Question: What are the historical approaches that have been take in an attempt to understand the Kirtland Egyptian Papers?

Previous LDS approaches to the Kirtland Egyptian Papers

LDS approaches to the KEP have been more varied. The first significant scholarly study of the matter, by John A. Tvedtnes and Richley Crapo, appeared in a series of articles under the auspices of the Society for Early Historic Archaeology from 1968 to 1970. Their theory was that the Sensen Papyrus may have represented a mnemonic device to bring to mind a longer oral tradition — a tradition that corresponded to the narrative of the Book of Abraham as we know it. This theory was grounded in two observations. First, the hieratic symbols copied into the left margin of the KEPA documents were complete morphemes, as opposed to the inappropriate breaks one would expect of someone who could not read Egyptian. Second, in every case the meaning of the hieratic word in the margin shows up in some relevant way in the much longer English text corresponding to the hieratic word. Of course, lots of other words and concepts are present as well, but the meaning of the hieratic word in each case is present in the English text.

While a fascinating study, the Tvedtnes and Crapo mnemonic device theory never really caught on. Hugh Nibley was intrigued by this possibility at first, but then decided to go in a different direction. Nibley authored a seminal, lengthy study of the KEP in BYU Studies entitled "The Meaning of the Kirtland Egyptian Papers." He did not attempt to defend the KEP as revelatory documents (other than the English portions of the KEPA). Rather, he took the view that the KEP represent either a preliminary "studying it out" stage in the process, or a (failed) attempt to reverse engineer the English translation so as to decipher the Egyptian language. In other words, the English text of the Book of Abraham was received by revelation as opposed to a purely mechanical process. While Joseph was involved in the KEP project, a theme of Nibley's piece is to portray the efforts of Phelps, Cowdery, and Parrish as largely independent of Joseph. Nibley's take has become the dominant LDS view, and has been echoed more recently in several publications by John Gee.

A small minority of LDS commenters on the KEP seeks to defend the supposed revelatory character of these documents, viewing them through the lenses of kabbalism or extreme symbolism. It has few adherents.