LDS Joseph Smith's Claim of an Apostasy is a Lie

[mmksparbud]

dzheremi---

I have never heard better explanations of all this than what you have been presenting. Thank you!

 

[dzheremi]

Hey, thanks! I knew my Linguistics degree would come in handy for something eventually. Didn't quite foresee this, but hey...any time I get to apply it to anything, I'm grateful. Hahaha.

 

[Peter1000]

All cronies???!!!!-----not one witness not related nor a buddie?---We follow the bible precisely because it is the word of God. We follow it to not end up believing in the imaginations of those who would demolish His word and replace it with their own. God gave us His word to keep us from going off into paths not of His making. A whole throng people--reportedly 1-2 million -- saw the tablets of stone and the U and T--The U and T were worn publicly. Even the most sacred of articles--0the Ark itself-- was at times taken out in public and viewed by all--as in war, it went before them. And it was captured and then returned--0seen even by the enemy. No one has seen those plates, not even your witnesses for they plainly state they saw them with their "spiritual eyes"-not physically, where they could touch them.
There is no High Priest save Jesus Christ. Not even the Catholic church makes such a claim--they have priests, with their Pope--but even he has never been referred to as a High Priest---the vicar of Christ is what they call him---and they have first dib's on what to call a priest, they started long before your church did. Read Hebrews, prayerfully, asking fir the Holy Spirit--- You can come to no other conclusion-- not if you love God as you say you do.

You know for a fact that Mormons do not demolish His Word and replace it with their own. You know that I read a study and believe in the bible, but yet you make this absurd statement. After all these months and you still make this absurd statement.

If God wants HP's in this day, He has the right to have them. He has chosen to have them and you and all your bible scholars can not stop it. Your tradition is shown to be short sighted. Besides it says no where in the bible that Jesus is the only HP. It says no where in the bible that Jesus could not have another HP on the earth.

So it boils down again to: it doesn't matter what you or your bible scholars think what God should or should not do. God is revealing things to the Mormon leaders to guide and direct His church on this earth today. I believe that, and you don't, but you will see as the days move into years that the Mormon church will just continue to grow and continue to be a wonderful influence in the world.

 

[Peter1000]

Hey, thanks! I knew my Linguistics degree would come in handy for something eventually. Didn't quite foresee this, but hey...any time I get to apply it to anything, I'm grateful. Hahaha.

It's wonderful to have such a degree. I wish I could say the same. But in the case of JS and the BOM and the BOA your degree will not do you a lot of good. Sorry. Only God could bring these documents and have them translated into English and he did it through an unlearned man with a 3rd grade education and no linquistic degrees or doctorates.

If you read what JS translated, it is unreasonable to assume that he did it from his own learning. The books are amazingly complicated, yet simple enough for even children to read and understand. They are a treasure and a miracle directly from God and it is because of the BOM that JS was instantly separated from other preachers of his day and the reason thousands of people thronged to come and follow him as a true prophet of God, not seen since John the Revelator in 110AD. It is the reason that nearly 16,000,000 people are in the church today and growing.
Ever growing.

The winner in all this book writing is Jesus. All that JS translated centered around the man Jesus. He appeared to JS, and told him that these things were going to happen. He still appears to prophets today, to lead and guide the church in today's turbulent times. Be thankful that there are prophets among us again, like they have been among the people since the beginning of the earth. That's how God does things, and you can confirm that I am right by reading the OT & NT.

Put your degree to work and help us find that what JS said was feasible according to what Egyptian information we have, then your application will be directed in the right way, and the knowledge of Jesus will be increased exponentially around the world.

 

[mmksparbud]

There was no such thing as several High Priests at a time--only one at s time---And Jesus Christ can not be replaced---He is our High Priest forever.
And your church does very much demolish the word of God and replaces it with the words of JS---a new thread was just started on that very theme. First you claim Christians apostatized and JS had to bring in his writings to bring the truth--you say God's Holy word is corrupted and replace it with the writings of JS. You change the way of salvation from faith based free gift to works based-nothing is free. You change the very creation of man from God created Adam at creation week to God physically procreated with a heavenly mother to produce children which existed before being brought forth on earth -which included Adam and Eve. You have to change the clearly stated word of God by making it of no effect in order to replace it with your own ideas, including the High Priest. Yes-0you demolish His word to the point many Mormons when they leave, leave religion all together because you demolished their belief in the word of God. That is why a forum for exMormons is being started., to get support and back into what the word of God really says.


Heb 7:11 If therefore perfection were by the Levitical priesthood, (for under it the people received the law,) what further need was there that another priest should rise after the order of Melchisedec, and not be called after the order of Aaron?
Heb 7:12 For the priesthood being changed, there is made of necessity a change also of the law.
Heb 7:13 For he of whom these things are spoken pertaineth to another tribe, of which no man gave attendance at the altar.
Heb 7:14 For it is evident that our Lord sprang out of Juda; of which tribe Moses spake nothing concerning priesthood.
Heb 7:15 And it is yet far more evident: for that after the similitude of Melchisedec there ariseth another priest,
Heb 7:16 Who is made, not after the law of a carnal commandment, but after the power of an endless life.
Heb 7:17 For he testifieth, Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec.

Heb 7:22 By so much was Jesus made a surety of a better testament.
Heb 7:23 And they truly were many priests, because they were not suffered to continue by reason of death:
Heb 7:24 But this man, because he continueth ever, hath an unchangeable priesthood.
Heb 7:25 Wherefore he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them.
Heb 7:26 For such an high priest became us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and made higher than the heavens;
Heb 7:27 Who needeth not daily, as those high priests, to offer up sacrifice, first for his own sins, and then for the people's: for this he did once, when he offered up himself.
Heb 7:28 For the law maketh men high priests which have infirmity; but the word of the oath, which was since the law, maketh the Son, who is consecrated for evermore.

 

[dzheremi]

Put your degree to work and help us find that what JS said was feasible according to what Egyptian information we have, then your application will be directed in the right way, and the knowledge of Jesus will be increased exponentially around the world.

I'm sorry, but no. We're not talking theology here, Peter. I wouldn't be a very good linguist if I answered questions about language by simply saying "God did it" when presented with evidence contrary to whatever theory I have.

Faith and science do not necessarily have to contradict (depending on what it is you're looking at, and how you intend to answer whatever questions you're investigating). Gregor Mendel, whose experiments with plants laid the foundation for modern Genetics, was an Augustinian monk, if my memory serves me. The monks in Egypt invented a form of writing that is essentially the precursor to Braille which allowed the blind to read over a millennia before the invention of modern Braille. The current Pope Tawadros II of the Coptic Orthodox Church has a degree in Pharmacy (it is common for Copts to be doctors or pharmacists). There are many more examples like this. But if you are going to claim things that have been proven incorrect, the answer is not then to say "I'm going to use my scientific training to come up with some kind of theory that makes my religion correct." Science doesn't comfortably serve religion any more easily than religion comfortably serves science. It's not even that the two are 'separate' necessarily (for example, the existence of several peoples who are written of in the OT has been substantiated in our own time by linguistic studies of the ancient languages of Anatolia and the wider Near East, as was the case with the Hittite language in the early 20th century), only that when you attempt to subordinate one to the other you end up compromising both.

Put simply, it is not feasible to reconcile LDS claims about Reformed Egyptian with the information that we have about Egyptian. You either need to come up with different evidence than what you currently have and submit it to the wider scientific community for peer review (I'm afraid LDS and BYU-affiliated journals will not cut it if you want your claims to be accepted by people outside of the LDS community), revise your claims to bring them into conformity with the evidence that is accepted by scientists and other specialists in the relevant fields (so not just linguistics/Reformed Egyptian, but also DNA studies of Native Americans, Mayan cultural studies, and so on), or cease claiming these things as being literally true in the first place. I would imagine that each of these options is unpalatable in different ways for different reasons, but that's the reality of what we're talking about if the idea is to have LDS claims taken seriously by people who study such things for a living.

And just in case anyone -- Mormon or otherwise -- might be wondering, I'd be saying the exact same thing to "Young Earth Creationists" and similar folks in more mainstream Christian churches (I've met a very small number of such people in my own church, and have said as much to them in person). Though I lack the requisite background to evaluate their claims about Biology, Geology, and evolution as easily as I can LDS claims about 'Reformed Egyptian', the basic principle remains the same: Holy texts of a given religion are just that, while scientific textbooks or journals are scientific textbooks or journals. I suppose in a way it could be argued to be natural to want to back up your religion with scientific evidence (I'd imagine it makes you feel more secure in it), but this becomes a very tricky endeavor the more your religious claims encroach upon actually testable/falsifiable scientific matters. Say that Jesus Christ our God was crucified on the cross, died, and resurrected three days later, and you're unlikely to rouse any disinterested (read: non-Christian) scientist to say anything more than "Okay; that's what you believe", because they know that's not a testable/falsifiable claim in the first place. Say that He actually spoke Italian and was a 22-foot tall Samoan woman, and...no. There's no possible way that is correct, given what evidence we have of first-century Palestine (where all available evidence says He lived), the type of people who lived there at that time, what languages they spoke, their geographical spread, their physical characteristics, material culture, etc.

 

[withwonderingawe]

Joseph seemed to claim that he could read Egyptian when producing the book I mentioned earlier containing his description and translation of the 'Reformed Egyptian' characters. T

As I said before, the alphabet was done after the Book of Abraham was finished and a group of men tried to compare the different words back and forth. There was no claim of inspiration.

Also, I don't know what you're trying to say by pointing out what is written in Aramaic papyri found in Egypt. Aramaic is a Semitic language, but Egyptian is not, so the part in your sentence where you say "it has been found in Aramaic papyri in Egypt" and follow that by saying "Nephi is also felt to be Egyptian" makes no sense, since Egyptian and Aramaic are two different languages.

Etymology

The most likely derivation of the name is EGYPTIAN nfr "good, beautiful." (JG)[1] The final r in EGYPTIAN had dropped out of pronunciation about a thousand years earlier,[2] and it is attested as a personal name at the time of LEHI.[3]

"In Semitic languages, two directions exist for seeking the etymology of this important Book of Mormon name, nph/ḥ or nv̄ p or n alephp. Historical and current LDS pronunciation of the name would favor the latter, reading the ph as one phoneme [f], rather than as two, [p] and [h/ḥ]. However, I am unaware of any root in Semitic corresponding with nv̄/ʿp. Both npḥ, “to breathe, blow” (JAT, JH), and nph, “to discard, banish, reject” (JH) exist in West Semitic, though the latter is not attested in North-west Semitic (JH). Nap_pnu means “anblasen, entzünden; aufgehen” and appears in the form niphu “Aufleuchten, Entbrennen” and refers metaphorically to sun up and star up. It occurs in the feminine names i-na-ni-ip-pni-ša-al-si-iš and i-na-nippni(SAR)-ša-al-si-iš (Stamm, ANG, 200). The form may be related to the biblical Zimri/Omri and Book of Mormon LEHI/LIMHI, etc. (PN). The root also occurs in the Akkadian term nappahu"smith".

An equally or even more promising derivation would come from EGYPTIAN nfw (later nfy), “captain, skipper, chief of sailors” (Copticne(e)f, neeb), from meaning “breathe, blow at” (RFS, JH, JAT).[4] Nibley wrote that “Nfy was the name of an EGYPTIAN captain,” implying a PN rather than a word meaning “captain” (LID, 27; see also ABM, 290); the term nfy is attested as an EGYPTIAN name but not after the New Kingdom.[5] See also EGYPTIAN nfʿ=i, “I am driven away” (passive sdm=f) (EHA). If correct, the name could be metonymic, in view of NEPHI’s forced departure from his homeland (JAT). This is unlikely because the so-called passive sdm=f is a circumstantial past passive meaning in this case "since I had been driven away." It would have to be a dependent clause and is not nominalized.

Nibley notes the PN nfy on at least 10 Nabatean inscriptions. In one case, nfy is the father of one lmy, where the y is defective and may, according to Jaussen, have been n, hence LAMAN (if it is really y, cf. Book of Mormon LAMAH—JAT), while in another hnfy appears with the name mrmlw, for which cf. MORMON (ABM, 290 and esp. fn. 28 [in the reprint by FARMS; fn. 27 in the 1964 Deseret edition] to Chap. 22).

The Aramaic GN npʾ occurs in the Elephantine documents (7:4) (EHA)....."

Footnotes

1. John Gee, "A Note on the Name Nephi," JBMS 1/1 (1992): 189-191; John Gee, “Four Suggestions on the Origin of the Name Nephi,” in Pressing Forward with the Book of Mormon, ed. John W. Welch, and Melvin J. Thorne (Provo, Utah: FARMS, 1999), 1-5.
2. Jump up↑ William F. Edgerton, "Stress, Vowel Quality, and Syllable Division in Egyptian," Journal of Near Eastern Studies 6/1 (1947): 10-17.
3. Jump up↑ Ranke, Die ägyptischen Personennamen 1:194.
4. Jump up↑ Robert F. Smith proposes that EGYPTIAN nfw is cognate with West Semitic npḥ but this is doubted by JG as Semitic ḥ does not become w in EGYPTIAN.

1. John Gee has a PHD in Egyptology from Yale, (I don't know why but I can't get the numbers to go away.)

" As a HEBREW feminine personal name SARIAH is attested in the Aramaic papyri found in Elephantine, EGYPT, D9.14.5 and C3.15.4, where it is written śryh brt [...] hrmn and śry[h br]t hwš‘ br hrmn respectively.[2] Although the language of the documents is Aramaic, the names are in fact HEBREW. Additionally, the name śryhw occurs on biblical period seals.[3] (PYH and SDR)"

Footnotes;
2 Jump up↑ See Nahman Avigad and Benjamin Sass, Corpus of West Semitic Stamp Seals (Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sociences and Humanities, 1997), 122, 134, 163,189, and 237.
3 See Nahman Avigad and Benjamin Sass, Corpus of West Semitic Stamp Seals (Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sociences and Humanities, 1997), 122, 134, 163,189, and 237.

https://onoma.lib.byu.edu/index.php/SARIAH

 

[BigDaddy4]

Imagine that, 136 years ago Joseph was describing an app that I can now down load for $10.

There's a Reformed Egyptian translation app???

 

[withwonderingawe]

Aramaic is a Semitic language, but Egyptian is not, so the part in your sentence where you say "it has been found in Aramaic papyri in Egypt" and follow that by saying "Nephi is also felt to be Egyptian" makes no sense, since Egyptian and Aramaic are two different languages.

It's okay, people enter changed their names all the time.

Lehi may have married a Jewish woman whose family lived Elephantine. In his dealings with Egyptians he may have named a son after someone.

Etymology
Though LAMAN is quite likely from the Semitic triliteral root LMN, it is found only once as a proper name mentioned in a Lihyanite inscription. Lihyanite was a language spoken (and written) in the ancient northwest Arabian Peninsula in the mid- first millennium b.c.

makes since if Lehi was traveling and trading.

Lemuel One may compare the Book of Mormon PN LEMUEL with biblical Hebrew PN lĕmūʾel, LEMUEL, Proverbs 31:1, 4, composed of lĕmôplus ʾēl, meaning "belonging to God,"[1] and possibly analogous to the biblical PN lāʾēl, “belonging to God,” in Numbers 3:24.[2] Note the Edomite PN LEMUEL in the text “The Words of LEMUEL, King of Massa."[3]

A non Mormon website say it is a second name for Solomon

Sam is argued over, some say it's a short form of Samuel. Nibley says it's and Egyption word for uniter and other's say the Arabic pronunciation of NOAH’s son Shem is SAM
https://onoma.lib.byu.edu/index.php/SAM

As a business man Lehi would have used all of these different langues and that's ok. His last two sons are clearly Hebrew names Jacob and Benjamin.

 

[withwonderingawe]

There's a Reformed Egyptian translation app???

Nothing is impossible with God!

Really it is quite amazing, the instrument which was used to do most of the translating was described " two stones which were fastened into the two rims of a bow" what does that mean? No one gave any other explanation. There was also the Liahona which seem to have a GPS signal which would turn off if they didn't behave themselves. It would give them messages from God also. Now I have it all wrapped up into one, I got app for maps, I can translate if needs be and my scriptures are on there too. Joseph was so ahead of his time!

 

[mmksparbud]

Everything you quote is from BYU---not exactly credible info---they have to protect their interest. And then there is speculation--Lehi MAY HAVE married a Jewish woman who lived in Elephantine. That is not linguistics. You have provided nothing that contradicts what dzheremi said.

 

[dzheremi]

Again, WWA, Egyptian is not a Semitic language. All that stuff giving Nephi this or that derivation via Semitic is pretty irrelevant, though it may be useful in establishing the place of an Egyptian form relative to other members of Afroasiatic (which is not what you are trying to do by claiming that it is specifically Egyptian, I take it).

Looking at the Coptic, ⲛⲉϥ (nef) does mean 'sailor' (Crum 238b). I could find no evidence that it means 'captain, skipper, chief of sailors', though perhaps the BYU members linked to in your passage don't use standard reference works like Crum's dictionary (don't know why; everyone else does, and it has been republished several times since its initial publication in the 1930s, since no one has surpassed it since then).

So what am I supposed to make of this, exactly? For one thing, all of your sources are either BYU/LDS-affiliated, which are not scholarly (I'm not saying people from BYU or the LDS community can't be scholars, only that they'd have to publish something outside of this sphere to be taken seriously by non-LDS people), or appear to be claiming things contradicted by non-LDS sources, like Crum. I did look up the non-LDS footnotes and in the one reference I could find online (Ranke's book of personal names, which is quite good at first blush) it does seem that nf-w appears as a personal name, with the variant nfw-j. In Coptic, noufi means 'good'; the qualitative form retains the final [r] that one of your sources says dropped out by a certain point ('a thousand years earlier' than when exactly?), yielding "noufer". Neither of these sound like what I've heard LDS people call your book's protagonist, "Nephi" (pronounced like Nee-fai, hence my earlier attempt to give it some kind of Egyptian etymology along those lines). The problem with the attempted Egyptian etymology here is that if your source is right that Nephi appeared as a personal name not after the New Kingdom, then it would have to have fallen out of use by the end of the 11th century BC, as the New Kingdom itself lasted from 16th century BC to the 11th century BC. All LDS sources I've seen say that Nephi lived in the 6th century BC, which is five centuries after this name would've stopped appearing in Egyptian records. So again, it's hard to see how your claims are supported by your sources as I'm presuming you want them to be.

Readers of this thread, which do you think is more likely: That this Nephi person would've had an Egyptian name which would have been unknown as a personal name in that language starting hundreds of years before he was ever born, or that this nfw-j/noufi/Nephi thing is pure coincidence (and something of a stretch, too) and its significance to LDS scholars says a lot more about the religious claims that they are trying to prove than anything scientific?

Personally, I'm going with the second option, which again is fine. Just stop trying to present your book as being historically and scientifically grounded and we don't need to be at loggerheads over anything. It is nobody's business if LDS people want to believe and preach that an Israelite with an anachronistic Egyptian name came to North America and became a founder of and prophet to a great civilization there is absolutely zero evidence of, so long as LDS recognize that this is what they are doing. I mean, I believe that a virgin was chosen by God to bear the Son of God who became incarnate, lived, preached, was crucified on the cross, died, and was resurrected after three days, and there is exactly zero physical evidence for any of that, either. There is, as I understand it (not an anthropologist here), quite a bit of evidence for the existence of Jesus as a man in first century Palestine, who was at least known to non-Christian writers of his day and immediately afterwards as a leader of a community which emerged from first century Messianic Jewish movements, and who was eventually crucified by the Romans. Beyond that, these are all faith claims, for which there is zero scientific evidence, and there will never be any forthcoming, because...well, that's not how science works. The incarnation, the resurrection, etc. are not scientifically falsifiable. Therefore they are non-scientific by their very nature. So believe me, I am sympathetic to the situation that LDS people find themselves in. It's a place where all religious people have to come and find their own peace eventually.

So just as I am as a Coptic Orthodox Christian, if I were a Mormon, I imagine I would have to be content with those aspects of my faith that are similarly not scientifically falsifiable, and leave the actual science to actual scientists, not self-interested propagators of the Mormon narrative as science or history (linguistics, genetics, etc.) -- because it clearly isn't that.

 

[withwonderingawe]

WWA, Egyptian is not a Semitic language.

Nobody said it was but that Lehi spoke different languages, why is that so hard to understand?

 

[withwonderingawe]

In Abraham 1 he gives a list of gods ;

For their hearts were set to do evil, and were wholly turned to the god of Elkenah, and the god of Libnah, and the god of Mahmackrah, and the god of Korash, and the god of Pharaoh, king of Egypt;

Some Mormons have bent over backwards trying to make something out of these names but the answer is very simple. These are not the names of the gods but are either people or place names of the those who worshiped the gods.

Compare it with Ex 4 “ the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” Abraham is not a god but Yahweh is the God of Abraham.

Joshua 10:29
Then Joshua passed from Makkedah, and all Israel with him, unto Libnah, and fought against Libnah:

Elkanah is the name of Hannah’s husband in Samuel 1 but this takes place hundreds of years before that, but it shows there were similar names. On the other hand it might be a place name. “And the Lord broke down the altar of Elkenah, and of the gods of the land, and utterly destroyed”

So these gods we see under the lion bed in facsimile 1, the four sons of Horus, are the gods worshiped by these people.

*The god of the Pharaoh was Sobek and his idol was a crocodile, in facsimile 1 of the Book of Abraham, Joseph correctly identifies him as “The idolatrous god of Pharaoh”

There is another odd name mentioned in Abr 1 Shagreel. We do not know if it is a place or person. Abraham says his god is the sun and we know Ra was the Egyptian sun god. Ra was merged with Sobek and became Sobek-Ra. He was depicted as a man with a crocodile head and then a round disk of Ra over his head.

Abr 1
9 And it came to pass that the priest made an offering unto the god of Pharaoh, and also unto the god of Shagreel, even after the manner of the Egyptians. Now the god of Shagreel was the sun.

 

[withwonderingawe]

so we can tell what he thought Egyptian was, and especially considering that the period of time these people were supposed to have existed and written in Egyptian ('Reformed' or whatever kind) extends well into the Coptic period, it is relatively easy to compare the kinds of things found in Joseph's text with any reputable Coptic dictionary or grammar.

LETS SAY IT AGAIN; THE ALPHABET CREATED IN THE KIRTLAND PAPERS WAS JUST SOME DIFFERENT PEOPLE PLAYING AROUND WITH THE SCROLLS AND TRYING TO LINE THEM UP WITH WHAT WAS IN THE SCROLL THE BOOK OF ABRAHAM CAME FROM. MOST OF IT DOES NOT EVEN COME FROM JOSEPH SMITH BUT OTHER MEN WHO WERE JUST CURIOUS.

YOU ARE MAKING A BIG DEAL ABOUT NOTHING!

 

[dzheremi]

1. Why are you yelling? There's nothing in this conversation that requires or is enhanced by yelling.

2. I've asked several times in the course of the conversation if you could clarify what 'Reformed Egyptian' is actually meant to be. Is it a form of Egyptian? If it is supposed to be, then we have certain issues with it. If it's supposed to be purely a writing system used to write other languages, then we have other issues with it. Either way, it is not supported by even a shred of linguistic or historical evidence.

3. I am aware of the authorship controversy surrounding the Kirtland Papers, but getting upset about that is missing the point: Again, if we are to take this 'Egyptian grammar and alphabet' as evidence of the kinds of things Joseph (or scribes working under his direction, if you prefer that) thought he was reading or translating via the 'Reformed Egyptian' symbols, then it is clear that the entire scribal team, with Joseph at its head, knew nothing of any kind of Egyptian, or probably of any non-English language (as it doesn't really have any consistent resemblance to any known language).

This is really not all that outlandish an idea. Given the similarity of the characters in the Anthon transcript (a.k.a. the 'Caractors' document) and the various letters and numerals that make up English orthography, having English as the source of the letter forms seems pretty likely, with the descriptions that accompany them being the result of somebody's fanciful imagination(s), rather than anything rooted in Egyptian or any other foreign language.

For the thread's consideration:

"How Joseph Smith Invented Reformed Egyptian"

 

[mmksparbud]

LOL--the closing lines were great, you could actually read that!!! I'll have to get around to watching more of those. Thank you --again--

 

[fatboys]

1. Why are you yelling? There's nothing in this conversation that requires or is enhanced by yelling.

2. I've asked several times in the course of the conversation if you could clarify what 'Reformed Egyptian' is actually meant to be. Is it a form of Egyptian? If it is supposed to be, then we have certain issues with it. If it's supposed to be purely a writing system used to write other languages, then we have other issues with it. Either way, it is not supported by even a shred of linguistic or historical evidence.

3. I am aware of the authorship controversy surrounding the Kirtland Papers, but getting upset about that is missing the point: Again, if we are to take this 'Egyptian grammar and alphabet' as evidence of the kinds of things Joseph (or scribes working under his direction, if you prefer that) thought he was reading or translating via the 'Reformed Egyptian' symbols, then it is clear that the entire scribal team, with Joseph at its head, knew nothing of any kind of Egyptian, or probably of any non-English language (as it doesn't really have any consistent resemblance to any known language).

This is really not all that outlandish an idea. Given the similarity of the characters in the Anthon transcript (a.k.a. the 'Caractors' document) and the various letters and numerals that make up English orthography, having English as the source of the letter forms seems pretty likely, with the descriptions that accompany them being the result of somebody's fanciful imagination(s), rather than anything rooted in Egyptian or any other foreign language.

For the thread's consideration:

"How Joseph Smith Invented Reformed Egyptian"

Lol

 

[dzheremi]

You can laugh about it all you want, Fatboys, but the guy who made that video has a point: the script as presented there doesn't really behave like a natural writing system, and many of the characters do look an awful lot like inverted, ornamented, or otherwise disguised English letters or Indo-Arabic numerals.

I'm not saying you have to believe the video, but if that doesn't give you pause, especially together with all the other linguistic evidence that contradicts the LDS narrative, then I have some real estate to sell you on Kolob.

 

[mmksparbud]

fatboys,

Did you see that last thing--it says:

You have been watching how Joseph Smith invented Reformed Egyptian by Dan Vogel------it is written using the characters that Joseph wrote---and is perfectly legible in English!! Wow!!