 Joseph Smith translated a number of ancient records during his lifetime, the Book of Mormon, the Joseph Smith translation of the Bible, and the Book of Abraham. I've done a little bit of translating myself from Japanese to English, and so when I think of the word translation, I think of the process of converting a written foreign language into my own language, usually with the use of a dictionary. That doesn't seem to be what Joseph Smith is doing. What do we know about his translation processes? I think what's important to remember is that he has an intellectual component that he tries on occasion, but for the majority of the translation that he does, he has this revelatory process. For instance, Joseph Smith in the Book of Mormon used interpreters, used physical objects as a way of translating. With the Joseph Smith translation, there are a number of different ways that he translated. He received revelation, inspiration. The Book of Moses, for instance, seems to be not based upon any text. Then with the Book of Abraham, you also have both a more intellectual and a spiritual component, where he's trying to understand the language on an intellectual level. He's copying down characters, but he's also then through inspiration receiving the text of the Book of Abraham. In terms of the translation process, then we can't think of just one way in which he translated all these records. There's different ways in which he drew upon the Lord's power to be able to do that. Exactly. In the case of the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith is directed to get these plates by an angel of God. In the case of the Joseph Smith translation in the Bible, he's drawing from a sacred text that people are familiar with. On the other hand, the Book of Abraham, Joseph Smith is translating from Egyptian hieroglyphs that are on these papyri. Why is Joseph Smith interested in Egyptian papyri? The Western culture has long been fascinated with ancient Egypt. Towards the beginning of the 19th century, there's a lot of people buying and selling mummies and artifacts and other things. People would go and see mummies, and they would make the comment that, here it is, this person that lived thousands of years ago, and here I can still see them. Someone wrote this passage so long ago, and yet I can still see it. I can still have it. I think what's going on in Joseph Smith's mind is he recognizes that God speaks to his children in every age. So Joseph Smith looks to the ancient cultures as a way of uncovering additional truths from God. It's not just about God's words or translated texts. It's also about the language itself. Joseph Smith is interested in recovering ancient languages as a way of getting to this pure language of Adam talked about in Moses. And so when papyri come in Ohio, he's going to seek that out. He's going to want to include that in his language study. So in the summer of 1835, Joseph Smith and others purchased Egyptian papyri along with some mummies. What do they do with the papyri once they get them? He was interested, I believe, in the papyri to understand the language. And other scribes begin to create what's called alphabet documents. They essentially copy characters from the papyri onto these sheets of paper. And they begin to systematize the language. But then related to that is the book of Abraham text. So you have Joseph Smith trying to understand the language and also revealing, translating the book of Abraham text. So at least in 1835, Joseph Smith and his associates are engaged in, it sounds like, two related projects. You've got the book of Abraham on one side. You've got the Egyptian alphabet and grammar on the other. So fast forward to the late 1960s. Some of the fragments of the papyri that Joseph Smith supposedly used to translate the book of Abraham resurface in the archives of the Metropolitan Museum of New York. When Egyptologists study the Egyptian hieroglyphs that are on those remaining fragments, they come to the conclusion that it does not match the dictated texts that Joseph Smith has given through the book of Abraham. How do we make sense of this? Yeah, the Egyptologists look to the papyri and they recognize them for Egyptian funerary rights, books of the dead, book of breathings. And the book of Abraham doesn't fit into that Egyptian context, according to many Egyptologists. And so we're left to understand what's going on. Some have looked at the papyri, recognized that there are missing pieces and have postulated that some of those missing papyri could have contained the book of Abraham. Other scholars have looked to the papyri as maybe a catalyst for Joseph Smith. Joseph Smith is looking to the papyri and receiving inspiration when he's dictating the book of Abraham. Similar to his work on the Joseph Smith translation, where the book of Moses is not found in the King James Version, though Joseph Smith is clearly working from the Bible. Some suggest that there is an as-of-yet-unknown relationship between the language documents and the book of Abraham documents. Some look to the ancient past to find parallels. Some look to the historical context of Joseph Smith to try to understand what he believed about hieroglyphs and translation and whatnot. In all of these theories, I think what's important to remember is that scholars are engaged on an intellectual level. They're trying to understand the book of Abraham. Members should be doing the same thing. They should be engaged in trying to understand the history of their scripture. But that only takes us so far. Ultimately, they need to ask God.