Tag: translation
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…
Moses Stuart or Joshua Seixas? Exploring the Influence of Hebrew Study on the Grammar and Alphabet of the Egyptian Language
Update, June 16, 2019: After searching in many places (Hebrew texts, Masonic literature, and sources on ciphers and scripts) for alternate sources for the archaic Hebrew letter beth that W.W….
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…
Wrong Again, In Part! How I Misunderstood the Plainly Visible Evidence on the W.W. Phelps Letter with Egyptian “Translation”
Update, April 23, 2019: Doubly wrong! When I wrote this post earlier today, I was examining the very light “ink” with the words “in part” on a key manuscript by…
Did Joseph’s Scribes Think He Translated Paragraphs of Text from a Single Egyptian Character? A View from W.W. Phelps
In using the Kirtland Egyptian Papers (KEP) to discredit Joseph’s “translation” of the Book of Abraham, it is assumed that these papers show that Joseph and his scribes thought that…
My Hypothesis Overturned: What Typos May Tell Us About the Book of Abraham
In my previous post, “The Smoking Gun for Joseph’s Translation of the Book of Abraham, or Copied Manuscripts from an Existing Translation?,” I suggested that examination of the “smoking guns”…
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…
Puzzling Content in the Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar
When I first started looking at the Kirtland Egyptian Papers in detail on the Joseph Smith Papers site, I was immediately struck by the surprisingly specific and narrowly focused content…
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…
