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“Any Excuse Will Do”: Why FAIR’s Most Famous Egyptologist \u2767 \u2726 \u2767<\/span><\/p>\n Imagine reading your Book of Mormon eight times in two years. Imagine praying, as the apostle commands, without ceasing, not to find a door out but to find a reason to stay. Imagine finally leaving, grieved and exhausted, only to hear a credentialed scholar announce from a conference podium that people like you are usually not telling the truth about why you left, that the Book of Abraham was merely an “excuse,” and that citing it marks you as neither an original thinker nor an intelligent one.<\/p>\n That is precisely what happened when the anonymous host of the YouTube program FAIR Friday<\/i> sat down to review John Gee’s presentation at the August 2026 conference of FAIR (Faithful Answers, Informed Response), the leading volunteer apologetics organization of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Gee, a Yale-trained Egyptologist and BYU professor, argued that many who leave the Church dress up behavioral choices in intellectual clothing. He marshaled statistics, invoked the name of former-Mormon podcaster John Dehlin, cited the survey research of Jana Riess, and then spent roughly sixteen minutes on the handwriting and chronology of Joseph Smith’s Kirtland-era Egyptian documents, without ever, by the host’s account, telling the audience what the Egyptian on Joseph Smith’s papyri actually says.<\/p>\n I was desperately trying to find a reason to stay.<\/i><\/p>\n \u2014 Host of <\/b><\/span>FAIR Friday<\/b><\/i><\/span>, responding to John Gee’s August 2026 FAIR presentation<\/b><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n This essay examines Gee’s argument from the standpoint of historic, biblical Christianity. Its purpose is not to ridicule Latter-day Saint belief, nor to impugn the faith of the many sincere Latter-day Saints who love their families and their Lord as they understand Him. Its purpose is to test claims, as Scripture commands every believer to do (1 Thessalonians 5:21), and to ask three questions that Gee’s presentation raises but does not answer honestly. First, do the studies he cites actually say what he says they say? Second, does his considerable academic standing actually extend to the arguments he is making? Third, and most important pastorally, is it right, before God and before men, to declare that thousands of former members are lying about their own reasons for leaving?<\/p>\n The answers, as we shall see, are no, only partly, and no.<\/p>\n \u2767 \u2726 \u2767<\/span><\/p>\n No one can evaluate the Book of Abraham fairly without first stepping into the 1830s. Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign (1798\u20131801) had set the Western imagination ablaze. The Rosetta Stone had surfaced in 1799, and Jean-Fran\u00e7ois Champollion announced his decipherment of hieroglyphs in 1822. Yet in the American frontier of 1835 there was, practically speaking, no one who could read Egyptian. Traveling exhibitors carted mummies from city to city and charged admission to see them.<\/p>\n Into this climate came Michael Chandler, who arrived in Kirtland, Ohio, in the summer of 1835 with four mummies and several rolls of papyrus. Joseph Smith examined the papyri and announced that one roll contained the writings of Abraham and another the writings of Joseph of Egypt. The Saints raised about $2,400 to purchase the collection. Over the next months, Smith and his scribes, notably W. W. Phelps, Oliver Cowdery, Warren Parrish, and Frederick G. Williams, produced manuscripts of a Book of Abraham alongside a set of documents now called the Kirtland Egyptian Papers, including the so-called Grammar and Alphabet of the Egyptian Language<\/i>. The finished text, five chapters with three illustrated facsimiles, appeared in the Nauvoo newspaper Times and Seasons<\/i> in the spring of 1842 under a heading that is still printed in the Pearl of Great Price: a translation of records “purporting to be the writings of Abraham, while he was in Egypt, called the Book of Abraham, written by his own hand, upon papyrus.”<\/p>\n As this author observed in an earlier essay for this publication, there is a striking irony here: Chandler embellished the provenance of his artifacts with an invented family connection, and the same artifacts soon received an even grander provenance in Kirtland.<\/p>\n Chandler invented a relative. Joseph Smith invented a scripture.<\/i><\/p>\n \u2014 The Righteous Cause, “Exposing Joseph Smith’s Deception: The Book of Abraham’s Fictional Genesis,” <\/b><\/span>February 19, 2026<\/b><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n The Book of Abraham is not a theological footnote. Gee himself, in a FAIR presentation preserved on FAIR’s Book of Abraham topic page, tallied 378 quotations of the book in general conference since 1942 and found that 238 of them, about 63 percent, come from Abraham 3:18\u201328, the passage on premortal existence. In his 2012 FAIR address, he made the same point more broadly: only the Book of Abraham teaches that every human being who has ever lived existed as a spirit before birth. Hymns such as “I Am a Child of God” and “O My Father,” and the entire Latter-day Saint “plan of salvation” narrative of a premortal council, rest heavily on these few verses. Kevin Folkman, reviewing Gee’s own introductory book for the Association for Mormon Letters, noted that without Abraham 3 there would be no foundation in Latter-day Saint scripture for belief in a Mother in Heaven.<\/p>\n In other words, the Book of Abraham sits near the foundation of distinctive Latter-day Saint cosmology, and that cosmology developed during the Nauvoo years alongside the doctrines of plural gods and human exaltation. When historic Christians question the book, they are not nitpicking. They are asking whether a central pillar of a theological system that departs sharply from the biblical teaching of one eternal God (Isaiah 43:10; 44:6) can bear the weight placed upon it.<\/p>\n For a century the papyri were believed lost in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. Then, in 1966, fragments were identified at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and in November 1967 they were transferred to the Church. Among them was the original of Facsimile 1, still attached to the beginning of a scroll made for an Egyptian priest named Hor. Egyptologists quickly identified that scroll as a “Breathing Permit,” a common funerary text dating, as the Church’s own Gospel Topics essay now acknowledges, to between the third century B.C. and the first century A.D.<\/p>\n None of the characters on the papyrus fragments mentioned Abraham’s name.<\/i><\/p>\n \u2014 “Translation and Historicity of the Book of Abraham,” Gospel Topics Essays, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (2014)<\/b><\/span><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n The late Robert K. Ritner of the University of Chicago, one of the foremost specialists in Egyptian religious texts of exactly this period, concluded in 2014 that the source of the Book of Abraham is the Breathing Permit of Hor, “misunderstood and mistranslated by Joseph Smith.” Long before that, in 1912, Bishop Franklin S. Spalding had gathered the judgments of eight prominent scholars on the facsimiles, and every one rejected Smith’s interpretations.<\/p>\n How did faithful scholars respond? The history of their response is itself instructive. For more than a century, the default Latter-day Saint understanding was that Joseph Smith translated the papyri he possessed. After 1967, that view became untenable, and apologists developed two principal alternatives. The first, the “missing scroll” theory, holds that the Book of Abraham was written on a portion of papyrus that did not survive. The second, the “catalyst” theory, holds that the papyri merely prompted revelation, so that the English text need not correspond to the Egyptian at all. Gee is the leading advocate of the first. In his 2012 FAIR address, he described the idea that Smith translated from the surviving fragments as a “strawman” and an “anti-Mormon theory,” and he described the purely revelatory catalyst view as popular among members but without historical evidence.<\/p>\n The careful reader will notice that the position Gee now calls an anti-Mormon theory was, for well over a century, the plain-sense understanding of Latter-day Saints themselves, an understanding grounded in Joseph Smith’s own words and in the book’s heading. That is the context in which Gee’s 2026 remarks must be heard. He is not a neutral observer of people who leave over the Book of Abraham. He is the principal architect of the defense they found unpersuasive.<\/p>\n \u2767 \u2726 \u2767<\/span><\/p>\n The prompt for this essay asks whether Latter-day Saint biographical sources give too much credit to Gee’s academic prowess. Fairness requires beginning with what is true. John Laurence Gee (born 1964) graduated from Brigham Young University in 1988, earned an M.A. in Near Eastern Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1991, and completed a Ph.D. in Egyptology at Yale University in 1998 with a dissertation on ritual purity in ancient Egypt. He held the William (Bill) Gay Research Chair at BYU’s Neal A. Maxwell Institute from 2007 until 2019, when he transferred to BYU’s Department of Asian and Near Eastern Languages. He has edited the Journal of the Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities<\/i> and twice chaired a section of the Society of Biblical Literature. These are genuine accomplishments, and no honest critic should pretend otherwise.<\/p>\n The Latter-day Saint descriptions build from there. FAIR’s current biography is modest, describing him as an “Egyptologist,” “Ancient Scripture Scholar,” and FAIR Conference speaker whose work bridges history, archaeology, languages, and scripture. The Interpreter Foundation’s author page is more expansive, crediting him with more than 150 publications on subjects ranging from Aramaic and Coptic to Luwian, Sumerian, and rhetoric. A 2021 FAIR announcement described him as prolific in academic publication. A FAIR conference introduction recited a long list of distinguished Egyptologists said to have “vetted” his work. Kevin Folkman called him “arguably the church’s leading scholar of Egyptology,” and apologist Jeff Lindsay described him as among the most qualified experts on the Joseph Smith Papyri.<\/p>\n Here is the crucial distinction. Gee’s credentials are real; the problem is the transfer of their authority. A doctorate from Yale certifies competence in Egyptology. It does not certify that every apologetic argument a Yale doctor makes about the Book of Abraham has passed through the ordinary filters of his discipline. And on that point, the record is sobering.<\/p>\n First, there is the testimony of his own teacher. Ritner, who taught Gee at Yale, publicly distanced himself from his former student’s apologetic work in Dialogue<\/i> (2000) and again in the Journal of Near Eastern Studies<\/i> (2003), noting that Gee, unlike his other students, never shared drafts for scholarly criticism.<\/p>\n Nor the standards of Egyptological proof that I required at Yale or Chicago.<\/i><\/p>\n \u2014 Robert K. Ritner, on John Gee’s apologetic writings, as quoted in “John Gee,” <\/b><\/span>Wikipedia<\/b><\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Second, there is the verdict of his former collaborator. Brian Hauglid, who co-authored and co-edited Book of Abraham volumes with Gee and later co-edited the Joseph Smith Papers volume on the Book of Abraham, wrote in 2018 that he no longer agreed with Gee or Kerry Muhlestein, adding a sentence that no amount of spin can soften.<\/p>\n I find their apologetic “scholarship” on the BoA abhorrent.<\/i><\/p>\n \u2014 Brian M. Hauglid (2018), as quoted in “John Gee,” <\/b><\/span>Wikipedia<\/b><\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Third, there is the venue problem. Gee’s mainstream Egyptological publications appear in recognized journals. His Book of Abraham arguments appear overwhelmingly in Latter-day Saint venues: FARMS, the Religious Studies Center, Interpreter<\/i>, and FAIR. Even his reviewers within the Latter-day Saint literary community noticed. Folkman counted the “further reading” suggestions in Gee’s An Introduction to the Book of Abraham<\/i> and found that 36 of 112 pointed to Gee’s own work, enough, he wrote, to make a lay reader wonder whether the ideas had support from anyone else.<\/p>\n Fourth, there is the boundary problem. When Gee ventured outside Egyptology, the results were troubled. Folkman found that Gee claimed the Book of Abraham was not used to justify the priesthood and temple ban on Black members until 1895, when Orson Pratt, the Juvenile Instructor<\/i>, Erastus Snow, and B. H. Roberts had all appealed to it decades earlier.<\/p>\n Raises unnecessary questions about the level of trust a reader can give Gee.<\/i><\/p>\n \u2014 Kevin Folkman, review of <\/b><\/span>An Introduction to the Book of Abraham<\/b><\/i><\/span>, Association for Mormon Letters (2017)<\/b><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Gee’s 2020 book Saving Faith<\/i>, a venture into the sociology of family religiosity, drew immediate criticism for suggesting that sexual abuse might be a factor in same-sex attraction; reviewers concluded that he had wandered outside his expertise and misread data, and the publisher pulled the book. That episode matters directly here, because his 2026 FAIR presentation is, again, sociology, not Egyptology.<\/p>\n Fifth, there is the pattern of attacking other faithful scholars. In 2019, Gee reviewed the Church-owned Joseph Smith Papers volume on the Book of Abraham under the title “The Joseph Smith Papers Project Stumbles,” accusing its editors of deliberately excluding faithful Egyptologists. Even Jeff Lindsay, a sympathetic apologist, called the review “troubling.” The Papers editors responded that they were confident in the volume, and they confirmed only one of the errors Gee had alleged.<\/p>\n Sixth, and perhaps most telling, there is the matter of the translation itself. In the question-and-answer portion of a FAIR presentation reproduced on FAIR’s Book of Abraham topic page, Gee was asked how he explained the fact that Ritner’s translation of the Hor papyrus contradicted his own. His answer was candid to the point of self-defeat.<\/p>\n Hard to say that it contradicts mine because I haven’t published mine yet.<\/i><\/p>\n \u2014 John Gee, FAIR Conference question-and-answer session, FAIR “Book of Abraham” topic page<\/b><\/span><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n In the same answer, he acknowledged that the translations of Klaus Baer, Ritner, Hugh Nibley, and Michael Rhodes “don’t differ that much.” Consider what that concession means. Baer and Ritner were non-Latter-day Saint Egyptologists at the University of Chicago. Nibley and Rhodes were faithful Latter-day Saint scholars. All four agree on what the Hor papyrus says, and what it says has nothing to do with Abraham. The question of the Egyptian is, for practical purposes, closed. That is why the FAIR Friday<\/i> host’s question lands with such force: why does an Egyptologist spend sixteen minutes on scribal chronology instead of the Egyptian? The likeliest answer is that the Egyptian offers him no help.<\/p>\n
\nHas the Ex-Mormon Story Backwards<\/em><\/p>\nIntroduction: A Lecture Hall Verdict on People Who Weren’t in the Room<\/b><\/span><\/h2>\n
Part One: The Historical Setting \u2014 Mummies, Papyri, and a Prophet in Kirtland<\/b><\/span><\/h2>\n
Egyptomania Comes to Ohio<\/b><\/span><\/h3>\n
Why the Book of Abraham Carries So Much Weight<\/b><\/span><\/h3>\n
The Papyri Return \u2014 and the Verdict Arrives<\/b><\/span><\/h3>\n
The Apologetic Retreat<\/b><\/span><\/h3>\n
Part Two: Who Is John Gee? Testing the Credentials Against the Claims<\/b><\/span><\/h2>\n
What the Biographies Say<\/b><\/span><\/h3>\n
Where the Halo Exceeds the Evidence<\/b><\/span><\/h3>\n