And it came to pass that the priests laid violence upon me, that they might slay me also, as they did those virgins upon this altar; and that you may have a knowledge of this altar, I will refer you to the representation at the commencement of this record . . . That you may have an understanding of these gods, I have given you the fashion of them in the figures at the beginning, which manner of figures is called by the Chaldeans Rahleenos, which signifies hieroglyphics. (Abraham 1:12, 14)
In his excellent article on the facsimiles of the Book of Abraham, Kevin Barney presents the following explanation of Abraham 1:12, 14 in light of his J-Red theory of the redaction of the Book of Abraham:
I believe the Semitic Adaptation theory has the potential to put the “missing papyrus” theory on a sounder footing. John Gee has suggested that there may have been another text on the roll containing the Book of Breathings. The Semitic Adaptation theory explains why the text of the Book of Abraham may have been appended to a Book of Breathings: because J-red intended to adapt the vignettes of the Book of Breathings as illustrations for his text, the Book of Abraham. This placement of the text would also explain why the back-references to Facsimile 1 as being at “the commencement of this record” and at “the beginning” (which were meant to refer to the beginning of the scroll, not the beginning of the book) may have been misunderstood and led those involved in the production of the Kirtland Egyptian Papers, in their attempt to reverse engineer the Egyptian language, to begin with the Book of Breathings itself at the beginning of the scroll.
