The fifth appendix to this book (and also some of the introductory material) is a heaping helping of hypocrisy and ad hominem. (There's an alliteration to make the Backyard Professor proud.) Some examples:
1) We're informed that Larson is "confused" because he can't make up his mind what he thinks of "long-time critic and insurance salesman" Edward Ashment.
2) We're also told that Joseph Smith's scholarly critics and his religious critics (apparently mutually exclusive categories for Smith) both believe that "there are no such persons as 'prophets'." I suspect this would be news to quite a few of Mormonism's "religious critics."
3) Smith complains that critics "engage in various speculations about the psychology of Mormons." Later he tells us that
Joseph Smith's critics do not base their objections to him on the book of Abraham. Those real objections are an entirely different and often unnamed (in the context of the book of Abraham) set of complaints. For example Dale Morgan's statement, "With my point of view on God, I am incapable of accepting the claims of Joseph Smith and the Mormons, be they however so convincing. If God does not exist, how can Joseph Smith's story have any possible validity? I will look everywhere for explanations except to the ONE explanation that is the position of the Church" [as quoted by Gary F. Novak, FRB, 8 no.1 (1996) p. 147, emphasis added.]
4) He says of Josiah Quincy's recollection (that Joseph Smith identified Abraham's signature on the papyrus), "it is clear that Quincy was exaggerating for effect. Another diarist present at the same interview tells us that Joseph Smith made no such claim." For Smith, Charles Francis Adams' silence apparently becomes an actual negation of Quincy's statement.
5) We're told that Wesley P. Walters was a "hired gun." Tanner and Marquardt are dismissed as "lapsed Mormons."
6) The entire Kirtland Egyptian Papers project is blamed on Warren Parrish (which is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard).
7) All diary entries which have Smith working on the Grammar or speaking positively about it are fabricated by Joseph's evil scribes, in a conspiracy involving at least Parrish, Phelps, and Cowdery. Every effort is made to discredit these men as dishonest apostates.
Examples could be multiplied, but I think that should suffice to make my point. The guy quite frankly got almost everything wrong with respect to historical material on the KEP and papyri. Yet he has the brass to tell us,
Here we must emphasize for the benefit of those critics of Joseph Smith still stuck on the EAG, or KEPA#1, that Joseph Smith did not write them and that it has been clearly shown that the text of the book of Abraham was laid down long before KEPA#1 (or2) or the EAG. Furthermore, it is clear that Smith himself put no stock in the EAG. Critics must realize that to continue to stonewall on these issues leaves them open to the worst charge of all: the obfuscation they claim for Joseph Smith! Once and for all, the EAG and KEPA#1 are not relevant to the source of the book of Abraham and Joseph Smith never thought the book arose from the little breathing permit. With the additional evidence that the book of Abraham text was hours worth of reading in its ms form in 1838, this die-hard claim of critics assumes a position somewhere outside the circle of wishful hoping. Like librarian Dale Morgan, any explanation must be accepted before Smith's.
The whole book actually isn't as bad as this appendix, by the way. He does very poorly at seeing the glaring flaws in Gee's and Nibley's arguments, and in some cases he actually attempts to expand upon those arguments. But that said, he does a great job connecting elements in the Book of Abraham to Joseph Smith's contemporary teachings, especially as recorded in his sermons and other scriptures. It at least makes for interesting and thought-provoking reading. But don't pick this book up unless you're ready to get hopping mad during some portions.
By the way, Smith refers to Gee's Seyffarth inference 8 times in the book. (For the lowdown on Seyffarth see here.) It is taken to be "very strong evidence" for the missing papyrus theory, and is even adduced as evidence that the missing text was the Book of Abraham. Like "the one that got away," this is a fish story that gets bigger and bigger over the course of the book.
PAGE 14: it is not possible to logically affirm that the missing portion does not contain the book of Abraham (in fact, an 1856 observer noted that the roll that once contained the breathing text, or at least Facsimile No. 3, continues with the notation "the beginning of the book of . . ."). [Gee, History, 1999.]
PAGE 17: there is very strong evidence that Joseph had other papyri and indeed that the Hor papyrus with Facsimile No. 1 contained another book [1856 entry in Appendix IV].
Page 155: Now, the original of Facsimile No. 3 is, based on observations of Gustavus Seyffarth in 1856, to be on the same roll of papyrus as P. Joseph Smith 1 and the breathings text, but that this roll was a very long one and following Fac. 3, contains words to the effect "the beginning of the book of . . . " [conclusion of the sentence unknown].
Page 159: An 1856 observation of what was apparently the roll from which Fac. 1 was cut shows it did contain Facsimile No. 3 and another text with the opening line "the beginning of the book of . . ." and was much longer than the breathing permit hypothesized by Klaus Baer [which in any case was possessed by Abel Combs at that point]. [See Appendix V, n50.; Gee, History, 1999.]
APPENDIX IV, PAGE 206: Gustavus Seyffarth, an expert in observing, if not in translating Egyptian script, sees the rolls and the Hor papyrus is observed to contain another book besides the book of breathings text.
APPENDIX V, PAGE 224: Indeed in 1856, an expert who examined part of the papyri had by Joseph Smith shows that the breathing permit was merely a small text attached to a larger one whose title is unknown (see JSCOM appendix IV).
APPENDIX V, PAGE 229: Was the book of Abraham contained on such a portion? Evidence points this way. See Appendix IV of JSCOM, under date 1856.
-CK