Fantasy and Reality in the Translation of the Book of Abraham

Abstract: The volume editors of The Joseph Smith Papers Revelations and Translations: Volume 4 propose a theory of translation of the Book of Abraham that is at odds with the documents they publish and with other documents and editorial comments published in the other volumes of the Joseph Smith Papers Project. Two key elements of their proposal are the idea of simultaneous dictation of Book of Abraham Manuscripts in the handwritings of Frederick G. Williams and Warren Parrish, and Joseph Smith’s use of the so-called Alphabet and Grammar. An examination of these theories in the light of the documents published in the Joseph Smith Papers shows that neither of these theories is historically tenable. The chronology the volume editors propose for the translation of the Book of Abraham creates more problems than it solves. A different chronology is proposed. Unfortunately, the analysis shows that the theory of translation of the Book of Abraham adopted by the Joseph Smith Papers volume editors is highly flawed.

The translation of the Book of Abraham has been a controversial topic for well over a century. At present a number of theories have been put forward. Publication of the Joseph Smith Papers has provided the means to test the validity of some of the theories proposed for the translation of the Book of Abraham. I will look at two interconnected theories put forward by the volume editors of The Joseph Smith Papers Revelations and Translations: Volume 4[1] in the light of the Joseph Smith Papers and demonstrate that they are are untenable.

[Page 128]Simultaneous Dictation

The volume editors of JSPRT4 have promoted a testable theory about the translation of the Book of Abraham. The theory is sometimes referred to as the Simultaneous Dictation Theory. This theory is elaborated in detail in the volume itself in a general discussion of the Book of Abraham manuscripts:

The three [Book of Abraham] manuscripts presented here provide insight into the timing of the translation of the Book of Abraham text. The close relationship between the manuscripts created by Williams [labeled Book of Abraham Manuscript–A] and Parrish [labeled Book of Abraham Manuscript–B] indicates that they were begun around the same time — perhaps even concurrently. The leaves on which the two manuscripts were inscribed were originally two halves of a single sheet: one large sheet was separated in two, and the halves were used by Williams and Parrish as the first leaves of their respective documents. The same process was repeated with a second large sheet, the halves of which then served as the second leaves of the two manuscripts. The texts of the Williams and Parrish manuscripts are similar though not identical, as are the revisions, including cancellations and insertions.

Discrepancies in the spelling of several words in the two manuscripts suggest that the manuscripts were not visually compared against one another or against a single earlier version. Given the similarities between the texts of the two manuscripts and the revision process for both, JS may have dictated some or most of the text to both scribes at the same time. In that case, these two manuscripts would likely be the earliest dictated copies of the Book of Abraham. Some scribal errors in the later portion of the manuscript made by Williams, however, indicate that he copied some of his text from another manuscript. JS may have read aloud to Williams and Parrish from an earlier, nonextant text, making corrections as he went; he followed a similar process in his work in the Bible revision project.[2]

[Page 129]This theory is repeated in the introduction to Book of Abraham Manuscript‑A:

In late 1835, Frederick G. Williams inscribed the following version of the first portion of the Book of Abraham. Williams’s manuscript was closely related to Book of Abraham Manuscript–B, which was inscribed by Warren Parrish. Evidence suggests that large portions of this version and Book of Abraham Manuscript–B were created and revised simultaneously. The similarities in the revisions to the two manuscripts suggest that Williams and Parrish created portions of these texts by taking down dictation and perhaps by copying portions from a nonextant version of the Book of Abraham.[3]

It is also repeated in the introduction to Book of Abraham Manuscript‑B:

Warren Parrish created this version of the Book of Abraham, which is closely related to Book of Abraham Manuscript–A, the version created by Frederick G. Williams. Evidence suggests that large portions of this version and Book of Abraham Manuscript–A were created and revised simultaneously. The similarities in the revisions to the manuscripts suggest that Williams and Parrish created these texts by taking down dictation and perhaps by copying from a nonextant version of the Book of Abraham.[4]

Finally, in a joint interview after the publication, the volume editors elaborated on their theory:

JENSEN: Yes. Documentary editors make a big deal of small things sometimes, but it’s sometimes those small things that have lasting implications. There’s one particular instance where there are two documents in here, two Book of Abraham manuscripts in manuscript form. One written by [Warren Parrish] and Frederick G. Williams. These always have posed a challenge. We’ve never known precisely the order in which these were created. And as we looked more closely at these, we realized these documents were created at the same time. In other words, there was some sort of dictation [Page 130]process and then [Parrish] and Williams are capturing this same aural, spoken, text at the same time.

One of the pieces of evidence for that which seems pretty solid is that there was — and we’re really going to get into the nitty-gritty here — but there was one large piece of paper cut in half, divided in half. Those two pieces of paper from the same larger piece of paper make up page one of each of the respective pages of the Book of Abraham. So what we have is pretty compelling evidence that they are there at the same time using the same piece of paper, creating this text, the Book of Abraham, that gives us a new appreciation to the dictation process. Usually when we hear about Joseph Smith dictating, it’s he dictating to one singular scribe. So it’s interesting to imagine trying to reconstruct what that would look like with Joseph Smith dictating to multiple clerks.

HAUGLID: It’s interesting that we’re now talking about this when years and years ago Ed Ashment proposed the same thing. It created a firestorm of rejection amongst our LDS scholars, but now here we are talking about this and agreeing with Ed Ashment.

HODGES: About having multiple clerks in particular at the same time?

HAUGLID: Receiving dictation, yeah.

HODGES: Why was that so controversial?

JENSEN: I have no idea.

HAUGLID: Probably because it was Ed Ashment that proposed it. [laughter][5]

Contrary to Hauglid’s assertions that the theory is not accepted because of who first proposed it, there are valid historical reasons for rejecting the theory. As shown shortly, the proposal that multiple clerks recorded [Page 131]newly dictated scripture from Joseph Smith at the same time has serious weaknesses.

Dictation Errors?

The theory of the volume editors (Hauglid and Jensen) contradicts the findings of other editors from the Joseph Smith Papers. The earlier editors concluded that “textual evidence suggests that these Book of Abraham texts were based on an earlier manuscript that is no longer extant.”[6] The other editors base these conclusions on the following reasoning: “Documents directly dictated by J[oseph] S[mith] typically had few paragraph breaks, punctuation marks, or contemporaneous alterations to the text. All the extant copies, including the featured text, have paragraphing and punctuation included at the time of transcription, as well as several cancellations and insertions.”[7]

In their interview, Robin Jensen claims that “there was some sort of dictation process and then Phelps [sic] and Williams are capturing this same aural, spoken, text at the same time.” Since aural errors are associated with dictation rather than visual copying, they can be viewed as a sign that a manuscript is dictated. The volume editors assert that “Discrepancies in the spelling of several words in the two manuscripts suggest that the manuscripts were not visually compared against one another or against a single, earlier version.”[8] The footnote gives three differences in spelling: “See, for instance, the misspelling of ‘indeovered’ and ‘endeavoured’, ‘alter’ and ‘altar’, and ‘bedsted’ and ‘bedd stead’.”[9]

The examples are not dispositive. The volume editors may have misinterpreted the phenomenon they are discussing. In each of the cases listed, Frederick G. Williams has a nonstandard spelling of the word while Warren Parrish has the standard one, and this is typical when one compares the two manuscripts. There is another way to explain this phenomenon. In the production of this manuscript, Parrish could be visually copying but correcting the manuscript he is copying.[10]

The three examples the volume editors provided are inadequate, since there are dozens of differences between the manuscripts. Most [Page 132]are ambiguous, since they could be explained either as simultaneous dictation or as Parrish editing while copying the text from Williams’s manuscript. A few of the differences, however, cannot be explained if they were both receiving dictation at the same time.

Because the volume editors neither exhaustively cataloged nor even noted the various discrepancies, it has been necessary to compare and collate the manuscripts by cataloging the various discrepancies to determine whether the discrepancies can be accounted for by mishearing a word, visual errors, or editorial correcting.[11]

Most of the differences between the manuscripts could come from either taking dictation or from Parrish correcting and normalizing the manuscript he was copying. Only 12 of the 147 differences between the manuscripts cannot be explained as Parrish editing Williams, and all of those can also be explained as simple visual copying errors. Twenty-five of the differences (about one in six) cannot be explained as simultaneous dictation errors. A few of the differences, however, can be accounted for only by Parrish’s making a correction to the manuscript in Williams’s hand that he was visually copying.

The hardest differences to explain by reference to simultaneous dictation are the two lengthy insertions. In the manuscript in Williams’s hand, the first of these insertions is crammed between the space at the end of a paragraph and above the already written first line of the next paragraph. In the Parrish manuscript this is continuous flowing text at the bottom of the page.

Williams’s manuscript:

edge of this alter <I will refer you to the representation that is at the(commencement of this record>

It was made after the form of a bedsted such as was had

Parrish’s manuscript:

ledge of this altar, I will refer you to the

representation, that is lying before you

at the commencement of this record.

[end of page]

It was made after the form of a bedd stead

The section corresponding to the first line of the new paragraph in Williams’s hand (“It was made after the form of a bedstead”) is at the top of the next page in Parrish’s manuscript. But if the section were not in [Page 133]the Parrish manuscript, then it would have left an uncharacteristically large margin at the bottom of the page, almost twice the size of any other margin in that manuscript.

Page of Book of Abraham manuscript in Parrish’s hand

Measurement of Lower Margin (in inches/cm.)

1

.4/1.04

2

.2/.55

2 (hypothetical)

.9/2.29

3

.5/1.38

4

.6/1.42

5

.6/1.42

6

(ends mid-page)

It is difficult to imagine what sort of simultaneous dictation would have produced the manuscript evidence. For the sake of argument, let’s try (although we will ignore that the dips of the pen in the ink do not support this reconstruction):

Joseph dictates “that you might have a knowledge of this altar.” At this point Warren Parrish stops and pulls out another piece of paper. Joseph then dictates, “It was made after the form of a bedstead such as was had among the Chaldeans.” Joseph then indicates he forgot something. At this point Williams backs up and inserts the text between the lines. Parrish, rather than inserting the text at the top of the new page because he does not have enough room, goes back to the previous page and adds the line in at the bottom of the previous page, but manages to evenly space his lines. Somehow Williams did not hear the words “lying before you” but Parrish did. Joseph apparently made a mistake and Parrish had to strike them out but Williams did not. Then Parrish and Williams pick up where they left off.

If they did pick up where they left off, we would expect a simultaneous re-inking of the pens, but it is difficult to locate where that may have occurred.

The other addition, inserted into the upper margin of the manuscript in Williams’s hand, but included in the text, is harder to explain.

Parrish is normally consistent in his spelling. On the rare occasion where he uses a spelling that for him is unusual, the mistake looks more like a visual copying error that he did not correct. Williams much more frequently [Page 134]uses nonstandard spelling and is not terribly consistent in his orthography.

An example of the variant use of spelling is the word endeavor used in the Book of Abraham. Williams spells it differently every time, but Parrish is consistent in his spelling.

Reference

BoA-M-Williams

BoA-M-Parrish

Abraham 1:7

indeovered

endeavoured

Abraham 1:28

indeaver

endeavour

Abraham 1:31

endeaver

endeavour

When considering the spelling of altar, Williams and Parrish are consistent in their spellings but Williams consistently uses the nonstandard spelling.

Reference

BoA-M-Williams

BoA-M-Parrish

Abraham 1:8

Alter

altar

Abraham 1:10

alter

altar

Abraham 1:11

alter

altar

Abraham 1:11

alter

altar

Abraham 1:12

alter

altar

Abraham 1:12

alter

altar

Abraham 1:20

alter

altar

With the spellings of heathen, Williams is inconsistent, including nonstandard spellings while Parrish is consistent.

Reference

BoA-M-Williams

BoA-M-Parrish

Abraham 1:5

hethens

heathens

Abraham 1:7

heathens

heathens

Parrish is generally more consistent in his use of standard orthography.

Parrish has occasionally one unusual feature to his spelling. In a number of places Parrish drops the final letter or letters of the word. This is a visual copying error.

Reference

BoA-M-Williams

BoA-M-Parrish

Abraham 1:8

strange

strang

Abraham 1:9

made

mad

Abraham 1:10

plains

plain

Abraham 1:13

among

amon

Abraham 1:17

their hearts are turned

their harts are turn

[Page 135]There are places where Parrish slips in his spelling and follows Williams. For example, Parrish consistently spells the word hearken while Williams consistently spells it harken. But in Abraham 1:7, Parrish spells the word harkened.[12] Parrish here follows Williams in spelling the word in a way that is uncharacteristic for him. This is a visual copying error that Parrish did not correct.

Reference

BoA-M-Williams

BoA-M-Parrish

Abraham 1:5

harken

hearken

Abraham 1:7

harkened

harkened

Abraham 1:15

harkened

hearkened

Consider also the spellings of the god of Elkenah in the two manuscripts. The endings of –er and –ah may have been caused by the /r/ intrusion from Joseph Smith’s accent. The /r/ intrusion adds an /r/ sound at the end of words ending in a long vowel. This can be seen in the switching of the spelling in the Book of Abraham manuscript in Williams’s hand.

Reference

BoA-M-Williams

BoA-M-Parrish

Abraham 1:6

Elk=kener

Elkkener

Abraham 1:7

Elk=Kener

Elkken[er]

Abraham 1:7

Elk=Keenah

Elkkener

Abraham 1:13

Elk-keenah

Elkkener

Abraham 1:17

Elk kee-nah

Elkkener

Abraham 1:20

Elkeenah

Elkken{ah|er}

Abraham 1:29

Elkeenah

Elkkener

While Williams used a number of different spellings for the deity, Parrish consistently used the same spelling, the first one that Williams used, except one time when he wrote the same ending as Williams and then corrected it to his version of the spelling. If this were a dictation error, one would have expected Parrish to consistently hear the –er ending and write it. Parrish’s consistency makes this example easier to explain as a visual copying error rather than an aural copying error.

The volume editors have not only mischaracterized ambiguous differences between the manuscript to match a preconceived theory, but they have also missed the differences in the manuscripts which indicate other theories that have greater explanatory power. The theory that [Page 136]Parrish copied and normalized Williams’s manuscript explains more of the features than the simultaneous dictation theory does.[13]

Some might point to identical corrections between the Book of Abraham manuscripts in Parrish’s and Williams’s hands as evidence for simultaneous dictation. The evidence for this does not necessarily support the argument. Here is the evidence for the scribal corrections in Williams’s hand from the Book of Abraham manuscripts before the long insertions. (I have used my transcriptions, since there are a couple of errors in the JSPRT4 transcriptions here.)

BoA-M-Williams

BoA-M-Parrish

BoA-M-Phelps/Parrish

first seccond (line 1)

first second (page 1, line 1)

my mine (line 2)

the mine (page 1, line 2)

mine (page 1, line 22)

whereunto unto (line 2)

whereunto unto (page 1, lines 2–3)

unto (page 1, line 22)

d{m|u}mb (line 12)

dumb (page 1, line 22)

dum (page 2, line 5)

E{k|l}k=Keenah (line 15)

Elkkener (page 1, line 26)

Elkkener (page 2, line 9)

the{m|se} (line 18)

these (page 2, line 1)

these (page 2, line 14)

{S}un (line 22)

son sun (page 2, line 9)

Sun (page 2, line 22)

Pot{t|i}pher<s> (line 24)

Potiphers (page 2, line 12)

Potiphers (page 2, line 25)

plains (line 25)

plain (page 2, line 13)

plain (page 2, line 26)

{offer|up}on (line 26)

upon (page 2, line 14)

upon (page 2, line 27)

regular royal (line 28)

regular royal (page 2, line 17)

royal (page 2, line 30)

{p|di}scent (line 28)

descent (page 2, line 17)

descent (page 2, line 30)

wor{e|s}hip (line 30)

worship (page 2, lines 19–20)

worsh=ip (page 2, lines 33–34)

were Killed (line 31)

were Killed (page 2, line 21)

were Killed (page 3, line 1)

Of the fourteen scribal corrections that Williams makes, three are copied by Parrish, two in the first two lines, and one later on. This is hardly an indication of Joseph making a correction in dictation that both men are following. In the second error Williams makes, Parrish makes a different error but makes the same correction. But one can see that where Parrish is copying his own work, he copies his own mistake (e.g., “Potiphers”). One can also see that where Williams capitalized Killed in the middle of the sentence, Parrish copies the error not once but twice. So Parrish could and did copy both errors and corrections. But the fact that he did not match all the errors argues against simultaneous [Page 137]dictation. For example, Williams has a corrected my appointment while Parrish has a corrected the appointment in Abraham 1:4. Williams had to correct them strange gods in Abraham 1:8 (this could be seen as a correction of them to these strange gods), but Parrish did not. The fact that the errors and corrections are not consistent argues against the two manuscripts being dictated simultaneously.

It may also be worth noting that one of the early errors Williams corrects (offered {offer|up}on in Abraham 1:11) is a dittography, the first of multiple in this manuscript, which in Joseph Smith’s scribes in 1835–1836 is more typical of a copying error than a dictation error.

Scribal Employment

Comparison of the manuscripts does not support the simultaneous dictation scenario proposed by the volume editors. It substantially undermines it, showing that Parrish copied and edited Williams’s manuscript. But to prove that the scenario of simultaneous dictation by Joseph to Williams and Parrish is impossible, one has only to ask one question: When did this supposed simultaneous dictation take place?

The volume editors have very helpfully specified that they think the translation took place between July and November 1835 and have included this in the title of both of the Book of Abraham manuscripts in question. So were Warren Parrish and Frederick G. Williams ever scribes together during this time?

The dates that Frederick G. Williams served as scribe are somewhat restrictive: We know of only 28 September 1835,[14] 3–7 October 1835,[15] 16 November 1835,[16] and 23–26 December 1835.[17] On 2 November 1835, Williams even proposed leaving town.[18]

Warren Parrish, whom Joseph Smith even designated “my scribe,”[19] was more commonly employed as a scribe during this time, but not all of it. In July of 1835, Warren Parrish was serving a mission and was the companion of Wilford Woodruff. Parrish had finished his time [Page 138]on a mission and took his departure from Woodruff on 23 July 1835 in Sandy, Kentucky, about 265 miles from Kirtland.[20] The earliest mention of him in Kirtland was on 17 August 1835 when he took minutes of the general assembly of the Church.[21] Joseph Smith was out of town[22] and noted as “absent.”[23] He also served as a clerk for a meeting of the Kirtland High Council on 28 September 1835.[24] After two experiences drafting documents for Joseph Smith on 23 and 27 October 1835,[25] Parrish was hired as Joseph Smith’s scribe on 29 October 1835.[26] On that day, they “went to Dr. Williams after my large journal.”[27] Parrish served daily in the scribal capacity from that time until 18 December 1835,[28] when he took ill. He began again about a week and a half later on 27 December 1835 and served daily until 22 January 1836.[29] Williams served as a scribe only during times when Parrish was unavailable.

Parrish and Williams were also together with Joseph Smith, Sidney Rigdon, and Oliver Cowdery on 2 November 1835 when they, along with “a number of others went to Willoughby to Hear Doct Piexotto deliver a lecture on the profession theory & practice of Physic,” after which they “returned home.”[30] It does not appear that there was any time taken to work on translation on this occasion.

The only day when both Williams and Parrish served as scribes together was on 16 November 1835. On that day, Joseph Smith “dictated a letter for the Advocate, also one to Harvey Whitlock.”[31] The letter to the Messenger and Advocate was over 2,500 words long and filled three [Page 139]printed pages,[32] and probably took ten manuscript pages.[33] The letter to Harvey Whitlock was three manuscript pages, and both it and the original letter from Harvey Whitlock were copied into Joseph Smith’s journal. About one page of the copying was taken over by Williams. At around 20 pages, Parrish is known to have written more on that day than on any other day when he was employed as Joseph Smith’s scribe. Only on two other days is Parrish known to have written anything close to what he did on that day.[34] The effort seems to have taken Parrish all day.[35] In the evening, Joseph Smith was busy with a council meeting.[36] Williams takes over copying a page after Parrish has already written about 13 pages, and Williams seems to have been at Joseph Smith’s to take part in that evening’s council. This particular day seems a very unlikely time for the simultaneous dictation to take place.

The day of 19 November 1835 is another possible time when Williams and Parrish were together in the presence of Joseph Smith. The journal entry reads:

Thursday 19th went in company with Doct. Williams & my scribe to see how the workmen prospered in finishing the house; the masons on the inside had commenced putting on the finishing coat of plastureing, on my return I met Loyd & Lorenzo Lewis and conversed with them upon the subject of their being disaffected. I found that they were not so, as touching the faith of the church but with some of the members.

I returned home and spent the day in translating the Egyptian records:[37]

What is not clear from the journal entry is whether Williams accompanied Smith and Parrish only to the temple, or whether he was with them the entire day. This is the only possible day mentioned in the journals when Williams and Parrish could have worked together as scribes on the Book of Abraham, and it is not clear they did so. While [Page 140]such an event might have occurred without being recorded in the journal, one still has to argue for something on the basis of no evidence, which appears exactly the same as making it up.

In December 1835, the handwriting in Joseph Smith’s journal changes. For four days (19–22 December 1835), Joseph Smith writes his own journal.[38] Then Williams takes over for the next four days (23–26 December 1835).[39] A similar pattern occurs in late January and early February 1836 when Parrish’s “ill health” prevented him from writing for Joseph Smith when he complained that “writing has a particular tendency to injure my lungs.”[40] The last of those days in December, Williams and Parrish are together again with Joseph Smith, but Joseph Smith says that he “commenced studeing the Hebrew Language in company with bros Parish & Williams in the mean time bro Lyman Sherman came in and requested to have the word of the lord through me.”[41] On that day the three were studying Hebrew, not Egyptian, and were interrupted. Parrish takes up the scribal duties again the next day.[42] But this is after the period when the volume editors speculate that the Book of Abraham manuscripts were produced.

So during the period when the volume editors claim the Book of Abraham manuscripts were produced, Frederick G. Williams served as scribe only when Joseph Smith’s regular scribe, Warren Parrish, was not available because (1) he had not been hired yet, or (2) he was ill. The only occasions during that time when it is known that Smith, Williams, and Parrish are together, they are doing something else.

There is something else odd about these particular dates. The only days when Parrish and Williams worked together were 16 November 1835, 19 November 1835, and 26 December 1835. Consider these dates in the context of known work on the Book of Abraham:

Date

Present

Work on the Book of Abraham

1 October 1835

JS, OC, WWP

“labored on the Egyptian alphabet” “The system of astronomy was revealed”[43]

7 October 1835

JS, FGW

“recommenced translating the ancient records”[44]

[Page 141]16 November 1835

JS, WP, FGW

“dictated a letter”[45]

19 November 1835

JS, WP, (FGW?)

“spent the day in translating the Egyptian records”[46]

20 November 1835

JS, WP

“we spent the day in translating”[47]

24 November 1835

JS, WP

“we translated some of the Egyptian, records”[48]

25 November 1835

JS, WP

“spent the day in Translating.”[49]

26 November 1835

JS, WP

“we spent the day in transcribing Egyptian characters from the papyrus”[50]

28 November 1835

JS, WP

“I think I shall be able in a few days to translate again”[51]

We cannot prove that Williams is involved in the 19 November translation session. Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that Williams did not just visit the Kirtland temple with Smith and Parrish but continued with them the rest of the day; and that contrary to all our manuscript evidence, the Book of Abraham manuscripts in the handwriting of Parrish and Williams were simultaneously dictated. Since this would be the last known time in the proposed time of translation of the Book of Abraham that Frederick G. Williams participated in the translation, all of the text in his hand would have had to be done on that day. The manuscripts are certainly within the known and expected range of what Williams and Parrish could do as scribes. The manuscript in Parrish’s hand does not cover as much of the text as Williams does. Why does Parrish stop early? Over the next week and a half Parrish is also involved in the same translation on four separate occasions. Where is the text? If Abraham 1:4–2:6 (32 verses) are covered in one day, should we not expect about 128 more verses over the next four translation sessions? Since there are only 101 more verses in the published Book of Abraham, what does such a scenario say about the pace of translation of the Book of Abraham?

Looked at another way, Parrish’s handwriting is only on the following materials:

[Page 142]Book of Abraham Manuscript-C = CHL Ms. 1294, fd. 1, 10 pages

Book of Abraham Manuscript-B = CHL Ms. 1294, fd. 3, 6 pages

Grammar and Alphabet of the Egyptian Language = CHL Ms. 1295, fd. 1, four scattered entries, none exceeding a single paragraph.

We know that Parrish is involved in five translation sessions, yet all of that amounts to at best eighteen pages of material, six of which can be produced in a single session. At best that can account for three of the sessions. Where is the rest of the Book of Abraham material in Parrish’s hand? Since the rest of the material is simply copying, why was it called translating?

The proposed theory of simultaneous translation does not account for the manuscript evidence, or the historical evidence.

Errors in Joins

Finally, the volume editors raise the issue of joins, but their statements need to be examined. Although the volume editors raise the issue, their simultaneous dictation theory does not depend on it. The simultaneous dictation theory could still be true even if their observations about manuscript joins were false.

Manuscript joins are very important in work with fragmentary documents.[52] In this case, the join tells us less about the document and more about the source of the paper for the documents. A number of ledger volumes had been purchased,[53] some of which were mined for paper by taking quires and cutting the larger folded sheets apart at the fold in the gutter. Indeed, although unnoted by the volume editors, the ledger volume containing the Grammar and Alphabet document has indications that at least one quire has been removed from the volume. Since the cuts were freehand, there are irregularities that allow for different parts of an original leaf to be matched together to [Page 143]show they were once together. There is no real meaning to this phenomenon, since the main purpose was simply getting usable sheets of paper. The volume editors, however, try to use this to hypothesize that two manuscripts that both have one page from an originally larger sheet of paper were created at the same time. I have long been interested in the phenomenon of joins since I first noticed it and pointed it out to Hauglid. At the time, I could not find any other joins between manuscript sheets when looking at the originals, so their announcement that the second leaves also joined came as a surprise, since I had checked that in the originals and had not found that to be the case.

The volume editors use the term leaf to refer to a sheet of paper. They use the term page to refer to the side of a leaf. Each leaf has two pages: the front side (called the recto) and the back side (called the verso).

The volume editors are correct in the first half of their statement. The first leaf of what they call Book of Abraham Manuscript–A originally joined to the first leaf of what they call Book of Abraham Manuscript–B before being separated. The rectos were on the same side of the original sheet. The separate leaves, however, were originally oriented upside- down to each other so the left sides of the rectos of the two leaves join. The divergent orientation as well as the formatting for each leaf indicates that the leaves were separated before they were inscribed.

The volume editors, however, are not correct in their assertion that the second leaves in each manuscript were also joined. In what they call Book of Abraham Manuscript–A, the second leaf (comprising the third and fourth pages) has excess paper on the cut edge (which is the right edge of the recto or left edge of the verso) that has been folded over and is visible only from the verso. This material (approximately 1 mm wide in the photograph) appears along the left-hand edge between 3.5 and 5 cm from the top edge in the photograph.[54] A portion of the corresponding image from the Joseph Smith Papers website is shown in Figure 1 with an arrow marking the folded-over excess paper. No corresponding lack of paper, or nick, appears in any potentially corresponding edge of the second leaf of Book of Abraham Manuscript–B as would be necessary if the second leaves also joined.[55] Contrary to the assertions of the volume editors, these two leaves were not originally joined.

[Page 144]

[Page 145]Even if the two successive leaves were joins, it would support the simultaneous dictation theory only if the page usage were the same for both scribes. But it is not. Warren Parrish has a larger hand and makes use of different margins than Frederick G. Williams. Williams has 41 lines on his first page, while Parrish only has 30. Thus Parrish was on the second page (verso of the leaf) at the same place in the text where Williams was on only his 19th line of the first page. At the place in the text when Parrish began his second leaf, Williams still had not finished his first page. At the place in the text where Williams was ready for his second sheet of paper, Parrish was almost done with his second sheet. Had the second sheet joined, it probably would have been coincidence. In other words, this argument is not necessary for the simultaneous dictation theory to be true. It would count as evidence for the theory only if it were true. Since it is not, it is simply irrelevant.

One suspects that the volume editors have confused page and leaf. This occurs elsewhere in the volume where the page count is given for a document rather than the leaf count.[57] Because a leaf has two sides, or pages, and the first leaf is a join, perhaps the volume editors mistook the fact that the first two pages in each manuscript necessarily join because the pages are two sides of two leaves that join and either through confusion or mistake changed this to a statement about the first two leaves joining. The assertion shows that they were looking at photographs rather than the originals.

Just because the second proposed join is incorrect does not, in and of itself, mean that the simultaneous dictation theory is false. It just means that the volume editors cannot use this to bolster their theory.

Summary

In summary, the evidence that the volume editors have adduced for a simultaneous dictation does not prove their case. Looked at in the fuller picture of what Joseph Smith was doing in July through November 1835, there is no time when both Parrish and Williams were known to serve as scribes together. If they did, they are known to be working on other [Page 146]projects. Even if they did, the theory does not account for all the time when Parrish served as a scribe in the translation after the alleged event.

The Use of the Grammar and Alphabet

The volume editors insist that Joseph Smith worked on the book titled Grammar and Alphabet of the Egyptian Language,[58] and that book was a source for the Book of Abraham. The volume editors treat the book as though it were a single coherent document. It does seem to have been intended as an attempt to make a coherent document, but the manuscript also indicates it was executed in a number of discrete sessions where the bulk of the text was written and then a few pages were skipped to write another section. The individual sections are each within the range of known scribal work for a single section:

Document Label

Written Pages

Blank Pages

Reference

Grammar and Aphabet [sic] of the Egyptian Language

7

26

JSPRT4, 116–29

Bethka

1

Contents