The Book of Mormon’s “Other Words” as an Egyptianism

Pictured: Turin 1791 papyrus of the Book of the Dead

Throughout the Book of Mormon, prophets will mention on occasion that something can be said “in other words.” Multiple possibilities exist for the inclusion of this phrase, however, a new possibility was originally brought to my attention. As such, I would like to add this possibility as an addendum to an article I previously had published in Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship.

In my review of Jonathan Neville’s book A Man That Can Translate, I wrote the following:

…Neville claims that phrases such as “in other words” or “or rather” are best understood not as Mormon’s rethinking of a phrase or fixing an error that may have crept in as he engraved on metal plates, but “it seem[s] more likely” that it was Joseph who felt that his word choice “did not capture the meaning he wanted to convey.” Neville believes that “the existence of [these phrases in the translated Book of Mormon] would be another reason to reject [the seer stone’s use] as implausible” because there would be little reason for a divine translation to require a reworking of words or phrases. (He does not explain why, if Joseph was unhappy with his first translation’s phrasing, he could not simply say, “Strike that, instead write….”)

This is a problem that simply does not exist. He himself notes that Paul used the phrase “or rather” in his epistles, and even Jonathan Edwards used the phrase when not translating any ancient text, but Neville appears to be unwilling to offer that same liberty to the Nephite authors. Neville likewise fails to consider that should those phrases be authentic to Mormon’s writings, it would not discredit the seer stone or the Nephite interpreters, because Joseph Smith could as easily have translated these phrases into English from the original text, just as they were translated from the original text in Paul’s epistles (who assuredly did not write in English).

However, because Neville is intent on dismissing the seer stone as a revelatory instrument used in the translation of the Book of Mormon, this logical analysis escapes his due consideration. [1]

However, as has been pointed out to me by my good friend and trained Egyptologist Stephen Smoot, the inclusion of the phrase “or rather” or “in other words” does not necessarily reflect either the challenges of writing on metal plates or the complexities of English translation. 

In fact, such a phrase was a common in Egyptian writings, employing the phrase ky ḏd. According to an Egyptian-German dictionary, one definition of this phrase is “in anderen Worten.”[2] For those not blessed to speak German, it translates as “In other words.”

According to Foy Scalf, such a phrase was commonly employed by Egyptian historians dealing with multiple sources. He writes:

However, modern scholars are not the only ones who were interested in compiling and comparing manuscripts. The Egyptians themselves took care to note variations in vocabulary, phrasing, choices of deities, and so forth. The most common way of in- dicating the variations between the manuscripts or glossing the text with a comment was by adding the phrase ky ḏd “another saying” (Gardiner 1938). This practice was not restricted to funerary literature, but it appears most commonly in Book of the Dead spells, with later copies of the text providing substantially more examples of annotation (fig. 3.7). For instance, in papyrus Turin 1791, which dates to the Ptolemaic Period and was carefully written in vertical columns of cursive hieroglyphs, there are 229 glosses with the phrase ky ḏd in 74 of the 165 spells, i.e., 45% of the spells (Lepsius 1842).[3]

The connections to The Book of Mormon are quickly apparent. Nephi states that the language of the Egyptians was a part of his educational training and the language in which he made his record on the Small Plates (1 Nephi 1:2), and Moroni states that the gold plates were written in “reformed Egyptian” (Moroni 9:32). The Book of Mormon itself is an abridged history compiled from many source texts by Mormon’s editorial hand. For a trained historian such as Mormon, it would be natural for this phrase to appear in his writings, perhaps when dealing with multiple source texts. 

Other instances that this phrase would be employed in Egyptian texts could include offering clarifications, providing corrections (as I have previously noted), specifying what is intended, or providing a later gloss on passages that may not be immediately clear. 

For examples of this phrase likely as employed by Book of Mormon authors in many of these contexts, see, for example, 1 Nephi 10:4, Mosiah 7:27, Alma 13:7, Alma 24:19, Alma 32:16, Alma 40:2, Alma 46:21, Alma 48:15, 3 Nephi 3:7, and 3 Nephi 6:20. This list is clearly not comprehensive—but is indicative of how this phrase matches how early Egyptian authors used the phrase ky ḏd in a variety of contexts. While such usage of this phrase may not necessarily be proof of the antiquity of the plates, as it was a phrase used by English authors in similar contexts, it may shed light on the original linguistic training of Nephite prophets and provide an ancient background to this otherwise simple phrase.

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[1] Spencer Kraus, “An Unfortunate Approach to Joseph Smith’s Translation of Ancient Scripture,” Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 52 (2022): 12–13. Footnote 56 of my review, found on page 51, reads in part: “Daniel H. Ludlow recognizes that this verse may reflect the challenges Mormon faced as he wrote on metal plates and would be unable to correct what he had previously written. See Daniel H. Ludlow, A Companion to Your Study of the Book of Mormon (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1976), 210.”

[2] Rainer Hannig, Großes Handwörterbuch Ägyptisch-Deutsch (Mainz: Philipp Von Zabern Verlag, 1995), 878–879.

[3] Foy Scalf, ed., Book of the Dead: Becoming God in Ancient Egypt in Oriental Institute Museum Publications, no. 39 (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago, 2017), 46. For more discussion on the use of this Egyptianism, see Alan H. Gardiner, “The Egyptian for 'In Other Words', 'In Short',” The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 24 no. 2 (1938), 243–244.