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Henry Caswall
The Reverend Henry Caswall
The Greek psalter
On 19 April 1842, an English clergyman from Missouri named Henry Caswall visited Nauvoo, and would later claim that he had shown Joseph Smith a Greek psalter, which the Prophet claimed to translate:
- He [Joseph Smith] has a downcast look, and possesses none of that open and straightforward expression which generally characterizes an honest man. His language is uncouth and ungrammatical, indicating very confused notions respecting syntactical concords. When an ancient Greek manuscript of the Psalms was exhibited to him as a test of his scholarship, he boldly pronounced it to be a "Dictionary of Egyptian Hieroglyphics." Pointing to the capital letters at the commencement of each verse, he said, "Them figures is Egyptian hieroglyphics, and them which follows is the interpretation of the hieroglyphics, written in the reformed Egyptian language. Them characters is like the letters that was engraved on the golden plates." [1]
For a detailed response, see: Joseph Smith/Translator/Greek psalter
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- [note] Henry Caswall, The Prophet of the Nineteenth Century (London: J.F.G. & J. Rivington, St. Paul's Church Yard and Waterloo Place, Pall Mall, 1843), 223.