Category: Critics
Kirtland’s Rosetta Stone? The Importance of Word Order in the “Egyptian” of the Grammar and Alphabet of the Egyptian Language
There may be an important story hidden in one of the easily-overlooked details in the always puzzling Kirtland Egyptian Papers, especially the Grammar and Alphabet of the Egyptian Language (GAEL)…
The Twin Book of Abraham Manuscripts: Do They Reflect Live Translation Produced by Joseph Smith, or Were They Copied From an Existing Document?
A number of critics of the Book of Abraham and even some LDS scholars have alleged that a pair of Book of Abraham manuscripts with a few Egyptian characters in…
The New Hauglid and Jensen Podcast from the Maxwell Institute: A Window into the Personal Views of the Editors of the JSP Volume on the Book of Abraham
The Maxwell Institute recently revamped their website after roughly a week of downtime, introducing dramatic changes (and some painful losses). The new website currently gives pride of place to a…
He Whose Name Cannot Be Spoken: Hugh Nibley
Whether you agree with Hugh Nibley or not, those doing research on the Book of Abraham and the Kirtland Egyptian Papers must recognize that he was certainly the most prolific…
Egyptomania and Ohio: Thoughts on a Lecture from Terryl Givens and a Questionable Statement in the Joseph Smith Papers, Vol. 4
In a lecture I heard from Terryl Givens, one of my favorite LDS writers and thinkers, I was intrigued with his views on Egyptomania and its influence on Joseph Smith…
Digging into the Phelps “Translation” of Egyptian: Textual Evidence That Phelps Recognized That Three Lines of Egyptian Yielded About Four Lines of English
Update, April 30, 2019: Today I noticed there is another document from Oliver Cowdery mentioning Katumin and giving the same English text that Phelps provides. The document is listed as…
Joseph Smith and Champollion: Could He Have Known of the Phonetic Nature of Egyptian Before He Began Translating the Book of Abraham?
The Rosetta Stone was discovered in 1799. While Thomas Young and other scholars studied it and made some progress in better understanding Egyptian through its clues, it was Jean François…
The Pure Language Project
To understand the strange Kirtland Egyptian Papers, we may need to understand the fascination with “pure language” that was found among some early Latter-day Saints. Brian Hauglid wrote this in…
The Smoking Gun for Joseph’s Translation of the Book of Abraham, or Copied Manuscripts from an Existing Translation?
Thanks to the Joseph Smith Papers website and its section on the Book of Abraham, we can explore in detail the surviving manuscripts related to production and translation of the…
My Uninspired “Translation” of the Missing Scroll/Script from the Hauglid-Jensen Presentation
While I have expressed disappointment with what was said, or rather, what wasn’t said, at the Maxwell Institute’s recent presentation, “A Window into Joseph Smith’s Translation” of the Book of…
