By Jerald and Sandra Tanner

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On November 11, 1978, the Salt Lake Tribune, printed a very sensational story relating to Joseph Smith’s Pearl of Great Price:

Claiming the “biggest breakthrough since the discovery of the Rosetta Stone,” Utah polygamist Alex Joseph said Friday he has worked out a mathematical formula proving a link between the writings of Moses and the writings of Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints prophet Joseph Smith.

Mr. Joseph said in a press conference . . . that his complex formula “demonstrates that both Moses and Smith were working from the same manuscript when the former wrote Genesis and the latter, the ‘Pearl of Great Price.’ ’’ . . .

Using as a guide a burial head plate found in Egyptian pyramids, a facsimile of which also appears in the Book of Abraham in the “Pearl of Great Price,” Mr. Joseph claims to have worked out an “irrefutable” mathematical formula with which he translated part of the plate into the first words of the Bible, “In the beginning . . .”

“My formula will stand any test,” Mr. Joseph said. “It’s a very complex machine, but it is also a mathematical certainty.”

The manuscript is “a rebuttal to anti-Mormon writer Gerald Tanner’s arguments against the validity of the translations made by Joseph Smith of the ancient Egyptian manuscripts which appear in the ‘Pearl of Great Price.’ Joseph begins with a refutation of Tanner’s claim that because Smith derived 76 English words from a single Egyptian character, his efforts at translation are thereby rendered fraudulent,” according to an editor’s note in the beginning of the 24-page Joseph manuscript.

Mr. Joseph said he had been working on the project for about 10 years, and a full book is expected within a year.

We would probably not mention Mr. Joseph’s work if it were not for the fact that the newspapers and television stations gave him so much publicity. Even the Associated Press carried a story on its wire:

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Polygamist Alex Joseph says he has “just saved the Mormon Church’s bacon” by proving that Egyptian hieroglyphics Mormon founder Joseph Smith claimed to have translated “were the basis of the Old Testament writings of Moses.” . . . The 24-page booklet purports to be a refutation of attacks made on Smith’s work by Gerald Tanner of Salt Lake City in his book, Mormonism: Shadow or Reality? (Ogden Standard-Examiner, November 12, 1978)

Mr. Joseph’s 24-page booklet is entitled, The Bones: The Key to Facsimile No.2. In this pamphlet he is very critical of our work:

This entire approach to the translation of anything is asinine. Asininity is, however, the main element in Tanner’s prolixic intellectualism.

I shall now leave Tanner and his pin-headed scholarship and freely translate BRASHITH, . . . (page 2)

Joseph Smith’s expertise in these matters is forever established by Gerald Tanner’s ignorant parroting of these ancient words on page 471 of Mormonism—Shadow or Reality. The title of Tanner’s book is more properly The Shadow of Tanner and the Reality of Smith.” (page 10)

In Mormonism—Shadow or Reality, Mr. Tanner is amazed that Joseph Smith could find 76 words in one simple Egyptian character. But I’ve found more than a hundred in just the spaces that appear between the characters. Although he is no doubt appalled, Tanner is now required to examine those blanks and show where I went wrong. . . .

We can now turn our attention to Tanner the Egyptologist. In his book, the following appears in bold type (page 307):

NIBLEY NOT AN EGYPTOLOGIST

I translate those spaces as follows: . . .

TANNER NOT REAL BRIGHT

Unfortunately for Tanner, he left too many gaps in his case, and, as previously demonstrated, I am very astute in the translation of spaces. Unlike the case cited above where the judge was forced to find in favor of the defense, Tanner lacks the education to effect such a strategy. (pages 20-22)

On page 8 of the same book, Alex Joseph talks of “Mr. Tanner’s sophisticated ignorance.” Although we cannot find anything of merit in Mr. Joseph’s work, at least we must give him credit for having the courage to attach his name to the publication—something that the anonymous Mormon historian “Dr. Clandestine” refused to do.

In his booklet Mr. Joseph “translates” over 870 English words from the Hebrew word ( בּרֵאשִֹית) Bereshith. This is the first word in the Bible and is actually translated as, “In the beginning.” We can follow at least some of Mr. Joseph’s reasoning at the start of his pamphlet. He is correct, for instance, in stating that the first letter in the word Bereshith is Beth ( ב) . It is equivalent to our letter b, and can be translated as “in” our “by means of.” Mr. Joseph is also correct when he says that Beth (actually written out as בית) is a “house” in Hebrew. For example, Bethel is translated as “house of God.” At any rate, Mr. Joseph proceeds to assign numerical values to the letters. The letter Beth (ב ) is given the value of 2 (it is the second letter in the Hebrew alphabet). Yod ( י ) is the tenth letter and therefore receives a value of 10, and the letter Tau ( ת) , the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet, is given a value of 400. Mr. Joseph then goes on to add these three numbers and obtains the sum of 412. He does the same thing with all of the other letters in the word Bereshith and obtains a grand total of 2,665. From this point on, however, Alex Joseph’s system turns into almost total nonsense. The Ogden Standard-Examiner, November 12, 1978, pointed out that “Joseph admitted that, ‘The significance of this you’re not going to be able to understand.’” On page 16 of The Bones, Joseph remarked that “To go any further would require volumes of instruction to the initiate and would certainly weary my flesh (Ecc. 12:12).”

Although Alex Joseph is unable to explain his system to those of us who are “NOT REAL BRIGHT,” he proceeds to boast that “Six Hebrew symbols have been expanded to nearly 300 English words, and I must caution the reader again that this translation of the one word BRASHITH [Bereshith] is abbreviated.” Mr. Joseph apparently feels that he has not stretched our credulity far enough so he proceeds to “translate . . . a single Hebrew word into over 870 English words . . .” (see pages 16-19).

If Alex Joseph were to complete his translation of the Bible we would probably have hundreds of volumes, and if he should decide to translate the spaces between the words he could use Ecclesiastes 12:12 as a prophecy concerning his work: “. . . of making many books there is no end; . . .”

Mr. Joseph’s work cannot be tested by Hebrew scholars because it does not come from any know method of translation. The Associated Press release claims that “Joseph . . . says he knows no Hebrew . . .” (Ogden Standard-Examiner, November 12, 1978) It is also obvious from his work on Facsimile No. 2 of the Book of Abraham that he knows nothing about the Egyptian language. He claims “The facsimile is the very plate from which Moses wrote the Book of Genesis” (The Bones, page 24).

Although Facsimile No. 2 contains no Hebrew letters, Alex Joseph derives the word Bereshith from Figures 5-6 of that facsimile (see, Mormonism—Shadow or Reality? page 343, Part E). What Egyptologists would see as “The goddess Hathor in the form of the Divine Cow Ahait” facing the four sons of Horus, is in Alex Joseph’s thinking the Hebrew word Bereshith. If we are correctly following his reasoning, he believes the scene takes place in a house; and since a house is Beth in Hebrew, we have the first letter in Bereshith. His method of deriving the rest of the letters is just as bizarre. It reminds us of Wells Jakeman’s attempt to read the words Lehi, Sariah and Nephi from the socalled Lehi Tree of Life Stone.

Although Alex Joseph’s work is of no scientific value, it helps us to understand Joseph Smith’s way of thinking. We feel that Alex Joseph and Joseph Smith used the same system in their “translation”—i.e., an over-worked imagination. Joseph Smith’s History of the Church, vol. 2, page 238, contains this statement under the date of July, 1835: “The remainder of this month, I was continually engaged in translating an alphabet to the Book of Abraham, and arranging a grammar of the Egyptian language as practiced by the ancients.” Egyptologist I.E.S. Edwards, Keeper of Dept. of Egyptian Antiquities, British Museum, wrote the following in a letter dated December 22, 1966: “Joseph Smith’s Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar . . . is largely a piece of imagination and lacking in any kind of scientific value. . . . The whole document reminds me of the writings of psychic practitioners which are sometimes sent to me” (see Mormonism—Shadow or Reality? page 360, [emphasis added]). Mormon scholars have worked for many years on Joseph Smith’s Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar, but so far no one has been able to make any sense out of it.

Alex Joseph’s work certainly reminds us of this purported “Alphabet and Grammar.” Both, for instance, believed that a large number of words could be translated from one Egyptian or Hebrew word. As we have already pointed out, Alex Joseph “translated” over 870 words from Bereshith. After performing this incredible feat, he commented: “Again, I apologize for the brevity of this translation, but time and space do not allow for a fuller exposition.” Fortunately, the original translation manuscripts for Joseph Smith’s Book of Abraham are still in existence (see photographs in Mormonism—Shadow or Reality? pages 312-313). These manuscripts show that like Alex Joseph, Joseph Smith felt he could squeeze an extraordinarily large number of English words out of just one ancient word. For instance, in Mormonism—Shadow or Reality? page 323, we show that Joseph Smith derived 177 words from one Egyptian word. These words are published in the Pearl of Great Price, Book of Abraham 1:16-19. The Egyptian word which Joseph Smith pretended to translate 177 words from is “Khons”—the name of an Egyptian moon-god.

Because of Joseph Smith’s mistranslation of the Egyptian papyrus we have been calling upon the Mormon leaders to repudiate the Book of Abraham and the anti-black doctrine contained in its pages. They have finally yielded to pressure and allowed blacks to hold the Priesthood. We feel, however, that they should go one step further and admit the Book of Abraham is a work of Joseph Smith’s imagination.

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