By Jerald and Sandra Tanner
Just as we were ready to print this paper, we received word that Dr. Hugh Nibley, who is supposed to be the Church’s top authority of the Egyptian language, had repudiated Joseph Smith’s Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar. This rumor has now been confirmed.
In 1966 we published Joseph Smith’s Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar. This document was submitted to some of the world’s top Egyptologists. These Egyptologists denounced it as a fraud. In fact, I. E. S. Edwards, Keeper of the Dept. of Egyptian Antiquities at the British Museum, said the Joseph Smith’s Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar was “largely a piece of imagination and lacking in any kind of scientific value.” (See photograph of this letter in The Mormon Papyri Question.)
When we heard that Dr. Nibley had repudiated this document we could hardly believe it, for Joseph Smith’s Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar, was supposed to have been the very key to the translation of the Book of Abraham. Yet, strange as it may seem, we find the following statements by Dr. Nibley in the Brigham Young University Studies:
Which brings us to the subject of Joseph Smith’s Egyptian Grammar, because a surprising number of people have recently under taken studies of that remarkable work. This writer, however, has never spent so much as five minutes with the Egyptian Grammar, and does not intend to unless he is forced to it. When parties in Salt Lake procured and reproduced photographs of this document, they advertized it with the usual sensationalism as a “Hidden Document Revealed. Joseph Smith’s Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar suppressed for 130 Years Now Comes to Light. This document proves that Joseph Smith did not understand Egyptian and that the Book of Abraham was a work of his imagination!” Joseph Smith never pretended to understand Egyptian, nor that the Book of Abraham was a work of his scholarship: if this document as advertized proves anything it is that some people will go to any length of skulduggery to make a case out of nothing. For if the so-called Alphabet and Grammar were meant as an inspired communication it would have been published as such, not “hidden” or “suppressed for 130 years.” It was hidden and suppressed for the same reason that Brigham Young’s laundry lists are hidden and suppressed, because it was nobody else’s business. Let us allow Joseph Smith at least for the time being the luxury of a moment of privacy, of a little speculation on his own there on his hands and knees in the front room of the Mansion House, with papyri spread out around him on the floor. The fact that he kept his notes strictly to himself is evidence enough that they were his own private concern and were never meant as a message to the Church.
This is a very important point. The whole attack against the Book of Abraham in the past has been based on the perfectly false principle that whatever a prophet does must be of a supernatural nature and whatever he says must have the authority of scripture, and that hence if a prophet ever betrays the slightest sign of human weakness or any mortal limitation he must necessarily be a false prophet. . . . The sectarian world has never been able to see how it is possible to have revelations and still learn by trial and error: If Brigham Young experimented with silkworms and sugar beets, they argued, doesn’t that prove he is a false prophet? Because aren’t prophets infallible, and don’t they know everything? Why experiment then? The Pearl of Great Price itself admirable illustrates the issue. The Facsimiles now in use are extremely bad reproductions, far inferior to the first engravings published in 1842. Am I, then as a member of the Church bound to consult the present official edition and that only, and regard it as flawless, bad as it is, because it is the official publication of the Church? Who is responsible for the present state of the book? . . . it should be perfectly clear to all that no one is bound by anything outside of the four standard works, and that to make an issue of the so-called Egyptian Grammar is to insist on a doctrine of infallibility that is diametrically opposed to the teachings of the Church. (Brigham Young University Studies, “Prolegomena to Any Study of the Book of Abraham,” by Hugh Nibley, Winter, 1968, pages 176-178)
This statement by Dr. Nibley must come as a great shock to the Mormon leaders. Notice that Dr. Nibley admits that Joseph Smith’s Egyptian and Grammar “was hidden and suppressed.” He also admits that Joseph Smith did not understand Egyptian, and that the “Egyptian Grammar” is not worth five minutes study. It appears, then, that Dr. Nibley is admitting that Joseph’s Grammar is worthless, but that the Book of Abraham came by divine revelation. We feel that this is an impossible stand to maintain. If the “Egyptian Alphabet” is worthless, then the Book of Abraham must also be rejected.
Joseph Smith certainly took the “Egyptian Alphabet” seriously, for he made this statement concerning it in 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. (History of the Church, by Joseph Smith, vol. 2, page 238)
Dr. Sidney B. Sperry, of the Brigham Young University, tells that he read Joseph Smith’s statement in the History of the Church and decided that Joseph Smith probably used the Urim and Thummim to prepare the Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar:
Let me read that to you again: “I was continually engaged in translating an alphabet.” Now what did the Prophet mean by that, “translating and alphabet”? I pondered over this a great deal and finally came to the conclusion that what the Prophet meant by “translating an alphabet” was that as he copied the characters from the papyri which were in his possession, he would put down these characters, one after another, with the general meaning that he would get as he looked at them through the Urim and Thummim. I assume that he used the Urim and Thummim, in translating these materials, but I felt that the Lord never would condone laziness in a man or in a scholar, and that as the Prophet would go through these passages in Egyptian, he would put down the meaning opposite the character. In so doing, then, it would not be necessary for him to call on the Lord, continually, to tell the meaning of a character. Well, that is the way I figured it out. (Pearl of Great Price Conference, B.Y.U., 1964 ed., page 4)
William E. Berrett, Vice-Administrator of the B.Y.U. stated:
Joseph Smith . . . did not expect the Lord to forever aid him in understanding ancient languages. He could learn many of these for himself and he set about to do so. He began a study of Egyptian, Hebrew and Greek . . . This study continued at intervals until his death. His most notable achievement was the development at Kirtland of a grammar for the Egyptian hieroglyphic form of writing. This was used by him, as well as divine aid, in translating ancient writings of the patriarch Abraham, now published as the Book of Abraham in the Pearl of Great Price. This grammar was never published, and was perhaps never used by any one other than the Prophet. It was, however, that first Egyptian Grammar in America and was developed entirely independent of Champollion’s Egyptian Grammar. (The Restored Church, by William E. Berrett, Salt Lake City, 1956, pages 133-134)
Just two months before Dr. Nibley repudiated the “Egyptian Grammar,” the Church Section of the Mormon paper, Deseret News, carried this statement about it:
Hyrum L. Andrus in his recently-published work, “Doctrinal Commentary on the Pearl of Great Price,” notes that a study of a handwritten document by Joseph Smith designated as the “Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar,” shows each page divided by three columns.
These columns have a copy of a character in the first column, the English pronunciation in the second, and the translation in the third.
“A study of the document suggests that it was formulated by an ancient writer, probably Abraham, to assist a translator in deciphering the language in which the record was written, if this conclusion is correct, Joseph Smith literally translated an alphabet to the Book of Abraham,” Dr. Andrus wrote. (Deseret News, Church Sect., December 2, 1967, page 10)
The Mormon people—especially students of the B.Y.U.—have been told that the “Egyptian Grammar” was of great value and that it was the very key to the translation of the Book of Abraham, but now Dr. Nibley claims that it is worthless.
Dr. Nibley’s statement will, no doubt, place the Mormon Church in a serious dilemma. More information concerning this matter will be found in The Mormon Papyri Question.
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