Reformed Egyptian came from? I know it is in 1 Nephi, but does it appear in any other book contemporary to Joseph Smith's time?

I think the answer goes back to a discussion I once heard on the actual geographical location of the Book of Mormon story. Once person postulated that he believed the actual location of the Book of Mormon sites rested somewhere along the gray matter in Joseph Smith's head. I would imagine that's where "reformed Egyptian" came from as well. At bare minimum, if it wasn't Joseph Smith, then it was someone else's gray matter. However, this is why I accept the limited geography model. The term "limited" is simply a matter of scale.

habiff Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Reformed Egyptian came from? I know it is in 1
> Nephi, but does it appear in any other book
> contemporary to Joseph Smith's time?

From someone's backside. There is no such language.

In my opinion it shows the ignorance of Joseph Smith. Why would people living in Jerusalem, who leave Jerusalem and travel to a new world, who write a history for their posterity, write that history in a language and script that is foreign to their heritage, their native language, and everything they know? Why would they not just write it in Hebrew? I think it is because good ole Joe wanted to make what he was doing seem more exotic and mysterious and Hebrew simply isn't that exotic or mysterious so he claimed it was some unknown language called reformed Egyptian. Besides if he claimed it was written in Hebrew there were plenty of people who could have read and translated the gold plates and that wouldn't make him very special. The Rosetta Stone had been rediscovered in 1799 and in 1822 Jean-François Champollion announced the transliteration of the Egyptian script in France. So Egyptian was still a mysterious language to the world and it made him look "prophetic" to be able to translate something of Egyptian origin even if it was some fairy tale script called "reformed Egyptian".

Just part of the whole con-game he was playing.

I cast a wider net.

I'm convinced Smith was merely a collaborator, and that the bulk of the Book of Mormon was manufactured by Spalding and Rigdon.

Hebrew would have been a dead giveaway because it was a well-known language. Anything they wrote in hebrew might have been easily call-out by a hebrew expert.

"Reformed Egyptian" was therefore a way to simply make up a fake language, but still relate it to the story. A novice could easily think the jews kept some egyptian centuries after the exodus.
But we know the characters Smith wrote weren't reformed egyptian anyway because they were copied from some welsh shorthand I think.

Excellent point. Since he made up a bunch of characters and wrote it on the "anton script" or whatever it was, he figured no one would be able to debunk it. Now had he said it was in hebrew, he was probably well aware that he wouldn't be able to get away with that since there are and were many people that could read that language.

Great Wiki piece on it.

I especially liked this:

Standard language reference works contain no reference to "reformed Egyptian". No non-Mormon scholars acknowledge the existence of either a "reformed Egyptian" language or a "reformed Egyptian" script as it has been described in Mormon belief. For instance, in 1966, John A. Wilson, professor of Egyptology at the University of Chicago, wrote, "From time to time there are allegations that picture writing has been found in America… In no case has a professional Egyptologist been able to recognize these characters as Egyptian hieroglyphs. From our standpoint there is no such language as 'reformed Egyptian'." Klaus Baer, another Egyptologist at the University of Chicago, called the characters of the "Caractors" document nothing but "doodlings". An early-twentieth-century scholar said that the "Caractors" document looked more like "deformed English."

Love it, "Deformed English."

As noted, there is no reference to "reformed egyptian" until the BoM came into existence. The only "contemporary" books with those words are books related to Joseph Smith.


Mormon 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; but the Hebrew hath been altered by us also; and if we could have written in Hebrew, behold, ye would have had no imperfection in our record.

As it was explained to me, in RLDS classes, reformed
Egyptian was not a new or different language -- it was
vernacular or literary Egyptian, written in a New World
version of a hieratic or demotic script.

See the excerpts from Israel A. Smith's 1942 paper on the
subject, in the graphic about half-way down this page:

http://solomonspalding.com/SRP/saga/saga02b.htm

UD

Egyptian started out fine, getting good grades and playing trombone in the high school marching band, but as time went on, it began hanging out with the wrong kind of writing, like cuneiform early sanskrit, and soon was smoking, skippping PE class and being truant; finally it hit rock bottom, and after spending a horrific month in juvi' having to fight it with etruscan and hittite, straightened itself out and became reformed.

right out of pervert Joe Smith's warped mind.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UncZBWcIPL8

another question would be: how come the MORmONS NEVER talk about the Rosetta stone and what it means?



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/15/2013 12:04AM by lucky.