Excerpts from Matthew Grey on Hebrew in the Book of Abraham

[_Dr Moore]

From Matthew Grey, Approaching Egyptian Papyri through Biblical Language, in Producing Ancient Scripture (2020)

A few choice tidbits from Matthew Grey's article. Some of these infected me with loud laughter.
Bolded-italicized emphases in the quotes below are mine.

Speaking about Joseph's extensive insertions of biblical Hebrew words in the Book of Abraham narrative and vignettes...

These editorial explanations demonstrate that, along with his other possible sources of inspiration, Smith was comfortable drawing upon and applying his academic studies to his prophetic elucidation of the sacred past. Although his motivations for openly using Hebrew terminology to help describe Egyptian imagery are uncertain, they might have included a desire to provide biblical verisimilitude for his Abrahamic record, display his erudition, or help his fellow students of Hebrew make connections between their studies and the papyri.

ROFL!!! I want to give Grey high marks here -- I'm genuinely impressed with the way he recruits big words to theorize that Joseph "just wanted make his story sound more believable, or maybe he was just showing off." It must be a very small club of working BYU professors who've gotten away with postulating a theory that the reason for an unavoidable inconsistency in canonized scripture is that, well, Joseph abused his position of authority to show off his sick new language skills, or that he added ancient-looking flourishes to make his fictional opus realistic sounding.

Admittedly, I didn't know what the proper definition for "verisimilitude" was, so I looked it up. Miriam Webster online: "Something verisimilar" (having the appearance of truth) "From its roots, verisimilitude means basically "similarity to the truth". Most fiction writers and filmmakers aim at some kind of verisimilitude to give their stories an air of reality."

Then this one, perhaps an example of Joseph "showing off" or copy+pasting for "verisimilitude":

Beyond these subtle alterations, however, Smith's Hebrew studies influenced his translation of the Abraham creation account in at least two profound and theologically significant ways, both of which may have been initially informed by his earlier revelations and both of which gave further shape and substance to his subsequent doctrinal teachings. The first, and most prominent of these was Smith's infusing into the narrative the existence of a plurality of gods acting as a divine council orchestrating the creation. This was done through his consistent rendering of the Hebrew (elohim) and (Yahweh-elohim)--typically trnaslated through the Hebrew Bible as the singular "God" and "Lord God"--as the plural "they...(that is, the Gods)," "they, the Gods," or simply "the Gods," along with a pluralization of all accompanying pronouns and verbs. This innovation was almost certainly prompted by the morphologically plural form of the word for "God" (elohim) in the Hebrew text of Genesis 1-2.

So, in other words: thanks to his crash course in introductory Hebrew, Joseph was able to apply his newfound expertise and noticed that "God" in the Hebrew creation account was a plural word (ending in -im). Smith couldn't let it go and insisted in all of his Hebrew classes that his teacher, Joshua Seixas, allow Joseph to use the technically literal translation for elohim as "Gods."

Grey clarified later that Seixas explained things to Joseph, but to no avail. The seed of new theology was planted.

"For his part, Seixas acknowledged that the word (elohim) was technically plural but, following his colleague Moses Stuart, he preferred its singular translation (God). Like other scholars, Stuart and Seixas considered the word to be a pluralis exccellentia, which "for the sake of emphasis" was rendered "in the plur. form but with the sense of the singular."

Grey later comments on Joseph's belief that the Book of Abraham was the original source for the books of Moses:

There are indications that Smith believed the creation account on the papyri actually predated the book of Genesis and represented the primary source used by Moses to compile the biblical narrative. ... In short, if Smith and his associates believed that the papyri contained the urtext of Genesis, they may have felt that rather than laboring over the papyri to translate that original source, it was more convenient to start with the surviving derivative source (Genesis 1-2) and work backward to recover the original account. In this process of reverse engineering, Smith may have drawn upon his study of Hebrew to help restore the text to what he felt was its pristine version.

Who is this "they" -- a ragtag band of pretend translators? Did Grey forget they had among them Joseph Smith, the Seer??? Wouldn't it be great if this seer could just follow that same spirit of revelation that worked on him when he received the scrolls and proclaimed them the writings of Abraham, and, you know, to "see", ie translate the original? It isn't like the scrolls were hidden in a log in the forest -- he had them right there, in front of him. And, well, there is the fact that Joseph claimed nothing like reverse engineering of Genesis into the Book of Abraham. Why should Joseph have had any reason to think that was necessary? I wonder what he might have done, were one of his fellow Hebrew students to accuse Joseph of working to reverse engineer the Book of Abraham by picking up on grammatical technicalities in his first time reading aloud Hebrew fragments in Genesis?

Grey summarizes:

In this process, his use of external resources defies simplistic categorizations of scriptural plagiarism, but instead has been described by some scholars as more closely resembling biblically attested models of inspired targums or midrash. (231) Whether or not these categories serve as precise analogies for the Book of Abraham, Smith's fusion of his religious genius and academic efforts resulted in scriptural texts that ostensibly merged a restoration of ancient history with modern prophetic relevance.

(Footnote 231). For attempts to analyze Smith's translations within ancient categories of scriptural expansion as pseudepigrapha, targums, or midrash, see Wright, "In Plain Terms that We May Understand," 207-10; Hutchinson, "A Mormon Midrash?"; Barlow, Mormons and the Bible, 57-61; and Bokovoy, Authoring the Old Testament, 169-73.

What a beautifully wishy-washy series of statements! It's easy to get lost, so I will try to restate: "he probably didn't just steal it, but he might have made it all up based on biblical stories, or he might not have, but for sure he did make some of it up and some might have been inspired, but who really knows. And quite a collection of references -- shout outs to Wright and Bokovoy!

And to conclude:

These concepts appear to have been inspired or at least buttressed by Smith's study and knowledge of Hebrew. They also came to be articulated in Smith's translation of the Abraham text and were the catalyst for his most theologically innovative sermons between the publication of the Book of Abraham in 1842 and his death in 1844.

King Follett? Is this a theory that the theology in that discourse originated with Joseph's obsession over a grammatical technicality he found on his first transliterated reading Genesis in Hebrew?

[_Philo Sofee]

Sounds like John Gee helped him write this up.

[_Hagoth]

In this process, his use of external resources defies simplistic categorizations of scriptural plagiarism...

Yeah, he overcomplicated everything. And he crossed the stream a few times to try to hide his tracks.

[_Dr Moore]

Sounds like John Gee helped him write this up.

I really doubt it, Philo. Grey’s work undermines the 1835 completion theory and the long scroll theory, by showing Joseph’s Hebrew all over the place. He ginger steps around the catalyst theory, in my view.

[_Philo Sofee]

Joseph Smith did not produce ancient scripture, he produced modern writings using ancient scripture. This is what chapel Mormons hate to recognize.