By Jerald and Sandra Tanner

Although the original gold plates from which the Book of Mormon was supposed to have been translated were reported to have been taken away by an angel, Joseph Smith did make copies of some of the characters from the plates. According to the account given in the Pearl of Great Price, Joseph Smith claimed that Martin Harris

came to our place, got the characters which I had drawn off the plates, and started with them to the city of New York. . . . I refer to his own account of the circumstances, as he related them to me after his return, which was as follows:

I went to the city of New York, and presented the characters which had been translated, with the translation thereof, to Professor Charles Anthon, a gentleman celebrated for his literary attainments. Professor Anthon stated that the translation was correct, more so than any he had before seen translated from the Egyptian. (Pearl of Great Price, Joseph Smith, 2:63-64)

Although Book of Mormon witness David Whitmer preserved a paper which contained Book of Mormon characters, it did not match the description given by Professor Anthon in a letter dated February 17, 1834:

This paper was in fact a singular scrawl. It consisted of all kinds of crooked characters . . . arranged in perpendicular columns, and the whole ended in a rude delineation of a circle divided into various compartments decked with various strange marks, . . . I . . . well remember that the paper contained any thing else but “Egyptian Hieroglyphics.”. . . (Letter written by Charles Anthon, as published in Mormonism Unvailed, 1834, pages 271-272)

On May 3, 1980, the Church Section of the Mormon Church’s newspaper, Deseret News, made the startling announcement that Mark William Hofmann had discovered the original document that Harris took to Professor Anthon. According to another newspaper report, Dr. Richard L. Anderson, of Brigham Young University, claimed that “ ‘This new discovery is sort of a Dead Sea School [sic] Equivalent of the Book of Mormon,’. . .” (The Herald, Provo, Utah, May 1, 1980). Dr. Hugh Nibley was quoted as saying, “ ‘This offers as good a test as we’ll ever get as to the authenticity of the Book of Mormon,’. . .” (Ibid.)

This new discovery has made it possible to decide whether Martin Harris or Professor Anthon told the truth. According to the account published in the Pearl of Great Price, “Professor Anthon stated that the translation was correct, more so than any he had before seen translated from the Egyptian.” In his letter, however, Professor Anthon charged that this report concerning him was incorrect and that “the paper contained any thing else but ‘Egyptian Hieroglyphics.’ ” To settle the matter a photograph of the original document was sent to Klaus Baer, Professor of Egyptology at the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute. Dr. Baer replied:

What is it? Probably not Egyptian, even if here and there signs appear that could be interpreted as more or less awkwardly copied hieroglyphs or hieratic signs, . . . I suspect that one would have about the same batting average in comparing this with Chinese or Japanese or other systems that arrange signs in columns. (Letter dated May 10, 1980)

In a television interview the Mormon Egyptologist Edward H. Ashment said that the document “doesn’t come very close to being readable as demotic.” He went on to say that “it’s in a script that is entirely unique and it has no relationship, to my knowledge again, of Egyptian or to any American script.”

When the Mormon apologist Dr. Hugh Nibley was asked about the document just after its discovery, he proclaimed: “Of course it’s translatable” (The Herald, Provo, Utah, May 1, 1980). Almost a year and a half has passed, however, and no translation has been published. It appears that Mormon scholars have found it impossible to vindicate Joseph Smith’s claims concerning the Book of Mormon characters.

In The Changing World of Mormonism, pages 334-335, we pointed out that when the original Joseph Smith Papyri were rediscovered, the “Prophet, Seer and Revelator”—i.e. the President of the Church—was completely silent about the translation of the manuscripts. We also quoted the Book of Mormon as saying that a “seer” can “translate all records that are of ancient date” (Mosiah 8:13). We then stated that “it appears that the prophet does not have the gift to translate languages as has been previously claimed.” The Browns feel that they have a good answer to this accusation:

Why wasn’t the papyri given to the prophet and leader of the LDS church to translate? That the papyri was translated by several persons shows that such translation is humanly possible. Why would the prophet need to translate it?

Our Heavenly Father will not do for us what we can do for ourselves. Individually, or as a group, we grow and progress by solving our own problems. There was no need to have the papyri translated by the prophet . . . and it wasn’t! (They Lie in Wait to Deceive, page 113)

Although the Browns seem to feel that they have answered the criticism, the discovery of the paper containing Book of Mormon characters certainly weakens their argument and puts the President of the Church in an embarrassing position. The characters on this paper are as unintelligible to scholars as those on the Kinderhook plates, yet the President of the Church had refused to get involved in the matter. Instead of using the “seer stone,” which is in the Church’s possession, to translate the characters, he examined them with a magnifying glass (see photograph in Deseret News, Church Section, May 3, 1980).

CONCLUSION. While there has always been a question as to Joseph Smith’s ability as a translator, the recent tests on the Kinderhook plates, the translation of the Joseph Smith Egyptian Papyri by noted Egyptologists and the discovery of the sheet containing Book of Mormon characters all combine to show that Joseph Smith did not understand the Egyptian language. It is clear, therefore, that the “translations” he has produced are only the work of his own imagination. For more information on the question of Joseph Smith’s ability as a translator we recommend the following books: Mormonism—Shadow or Reality? (dealing with the Book of Abraham and the Kinderhook plates), The Changing World of Mormonism (for an updated work on the Book of Abraham), Book of Mormon “Caractors” Found (for important information on the recently discovered sheet Harris took to Anthon) and Can the Browns Save Joseph Smith? (for a rebuttal to charges made by Robert L. and Rosemary Brown)

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