Talk:Kirtland Egyptian papers

Expansion
I've added material that details the contents of the KEP and clarifies the date of publication of the images from the documents in the LDS Church Historian's Office. BTW - It is my understanding that the entire content of the KEP will be included in the Joseph Smith Papers Project, which begins publication this year. DWmFrancis (talk) 15:06, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Copies of papers
Can we get copies of the actual papers to publish in the article? Also this article isn't as well developed as some of other translation articles (BoA, Kinderhook, etc) j_lechem@msn.com (talk) 19:01, 20 April 2009 (UTC)


 * The majority of them appear to have never been published. AnonMoos (talk) 06:33, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Authorship Controversy
I have added a section on the authorship controversy. Additional sections on the dates and sources of the manuscripts, as well as on their historical context might be helpful. Unfortunately, no really good work has been published on the dating of the manuscripts (Nibley is worthless in this regard). For sources, there are the characters from the Hor Book of Breathings in the left-hand margins of the manuscripts, and there is also the use of Josephus and some earlier Mormon documents (see the article by Christopher Smith). For historical context, I recommend Sam Brown's piece in Church History about how the documents were part of Joseph Smith's effort to restore the primordial language of Adam. CaliforniaKid (talk) 07:51, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

New Insight into KEP
Will Schryver has presented an amazing new theory that is hugely respected at FAIRLDS. For a summary look up http://www.mormontimes.com/article/16366/FAIR-conference-Secret-Mormon-codes-and-Egyptian-papers.

It seems much of the KEP were not used as a means of deciphering the Egyptian writings but as a tool for enciphering communications among the brethren for the purposes of security and safety.

As one researcher commented;

""Schryver has, I think, pretty much killed, buried, and nailed the coffin shut on the idea the KEP are the 'translation documents' of the Book of Abraham, and then thrown the coffin into Mount Doom, before dropping Mt. Doom under the continental plates."

I propose a serious investigation of Schryver's theory, and then a likely revision of the whole article as it stands.

96.51.55.125 (talk) 20:36, 11 August 2010 (UTC)Canadiandy
 * Schryver's thesis has not yet been published, so the mention it currently receives in the "Authorship Controversy" section is sufficient for now. Personally, I find the thesis unconvincing. (See here.) Whether it will be better received by other historians remains to be seen. 134.173.11.254 (talk) 21:37, 23 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Being unpublished, the Schryver videos do not count as a reliable source under Wikipedia guidelines. Until this material gets published, we will need to take it down. As a reminder for the future, I am including the text here:
 * William Schryver argues that the text-critical evidence demonstrates that the Kirtland Egyptian Papers are dependent on a pre-existing text of the Book of Abraham, and that the Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar manuscripts attest similarities to a substitution cipher key. ,
 * CO GDEN  02:14, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Rename article to Joseph Smith Egyptian Papers
So much research has happened in the last ten years on this subject, and it is clear that not all of the papers in this collection are from the Kirtland period as was once thought. The name Kirtland Egyptian Papers is falling out of favor with the academic community, and I propose we do the same by renaming the article "Joseph Smith Egyptian Papers" Epachamo (talk) 12:55, 31 December 2019 (UTC)