Castalian Waters and Pierian Spring

Readers just want to learn something. Tired of the mystifying Castalian waters, Latter-day Saints readers, like Joseph Smith, just "want to show a little learning as well as other fools"; they know they must "Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring." 

Discovery in the Book of Mormon

ROUGH DRAFT--SEVERAL PAGES LACKING

Immersed in Robert Alter's books, which explore literary themes in the Hebrew Bible, I wrote the following little essay in 1992, the 500th anniversary of Columbus's discovery of America. I reproduce the sea-battered draft here, with some cosmetic changes. A second version(s), boasting new sails, and perhaps bettered, will appear in other posts.

Discovery and devastation march through the pages of the Book of Mormon. The graphic descriptions of the annihilation of entire cultures in the book remind the reader that for the Nephites, America, “the land of promise, choice above all other lands,” ever remained a mystery and a terror. To enter America was to be swallowed up in a labyrinth where, wanderers, “our lives passed away like as it were unto us a dream, we being a lonesome and a solemn people, wanderers, cast out from Jerusalem, born in tribulation, in a wilderness, in a strange land.” To discover America is to be separated, as it were in dream, from one’s own proper identity, lost, and, horribly enough, eventually forgotten, as in the case of the people of Zarahemla (or Mulekites), “whose language had become corrupted” and culture shivered and forgotten. In this state approaching disintegration, the Mulekites were ”discovered” by an isolated band of Nephites, themselves lost in the breadth and the sweep of the continent, fleeing the destruction of their own homes in the land southward. The secret of America lay to the north; northward coursed the dawn of discovery.

Amaleki, the Nephite record keeper, recounts how Mosiah, fleeing north with his refugee group “discovered a people who were called the people of Zarahemla. Now, there was great rejoicing among the people of Zarahemla; and also Zarahemla did rejoice exceedingly, because the Lord had sent the people of Mosiah with the plates of brass which contained the record of the Jews.

As we continue to read, Mosiah further “discovered that the people of Zarahemla came out from Jerusalem at the time that Zedekiah, king of Judah, was carried away captive into Babylon."

"At the time that Mosiah discovered them, they had become exceedingly numerous. Nevertheless, they had had many wars and serious contentions, and had fallen by the sword from time to time; and their language had become corrupted; and they had brought no records with them; and they denied the being of their Creator; and Mosiah, nor the people of Mosiah, could understand them.

And it came to pass in the days of Mosiah, there was a large stone brought unto him with engravings on it; and he did interpret the engravings by the gift and power of God. And they gave an account of one Coriantumr, and the slain of his people. And Coriantumr was discovered by the people of Zarahemla; and he dwelt with them for the space of nine moons.  . .

And his first parents came out from the tower, at the time the Lord confounded the language of the people; and the severity of the Lord fell upon them according to his judgments, which are just; and their bones lay scattered in the land northward."

In the Amaleki certain key terms, motifs, and themes appear, which also resurface later in the artfully constructed narratives of Mosiah, Alma, and Mormon. Martin Buber defines a key-word (Leitwort) as:

"A word or word-root that recurs significantly in a text, in a continuum of texts, or in a configuration of texts: by following these repetitions, one is able to decipher or grasp a meaning of the text, or at any rate, the meaning will be revealed more strikingly. The repetition, as we have said, need not be merely of the word itself but also of the word-root in fact, the very difference of words can often intensify the dynamic action of the repetition."


The Book of Mormon narrative is also rich in motif. Robert Alter describes a motif as:

"A concrete image, sensory quality, action, or object" that "recurs through a particular narrative," but "has no meaning in itself without the defining context of the narrative; it may be incipiently symbolic or instead primarily a means of giving formal coherence to a narrtive."

Motifs help to bind disparate, even unrelated, events in the narrative to a common theme. Amaleki emphasizes plates, records, swords, bones--all these, hard, cold, ringing, lifeless objects which survive man's own brief flowering, symbolized by the nine moons which terminate the existence of an entire culture. Plates, stones, towers; all reflect coldly, moonlike, lurid. The sun, itself extinguished, hides his faces from "a lost and a fallen people" caught in the chill void on the dark side of the earth.

The key words of language and discovery, then, inform Amaleki's concise historical narrative, and indeed are strengthened by the use of two important verbs, to interpret and to confound language. Interpretation of ancient records, like that found upon the "large stone," provides additional waves of discovery to shock and to terrify the Nephite explorers, being the "account of one Coriantumr and the slain of his people." "One Coriantumr"--only one, a certain strange fellow named Coriantumr, king no longer, kingdom defunct.

The theme of discovery plays itself out to envelop the picture as follows: The sense of joy and brotherhood shared by Nephites and the people of Zarahemla accompanies a recital of sorrows, for the people discovered by Mosiah is an illiterate people, atheistic, corrupt, and decimated by internecine war. Mosiah recovers this lost people through a program of education, focusing on written language and the study of ancient records.

Now another discovery is made. An ancient record that nobody can read is brought to the king, who learns that it too speaks of a confounding of languages, a journey to America, and to another people caught in the American labyrinth and ground to powder. The very appearance of the stone reveals that much. Yet Mosiah. . .

[temporary gap--draft only--Standing water, proceed with caution. . . 

according to Amaleki's pattern of crediting discovery by a descending rule of ethnocentricity, was discovered by the people of Zarahemla. This discovery of a single man represents the final moment of a people never to be recovered--beyond discovery--by a genius like Mosiah; an ultimate gestation period that bears only bones, ashes, and stones.

"One Coriantumr," to be sure, has fathers and first parents, but no progeny, for as Amaleki explains, "the severity of the Lord fell upon them, according to his judgments which are just." And then, a final statement which reveals the deepest level of discovery, one of wrenching sorrow: "and their bones lay scattered in the land northward."

Coriantumr knows nine silent months with a people fresh to a brave new world--one that had wonderful people in it, but now "their bones lay scattered," and that is all. The Amaleki calls to mind Psalm 53: "The is none that doeth good, no not one." "There were they in great fear." "God hath scattered the bones." "God hath despised them."

In the story of Mosiah discovery spells desolation. Desolation, in fact, is the name given in the Book of Mormon to the land far to the north of Zarahemla, "the land which had been peopled and been destroyed, of whose bones we have spoken [a grim phrase], which was discovered by the people of Zarahemla, it being the place of their first landing [they got out quick]. Far from being a pristine and a virgin country in 600 B.C., the newcomers found the scene so terrifying that they plunged quickly southward--southward into cultural annihilation. Southward, away from stones, plates, records, and the still warm bones. (The narrative recalls the Viking discovery of a shipwreck, even as they were in the act of "discovering" America.)

Amaleki completes the record of the small plates of Nephi,  (which represents the end of an epoch in Nephite history--a wipeout), by speaking of an expedition sent from Zarahemla to recover, or rediscover, the lost Nephite homeland in Lehi-Nephi in the deep southward:

"Wherefore, they went up into the wilderness. And their leader being a strong and might man, and a stiffnecked man [like "one Coriantumr"?], wherefore he caused a contention among them; and they were all slain, save fifty, in the wilderness [the labyrinth], and they returned again to the land of Zarahemla. And it came to pass that they also took others to a considerable number, and took their journey again[!] into the wilderness. And I, Amaleki, had a brother, who also went with them; and I have not since known concerning them. And I am about to lie down in my grave."

As this mini-episode indicates, the first 400 years of Nephite history terminates on a sad note. Fifty bloodstained men struggling back to Zarahema, brother separated from brother, lost from knowledge, simply dropping out of exitence, as far as the record is concerned, in the terror of the Americas.

Three generations have passed and brother yearns for brother. Both the Nephites at Zarahemla and the Nephites at Lehi-Nephi, separated by an uncharted distance, have sent out small expeditions 'not a map-making people, have sent out small expeditions each intent on finding the other. small-half-hearted. The narrative of the Book of Mosiah (the grandson of the great discoverer of Zarahemla), abridged, edited, and shaped by Mormon centuries later, begins with the expedition sent to Zarahemla under the direction of one Ammon and his three brothers. The four men upon arrival in the land of Nephi are surrounded, taken, bound, and thrust into prison by order of the king, Limhi. After two days, the four brothers stand before Limhi, who commands them to reveal their mysterious identity under penalty of death. Ammon, as spokesman, announces his name, genealogy, origin, and the purpose of the expedition, whereupon Limhi and all his people rejoice, for they dwell on the verge of extinction and are about to slip back into the leveling and eliminating forces of the continent.

This whole episode may be called a type-scene for it clearly recalls another Ammon, son of Mosiah himself, who after venturing forth to the same country with his three brothers some years later, is taken, bound, and granted audience before the Lamanite king. In this latter instance, however, Ammon does not reveal his true identity, a point that bears upon the denouement of the recital. Limhi caused Ammon to read the history of his own people and explains to him the present exigency:

Now, as soon as Ammon had read the record, the king inquired of him to know if he could interpret languages, and Ammon told him that he could not.

And the king said unto him: Being grieved for the afflictions of my people I caused that forty and three of my people should take a journey into the wilderness [reversal of first doomed journey: repentance], that thereby they might find the land of Zarahemla, that we might appeal unto our brethren to deliver us out of bondage.

And they were lost in the wilderness for the space of many days, yet they were diligent, and found not the land of Zarahemla but returned to this land, having traveled in a land among many waters, having discovered a land which was covered with bones of men, and of beasts, and was also covered with ruins of buildings of every kind, having discovered a land which had been peopled with a people who were as numerous as the hosts of Israel.

And for a testimony that the things that they had said are true they have brought twenty-four plates which are filled with engravings, and they are of pure gold. And behold, also they have brought breastplates, which are large, and they are of [cold, resounding] brass and of copper, and are perfectly sound. And again, they have brought swords, the hints thereof have perished, and the blades thereof were cankered with rust; and there is no on in the land that is able to interpret the language or the engravings that are on the plates.

Therefore I said unto thee: Canst thou translate?"

For: "I am desirous to know the cause of their destruction."

The venture into the wilderness was a dismal one, and the harbinger of fear. The group does not find Zarahemla, but rather loses itself in both space and in time, for the "space" of many days. Mormon, the narrator, perhaps for reasons of thematic emphasis retells the story in a later section of Mosiah, and in so doing plays again upon the language and irony of finding and losing in the dreadful game of discovery. The grand terror of the story is not indeed in the revelation of a land covered with bones and the skeletal remains of buildings, but in the mistaking of this desolation for the blithely abandoned sister-city Zarahemla, an error attributable to an obvious paranoia, not to mention a besetting loss of cultural memory--no one remember Coriantumr or marvelous translation or the testimony of the stone.

Now king Limhi had send, previous to the coming of Ammon, a small number of men to search for the land of Zarahemla, but they could not find it, and they were lost in the wilderness. Nevertheless, they did find a land which had been people yea, a land which was covered with dry bones; yea, a land which had been destroyed and they, having supposed it to be the land of Zarahemla, returned to the land of Nephi, having arrived in the borders of the land not many days before the coming of Ammon, And they brought a record with them, even a record of the people whose bones they had found; and it was engraven on plates of ore. And now Limhi was again filled with joy [type=scene: a king brought records in an unknown language] on learning form the mouth of Ammon that king Mosiah had a gift from God, whereby he could interpret such engraving such engravings. yea, and Ammon also did rejoice [the rejoicing Ammon]

The expedition returns to Lehi-Nephi bearing both the 24 plates and the sad tale of the devastation of Zarahemla. (The found 24 plates calls to mind the lost 24 daughters of the Lamanites in the previous chapter; and the 43 searchers for Zarahemla.) Although, not long afterward Ammon arrives to announce that Zarahemla yet survives in the middle of America, surrounded by a world of pain, a dread question remains; Who were the victims of the land northward? What was the cause of their destruction. It is the anxiousness and fear of a small and time-worn race on the border of the wilderness that impels the asking of such a question. God himself provides the answer and it is a dire one. (See Alma 37; be careful what you ask, but also ask the right question).

And now, I will speak unto you concerning those twenty-four plates, that ye keep them, that the mysteries and the works of darkness, and their secret works, or the secret works of those people who have been destroyed, may be made manifest unto this people; yea, all their murders, and robbings, and their plunderings, and all their wickedness and abominations, may be made manifest unto this people; yea, and that ye preserve these interpreters.

For behold, the Lord saw that his people began to work in darkness, yea, work secret murders and abominations; therefore the Lord said, if they did not repent they should be destroyed from off the face of the earth.

And the Lord said: I will prepare unto my servant Gazelem, a stone, which shall shine forth in darkness unto light, that I may discover unto my people who serve me, that I may discover unto them the works of their brethren, yea, their secret works, their works of darkness, and their wickedness and abominations.

And now, my son, these interpreters were prepared that the word of God might be fulfilled, which he spake, saying: I will bring forth out of darkness unto light all their secret works and their secret works and their abominations; and except they repent I will destroy them from off the face of the earth; and I will bring to light all their secrets and abominations, unto every nation that shall hereafter possess the land.

And now, my son, we see that they did not repent; therefore they have been destroyed, and thus far the word of God has been fulfilled; yea, their secret abominations have been brought out of darkness and made known unto us.

. . . . (Draft Only)

.......but the cessation of history and the wreckage of an entire society on the dark side of the earth: America. Through Mosiah all readers become wonderful seers and discoverers of hidden knowledge Yet as the narrator points out repeatedly whole cultures have been demolished leaving only stones, bones, and plates, hard lifeless testimonies of dashed hopes and bon vivre. These alone are preserved that all people should learn a tale of iniquity, abomination, and total loss.

The glorious discovery of America is ever a record of genocide. And genocide is ever a record of the severity of the judgments in in other words the decisions of the Lord, which are just. To discover America is to be translated instantaneously as it were to the day of judgment, Every stage of Nephite history unravels another chapter in the judgment day of the Lord.

Another example of this discovers itself in the history of Ammonihah, built far from the main center of Zarahemla, by the borders of the land, in order to foster a sense of independence of thought, pride, and self-security. Ammonihah was lost in a single moment of pain, when

"every living soul of the Ammonihahites was destroyed, and also their great city, which they said God could not destroy, because of its greatness. But behold, in one day it was left desolate; and the carcasses were mangled by dogs and wild beasts of the wilderness. Nevertheless, after many days their dead bodies were heaped up upon the face of the earth, and they were covered with a shallow covering, And now so great was the scent thereof that the people did not go in to possess the land of Ammonihah for many years. And it was called Desolation."

Ammonihah represents a mini-Desolation, a reminder in miniature that widespread destruction of the people in the north, is a constant in the American experience.

EPISODE

Moroni takes his Jaredite account from "the twenty and four plates which were found by the people of Limhi, which is called the book of Ether," Coriantumr enters the scene, scion of ancient warrior kings, “having studied himself in all the arts of war,” “for there were many who rose up, who were mighty men, and sought to destroy Coriantumr by their secret plans of wickedness.” The sun trembles at the horizon, and sets in blood.

And so great and lasting had been the war, and so long had been the scene of bloodshed and carnage, that the whole face of the land was covered with the bodies of the dead. And so swift and speedy was the war that there was none left to bury the dead, but they did march forth from the shedding of blood to the shedding of blood, leaving the bodies of both men, women, and children strewed upon the face of the land, to be a prey to the worms of the flesh. And the scent thereof went forth upon the face of the land, even upon all the face of the land; wherefore the people became troubled by day and by night, because of the scent thereof.

Was the war great and lasting or was it swift and speedy? It was as deep and as great as the very foundations of culture; it was swift to cut down even the most tender plants.

Troubled by day and by night, there came, finally, nights wherein men “were drunken with anger, even as a man is drunken with wine.” Then a dawn, by which “all had fallen by the sword,” except Corintumr and the Heraclean Shiz. But

Shiz had fainted with the loss of blood. And it came to pass that when Coriantumr had leaned upon his sword, that he rested a little [the nine moon rest would come later], he smote off the head of Shiz. And it came to pass that after he had smitten off the head of Shiz. . . that Coriantumr fell to the earth, and became as if he had no life.

Silver, gold, iron, copper, and the luminous bones glittered in the dawn, as the heaps of earth fell back in shadow. The whole face of the land was covered with a shroud.

Discovery bespeaks a search for that which is lost or hidden.  The Book of Mormon employs various words and expressions to clarify the message of discovery: to discover, to find, to search, to bring to light, to reveal. The greatest explorers of the Book of Mormon are the men of light, the seers, for the most significant findings in Nephite history are those of ancient records like the twenty-four gold places and the Jaredite stele. The discovery of a physical object or land is but prelude to the great act of decipherment., the interpretation of the discovery of the ancient record. To interpret a record by the power of God is to discover deeply a people, to reveal them and to come to know them heart to heart. It is to rejoice and to drink of dark sorry. Seers, in this world, see what they would not, yet in sight there is joy. The records of lost cultures proved an indispensable man and a guide for the Nephites by which they could negotiate the new world in which they found themselves.

The finding of the record of the Jaredites comes at the most crucial point in Nephite history—they are split—then split again—even lost.

The reoot of the verb discover is cover. A cover is a barrier to knowledge, and a closing of a door, the end of history. Has covered the eyes of the seers.

The narratives speak of many coverings

And who thus have no lasting cover for their sin, and whose bones lay scattered on the open face of the land. That face wears a cruel and lonesome countenance, as if it were the reflection of the moon..

DRAFT ONLY--MORE PAGES TOMORROW

Joseph Smith and the Book of Abraham Papyrus Roll in His Own Words

The guiding principle underlying all I write about the book of Abraham may be expressed as follows: 

Joseph Smith was a Prophet of God and he knew what he was doing. 

While he may not have fully grasped, at the moment, all the implications of the many revelations he received, as Elder Neal A. Maxwell suggested in his final public discourse, he surely understood his calling and the nature of prophecy and seership: "Though the grandness of this doctrine is beyond our comprehension, it is not beyond our attention and exploration. We are, in fact, in the position of having been given revelations that were then far beyond the Prophet Joseph Smith, bright as he was. Yet he was their enunciator and their declarer" ("Free to Choose," BYU devotional, 16 March 2004). And Joseph Smith was also the appointed keeper of the various sacred records that he both treasured and translated. How did he translate? In the words of associate W.W. Phelps: "He translated sacredly" (LDS Hymnal: "Now we sing with one accord")

It was for Joseph Smith, as it was with King Mosiah: "King Mosiah, had a gift from God, whereby he could interpret such engravings," as appeared on records "of ancient date," whether plates of ore, large stones, or papyrus rolls (Mosiah 21:28; Mosiah 8:11). And note how the "gift from God" precedes the instrumentality by which the gift is exercised; the "gift" is given, then "interpreters" provided "whereby he could interpret." For Brother Joseph, the gift to interpret ever remained, even when the instrumentality, or Urim and Thummim, "whereby he could interpret," varied from ancient interpreters to seer stones, then to the experienced seeric vision of spiritually endowed eyes. The gift also remained, whether he was to interpret engravings on plates of ore or hieratic on papyrus. Yet Latter-day Saints sometimes find it easier to exercise faith to see Brother Joseph visited by an angel and translating from plates hid from worldly eyes, rather than translating from papyri originating in "the catacombs of Egypt" and brought to him, as if by accident, by an ordinary man named Michael Chandler.

Yet documentary evidence abounds for the Prophet translating from a papyrus roll. Whether translation from papyri by the gift and power of God and an open flow of revelation combined to produce what we have of the book of Abraham is, naturally, an open question. As Hugh Nibley explains, the Prophet Joseph, in translating Scripture, would both translate and interpret ancient writings, while also allowing further revelation to cause his mind to "take flight" to skies of clarity and splendor (Hugh Nibley, An Approach to the Book of Abraham, 4). Like Abraham, Joseph Smith sought not only to be one "who possessed great knowledge" but "to possess a greater knowledge" (Abraham 1:1). We here recall the telling words of Elder Bruce R. McConkie who yearned for yet more knowledge about "the dispensation of the gospel of Abraham": "Would that the Prophet had gone on his translation or revelation, as the case may be" ("The Doctrinal Restoration," in The Joseph Smith Translation: The Restoration of Plain and Precious Truths, ed. M.S. Nyman, R.L. Millet, 1985, 1-22).

We speak of Lehi's dream of the Tree of Life, but he also calls it a vision. Interpretation, translation, insight, dream, or vision--all belong to seers and revelators. Scripture works to the salvation of the human family, which calls for nothing less than all the divine communication the Prophet is capable of receiving. We need not question, in any degree, the work of a seer because he is the one who has been set apart or consecrated to be the Gazelem, or spiritual interpreter, of this generation. Gazelem derives from Semitic g-z-r = Egyptian Dj-z-r, "set apart," "make sacred or consecrate," with -m as mimation, and occurs as a personal name in both Levantine and Egyptian sources.

Still, clear evidence that the Prophet Joseph interpreted from a papyrus roll comes from his own official record.

We would do well to start with the Prophet's final public discourse, his ultimate and far-reaching public testimony, delivered just eleven days before his martyrdom. On Sunday, June 16, 1844, Joseph Smith taught powerful doctrine about the nature of God and of eternal advancement from intelligence to intelligence. He took a portion of his text from Abraham Chapter 3, published two years earlier, and told his hearers that he had learned this powerful doctrine "while translating," which is a marvel. The act of translating papyri, by the gift of God, led to the receipt of revelation about the nature of God, one medium of gift and light flowing into the other! We recall the Lord's invitation to Oliver Cowdery a year before the publication of the Book of Mormon itself: "Ask that you may know the mysteries of God, and that you may translate and receive knowledge from all those ancient records which have been hid up, that are sacred" (Doctrine and Covenants 8:11). "Translate and receive knowledge": so runs the Divine invitation. The verse thus also succinctly describes Joseph Smith's learning the mysteries of God by translating a papyri, a "sacred record" once "hid up," and now "in [his] house." How did it all happen: Chandler and papyri and Abraham? Brother Joseph must have been asking in faith for more "ancient records" to come forth in his day. Such faith drew Abraham's record to Kirtland--and to a Prophet's home.

"I learned it by translating the papyrus now in my house." What a definitive statement! And it is very important to note the name of the Prophet's personal secretary who took down his last sermon: it was the gifted Englishman Thomas Bullock, the most accurate secretary the Prophet ever had.

As Joseph Smith delivered his powerful sermon, did he know what he was saying? did he know what he had been doing? or was the latter-day Gazelem, one who brings hidden things from darkness into light, himself in the dark? Some students now say that Joseph Smith only thought he was translating from papyrus, that in his ordinariness and weakness he might not always have been able to distinguish between an act of translation from a document and a revelation prompted because of a document. (Of course, seeric translation is revelatory at essence--and Orson Pratt insisted on combining these words to describe how seers translate.) These students insist that Latter-day Saints must today fashion new narratives about the book of Abraham because the old ones have failed, failed, they say, because Joseph Smith could not have divinely translated from an Egyptian papyrus, and this despite his work with the Egyptian engravings on the gold plates. 

Yet would anyone say the same of King Mosiah and the large stone "filled with engravings" brought to him for interpretation, itself a sort of historical accident reminiscent of Chandler's papyri? Did Mosiah translate the stone by the "gift and power of God" or was the stone only a heavy prompt? Amaleki says "he did interpret the engravings by the gift and power of God," but what did Amaleki know? Or, would Ammon perchance have suggested to King Limhi that while Mosiah's grandson, now king himself, could interpret languages, that even so, owing to weakness and simplicity, he might not know exactly what was going on when he translated, even with the engravings in front of him? Did "direct" revelation, then, though unrecognized as such by the weak king, hold him steady as he faltered in his noble and seeric but doomed efforts to interpret?

Consider the pattern the Books of Omni and Mosiah, and Doctrine and Covenants Section 9, give us for seeric translation. 

Amaleki knew; Mosiah knew; Benjamin knew; the second King Mosiah knew; Aminadi knew: Joseph knew. These were all seers of God and they knew what they were doing. The question is not one of frailty and weakness in a prophet or king or seer, but whether each and every one was a moron. So let's not ask questions about Joseph Smith, that we couldn't also in good faith ask of Aminadi, Gazelem, or of either Mosiah. "Limhi was again filled with joy on learning from the mouth of Ammon that king Mosiah had a gift from God, whereby he could interpret such engravings; yea, and Ammon also did rejoice" (Mosiah 21:28).

What is our response?

Do we rejoice? Or do we, at times, let our reasoning "interrupt [our] rejoicings?"

Oliver, in the revelation received through Joseph, was further invited to "ask in faith, with an honest heart, believing that you shall receive a knowledge concerning the engravings of old records, which are ancient, which contain those parts of my scripture of which has been spoken" (8:2). This special promise somehow seems to embrace all the "old records," and the consequent code-cracking, which have emerged in Egypt, Palestine, Mesopotamia, Asia, and the Americas since 1829--and the coming forth of the Book of Mormon leads them all.

One record alone joins the Book of Mormon in the lead, as earnest of that which is yet to come, "the revelation" of "a translated version of the record [of portions of the last chapter of the Gospel of John] made on parchment by John and hidden up by himself" (Doctrine and Covenants 7). As Hugh Nibley noted in 1975, there seems to be no limit as to the manner in which the "old records" come to light: some are penned on parchment, others engraved on metal or stone, some are perceived and translated by vision, others with the old record preserved and present. "The engravings of old records, which are ancient," certainly has the ring of metal to it, but may also include such things as the records of Enoch and Noah recovered through the inspired translation of the Holy Bible.

Needless to say, the brethren, in light of this revelation, expected to recover more engraved plates in the fashion of the gold plates of Mormon, or the like, and that's why the papyri, once identified as purporting to be Abraham's writings, had to purchased and kept safe at home. Joseph Smith would not have raised $2400 to purchase papyri unless he had already read on one of the rolls that it purported to be "the writings of Abraham." Just because someone, somewhere, says that the Prophet subsequently only thought that he was translating from a specific roll of papyrus, when he was really receiving the book of Abraham by revelation, without need of papyri, doesn't make it so. Not to fuss--evidence will point the way.

On Sunday, December 20, 1835, Brother Joseph wrote in his journal, in his own hand: "I showed them [guests] the sacred record." Here we find unequivocal evidence that the Prophet himself, not solely his scribes and associates, considered at least some part of the papyri in his possession to be Scripture, or "Sacred Record." So was Joseph Smith nine years in confusion about translating from a concrete sacred record, while "really" receiving inspiration that had nothing to do with what lay before his eyes or what he was exhibiting to visitors?

To say that the hieroglyphs have nothing to do with the translated book of Abraham, and that any previous claim to the contrary was in error, because Joseph wrote the book of Abraham by "inspiration" or by "pure inspiration," is not only to neglect the evidence found in the historical record, it is to promote the concoction of history by mind-reading. (And that's the very method Fawn Brodie evoked in her biography of Joseph Smith.) The claim can also be challenged on the grounds of logic.

If someone tells me that Joseph Smith "translated," or wrote, by inspiration, without hieroglyphs, couldn't I query whether the same inspiration would not work so well to translate papyri with hieroglyphic or hieratic script? If he was a seer working by inspiration, then what did he see in this case? Or what if I choose to bring up those Egyptian hieroglyphs on the gold plates? I could say: "Does not the 14-page book of Abraham translation undeniably follow the pattern previously stated to have been used to translate 421 pages?" Were the following response forthcoming: "Joseph Smith also translated those 421 pages by inspiration!?" "Well," I'd say, "didn't the plates sit beside him? didn't he see hieroglyphs appear before him? Or weren't there hieroglyphs and the translation thereof? Can the English translation of the Book of Mormon stand apart from a hieroglyphic original? And what were you telling me about the book of Abraham again? Is not Inspiration a word often veering from the concrete, one reflecting hesitation over using stronger words like revelation, vision, Spirit, words more befitting the dispensation of the fulness of times? Why not say instead 'He translated sacredly?'"

We sing of "an angel" that "Brought the Priesthood back again": "Even Joseph he inspired/Yea, his heart he truly fired/With the light that he desired/For the work of righteousness." Shall we, then, simply say it was all by "inspiration?" We could so say--and yet be doctrinal--but we'd then be leaving out so very, very much of the significance of seers and so very much of the realities of the Restoration. Inspired Joseph saw Elijah; inspired, he felt his hands on his head; under inspiration he "sacredly" pondered and expounded Elijah's expansive doctrines; and worked, fired in mind and heart, to build the Holy Temple. Did Joseph Smith build the Temple by "pure inspiration," then? He did. Nevertheless, as Brigham Young would be at pains to remind us, the Seer and the Saints used stone and mortar and brass all the same. And he used papyri and hieroglyphs all the same. The visionary mind of the Seer read iconography on the three facsimiles of the book of Abraham, iconography that must also be termed "hieroglyphic." So how is it that a Seer could not read words penned in hieroglyphic script? or words engraved on plates in a reformed hieroglyphic script?

Again in 1835, the Prophet appended a few words about the Egyptian artifacts, again written in his own hand, to a letter sent by W.W. Phelps to his wife Sally Phelps. In what he wrote, the Prophet, with his astonishing knowledge of Scripture ever likening verses, phrases, and prophecies, unto his own circumstances, tied the purchase and ownership of the papyri, or parts thereof, to the ancient prophecies of Moses--the papyri, arriving by seeming accident, nevertheless also came as prophecy fulfilled. The Prophet thus wrote to Sally of "hidden things of old time" and of "treasures hid in the sand" ("treasures": Deuteronomy 33:19). If the "treasures hid in the sand," in the very case of which Brother Joseph was then speaking, were mere prompts to revelation, then how could these rolls take on the substance and character of treasures? 

We move to an even more specific point of evidence.

"A TRANSLATION of some ancient records that have fallen into our hands, from the Catacombs of Egypt, purporting to be the writings of Abraham, while he was in Egypt, called the BOOK OF ABRAHAM, written by his own hand, upon papyrus." There next follows the shortened title, "The Book of Abraham". Times and Seasons, March 1, 1842. The lines introducing the book of Abraham, at the time of its publication in 1842, also convey the same line of evidence.

These records, says Joseph knowingly--and with wonder--"have fallen into our hands." Here is a frank acknowledgment of the accidental, or the seeming accidental, the utter strangeness of the event. The whole circumstance of Chandler's visit to Kirtland and the subsequent purchase of the papyri all unfolded as surprise, a double accident. The word accident, we recall, comes from ad cadere to fall to, into; the records "have fallen (cadere) into our hands" by accident or coincidence, etc. "Fallen into our hands" tells us much about the attitude of Joseph Smith toward the papyri. "Have Fallen into our hands. . . purporting to be": Brother Joseph is speaking to an audience and telling them that the recovery of Abraham's writings apparently was not effected through supernatural means, but by accident and surprise. Yet the Lord had commanded Joseph and Oliver quite specifically to ask for more "old records" to come to light.

By small and simple means, Alma tells his son, Helaman, are the writings of the ancients preserved (Alma 37).

Why were the several papyrus rolls valued and purchased? (And why were the mummies purchased under some duress and not valued at all?) Because one of the sheets of papyri "purported" (pro-portare, carry forth, bear forth) that it held a treasure from the sands of Egypt. What treasure and how? Clearly the papyrus itself carried a message. Who says so? Joseph Smith. And why did he say so? Because he claimed to have "a gift from God to interpret such engravings or ancient scripts. There can be no doubt as to the implications of the peculiar wording of the introduction to the book of Abraham. Joseph Smith is saying he examined the papyri and that on one roll he saw words conveying, or purporting to say: Here are the "writings of Abraham while in Egypt." And what were the specific words he first read? Would it not logically be the title, a purporting statement indeed, which in its full and typically Egyptian form reads (as Hugh Nibley noted half-a-century ago): "The Book of Abraham Written by His Own Hand upon Papyrus" (Hugh Nibley, An Approach to the Book of Abraham, 7-8)? There is no other way to read the introduction--and to wriggle out of it by writing "Joseph Smith, or perhaps one of his associates, wrote the introduction" misses the point (see the extremely hard-to-follow Gospel Topics Essay, "Translation and Historicity of the Book of Abraham." Joseph Smith tells us the plain truth as he saw it: The papyrus purported to bear the title Book of Abraham. Only Joseph Smith, among the brethren, claimed to have the gift of God to "translate all records that are of ancient date" (Mosiah 8:11).

We go now to Spring 1844. On May 15, two easterners, Josiah Quincy and Charles Francis Adams, visited Joseph Smith and spent the day with him. On the next day, Josiah Quincy wrote to his wife and stated the following:

"He preached for us, prophesied for us, and interpreted hieroglyphics for us."

According to Adams's own diary, the Prophet took papyrus up in his hand and read the English translation directly from it. Whether a portion of the book of Abraham or no, we see the Seer in act of translation by the gift and power of God. He preached by the gift of the Holy Ghost, prophesied by that gift, and even interpreted hieroglyphics by that gift. Here was not the man Joseph Smith, but the Prophet with the prophetic mantle--and the Seer with the papyrus in hand.

Again, we recall the words spoken before thousands on 16 June 1844: "I learned it [the mysteries of God] by translating the papyrus now in my house."

Not all the evidence for Brother Joseph translating directly and knowingly from papyrus comes from his own mouth and record. Some comes from our own ability to "interpret hieroglyphics." Indeed, abundant evidence linking Brother Joseph, the book of Abraham, and the papyri and vignettes, comes directly from Facsimile 2 of the book of Abraham, the Egyptian hypocephalus. Words and phrases on this particular hypocephalus parallel most remarkably themes and episodes in each of the first three chapters of the book of Abraham.

The "noble" and "great" god described on the hypocephalus matches the "noble and great ones" spoken of in Abraham Chapter 3. This "noble" and "great" god is described on the hypocephalus (as noted by Nibley, and as the recently restored hieroglyphs confirm) as "descending" to help and to rescue one who calls upon him for rescue--just as in Abraham 1--and just as God comes down in the beginning to instruct the great and noble spirits in Abraham 3. The great god of the hypocephalus, after all, dwells in "the beginning," or zp tpy, as everyone has noted. Yet more parallels could be drawn between the hieroglyphs found on the hypocephalus and the book of Abraham, but the question is How did Joseph Smith know? Joseph Smith is a Prophet of God and he knew what he was doing.

I would ask the question of Abraham: "Is anything too hard for the Lord?" By seership, says Ammon, man can "work mighty miracles." Is it too great a "mighty miracle," to imagine the book of Abraham in hieratic on an actual sheet or roll of papyrus? We shrink from that while accepting a Book of Mormon written on plates of gold.

Yet nearly all the recovered literature of antiquity and certainly all the code-cracking strikes me as wonderful. Consider the story of the cracking of the Maya script, as recounted by Michael Coe. Or consider George Smith.

George Smith was the 19th century student that first identified tablets from Iraq, tablets hidden away in the basement of the British Museum for twenty years, as the ancient Babylonian Flood Narrative: Utnapishtum and all that. He started to translate the text, filled with wonder. But a part of the text was missing, lost in millennia. What did George Smith do? He led a projected six-month expedition to Nineveh to recover the missing section of text--an unlikely outcome that took one week. Was anything too hard for these men?

"Now it must be understood that he was looking for some dirty bits of clay almost indistinguishable from thousands and thousands of other bits scattered across the ruins, which measured eight miles in circumference. Smith might just as well as shuffled through the woods in autumn looking for half-a-dozen specific leaves, yet he picked up the pieces in a week. Considering the amount of rubble, how did he do it? Nobody knows. You couldn't get away with this in a novel or a movie because the odds against such a thing happening are outrageous." "On the 14th of May," Smith writes, "I sat down to examine the store of fragments of cuneiform inscriptions from the day's digging. . .On cleaning one of them, I found to my surprise and gratification that it contained the greater portion of seventeen lines, . .fitting into the only place where there was a serious blank in the story,'" Evan S. Connell, The White Lantern, 158-9.

We further read in the Smithsonian Magazine of the "rather slender hope that he might be able to find a missing piece of the Flood tablet, some three inches on a side, which he felt should still be lurking among the tons of accumulated rubble at the site. Yet he had to know that this would be like looking for a needle in a haystack. The clay fragment would be almost indistinguishable from the debris around it, assuming it hadn't been pulverized in antiquity or tossed out by Rassam's men during their excavations 22 years earlier" (David Damrosch, "Epic Hero, Smithsonian Magazine, May 2007). Yet not only was the missing piece promptly found, but a mere three days into the dig Smith had also found the Epic of Atrahasis! (Vybarr Cregan-Reid, "The Sad Tale of George Smith and Gilgamesh," The Telegraph, 21 September 2013.he Telegraph, 21 September 2013).

But the story gets even chancier: "As it happened, the fragment Smith so rapidly found was not from Gilgamesh at all but was from what scholars now know to be the opening of an even older version of the Flood story, dating from perhaps 1800 b.c. [Abraham's dispensation]," (Smithsonian Magazine).

Here was "a self-taught laborer who had never been to high school, much less college" who was working not with "a window of opportunity, but a mousehole of opportunity" "chancing upon the flood story," and then happening upon an even older record, of ancient date, within a week of starting a dig in Nineveh. Accident, luck, serendipity? Let's move on and actually study these gifts, gifts undreamed of before 1829, before 1830 and Cumorah and the Book of Mormon (Smithsonian Magazine).

And consider the following gift of God to a humble George Smith, whereby he, too, could read such engravings: "His accomplishment is all the more impressive given that he built some of his interpretations on guesses about words that no one had ever deciphered, in lines that often were only fragments of their full selves. Smith's writings are full of discoveries that have stood the test of time, often involving intuitive leaps beyond literal surfaces" (Smithsonian Magazine).


We need to accept the role of accident and coincidence and of "falling into our hands," of surprise and irony as "mighty miracles". We accept angels; let's be open to surprises of every sort. Joseph Smith was the first to acknowledge the accidental element, the surprise in all this sudden appearance of papyri. Yet he quickly raised 2400 dollars for the purchase. That's a lot of money for a chimera, for someone who doesn't really know whether he was translating actual text in front of him by the "gift and power of God" or not. The mighty miracle of preservation and copying stands at equal weight with the mighty miracle of ship and wagon on to little Kirtland. Why was it so? Who knows. The Book of Mormon explains it all: the large stone, the twenty-four plates, in each case these object are brought to the kingly seer--though epochs and hundreds, if not thousands of miles, separate seer from record.

Abraham, another possessor of the Urim and Thummim, likewise explains with some wonder how certain ancient records of the fathers about Creation, Astronomy, and Priesthood, "came into my hands" preserved "until the present day." That's a hint for us, and he tells us all about it--how it happens. That should reassure us and build our faith. Abraham, says Doctrine and Covenants Section 132, "hath entered into his exaltation and sitteth upon his throne"--following his resurrection in 33 BC. He can, under the direction of the God of the Living and not the dead, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, oversee the destiny of his record, this sign, this earnest of the resurrection of the dead. We may have to adjust our thinking about what the Lord can do when He says I am able to do mine own work. 

We might ponder again the question put to Abraham and Sarah: Is anything too hard for the Lord?

Joseph Smith was and is a prophet, and he knew what he was saying and what he was doing.