the general notion of creativity."[49] Egyptians titled Min "Great God" (pȝ nṯr ʿꜣ; bare form nṯr ʿꜣ), "Lord of Life" (nb ʿnḫ), "Lord of All" (nb r ḏr).[49:1] The non-LDS reference work Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible (Brill, 2nd ed., 1999) entry on Min states that Min was a creator-god whose ithyphallic depiction signified generative cosmic force in Egyptian religious thought.[50]
The "Great God" epithet (nṯr ʿꜣ) is generic in Egyptian — applied to Re, Amun, Ptah, Osiris, Min, Horus, and others — so its application to Min is not specific.[51] What the apologetic case rests on is that the same generic epithet, in syncretic Greco-Roman period magical and religious texts, was also applied to the Israelite deity Iaho Sabaoth ("Lord of Hosts").[49:2] [52] Late-antique magical and religious texts routinely applied Egyptian divine epithets to non-Egyptian deities; that is a feature of how Greco-Roman syncretism handled foreign divine names generally.[52:1] The narrow useful claim: the epithet Egyptian priests applied to Min was, in late-antique syncretic texts, also applied to the God of Israel — placing Joseph's "God sitting on his throne" reading inside a documented register where the epithet crossed traditions. That is not "specific Min-Israel convergence"; it is "shared epithet in late-antique syncretic vocabulary."
Min's ithyphallic iconography signified, in Egyptian cosmological thought, "the creation (and sustaining) of the universe" — generative cosmic force, not pornography.[49:3] Min is depicted "raising his arm to the square" — a gesture in Egyptian art associated with kingship, divine authority, and protection.[49:4]
What does this resolve? The creator-god framing is solid: Egyptologists generally agree Min functions as creator-god whose ithyphallic depiction is generative-cosmological, not merely sexual. Joseph's "God sitting on his throne, revealing through the heavens the grand Key-words of the priesthood" maps to creator-god + throne + divine self-revelation.
What does this not resolve? The visual register remains ithyphallic. A modern reader's emotional reaction to the image is not changed by the creator-god framing. Three things are true at once: the popular framing of Min as a sex god is wrong; the figure is in fact a creator-god whose generic "Great God" epithet, in late-antique syncretism, also applied to Israel's God; and the visual register is still uncomfortable for modern readers.
Terms with no Egyptian etymology
Several of Joseph's Facsimile 2 figure names have no clean Egyptian or Semitic etymology that contemporary scholarship has confirmed: Oliblish (figure 2), Kae-e-vanrash (in the explanation of figure 4), Enish-go-on-dosh (figure 5), Floeese (figure 4), Hah-ko-kau-beam (in figure 5 explanation), Kli-flos-is-es (figure 5 explanation). Various proposals exist (Hebrew/Aramaic root reconstructions, Egyptian transliteration attempts), but none have achieved consensus even among LDS scholars. This is a real difficulty. It will not be resolved by appeal to creator-god parallels, four-quarters matches, or Sobek-as-god-of-Pharaoh evidence. These are terms whose origin is currently unknown rather than terms with established ancient pedigree like Olishem, Shulem, or Elkenah.[53]
Facsimile 2 figure-by-figure summary
| Fig | Joseph's reading | Modern Egyptology | Alignment |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Kolob, residence of God | Khnum / Atum-Re | Thematic: creator/primordial center |
| 2 | Oliblish; next governing creation | Amun-Re (chief god, hypocephalus standard) | Thematic alignment; "Oliblish" without etymology |
| 3 | God sitting on his throne, clothed with power and authority | Horus-Re in his boat (with was-scepter "dominion") | Thematic; Ritner dismisses the match as a trivial inference, not a substantive translation hit |
| 4 | Raukeeyang; measuring of time | Sokar-boat (celestial timing) | Thematic: time-measurement |
| 5 | Enish-go-on-dosh, governing planet, the Sun | Hathor cow (solar deity) | Thematic: solar identity confirmed; "Enish-go-on-dosh" without etymology |
| 6 | This earth in its four quarters | Four sons of Horus / four cardinal directions | Direct match — body text of the Gospel Topics Essay aligns |
| 7 | God sitting on his throne | Min (ithyphallic creator-god) | Thematic; "Great God" epithet (generic in Egyptian, shared with Israel's God in late-antique syncretism); visual register difficult |
| 8 | Contains writings that can only be revealed in the temple | Hieroglyphic funerary text | Thematic: hypocephalus is exclusively temple-clergy artifact |
Facsimile 3 — the presentation scene
Facsimile 3 is the article's hardest section. The hieroglyphs above the figures, in modern translations (Rhodes; Ritner), explicitly identify the figures: Osiris (figure 1), Isis (figure 2), Maat (figure 4), Hor (figure 5), Anubis (figure 6).[5:6] [43:1] Joseph identified them as Abraham, King Pharaoh, Prince of Pharaoh, Shulem, and Olimlah-the-slave. Two of those identifications (figures 2 and 4) misidentify visually-female figures as male. This is the most direct visual mismatch in the entire facsimile section.
What the hieroglyphic labels say
The Egyptian inscriptions above each figure of Facsimile 3, per Robert Ritner's translations:
- Figure 1: "Recitation by Osiris, Foremost of the Westerners, lord of eternity, ruler of forever..." (Osiris)
- Figure 2: "Isis the great, the god's mother" (Isis)
- Figure 4: "Maat, mistress of the gods" (Maat)
- Figure 5: "The Osiris Hor, justified forever" (the deceased priest-owner)
- Figure 6: "Recitation by Anubis, who makes protection (?), foremost of the embalming booth..." (Anubis)[5:7]
Joseph's identifications: Abraham (figure 1), King Pharaoh (figure 2), libation table (figure 3 — which matches), Prince of Pharaoh (figure 4), Shulem (figure 5), Olimlah a slave (figure 6).[54] On a literal-character-by-character reading, the modern Egyptological reading and Joseph's reading do not agree on figures 1, 2, 4, 5, or 6.
The presentation-scene framework
The standard critical framing reads Facsimile 3 as a Book of the Dead Spell 125 judgment scene. The Smoot et al. 2022 analysis argues this reading is iconographically wrong: Facsimile 3 lacks the distinctive Spell 125 elements (the forty-two judging gods, the balance-scale with Thoth weighing the heart, Ammut waiting to devour the unworthy, Hathor holding the was-scepter).[55] The closer Egyptian iconographic type is a presentation scene, in which the deceased is introduced to Osiris by other deities. Quinten Barney summarizes: "The type of scene with which Facsimile No. 3 compares best is that of the Presentation scene."[55:1]
This shift is real but limited. Reclassifying the scene as "presentation" rather than "judgment" weakens the Spell 125 framing the CES Letter implicitly relies on. It does not solve the figure-by-figure identification problem: a presentation scene with explicit hieroglyphic labels naming Egyptian deities is still a scene whose figures are explicitly named as Egyptian deities. The typology shift opens room for an "initiation" overlay (parallel temple scenes in Greco-Roman Egypt are explicitly labeled as initiations and include astronomical instruction[55:2]), but the labels above the figures continue to read as Ritner translates them.
The gender problem — Isis and Maat as male
This is the article's hardest single fact. The hieroglyphs above figures 2 and 4 read "Isis the great, the god's mother" and "Maat, mistress of the gods." Both figures are visually drawn as female. Joseph identified them as "King Pharaoh" (figure 2) and "Prince of Pharaoh" (figure 4) — both as male royal figures. There is no painless reading of this.
The strongest available scholarly defense, in Smoot, Gee, Muhlestein, and Thompson's BYU Studies 2022 piece "Isis the Pharaoh," runs as follows. Isis's name etymologically is "throne" — Egyptian Aset / st literally means "throne" or "seat."[56] Visually she always wears the throne hieroglyph. As "throne goddess," she was the mother of each Egyptian king.[56:1] In the Greco-Roman period — exactly the era of the surviving Joseph Smith Papyri — Isis received titles ordinarily reserved for reigning monarchs: "the Pharaoh(ess) of the whole land," "ruler of the two lands in the house of joy," "the Pharaoh(ess) of everything."[56:2] [57] Isis was bound to "the political aspect of [the king's] divine nature" by embodying the throne itself.
Hugh Nibley further documented Egyptian ritual-drama in which gender presentation was not always biologically literal. "On certain occasions, for certain ritual purposes, some Egyptian men dressed up as women," John Gee has written.[58] Nibley, citing Pyramid Text 335, argued the king wore "not only the horned headdress of the royal mother Hathor, but her complete outfit as well," and that the horned Hathor mask "was regularly worn by men" serving palace functions.[59] The PT 335 reading is one Egyptological interpretation among several — the broader Egyptological reception does not generally read the passage as evidence of routine ritual male-as-female practice. Nibley is being asked to do significant work here.
What does this defense resolve? It documents that Isis-as-Pharaoh is a real Greco-Roman period practice (with Isis receiving Pharaoh-equivalent titles), that Egyptian ritual drama did include gender-fluid presentation in some documented contexts, and that the royal-throne register in which Joseph placed "Pharaoh" has scholarly footing.
What does it not resolve? Isis-as-Pharaoh in the Greco-Roman tradition treats Isis as a divine queen with Pharaoh-equivalent titles, not as a male king. Joseph's reading requires not just "Isis can be called Pharaoh" but "Isis is identified as a male king" — and the second step is not straightforwardly in the Egyptian record. The figures are visually female; the Egyptian inscriptions name them as Isis and Maat; and Joseph identified them as male royalty. The defense complicates the "fatal error" framing without erasing the difficulty. This is the most visually direct mismatch in the entire facsimile section.
Abraham at Pharaoh's court — attested in antiquity
Joseph's narrative reading — "Abraham sitting on Pharaoh's throne, by the politeness of the king ... reasoning upon the principles of astronomy" — is, as a narrative claim, attested across multiple ancient witnesses Joseph could not have read.
| Source | Date | Parallel |
|---|---|---|
| Eupolemus (preserved in Eusebius) | 2nd century BC | "Abraham taught astronomy and other sciences to the Egyptian priests" |
| Artapanus (preserved in Eusebius) | pre-1st century BC | Abraham "came to Egypt... taught him astrology, that he remained there twenty years" |
| Pseudo-Eupolemus (preserved in Eusebius) | ~3rd century BC | Abraham instructed Egyptians in astronomy |
| Josephus, Antiquities 1.8.2 | 1st century AD | Abraham brought "arithmetic and the science of astronomy" to Egypt |
| Apocalypse of Abraham | 1st–2nd century AD | Abraham as astronomer; cosmological vision |
| Book of Jubilees | ~150 BC | Abraham as astronomer; instructed Egyptians |
| Qisas al-Anbiya' (Islamic) | AD 1310 | "The king honoured Abraham and seated him at his side" |
A careful caveat: Eupolemus, Artapanus, Pseudo-Eupolemus, and Josephus appear in editions of Eusebius's Praeparatio Evangelica and 19th-century editions of Josephus, so the strict "Joseph could not possibly have known any of these" claim is too strong. The Apocalypse of Abraham was not in English until 1898 (popular) / 1918 (scholarly); Jubilees not until 1888/1902.[60] [61] The Islamic source was unavailable in English in 1842. What the cumulative pattern shows is that "Abraham at Pharaoh's court teaching astronomy" is plural-source ancient tradition, with no parallel in KJV Genesis. Joseph's narrative fits that tradition. For the broader catalog of Abrahamic pseudepigrapha and the chronology of their English availability, see Anachronisms & Source Texts.
A further specific point. Hugh Nibley cited Wolfgang Helck's 1950 Orientalia study documenting the Egyptian title Rpʿt on the Throne of Gb — an official title that, on Nibley's reading of Helck, was used for non-royal court officials detailed to represent royalty on various missions, including ritually occupying the throne.[62] The citation rests on Nibley's mediation of Helck rather than on direct access to Orientalia 19, but the underlying philological point — the existence of an Egyptian title for non-royal officials seated on Pharaoh's throne — is the load-bearing claim. If Helck's reading holds, the Egyptian title makes Joseph's "by the politeness of the king" caveat — Abraham occupying Pharaoh's throne not as royalty but by royal grant — iconographically plausible.
The Shulem onomastic case (figure 5)
Joseph's Facsimile 3 explanation says of figure 5: "Shulem, one of the king's principal waiters, as represented by the characters above his hand." The hieroglyphs above figure 5 actually read, per Rhodes's and Ritner's translations, "The Osiris Hor, justified forever" — naming Hor, the deceased Theban priest who owned the papyrus.[5:8] [43:2] In a strict character-by-character sense, Joseph's reading does not match the hieroglyphic label.
The Institute for Religious Research has pressed this point: "There are no characters on Facsimile 3 that translate to Shulem. The person Joseph Smith calls Shulem is, in fact, Osiris Hor."[63] That is correct as a description of the character-level evidence.
What remains striking about Shulem is the name itself. In John Gee's onomastic analysis, the form "Shulem" (with the u vocalization) is attested in only two periods: (a) the Abrahamic / Middle Kingdom / Second Intermediate Period (Eblaite Sulum, Middle Babylonian Šulum, Ugaritic Šlmy); and (b) the Greco-Roman period of the surviving Joseph Smith Papyri.[64] As Gee writes, "the form of the name is attested only at two times: the time period of Abraham and the time period of the Joseph Smith papyri."[64:1] If Joseph Smith had gotten the name from his environment, the natural KJV-derived form would be Shillem (Genesis 46:24, Numbers 26:49) — the Hebrew biblical form he would have encountered.[64:2] He did not. He chose Shulem.
For Joseph's "principal waiter" title, Gee documents Egyptian onomastic parallels: the title wdpw n ḥqꜣ ("butler of the ruler") is attested once on a Twelfth Dynasty stele from Abydos under Amenemhet III — exactly the period in question. Alternative analogues include wdpw iry iʿḥ ("cupbearer, keeper of the crescent") and wbꜣ ("foodbearer").[64:3]
The character-level identification fails. The hieroglyphs name Hor, not Shulem. Joseph's "Shulem" is not a transliteration of the Egyptian text. But the name-form Joseph supplied is documented at the Abrahamic period and the Greco-Roman period, and not in the form Joseph would have produced from KJV vocabulary. Both facts hold simultaneously.
Abraham and Osiris (figure 1)
The hieroglyphs above figure 1 explicitly identify the figure as Osiris ("Recitation by Osiris, Foremost of the Westerners," per Rhodes/Ritner). Joseph identified the figure as "Abraham sitting on Pharaoh's throne." On a literal hieroglyphic reading, the modern Egyptological identification and Joseph's identification do not match.
The Smoot et al. 2022 analysis of this figure documents that ancient Jewish-Egyptian synthetic traditions identified Abraham with Osiris-style enthronement.[65] The Demotic phrase "May his soul live in the presence of Osiris" was "replaced by the expression 'rest in Abraham's bosom'" in later Greek renderings.[65:1] Kevin Barney has written: "Abraham must be a Jewish substitute for the pagan god Osiris."[12:1] "Abraham appears in contexts normally occupied by Osiris" specifically "in ways associated with the judgment of the dead or a postmortem declaration of the deceased's worthiness."[65:2]
Concession: the hieroglyphs say "Osiris." Joseph's "Abraham" reading requires accepting Barney's J-redactor / Semitic-adaptation framework — that the Egyptian-Jewish synthetic tradition substitutes Abraham for Osiris as a recognized convention. Barney's framework is interpretive, not philological: the late-antique substitution of "Abraham's bosom" for "the presence of Osiris" in some funerary contexts shows a documented substitution pattern, but it does not establish that the original Hor papyrus was J-redacted in production.[66] The honest framing is that Barney's J-redactor proposal is one scholarly proposal among several; it has documented late-antique substitution data behind it but does not directly demonstrate redaction of the surviving Hor papyrus.
Anubis as Olimlah the slave (figure 6)
Robert Ritner's characterization of Joseph's identification of figure 6 (Anubis) as "Olimlah, a slave belonging to the prince" — that Joseph turned "the black jackal Anubis into a Negro slave" — is harsh and pointed.[6:3] [67] Beyond the racial wording, the substantive critique is that Joseph misidentifies a major Egyptian deity (the canine-headed god of embalming, the funerary protector and judgment-supporter — one of the most easily identifiable figures in Egyptian art) as a low-status human servant.
The faithful response on figure 6 is weaker than on most other figures. There is no Greco-Roman period Egyptian-Jewish synthetic tradition in which Anubis becomes a named slave; the Olimlah identification has no documented ancient parallel comparable to the Abraham-Osiris substitution Barney has argued for figure 1, or the Isis-as-Pharaoh tradition for figure 2. The Smoot et al. 2022 cluster does not have a dedicated piece on figure 6 making Olimlah's identification work — the apologetic literature is largely silent here.
This is one of Joseph's identifications the apologetic case has the hardest time defending. The Abraham-Osiris substitution has an interpretive framework. The Isis-as-Pharaoh reading has Greco-Roman period evidence. The Anubis-as-Olimlah identification has neither.
Facsimile 3 figure-by-figure summary
| Fig | Joseph's reading | Hieroglyphic label (Ritner) | Apologetic framing |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Abraham on Pharaoh's throne | "Osiris, Foremost of the Westerners" | J-redactor / Abraham-as-Osiris substitution (Barney; Smoot et al.) — interpretive proposal, late-antique substitution data |
| 2 | King Pharaoh | "Isis the great, the god's mother" | Isis-as-Pharaoh (Greco-Roman period titles); gender problem unresolved |
| 3 | Abraham in Egypt (libation table) | (matches: libation table) | Match |
| 4 | Prince of Pharaoh | "Maat, mistress of the gods" | Ritual gender-fluidity (Nibley; Gee); gender problem unresolved |
| 5 | Shulem, principal waiter | "The Osiris Hor, justified forever" | Onomastic match for Shulem in Abrahamic & Greco-Roman periods; character match fails |
| 6 | Olimlah, a slave | "Recitation by Anubis" | No documented synthetic-tradition parallel; weakest identification |
The strongest critical case
The CES Letter's critical case relies primarily on Spalding's 1912 quote-stack and names Robert Ritner without quoting him. The strongest contemporary critical case is Ritner himself. The article cannot honestly engage the facsimile question without engaging it.
Robert Ritner's methodological core
Robert K. Ritner (1953–2021), Professor of Egyptology at the University of Chicago Oriental Institute, is the most credentialed contemporary critic. His The Joseph Smith Egyptian Papyri: A Complete Edition (Smith-Pettit Foundation / Signature Books, 2011) is the standard contemporary critical Egyptological reference on the Joseph Smith Papyri. His 2000 Dialogue article and 2003 JNES revision provide the foundational facsimile critique.[5:9] [6:4]
Ritner's case is not principally figure-by-figure scorecard arithmetic. It is methodological: Joseph claimed to be translating Egyptian; his contemporaries (Cowdery, Phelps, Parrish) described what he was doing as translating Egyptian; the Kirtland Egyptian Papers documentation supports that reading of what Joseph thought he was doing; the surviving fragments do not yield his English text on any defensible philology; and the modern apologetic frameworks (catalyst theory, Semitic adaptation, J-redactor, presentation scene, masked-priest readings) are 20th-century reframings of a 19th-century translation claim.[5:10] [6:5] [68] An honest engagement with Ritner has to address that methodological core, not just the figure-by-figure identifications.
Ritner is correct that Joseph and his contemporaries described the work as "translation" in 1835–1842, and that the modern catalyst-theory and Semitic-adaptation frameworks are 20th-century elaborations. That is a fair reading of the documentary record. The catalyst theory was articulated in its modern form in the late 20th century, drawing on a passing 1830s-LDS understanding of "translation" that included revelatory components but not in the precise form catalyst theory now proposes. A reader who comes to the apologetic literature should know this: the framework is a reframing, not a recovery of Joseph's explicit 1830s self-understanding.[69] [70]
The LDS tradition's understanding of "translation" — applied to the Book of Mormon, the Joseph Smith Translation, and the Book of Abraham — does include revelatory components alongside text-to-text rendering. John S. Thompson has argued that "translation" in 1830s LDS usage was broader than the strict mechanical model and accommodates the manuscript evidence without requiring a wholesale reorientation.[70:1] How that broader 1830s sense of "translation" maps across the Book of Mormon, JST, Kinderhook plates incident, and Book of Abraham is treated at length in Translator Claims. That reading does not make Ritner's methodological observation wrong — Joseph and his contemporaries did say "translation" — but it establishes that the term carried a different weight in the 1830s LDS context than it does in modern academic Egyptology. Whether that broader 1830s sense rescues the apologetic case from Ritner's critique is the live question, and this article does not pretend it is settled.[71]
Falsifiability is a fair test. If catalyst theory + Semitic adaptation + J-redactor + presentation scene + masked-priest readings can absorb every figure-by-figure mismatch as it surfaces, the apologetic framework risks being unfalsifiable. The article rests on parallels that have held to date — Elkenah, Shulem, hypocephalus genre, four sons of Horus, Sobek royal-cult prominence in some Abraham datings, Egyptian human sacrifice as documented practice — and concedes that future scholarship may revise some of them. If the proposed parallels fail under serious scholarly scrutiny, the apologetic case weakens.[72]
Ritner's specific arguments worth naming:
The Facsimile 3 hieroglyphic labels say what they say. Ritner's translations of the figure-labels — Osiris (1), Isis (2), Maat (4), Hor (5), Anubis (6) — are well-grounded in standard Middle Egyptian and Demotic philology. Joseph's identifications do not match these labels. The faithful response (Barney's J-redactor framework, Smoot et al.'s Greco-Roman synthetic-tradition framework) addresses this by appeal to an adapted-meaning layer rather than by disputing the labels.[5:11]
The Anubis-as-Olimlah-the-slave identification is hard. Ritner's framing of this identification is harsh, but the substantive critique — that Joseph misidentified a major Egyptian deity as a human slave with no documented synthetic-tradition parallel — is the steelmanned version of the Facsimile 3 critique.[5:12]
The Egyptian text on the surviving fragments does not say what Joseph's Book of Abraham says. The hieroglyphs adjacent to Facsimile 1 are part of Hor's Book of Breathings, a standard Ptolemaic funerary text dated c. 150–100 BC. There is no Egyptian text on or around the facsimiles that mentions Abraham, idolatry, or Chaldea. The Gospel Topics Essay concedes this.[11:4]
The catalyst-theory and missing-scroll responses are the LDS-scholarly frameworks that engage Ritner's critique without conceding fabrication. Both require giving up a strict mechanical-translation model. The catalyst framework treats the papyri as an "occasion for meditation, reflection, and revelation" rather than a transparent source-text. The missing-scroll framework holds that the Book of Abraham came from a separate scroll (now lost) within the original collection, with the surviving Hor papyri being unrelated funerary material from the same priestly archive. Both are treated in detail in Papyri. What Ritner's critique establishes: the literal Egyptian text on the surviving fragments does not contain the Book of Abraham, and Joseph's facsimile identifications do not match the Egyptian iconographic labels at the literal-character level. The Gospel Topics Essay concedes both points. What Ritner's critique does not establish on its own: that the Book of Abraham is therefore a fabrication. That further conclusion requires foreclosing the catalyst, missing-scroll, and Semitic-adaptation frameworks — and Ritner's expertise in Egyptian philology does not directly reach the broader textual case (Olishem, divine council, Idrimi-style colophon, ancient Abrahamic narrative parallels) that bears on authenticity. Kevin Christensen's lengthy Interpreter response (60+ pages) engages the broader case in detail.[73]
Brian Hauglid's reorientation
The most significant intra-LDS scholarly challenge to traditional Book of Abraham readings has come from Brian M. Hauglid. Hauglid was Associate Professor of Ancient Scripture at BYU and a published Book of Abraham specialist; his 2010 A Textual History of the Book of Abraham was a faithful textual study. He co-edited (with Robin Scott Jensen) the 2018 Joseph Smith Papers volume on the Book of Abraham, and he co-authored, with Terryl Givens, The Pearl of Greatest Price: Mormonism's Most Controversial Scripture (Oxford University Press, 2019).[74] [75] In a 2020 Dialogue essay, Hauglid traced his evolving views on Joseph Smith's translation method.[69:1]
In Facebook statements documented by Jeff Lindsay's Interpreter review, Hauglid stated: "I no longer hold the views that have been quoted from my 2010 book," and "I wholeheartedly agree with Dan [Vogel]'s excellent assessment of the Abraham/Egyptian documents."[76] Vogel's assessment, in his own published work, is that the Book of Abraham is a 19th-century pseudepigraphic composition rather than a translation of an ancient text. Hauglid's stated agreement with Vogel is therefore a strong statement, not a soft one. To say Hauglid "reoriented toward a more critical assessment" is accurate but understates the depth of the shift.
Honest framing: Hauglid is a credentialed LDS BYU Egyptologist with primary-source access to the Book of Abraham manuscripts. He publicly stated agreement with a critical assessment that holds the Book of Abraham to be a 19th-century composition. That is a data point about the parallel-evidence case, not just a position-statement separable from it. The faithful response cannot quarantine Hauglid's reorientation from the parallel-evidence case the apologetic relies on; Hauglid's view is itself part of the evidence about how the parallel-evidence case looks to a credentialed insider.
The faithful response engages the evidence underlying Hauglid's shift on its merits. John Gee, in "The Joseph Smith Papers Project Stumbles" (Interpreter), argues that the Jensen/Hauglid editorial framing of the 2018 Joseph Smith Papers Volume 4 contains over 200 transcription/editorial errors; that the Kirtland Egyptian Papers cannot have been a working translation tool because of 62 characters given meanings in the KEP, only 4 (some say 7) have a clear connection to actual papyrus characters; and that the dependency direction of the manuscript evidence runs Book-of-Abraham → KEP rather than KEP → Book-of-Abraham.[77] Lindsay's review notes that the Jensen/Hauglid volume cites Robert Ritner approximately 49 times and Hugh Nibley zero times — an editorial pattern indicating a particular interpretive frame.[76:1] John S. Thompson has argued that the LDS tradition's broader concept of "translation" accommodates the manuscript evidence without requiring Hauglid's level of reorientation.[70:2]
The reader is left with a real disagreement: Hauglid (with primary-source access) reads the manuscript evidence as supporting a fundamentally critical conclusion; Gee, Lindsay, and Thompson (with their own primary-source access) read the same evidence differently. The apologetic case can be defended on the merits of the parallels rather than on Hauglid's unanimity, and the article does so. The article does not pretend Hauglid's reorientation is only about translation method narrowly construed, and it does not pretend his agreement with Vogel is anything less than what it is.
The Kirtland Egyptian Papers
The Kirtland Egyptian Papers (KEP) — manuscripts in which Egyptian characters are paired with English passages of the Book of Abraham — are primarily Papyri's terrain. But the methodological question matters here, because the same translation methodology underwrites both KEP and the figure-by-figure facsimile interpretations.
The hard fact: some KEP manuscripts contain pages where single Egyptian characters from the surviving Joseph Smith Papyri are paired with extended English passages from the Book of Abraham — sometimes a single character corresponding to several lines or a paragraph of English text. That is not how Egyptian works. A skeptic's reading is that this fact, paired with Ritner's philological case, indicates Joseph and his associates believed they were translating Egyptian and were not doing so in any defensible philological sense.
The faithful response (Gee; Lindsay) holds that the KEP cannot have been a working translation tool because of the character-set mismatch (only a small fraction of KEP characters connect to actual papyrus characters), and that the dependency direction runs the other way (Book of Abraham → KEP rather than KEP → Book of Abraham). If that direction is correct, the KEP is a retroactive Egyptian-language study project undertaken after the Book of Abraham was already revealed, not the source of the Book of Abraham translation.[77:1] Hauglid's editorial framing in the 2018 Joseph Smith Papers Volume 4 reads the manuscript evidence differently, treating the KEP as more closely tied to the production of the Book of Abraham text.[75:1]
The methodological implication is direct. If Joseph used the same method that produced the KEP to produce facsimile interpretations, and the method is philologically indefensible (which Gee and Lindsay concede in their argument that the KEP cannot have been a working translation tool), then the facsimile interpretations are also philologically indefensible as translations. The catalyst-theory rescue says they were never meant to be philologically defensible — they were revealed Abrahamic content prompted by the papyri. But Joseph and his contemporaries described what he was doing as translation. The catalyst theory therefore distinguishes "translation" from "revelation" in a way the 1830s documentary record does not unambiguously support. That is the heart of Ritner's methodological critique applied at the KEP level.
What this article does claim: credentialed LDS Egyptologists disagree on what the KEP manuscripts show. Gee and Lindsay press the Book of Abraham → KEP direction and the character-mismatch statistics. Hauglid's editorial framing presses the other direction. The disagreement is real. The full case for and against catalyst theory is engaged in Papyri. The honest summary for present purposes: the KEP question is unresolved within LDS scholarship, the methodological pressure on the apologetic case is real, and the case for the Book of Abraham's antiquity is best made on the parallel-evidence record (Olishem, Shulem, hypocephalus genre, divine council, ancient Abraham traditions) rather than on the KEP debate alone.
What we honestly don't know
Several questions remain open and the article does not paper over them.
The "Oliblish-class" terms. Oliblish, Kae-e-vanrash, Enish-go-on-dosh, Hah-ko-kau-beam, Kli-flos-is-es have no clean Egyptian or Semitic etymology that contemporary scholarship has confirmed. Their origin is currently unknown.
The Facsimile 3 gender identifications. Isis and Maat are female; Joseph called the figures male. The Greco-Roman Isis-as-Pharaoh tradition and ritual gender-fluidity complicate the "fatal error" framing without erasing it.
The Anubis-as-Olimlah identification. No documented synthetic-tradition parallel makes this identification work in the way Abraham-as-Osiris (figure 1) or Isis-as-Pharaoh (figure 2) can be argued from Greco-Roman period evidence.
The Hedlock-restored portions of Facsimile 1. The original head of figure 3 was probably the jackal head of Anubis. The Hedlock woodcut supplied a human head where the original was missing. The masked-priest reading rescues Joseph's "priest" identification from contradiction; it does not vindicate the identification positively.
The Kirtland Egyptian Papers dependency direction. Hauglid (KEP→BoA) and Gee/Lindsay (BoA→KEP) disagree on what the manuscript evidence shows; the disagreement is between credentialed LDS scholars with primary-source access.
The hieroglyphs above Facsimile 3 figures literally name Egyptian deities. On any strict reading, this is a mismatch. The apologetic case rests on Barney's J-redactor framework or the Smoot et al. presentation/initiation scene framing, neither of which directly disputes the philological reading of the labels.
Whether the thematic-alignment standard distinguishes real matches from coincidence. Applied loosely, "thematic alignment" could let in false positives. The article uses a narrower standard above (figure 6 a direct match; figures 5 and 7 thematic hits with real Egyptological grounding; the rest more debatable).
Whether the Demotic and Greek Magical Papyri Abraham invocations preserve substantive tradition or are syncretic magical-name uses. The Smoot et al. reading and the Ashment/IRR counter-reading are both serious.
Whether Joseph and his contemporaries' 1830s self-understanding of "translation" supports the modern catalyst framework. The strict answer is: the catalyst framework is a 20th-century reframing. Whether the 1830s LDS sense of "translation" is broad enough to accommodate it is contested.
These open questions affect interpretation of the facsimile case. They do not by themselves settle the case in either direction. Honest acknowledgment is part of what makes the positive case credible where it is strong.
The 1912 Egyptology context
The CES Letter's stacked Egyptologist quotes on p. 49 — Breasted, Petrie, Sayce — are all from F.S. Spalding's 1912 pamphlet Joseph Smith, Jr., as a Translator: An Inquiry.[78] Spalding wrote to a series of leading Egyptologists in 1912, asking whether Joseph's facsimile interpretations matched Egyptological understanding. The pamphlet collected dismissive responses from Sayce, Petrie, Breasted, Mace, Peters, Mercer, Meyer, von Bissing, and others.[78:1]
The strongest of those quotes:
"It may be safely said that there is not one single word that is true in these explanations." — W.M. Flinders Petrie[78:2]
"Joseph Smith's interpretations of them as part of a unique revelation through Abraham, therefore, very clearly demonstrates that he was totally unacquainted with the significance of these documents and absolutely ignorant of the simplest facts of Egyptian writing and civilization." — James H. Breasted[78:3]
"It is difficult to deal seriously with Joseph Smith's impudent fraud... Smith has turned the goddess [Isis in Facsimile #3] into a king and Osiris into Abraham." — A.H. Sayce[78:4]
Three observations.
First, these are 1912 quotes responding to a real Egyptological mismatch. Most of the substance of the 1912 critique — that Joseph's identifications do not match standard Egyptological readings of the underlying iconography on a strict-translation rubric — has been confirmed by Ritner 2011 with the benefit of full modern Middle Egyptian scholarship. The CES Letter relies on Spalding because the punchy quotes are rhetorically useful; the underlying scholarly point is not invented out of nothing.
Second, the "not one single word that is true" claim is overstated by at least one figure. When Egyptology's own non-LDS reference works (Wallis Budge; Allen; Pinch; Raven) confirm that the four sons of Horus represent the four cardinal directions, Petrie's blanket statement is wrong on figure 6 of Facsimile 2. The Gospel Topics Essay's body text confirms the same match.[11:5] If even one of Joseph's identifications agrees with modern Egyptology — and figure 6 of Facsimile 2 plainly does — the universal "not one single word" claim is factually wrong on that figure. That qualifier does not extend to "overstated across the whole facsimile case" without further argument. What it does establish is that the strongest version of the 1912 quote-stack, taken as a universal, fails on the textual record.
Third, the historical record of the 1912 LDS response. B.H. Roberts and others engaged Spalding's pamphlet in the 1912–1913 LDS press, generally arguing that Spalding's selection of Egyptologists was not exhaustive and that the responses traded on incomplete evidence. With the benefit of a century of further scholarship, parts of the 1912–1913 LDS rebuttal have aged better than others — modern hypocephalus typology, Sobek-royal-cult studies, Greco-Roman period synthetic-tradition documentation, and Mirgissa partly vindicate the "more scholarship would change the picture" claim; Ritner's 2011 critique is more rigorous than Spalding's 1912 case. The 1912 response was not the last word but it was not vindication either.
What can be said honestly: the 1912 critics were responding to a real Egyptological mismatch on the strict-translation standard. They did not have access to modern hypocephalus typology, modern Min scholarship, modern Sobek scholarship, modern Greco-Roman Egyptian-Jewish synthetic-tradition documentation, or the masked-priest iconographic literature. The strongest contemporary critical case is Ritner 2011, not Spalding 1912; the CES Letter relies on Spalding for the punchy quotes but the substance of the critique stands or falls with Ritner.
Assessment
The facsimile case is genuinely complex. There are real misses on a literal-Egyptian-philological standard. There are also matches — some thematic, some onomastic, some structural — that the CES Letter's "1 out of 21" framing does not capture.
The honest concessions: the surviving Egyptian text adjacent to Facsimile 1 is from Hor's Book of Breathings, a standard Ptolemaic funerary text. The hieroglyphic labels above the figures of Facsimile 3 explicitly name Egyptian deities (Osiris, Isis, Maat, Hor, Anubis). Joseph's identifications of figures 2 and 4 of Facsimile 3 misidentify visually-female figures as male royalty — the most direct visual mismatch in the entire facsimile section. Several Facsimile 2 figure names (Oliblish, Kae-e-vanrash, Enish-go-on-dosh, and others) have no Egyptian or Semitic etymology contemporary scholarship has confirmed. The original head of Facsimile 1 figure 3 was probably the jackal head of Anubis, with the human head supplied by the Hedlock woodcut process. The Anubis-as-Olimlah identification on Facsimile 3 figure 6 has no documented synthetic-tradition parallel comparable to the Abraham-as-Osiris substitution. Brian Hauglid, a credentialed LDS BYU Egyptologist with primary-source access, has publicly stated agreement with Dan Vogel's critical assessment that the Book of Abraham is a 19th-century composition. Robert Ritner's 2011 Complete Edition is the strongest contemporary critical case and engages the entire body of evidence on a methodological level the 1912 quote-stack does not. The Kirtland Egyptian Papers question remains contested between credentialed LDS scholars.
The CES Letter framing is selective rather than dishonest. The "1 out of 21" parenthetical applies a strict-name-only scoring rubric, which is a defensible methodological choice. On that rubric, only figure 6 of Facsimile 2 matches, and the CES Letter's own modern column on p. 42 reflects that match. The strict literal rubric is tighter than the standards modern Egyptologists routinely apply when comparing 19th-century interpretations to the underlying iconography — a methodological observation about the rubric, not an accusation against the CES Letter's good faith.
What survives the strict rubric matters. Several specific matches are credible on independent grounds: hypocephalus genre as exclusively temple-restricted high-clergy equipment (Joseph said exactly that); four sons of Horus = four cardinal directions of earth (Joseph said "this earth in its four quarters" — direct match conceded by the Gospel Topics Essay's body text); Min as creator-god in Egyptian theology, with the "Great God" epithet shared in Greco-Roman syncretism with the God of Israel — Joseph's "God sitting on his throne" reading sits inside a documented register; Shulem as a name attested at the Abrahamic period and the Greco-Roman period and not in the form Joseph would have produced from KJV vocabulary; Elkenah as a documented Canaanite divine name (ʾel-qoneh-ha-ʾareṣ) attested across a wide ancient Near Eastern range, with the cuneiform and Phoenician sources unavailable in 1835. Other matches are weaker than they sometimes get presented: Sobek prominent in royal cult in one common Abraham dating (not uniquely "the god of Pharaoh"); the Korash-as-Kursha parallel running to a divine ritual object rather than a deity; Libnah and Mahmackrah described in the apologetic literature itself as "possible." Egyptian human sacrifice is a documented practice (Mirgissa) but the surviving JSP I lion-couch vignette remains, on standard Egyptology, a funerary scene; what the Mirgissa evidence does is widen the iconographic possibility-space rather than vindicate Joseph's specific reading. The Greco-Roman Magical Papyri Abraham invocations are documented; whether they preserve substantive tradition or syncretic magical-name use is contested. The Olimlah identification subtracts from the cumulative count.
Each parallel needs to be independently credible; a cumulative case is not a multiplicative confidence boost. The article does not claim "the convergence of multiple parallels" as a magnification of certainty. It claims that several specific elements of Joseph's interpretations point to features 20th-century recovery has documented and that 1835 sources could not have supplied — and that each one stands or falls on its own merits.
The hardest places remain hard. Facsimile 3 figures 2 and 4 are the most direct visual mismatch. The Olimlah identification is the weakest single point. The Oliblish-class names have no confirmed etymology. The KEP question is unresolved among credentialed LDS scholars. The hieroglyphs above Facsimile 3 literally name Egyptian deities; the J-redactor framework is interpretive and does not directly dispute that fact. Hauglid's stated agreement with Vogel's critical assessment is a real piece of evidence for the skeptical reading. Ritner's methodological critique is the strongest contemporary critical case and the catalyst-theory rescue distinguishes "translation" from "revelation" in a way the 1830s LDS context did not unambiguously articulate.
What the CES Letter's "1 out of 21" framing misses is what surfaces once the scholarship is engaged at depth: the body of independent ancient parallels (Elkenah, Shulem, hypocephalus genre, four sons of Horus, Egyptian human sacrifice as a documented practice, the Greco-Roman period magical-papyri Abraham material, the masked-priest iconographic register, the Sobek-royal-cult prominence in one common Abraham dating) that 1912 critics did not have and that any 1830s fabrication theory has to absorb on its own terms. None of these matches is individually decisive. The careful reader is invited to weigh each on its own merits and to set the cumulative weight against the genuine difficulties named above.
What this article claims, plainly. Joseph's facsimile interpretations do not constitute "translation" in the modern Egyptological sense. The literal Egyptian text on the surviving fragments does not contain the Book of Abraham; the Gospel Topics Essay confirms this. The Facsimile 3 hieroglyphic labels say what Ritner and Rhodes say they say. The "1 out of 21" headline reflects a strict rubric that does not capture the full picture, but the strict rubric is not unreasonable on its own terms. The apologetic case rests on 20th-century interpretive frameworks (catalyst theory, Semitic adaptation, J-redactor, presentation scene, masked-priest readings) that are real reframings, not direct recoveries of Joseph's 1830s self-description. Several specific elements of Joseph's interpretations align with features 20th-century recovery has documented, and 1835 sources could not have supplied them. The Olimlah identification is hard to defend. The Facsimile 3 gender mismatch is hard to defend. Hauglid's reorientation is real and material. The case for the Book of Abraham's antiquity is best made on the parallel-evidence record across the whole text — including Olishem, divine council, ancient Abrahamic traditions, and the Idrimi-style colophon (treated in Anachronisms & Source Texts) — rather than on the facsimiles in isolation.
The Book of Abraham's case is denser, more technical, and more textured than the Book of Mormon's. The textual history is messier; the manuscript variants are real; the catalyst-theory and revealed-translation models require holding a less mechanical view of "translation" than older traditions sometimes assumed. Where the questions are hard, this article has tried to name them. Where the evidence supports an apologetic point, it has tried to state the point at the strength the evidence actually warrants — not stronger.
What stands firm when the facsimile ground gets uneven is what stands firm everywhere else: the Book of Mormon. It was dictated in roughly sixty working days, witnessed by people who never recanted, internally coherent across a 270,000-word text its 19th-century author could not have engineered, and the evidence for its authenticity has only grown stronger with time. The Book of Abraham is the Restoration's harder document; the Book of Mormon is its bedrock. A reader weighing the facsimile difficulties honestly will weigh them in that wider frame — and find that what does not cleanly resolve here does not, by itself, dissolve the wider case for the Restoration.
Runnells, CES Letter (2017), "Book of Abraham," no. 3, p. 46. ↩︎
Runnells, CES Letter (2017), "Book of Abraham," p. 44 (parenthetical "Joseph may have gotten 1 out of 21 translations correct!" beneath the Facsimile 2 sources block). ↩︎
Runnells, CES Letter (2017), "Book of Abraham," p. 49. The quoted scholars — James H. Breasted, W.M. Flinders Petrie, and A.H. Sayce — all appear in F.S. Spalding, Joseph Smith, Jr., as a Translator: An Inquiry (Salt Lake City: Arrow Press, 1912), https://archive.org/details/josephsmithjrast00spala. ↩︎
Runnells, CES Letter (2017), "Book of Abraham," p. 50, naming Robert Ritner without quoting him. ↩︎
Robert K. Ritner, The Joseph Smith Egyptian Papyri: A Complete Edition (Salt Lake City: Smith-Pettit Foundation, 2011/2013); publisher page at https://www.signaturebooks.com/books/p/the-joseph-smith-egyptian-papyri. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
Robert K. Ritner, "'The Breathing Permit of Hôr' Among the Joseph Smith Papyri," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 33, no. 4 (Winter 2000): 97–119; revised in Journal of Near Eastern Studies 62, no. 3 (July 2003): 161–180. The "black jackal Anubis into a Negro slave" characterization of Joseph's Olimlah identification appears in this material and is reprinted in the 2011 Complete Edition. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
"Introduction to Egyptian Papyri, circa 300–100 BC," The Joseph Smith Papers, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/introduction-to-egyptian-papyri-circa-300-100-bc/1; "Book of Abraham and Egyptian Material," The Joseph Smith Papers, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/site/book-of-abraham-and-egyptian-material. ↩︎ ↩︎
Marc Coenen, "The Dating of the Papyri Joseph Smith I, X, and XI and Min Who Massacres His Enemies," in Willy Clarysse, Antoon Schoors, and Harco Willems, eds., Egyptian Religion: The Last Thousand Years, Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 84 (Leuven: Peeters, 1998), pp. 1103–1115. Standard non-LDS Egyptological dating of the Joseph Smith Papyri to c. 150–100 BC. ↩︎ ↩︎
John Gee and Stephen E. Lyon, "Research on Hypocephali," BYU Insights 24, no. 5, https://publications.mi.byu.edu/pdf-control.php/publications/insights/24/5/S00001-Research_on_Hypocephali.html. Catalogues 158 known hypocephali and identifies the Joseph Smith hypocephalus as a Type III specimen. ↩︎ ↩︎
"Was the original head of the priest in Book of Abraham Facsimile 1 actually the jackal head of Anubis?" FAIR, https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/answers/Question:_Was_the_original_head_of_the_priest_in_Book_of_Abraham_Facsimile_1_actually_the_jackal_head_of_Anubis%3F. ↩︎ ↩︎
"Translation and Historicity of the Book of Abraham," Gospel Topics Essays, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics-essays/translation-and-historicity-of-the-book-of-abraham. The body text near footnote 40 of the essay states the four-quarters interpretation of Facsimile 2 figure 6 has been argued by scholars studying similar Egyptian figures (footnote 40 itself cites Maarten J. Raven on body-orientation theory, Proceedings of the Ninth International Congress of Egyptologists [2007], 2:1569–70). ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
Kevin Barney, "The Facsimiles and Semitic Adaptation of Existing Sources," in Astronomy, Papyrus, and Covenant (Studies in the Book of Abraham, vol. 3, Provo, UT: FARMS, 2005); Scripture Central archive, https://scripturecentral.org/archive/books/book-chapter/facsimiles-and-semitic-adaptation-existing-sources. ↩︎ ↩︎
Stephen O. Smoot, John Gee, Kerry Muhlestein, and John S. Thompson, A Guide to the Book of Abraham (Provo, UT: BYU Religious Studies Center; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2022), https://rsc.byu.edu/book/guide-book-abraham. Comprehensive recent synthesis of the BYU Studies Quarterly 61/4 cluster of essays. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
Runnells, CES Letter (2017), "Book of Abraham," pp. 39–40 (Facsimile 1 scorecard table). ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
Stephen O. Smoot, John Gee, Kerry Muhlestein, and John S. Thompson, "Facsimile 1 as a Sacrifice Scene," BYU Studies Quarterly 61, no. 4 (2022), https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/byusq/vol61/iss4/41/; Pearl of Great Price Central, "Facsimile 1 as a Sacrifice Scene," https://pearlofgreatpricecentral.org/facsimile-1-as-a-sacrifice-scene/. ↩︎
John Gee, "Some Puzzles from the Joseph Smith Papyri," FARMS Review 20, no. 1 (2008): 113–137, esp. 135, https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/msr/vol20/iss1/15/. Source of the "excluding a sacrificial dimension to lion couch scenes is un-Egyptian" quotation. ↩︎
Jean Vercoutter, "Textes exécratoires de Mirgissa," Comptes rendus des séances de l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres 107, no. 1 (1963): 97–102; Vercoutter, Mirgissa I–III, 3 vols. (Paris, 1970–1976), the major published series of the Mirgissa excavations. ↩︎
Kerry Muhlestein, Violence in the Service of Order: The Religious Framework for Sanctioned Killing in Ancient Egypt (PhD dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles, 2003), https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3kp6n8nh. ↩︎ ↩︎
Kerry Muhlestein and John Gee, "An Egyptian Context for the Sacrifice of Abraham," Journal of the Book of Mormon and Other Restoration Scripture 20, no. 2 (2011): 70–77, https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/jbms/vol20/iss2/9/. ↩︎
Kerry Muhlestein, Violence in the Service of Order: The Religious Framework for Sanctioned Killing in Ancient Egypt, BAR International Series 2299 (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2011). The published reformulation of Muhlestein's UCLA dissertation. ↩︎
The Mirgissa evidence and the nmỉt/nmt homophony establish that ritual sacrifice was a real Egyptian iconographic register; they do not establish that JSP I specifically depicts that register rather than the funerary-embalming register the surrounding Book of Breathings text supports. The apologetic claim here is the narrower one — that a 1912 universal denial of Egyptian sacrificial iconography was wrong — not the broader one that JSP I has been positively reidentified as a sacrifice scene. The Smoot et al. 2022 "Facsimile 1 as a Sacrifice Scene" piece argues for the broader reading; this article does not adopt that stronger claim. ↩︎
Runnells, CES Letter (2017), "Book of Abraham," pp. 38, 41 (visual rhetorical material on Hedlock restorations and the four-strip Anubis comparison). ↩︎
Stephen O. Smoot, John Gee, Kerry Muhlestein, and John S. Thompson, "The Idolatrous Priest (Facsimile 1, Figure 3)," BYU Studies Quarterly 61, no. 4 (2022), https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/byusq/vol61/iss4/42/; Pearl of Great Price Central, "The Idolatrous Priest," https://pearlofgreatpricecentral.org/the-idolatrous-priest/. The Hildesheim Anubis-priest mask reference is to the holding in the Pelizaeus-Museum (today the Roemer- und Pelizaeus-Museum); see Deborah Sweeney, "Egyptian Masks in Motion," Göttinger Miszellen 135 (1993), p. 102, on the Dendara "false transparency" relief. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
Stephen O. Smoot, John Gee, Kerry Muhlestein, and John S. Thompson, "Sobek, the God of Pharaoh," BYU Studies Quarterly 61, no. 4 (2022), https://byustudies.byu.edu/article/sobek-the-god-of-pharaoh; Pearl of Great Price Central, "Sobek, the God of Pharaoh," https://pearlofgreatpricecentral.org/sobek-the-god-of-pharaoh/. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
Quinten Barney, "Sobek: The Idolatrous God of Pharaoh Amenemhet III," Journal of the Book of Mormon and Other Restoration Scripture 22, no. 2 (2013): 22–27, https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/jbms/vol22/iss2/3/. ↩︎ ↩︎
Edda Bresciani, "Sobek, lord of the land of the lake," in Salima Ikram, ed., Divine Creatures: Animal Mummies in Ancient Egypt (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2005), pp. 199–206. Standard Egyptological treatment of Sobek's prominence in Twelfth-Dynasty royal cult; source of the "best example of the success of the crocodile-gods" wording paraphrased in Smoot et al. 2022. ↩︎
Competing Abraham chronologies place him earlier or later than the Twelfth/Thirteenth Dynasties, and some treat him as a literary rather than chronological figure. The Sobek apologetic match holds only if a Middle Kingdom dating is correct, and even on that dating Sobek is one prominent god among several rather than the singular "god of Pharaoh." ↩︎
Kevin L. Barney, "On Elkenah as Canaanite El," Journal of the Book of Mormon and Other Restoration Scripture 19, no. 1 (2010): 22–35, https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/jbms/vol19/iss1/5/; "The Idolatrous God Elkenah," BYU Studies, https://byustudies.byu.edu/article/the-idolatrous-god-elkenah; Pearl of Great Price Central, "The Idolatrous God of Elkenah," https://pearlofgreatpricecentral.org/the-idolatrous-god-of-elkenah/. ↩︎ ↩︎
Stephen E. Thompson, "Egyptology and the Book of Abraham," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 28, no. 1 (Spring 1995): 143–160, https://www.dialoguejournal.com/articles/egyptology-and-the-book-of-abraham/. Phonological objections to several of Joseph Smith's name-derivations in the Book of Abraham, including the linguistic claims about Egyptus and Raukeeyang. ↩︎
Stephen O. Smoot, John Gee, Kerry Muhlestein, and John S. Thompson, "The Ancient Egyptian View of Abraham," BYU Studies Quarterly 61, no. 4 (2022), https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/byusq/vol61/iss4/37/; Pearl of Great Price Central, "The Ancient Egyptian View of Abraham," https://pearlofgreatpricecentral.org/the-ancient-egyptian-view-of-abraham/. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
F. Ll. Griffith and Herbert Thompson, The Demotic Magical Papyrus of London and Leiden, 3 vols. (London: H. Grevel, 1904–1909). The standard edition of Papyrus Leiden I 384. ↩︎ ↩︎
Edward H. Ashment, "Use of Egyptian Magical Papyri to Authenticate the Book of Abraham," Institute for Religious Research, https://mit.irr.org/use-of-egyptian-magical-papyri-authenticate-book-of-abraham-part-1. Ashment argues that the forms ABRAAM and ABRACAM in the Greek and Demotic Magical Papyri, while plausibly derived from the name "Abraham," function as syncretic voces magicae (power words) in late-antique magic rather than as substantive carriers of Abrahamic tradition. ↩︎
Stephen O. Smoot, John Gee, Kerry Muhlestein, and John S. Thompson, "The Ancient Owners of the Joseph Smith Papyri," BYU Studies Quarterly 61, no. 4 (2022), https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/byusq/vol61/iss4/38/; Pearl of Great Price Central, "The Ancient Owners of the Joseph Smith Papyri," https://pearlofgreatpricecentral.org/the-ancient-owners-of-the-joseph-smith-papyri/. ↩︎
Matthew J. Grey, "'The Word of the Lord in the Original': Joseph Smith's Study of Hebrew in Kirtland," in Approaching Antiquity: Joseph Smith and the Ancient World, ed. Lincoln H. Blumell, Matthew J. Grey, and Andrew H. Hedges (Provo, UT: BYU RSC, 2015), https://rsc.byu.edu/approaching-antiquity-joseph-smith-ancient-world/word-lord-original-joseph-smiths-study-hebrew-kirtland. Documents Joseph's Hebrew study under Joshua Seixas beginning in January 1836. ↩︎
Runnells, CES Letter (2017), "Book of Abraham," p. 44. ↩︎ ↩︎
Stephen O. Smoot, John Gee, Kerry Muhlestein, and John S. Thompson, "The Purpose and Function of the Egyptian Hypocephalus," BYU Studies Quarterly 61, no. 4 (2022), https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/byusq/vol61/iss4/43/; Pearl of Great Price Central, "The Purpose and Function of the Egyptian Hypocephalus," https://pearlofgreatpricecentral.org/the-purpose-and-function-of-the-egyptian-hypocephalus/. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
Runnells, CES Letter (2017), "Book of Abraham," pp. 42–43 (Facsimile 2 scorecard table). ↩︎
James P. Allen, The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts, 2nd ed. (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2015). ↩︎
Raymond O. Faulkner, The Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts, 3 vols. (Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1973–1978). Coffin Text Spell 158 (CT II, 364–366) is the standard precursor of Book of the Dead chapters 112–113 and explicitly assigns the four sons of Horus to the cardinal directions. ↩︎
Geraldine Pinch, Egyptian Mythology: A Guide to the Gods, Goddesses, and Traditions of Ancient Egypt (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002). ↩︎
E.A. Wallis Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians, 2 vols. (London: Methuen, 1904); Wallis Budge writes that the four sons of Horus "represented the four supports of heaven" and that each was "god of one of the four quarters of the earth." ↩︎
Maarten J. Raven, Egyptian Magic: The Quest for Thoth's Book of Secrets (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2012); see also Raven, "Egyptian Concepts of the Orientation of the Human Body," Proceedings of the Ninth International Congress of Egyptologists (2007), 2:1569–1570 (cited at note 40 of the Gospel Topics Essay). ↩︎ ↩︎
Michael D. Rhodes, "A Translation and Commentary of the Joseph Smith Hypocephalus," BYU Studies 17, no. 3 (1977): 259–274, https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/byusq/vol17/iss3/2/. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
Stephen O. Smoot, John Gee, Kerry Muhlestein, and John S. Thompson, "The Four Sons of Horus (Facsimile 2, Figure 6)," BYU Studies Quarterly 61, no. 4 (2022), https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/byusq/vol61/iss4/46/; Pearl of Great Price Central, "The Four Sons of Horus," https://pearlofgreatpricecentral.org/the-four-sons-of-horus-facsimile-2-figure-6/. ↩︎ ↩︎
"Did Joseph Smith identify any elements of Facsimile 2 that are in agreement with what Egyptologists say they represent?" FAIR, https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/answers/Question:_Did_Joseph_Smith_identify_any_elements_of_Facsimile_2_that_are_in_agreement_with_what_Egyptologists_say_they_represent%3F; "Joseph Smith's Explanations of Facsimile 2 of the Book of Abraham," FAIR, https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/answers/Joseph_Smith's_Explanations_of_Facsimile_2_of_the_Book_of_Abraham. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
A thoughtful skeptic will note that many Egyptian deities placed prominently on a hypocephalus could be described as fitting at least one of the apologetic categories (creator-god, high deity, solar deity, time-measurement), and a loosely-applied "thematic alignment" standard would let some false positives through. The narrower defensible standard counts a hit only where Joseph's category-level description corresponds to the standard Egyptological category for the underlying deity in ways the strict-name rubric ignores — not whenever any of the four broad categories applies to any of the figures. ↩︎
Stephen O. Smoot, John Gee, Kerry Muhlestein, and John S. Thompson, "Kolob, the Governing One," BYU Studies Quarterly 61, no. 4 (2022), https://byustudies.byu.edu/article/kolob-the-governing-one; "One Day to a Cubit (Facsimile 2, Figure 1)," BYU Studies Quarterly 61, no. 4 (2022), https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/byusq/vol61/iss4/44/. ↩︎
Stephen O. Smoot, John Gee, Kerry Muhlestein, and John S. Thompson, "The Hathor Cow (Facsimile 2, Figure 5)," BYU Studies Quarterly 61, no. 4 (2022), https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/byusq/vol61/iss4/45/. ↩︎
Stephen O. Smoot, John Gee, Kerry Muhlestein, and John S. Thompson, "God Sitting upon His Throne (Facsimile 2, Figure 7)," BYU Studies Quarterly 61, no. 4 (2022), https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/byusq/vol61/iss4/47/; Pearl of Great Price Central, "God Sitting upon His Throne," https://pearlofgreatpricecentral.org/god-sitting-upon-his-throne-facsimile-2-figure-7/. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
Karel van der Toorn, Bob Becking, and Pieter W. van der Horst, eds., Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible, 2nd ed. (Leiden: Brill, 1999), s.v. "Min." ↩︎
nṯr ʿꜣ ("Great God") is one of the most commonly applied divine epithets in Egyptian religious vocabulary; its presence on Min is not specific to Min in any unique way, and the apologetic case cannot rest on "this epithet identifies Min as Israel's God." Late-antique magical and religious texts routinely applied Egyptian divine epithets to non-Egyptian deities; that is a general feature of how Greco-Roman syncretism handled foreign divine names. The convergence is therefore at the level of epithet-borrowing in syncretism, not at the level of specific Min-Israel theological identity. ↩︎
Joachim F. Quack, "From Egyptian Traditions to Magical Gnostic Amulets," in Jan N. Bremmer and Jan R. Veenstra, eds., The Metamorphosis of Magic from Late Antiquity to the Early Modern Period (Leuven: Peeters, 2002), pp. 39–57. Treatment of how Egyptian divine epithets crossed into Greco-Roman magical-religious texts addressed to non-Egyptian deities, including the Israelite Iaho Sabaoth. ↩︎ ↩︎
John Gee, An Introduction to the Book of Abraham (Provo, UT: BYU Religious Studies Center; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2017), discussion of Facsimile 2 figure-name etymologies. ↩︎
Runnells, CES Letter (2017), "Book of Abraham," pp. 44–45 (Facsimile 3 scorecard table). ↩︎
Stephen O. Smoot, John Gee, Kerry Muhlestein, and John S. Thompson, "Facsimile 3: Judgment Scene or Presentation Scene?" BYU Studies Quarterly 61, no. 4 (2022), https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/byusq/vol61/iss4/48/; Pearl of Great Price Central, "Facsimile 3: Judgment Scene vs. Presentation Scene," https://pearlofgreatpricecentral.org/facsimile-3-judgment-scene-vs-presentation-scene/. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
Stephen O. Smoot, John Gee, Kerry Muhlestein, and John S. Thompson, "Isis the Pharaoh (Facsimile 3, Figure 2)," BYU Studies Quarterly 61, no. 4 (2022), https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/byusq/vol61/iss4/50/; Pearl of Great Price Central, "Isis the Pharaoh," https://pearlofgreatpricecentral.org/isis-the-pharaoh-facsimile-3-figure-2/. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
Laurent Bricault, Isis Pelagia: Images, Names and Cults of a Goddess of the Seas (Leiden: Brill, 2020). Major recent reference work on Greco-Roman Isis cult titles, including the Pharaoh-equivalent titles applied to Isis in the period of the surviving Joseph Smith Papyri. ↩︎
John Gee, An Introduction to the Book of Abraham (Provo, UT: BYU Religious Studies Center; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2017), pp. 152–155 (on Egyptian ritual gender presentation). ↩︎
Hugh Nibley, Abraham in Egypt, 2nd ed., Collected Works of Hugh Nibley vol. 14 (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book; Provo, UT: FARMS, 2000), citing Pyramid Text 335 and the Hathor-mask iconography. ↩︎
G. H. Box and J. I. Landsman, The Apocalypse of Abraham (London: SPCK, 1918; New York: Macmillan, 1919), https://archive.org/details/apocalypseofabra00boxg. First popular English translation by E. H. Anderson and R. T. Haag was published in Improvement Era (1898). ↩︎
R. H. Charles, The Book of Jubilees (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1902), https://archive.org/details/bookofjubileesor00char. First English translation by G. H. Schodde appeared in 1888. ↩︎
Wolfgang Helck, "Rpʿt auf dem Thron des Gb," Orientalia 19 (1950): 416–434, as cited in Nibley, Abraham in Egypt. Helck documents the Egyptian title for non-royal court officials who occupied the throne ritually. ↩︎
"Putting the Best Face on the Book of Abraham," Institute for Religious Research, https://mit.irr.org/putting-best-face-on-book-of-abraham. The IRR critique of Gee's Guide presses the point that "there are no characters on Facsimile 3 that translate to Shulem." ↩︎
John Gee, "Shulem, One of the King's Principal Waiters," Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 19 (2016): 383–395, https://interpreterfoundation.org/journal/shulem-one-of-the-kings-principal-waiters; archive at https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/interpreter/vol19/iss1/18/. See also Stephen O. Smoot, John Gee, Kerry Muhlestein, and John S. Thompson, "Shulem, One of the King's Principal Waiters (Facsimile 3, Figure 5)," BYU Studies Quarterly 61, no. 4 (2022), https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/byusq/vol61/iss4/51/. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
Stephen O. Smoot, John Gee, Kerry Muhlestein, and John S. Thompson, "Abraham and Osiris (Facsimile 3, Figure 1)," BYU Studies Quarterly 61, no. 4 (2022), https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/byusq/vol61/iss4/49/; Pearl of Great Price Central, "Abraham and Osiris," https://pearlofgreatpricecentral.org/abraham-and-osiris-facsimile-3-figure-1/. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
The leap from "later traditions sometimes substituted Abraham for Osiris in burial contexts" to "the Hor papyrus was J-redacted to mean Abraham" is the interpretive gap a skeptic will register. A reader who finds Barney's framework persuasive will see Joseph's reading as recovering adapted Abrahamic meaning; a reader who does not will see a hieroglyphic mismatch the framework cannot fully bridge. The Smoot et al. 2022 piece on Abraham and Osiris extends Barney's argument with additional Greco-Roman period evidence but does not eliminate the interpretive step. ↩︎
"Detailed Response to CES Letter, Book of Abraham," FAIR, https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/answers/Detailed_response_to_CES_Letter,_Book_of_Abraham; quoting Ritner's characterization of Joseph's Anubis-as-Olimlah identification. ↩︎
Robert K. Ritner, "'Translation and Historicity of the Book of Abraham' — A Response," 2014; PDF hosted at https://isac.uchicago.edu/sites/default/files/uploads/Translation and Historicity of the Book of Abraham.pdf (University of Chicago Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures); also via Institute for Religious Research, https://mit.irr.org/translation-and-historicity-of-book-of-abraham-response. ↩︎
Brian M. Hauglid, "'Translating an Alphabet to the Book of Abraham': Joseph Smith's Mature Translation Method," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 53, no. 4 (Winter 2020): 5–35. ↩︎ ↩︎
John S. Thompson, "'We May Not Understand Our Words': The Book of Abraham and the Concept of Translation in The Pearl of Greatest Price," Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 41 (2020): 1–48, https://interpreterfoundation.org/journal/we-may-not-understand-our-words-the-book-of-abraham-and-the-concept-of-translation-in-the-pearl-of-greatest-price/. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
A skeptic will reasonably say the broader 1830s sense of "translation" does not rescue the apologetic case from Ritner's critique; a faithful reader who finds the broader-translation reading historically grounded will say it does. The two readings are not resolved by the documentary record alone; they turn on prior judgments about how much weight to give the catalyst framework's distinction between "translation" and "revelation" as it operated in the 1830s LDS context. ↩︎
The article holds these as genuinely possible falsifying findings rather than as questions the framework's elasticity can absorb without cost: (a) credible primary documentary evidence that Joseph or his contemporaries said the facsimile interpretations were not translations of any Egyptian text but freestanding revelation; (b) decisive philological demonstration that no candidate Egyptian text in the relevant priestly milieu preserved any Abrahamic content of any kind — harder than it sounds, given the Greco-Roman period magical and religious papyri that do contain Abraham material on any reading; (c) demonstration that the "matches" the apologetic case relies on (Elkenah, Shulem, hypocephalus genre, four sons of Horus, Sobek royal-cult prominence, Egyptian human sacrifice) are spurious — that the proposed parallels do not in fact hold under closer philological scrutiny. ↩︎
Kevin Christensen, "Eye of the Beholder, Law of the Harvest: Observations on the Inevitable Consequences of the Different Investigative Approaches of Jeremy Runnells and Jeff Lindsay," Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 10 (2014): 175–238, https://interpreterfoundation.org/journal/eye-of-the-beholder-law-of-the-harvest-observations-on-the-inevitable-consequences-of-the-different-investigative-approaches-of-jeremy-runnells-and-jeff-lindsay. A 64-page response to Ritner-style critiques. ↩︎
Terryl Givens with Brian M. Hauglid, The Pearl of Greatest Price: Mormonism's Most Controversial Scripture (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019), publisher page at https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-pearl-of-greatest-price-9780190603861. ↩︎
Robin Scott Jensen and Brian M. Hauglid, eds., The Joseph Smith Papers, Revelations and Translations, Volume 4: Book of Abraham and Related Manuscripts (Salt Lake City: Church Historian's Press, 2018), https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/articles/revelations-and-translations-volume-4-book-of-abraham. ↩︎ ↩︎
Jeff Lindsay, "A Precious Resource with Some Gaps," Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 33 (2019), https://interpreterfoundation.org/journal/a-precious-resource-with-some-gaps. Documents the Hauglid Facebook statements ("I no longer hold the views that have been quoted from my 2010 book"; "I wholeheartedly agree with Dan [Vogel]'s excellent assessment") and notes that the Jensen/Hauglid 2018 volume cites Robert Ritner approximately 49 times and Hugh Nibley zero times. ↩︎ ↩︎
John Gee, "The Joseph Smith Papers Project Stumbles," Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 33 (2019), https://interpreterfoundation.org/journal/the-joseph-smith-papers-project-stumbles. Argues that the Jensen/Hauglid 2018 volume contains over 200 transcription/editorial errors and that of 62 characters given meanings in the Kirtland Egyptian Papers, only 4 (some say 7) have a clear connection to actual papyrus characters. ↩︎ ↩︎
F. S. Spalding, Joseph Smith, Jr., as a Translator: An Inquiry (Salt Lake City: Arrow Press, 1912), https://archive.org/details/josephsmithjrast00spala. Spalding submitted the facsimiles to eight Egyptologists and Semitists (Sayce, Petrie, Breasted, Mace, Peters, Mercer, Meyer, von Bissing); all eight returned responses unfavorable to Joseph Smith's interpretations, with the eight responses varying in tone from dismissive to merely skeptical. The Petrie, Breasted, and Sayce quotes used by the CES Letter on p. 49 are all from this pamphlet. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎