Abstract: For many theories about the Book of Abraham, the Egyptian Alphabet documents are seen as the key to understanding the translation process. While the original publication of those documents allows many researchers access to the documents for the first time, careful attention to the Joseph Smith Papers as a whole and the practices of Joseph Smith’s scribes in particular allows for improvements in the date, labeling, and understanding of the historical context of the Egyptian Alphabet documents.This essay supports the understanding of these documents found in the other volumes of the Joseph Smith Papers that the Egyptian Alphabet documents are an incidental by-product of the translation process rather than an essential step in that process.

table {border: 1px solid #dddddd; width: 100%; margin: auto;} table td{border: 1px solid #dddddd; padding: 10px !important; text-align: left; vertical-align: top;} table.centered td, td.centered {text-align: center;} p.wp-caption-text{text-align: center !important;} p.wp-caption-text:before {content: '' !important;}

 

This study comes as a response to an invitation by principals of the Joseph Smith Papers Project to examine Revelations and Translations Volume 41 more closely. In this paper, I consider only the section on the Egyptian Alphabet documents. While doing so, however, I must correct a number of errors and misconceptions promoted in the volume about the documents.

I note at the beginning that the volume editors do not necessarily demonstrate a consistent or coherent line of thought about the documents and will not infrequently contradict in one place what they say in another place. This could be evidence of at least two possibilities: (1) unacknowledged fundamental disagreements among the editors [Page 78]about the nature of the documents with which they were working had different editors adding different comments to the text without realizing they contradicted other passages in the text; (2) the editors simply did not think about how the different parts of what they were doing fit into a larger whole.

Description

Three documents in the Church History Library either bear or are assigned the title “Egyptian Alphabet.” These are Church History Library ms. 1295 fd. 3‒5. They are published under the following rubrics:

 

Manuscript Number

JSP Designation

Published In

Handwriting

Leaves

Ms. 1295 fd. 3

Egyptian Alphabet, circa Early July‒circa November 1835-C

JSPRT4, 85–93

W. W. Phelps

4 leaves

Ms. 1295 fd. 4

Egyptian Alphabet, circa Early July‒circa November 1835-A

JSPRT4, 55–71

Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery

4 leaves

Ms. 1295 fd. 5

Egyptian Alphabet, circa Early July-circa November 1835-B

JSPRT4, 73–83

Oliver Cowdery

4 leaves

The manuscript leaves are written on only one side, with the exception of the Egyptian Alphabet containing Joseph Smith’s handwriting in which the last leaf has been flipped vertically and writing added to the back.

The documents are related in that they have the same title. Their content is similar but not always identical. In the eyes of many this set of documents is seen as the key to understanding Joseph Smith’s translation of the Book of Abraham, and they therefore deserve more careful scrutiny.

Date

The Joseph Smith Papers gives the date of the Egyptian Alphabet Documents as “Early July‒circa November 1835.”