Reformed Egyptian

[græy]

I had a few thoughts I want to throw into the void. I apologize in advance because that does not really add anything new to the understood state of things, but I really just want to type this out somewhere.

I was listening to RFM's latest podcast where he and Bill Reel interview Patrick Mason. They spend most of the episode discussing the BoA, but it got me thinking about the BoM and "reformed Egyptian."

• Reformed Egyptian isn't and never was a thing. If it had ever been used as described in the BoM we would have examples of it from both ancient America and ancient Jerusalem. Instead we have absolutely nothing.
• Egyptian is not some magical alphabet capable of squeezing massive amounts of information into single characters as JS posited on many occasions. It is hardly any more efficient than hebrew at all. JS possibly made this claim assuming that Egyptian was one of the oldest languages on earth and therefore somehow closer to the "adamic" language which obviously makes it more better in every conceivable way.
• Recording large amounts of data/text on metal plates was not a thing. Metal was expensive and hard to record on. The few examples of writing on metal that we do have are plaques, single page notices, or short records of valuable items. If they used plates as described in BoM we should have examples from both ancient America and ancient Jerusalem. Instead we have absolutely nothing.
• According to Christopher Rollston, "Literacy in ancient Israel and Judah was probably 15 or 20 percent of the population, at most." Which means, if Nephi could read/write in Hebrew he was already in the severe minority. If he could read/write in two languages (Hebrew and Egyptian) then he would have been one of the most educated people in the entire region.
• Codices were not a thing in or around 600BC. In fact, the format did not exist at all until the Romans started using wax tablets in codex form around 1CE. Within 50-100 years (50-100 CE) papyrus codices began to appear. Metal codices though, have never shown up in any way until Mormonism made them a thing and people started making replicas.
• The bible as a single collection did not exist in 600BCE and certainly not in codex form.

End of rant. Thank you for listening.

[Red Ryder]

Great post.

I’ll never understand the likes of guys like Patrick Mason who seem intelligent enough but never pause and think through the things you wrote above.

Unfortunately these things are dismissed by assuming that God calls very special people to do his work for him. That explains away this type of thought.

Which means, if Nephi could read/write in Hebrew he was already in the severe minority. If he could read/write in two languages (Hebrew and Egyptian) then he would have been one of the most educated people in the entire region.

God also needed an uneducated boy to bring forth the gospel and therefore blessed him with an ability to learn reformed Egyptian.

[Just This Guy]

A few thought that occurred to me after that episode:

1. The BoM states it was written using reformed Egyptian. Even in the day, there is no record of that being a real language, let along one that is studied and understood. This makes the whole thing with Charles Anton very suspect. Ignoring that Anton himself denied it ever happened. How was someone supposed to be able to understand and read Reformed Egyptian to verify the translation when no one had ever heard of it, nor able to translate it?

2. Even if Reformed Egyptain existed, How would the Nephite version be anywhere near the Egyptain version? One thing I read a while ago is that normal language evolution will have about 50% of a language drop from you and be replaced over about 400 years. If Nephi left Jerusalem in 600BCE, Their version of the language would have then started evolving along a different path than it would be in the middle east. So in the 1000 years until Moroni takes over, the language would have had 2.5 half-lifes, so about 82-85% would have fallen out of use and been replaced. This language would have very little resemblance to the origional language. So if someone trained to read middle eastern Reformed Egyptain, they would not be able to translate the Nephite version of the language and would say so.

[Yobispo]

This is why I love coming back here.

Along the lines of authenticity, COB is really pushing the 1st Vision bicentennial and if Ballard's recent video about it is any indication of what's to come we can expect them to double-down on the PoGP version with all of its problems. My opinion is that they have moved into a new chapter, the last chapter was rolling out the essays and concluding with Saints. Now that much of the riff-raff have left, they are going right back to the old stuff. Look at the resources they're pouring into the BoM video series. Sound like they're backing off the BoM???

The next 5 years, with Nelson in charge and doing his thing on one side - and places like reddit, podcasts and facebook groups growing on the other side, it's going to be fascinating to watch.

[jfro18]

This is a great thread - thanks, græy!

[Apologeticsislying]

This is a great thread, thanks for starting it and all contributing to it. It is just fascinating that no matter what area we look at in Mormonism there are serious and deadly issues about its reality, about its viability. The more one thinks on that the more amazing it is that people believe anything of it. It is literally all on fire, burning down!

[Rob4Hope]

It is literally all on fire, burning down!

I've been gone for a while, but occasionally poke my head in and have a look-see.

Apologetics,....your comment above summarizes what I have felt for quite a while. I can't help but MARVEL over my TBM days. I caught myself, unfortunately (or fortunately?) a few days ago feeling nostalgic about the 80s. I was a TBM back then, and everything was working out: I was in the elite crowd in SLC; I had the power of God behind me for every answer I could possibly want; I was politically active with the John Birch Society and felt like all HELL was gonna blast the USA; I was EQP; I was able to hide my masturbation activities; I was moving up in the business world...etc. it was a good time!

And the last thing I did was smell smoke coming from the COB and all associated groups.

Now I find myself looking at things so much more pragmatically, and DAMN I sometimes miss drinking the cool-aid with the slow burn. Why?...because there is less stress involved when your head is in the sand and you don't think critically or objectively about anything. When you are getting cooked ever so slowly, ever so 'cuningly', you don't KNOW you are ready to pop. But that 'not knowing' had a kindof blissful nothingness to it after all...

After having that nostalgic moment, I had a fast moment right on it's heals: "There is no going back!".

I can't even consider turning my brain off and going back to TSCC.

I think this burn they are going through will continue. GAWD I wish I could have a candid talk with BRM right now about his Traveling Caravan talk. It would be interesting to see him get hot under the color and show his true self as the bully and know-it-all he is.

[Anon70]

I can't even consider turning my brain off and going back to TSCC.

Every now and then my DH says something that makes me realize he's waiting for me to go back to believing. It's a bit startling that he doesn't realize there is no going back. I listened to the Mormon Discussions Jana Reiss podcast yesterday and at one point she mentions something about.....the odds of going back to full activity/belief for people that have had a faith crisis are pretty low.

[Mackman]

Mormonism is like Donald Trump calling fact fake news. In short the BOM is a bunch of B.S.

[Emower]

I can't even consider turning my brain off and going back to TSCC.

Every now and then my DH says something that makes me realize he's waiting for me to go back to believing. It's a bit startling that he doesn't realize there is no going back. I listened to the Mormon Discussions Jana Reiss podcast yesterday and at one point she mentions something about.....the odds of going back to full activity/belief for people that have had a faith crisis are pretty low.

Not my DW, but others in my family I think have that hope pretty strong, especially as I have become less and less angry, and more willing to shrug things off and say, "yeah, maybe." But the odds of me ever returning are close to zero, and the odds of ever toeing a line that is close to the church line are exactly zero.

[Anon70]

I can't even consider turning my brain off and going back to TSCC.

Every now and then my DH says something that makes me realize he's waiting for me to go back to believing. It's a bit startling that he doesn't realize there is no going back. I listened to the Mormon Discussions Jana Reiss podcast yesterday and at one point she mentions something about.....the odds of going back to full activity/belief for people that have had a faith crisis are pretty low.

Not my DW, but others in my family I think have that hope pretty strong, especially as I have become less and less angry, and more willing to shrug things off and say, "yeah, maybe." But the odds of me ever returning are close to zero, and the odds of ever toeing a line that is close to the church line are exactly zero.

This is me too. I just do it all quietly now. My plan is that when my youngest is an adult, I bow out. I've hinted about that to my DH but recently have thought I need to be more direct in case he really is thinking I'll "come back".....

[Rob4Hope]

The church has made so many changes i dont even know if i would recognize it if i went back.

I still remember going to primary on Tuesday...and eating lunch before going back to sacrament meeting...and slitting my throat if i talked about names and symbols.

What has TSCC morphed into?


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[græy]

Sorry to drag up this old thread, but I was thinking in the shower and want to type this out. It's okay, I have a towel on my head...

I mentioned in the OP that according to Dr. Christopher Rollston literacy of ancient Isreal was 15-20% at best. Keep in mind that means only 1/5 could read or write in Hebrew.

Similarly, the literacy rate in ancient Egypt has been estimated to be 1-5%, though some also put the number as high as 15%. There is however, consensus that the vast majority of literate Egyptians were scribes or priests specifically trained for their job.

Now, if people growing up immersed in their own culture, constantly surrounded by their own common language, only had a 1 in 6 chance of learning to read, what are the odds that any of those people would learn to read a 2nd - COMPLETELY FOREIGN - language? By completely foreign I mean that their writing systems had no overlap, no commonality, no shortcuts to learning. It had to be extremely rare. Lehi's family must have been the most educated family in all of Jerusalem!

Now swim to the Americas...

Mosiah 2:8

And it came to pass that he began to speak to his people from the tower; and they could not all hear his words because of the greatness of the multitude; therefore he caused that the words which he spake should be written and sent forth among those that were not under the sound of his voice, that they might also receive his words.

Nephites were literate enough that he could simply issue an order and have hundreds (thousands?) of copies of his latest lecture printed up, distributed, and legitimately expect them to be understood and have impact. This says nothing about the difficulties of actually reproducing texts on a large scale.

Alma, preached to the Zoramites and asked...

33:3 Do ye remember to have read what Zenos...

and

33:12 Do ye believe those scriptures which have been written by them of old?

This implies that these Zoramites, who were extremely poor and probably the least likely to be literate, were still presumed by Alma to be literate in at least Hebrew and likely both Hebrew and "Reformed Egyptian" since that is the language they preferred for scripture.

Fast forward to the last Nephite (TM)...

Moroni 9:32-33

32 And now, behold, we have written this record according to our knowledge, in the characters which are called among us the reformed Egyptian, being handed down and altered by us, according to our manner of speech.

33 And if our plates had been sufficiently large we should have written in Hebrew;

How many of us learned foreign languages on our mission? How many of us who speak a foreign language have successfully taught that 2nd language to our children? How about our children's children? I'm guessing that unless we disobeyed doctrine and married someone from our foreign mission area, our children did not pick up on our 2nd language skills.

Humans are typically somewhat lazy... er... efficient. I want my kids to succeed, so we have invested a good deal of time teaching them to read English. However, I do not have time to teach, nor do they have the patience to learn Japanese, even though I speak it and can read/write a little. Without Japanese being spoken around them it would be a futile effort. And I have WAY more resources to accomplish that than the Nephites had to propagate a presumably unspoken Egyptian language for around 1000 years.

So not only did the Nephites do the seemingly impossible by teaching their youth an unspoken 2nd language for a 1000 hours years, they did it on such a large scale so as to greatly exceed the literacy rates of both their home Isreal and the non-home Egypt who couldn't even accomplish the same feat for a single language.

/end rant 2

[Red Ryder]

The Book of Mormon falls apart when you apply critical thinking from a modern world perspective.

Maybe the translation rock in the hat gave Joseph the impression that language was fluid and paper was plenty to write down the sermons for all the attendees. So he translated by the power of God the real events as described in the book.

Or Joseph made it up.

[Hagoth]

To me the bigger problem is that they wrote in Egyptian because there wasn't sufficient space on the plates to write in Hebrew. The glaring problem here is that Hebrew is a very concise written language, much more so than English, while Egyptian is just the opposite. However, some people in the early 19th century, including Joseph Smith, falsely believed that Egyptian writing was some sort of shorthand that packed entire sentences into individual characters. They were wrong. Going from Hebrew to Egyptian to save space is an entirely bogus concept. But, of course, Joseph Smith couldn't have known that since Champollion's cracking of the code wasn't yet common knowledge.

[moksha]

To me, the bigger problem is that they wrote in Egyptian because there wasn't sufficient space on the plates to write in Hebrew. The glaring problem here is that Hebrew is a very concise written language, much more so than English, while Egyptian is just the opposite.

Oh yeah? What if Joseph's seer stone was hardcoded for Reformed Egyptian algorithms hidden in unseen dimensions?

[Hagoth]

To me, the bigger problem is that they wrote in Egyptian because there wasn't sufficient space on the plates to write in Hebrew. The glaring problem here is that Hebrew is a very concise written language, much more so than English, while Egyptian is just the opposite.

Oh yeah? What if Joseph's seer stone was hardcoded for Reformed Egyptian algorithms hidden in unseen dimensions?

Dang, you really painted me into a corner there, Moksha.

[Angel]

It's not the first time a religious person has created their own language...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speaking_in_tongues

[Hermey]

Here's a little video instruction for all y'all on how to speak in tongues. You can't make this stuff up....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBIDsFeGESc

[moksha]

To me, the bigger problem is that they wrote in Egyptian because there wasn't sufficient space on the plates to write in Hebrew. The glaring problem here is that Hebrew is a very concise written language, much more so than English, while Egyptian is just the opposite.

Oh yeah? What if Joseph's seer stone was hardcoded for Reformed Egyptian algorithms hidden in unseen dimensions?

Dang, you really painted me into a corner there, Moksha.

Just trying out some master's level apologetics.