LDS LDS---YIKES!

BigDaddy4 said:

See post #381

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I thought so. Your MO is showing. He is the way gives you 2 very good examples of non-Mormons that said JS was a genius. And all you can do is refute his non-Mormon examples and then accuse him of not backing up his statement. You must think you are pretty slick.

Peter1000 said:

Thank you for this, but you or I know very little about Reformed Egyptian, certainly not enough to say, "it is more like the childish gibberish that children invent for themselves to keep everyone else out." What a silly, unknowable statement.

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You know nothing about reformed Egyptian as it does not exist. You are going on faith not on evidence of any sort. You have faith in JS--- if your faith in the bible was as strong, you wouldn't be Mormon. It is not a silly unknowable statement---It is very knowable, specially, since my one brother and I used to make up our own words and knew what the other thought, just about. We were sitting with a bunch of other people once and talking to each other and all of a sudden noticed everyone looking at us. One guy said it was like being loaded on drugs listening to us, we never finished a sentence and the other would already start another and half of what we said they couldn't understand. That was before he got onto drugs. After that---we could no longer connect at that level.

mmksparbud said:

You know nothing about reformed Egyptian as it does not exist. You are going on faith not on evidence of any sort. You have faith in JS--- if your faith in the bible was as strong, you wouldn't be Mormon. It is not a silly unknowable statement---It is very knowable, specially, since my one brother and I used to make up our own words and knew what the other thought, just about. We were sitting with a bunch of other people once and talking to each other and all of a sudden noticed everyone looking at us. One guy said it was like being loaded on drugs listening to us, we never finished a sentence and the other would already start another and half of what we said they couldn't understand. That was before he got onto drugs. After that---we could no longer connect at that level.

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You really have no idea if Reformed Egyptian existed or not. Many people said that they testify that they were real by touching them and seeing the writing on them and lifting them up, but I guess that means nothing to you because it is Mormons speaking and they evil liars. Is that how it works?

Peter1000 said:

I thought so. Your MO is showing. He is the way gives you 2 very good examples of non-Mormons that said JS was a genius. And all you can do is refute his non-Mormon examples and then accuse him of not backing up his statement. You must think you are pretty slick.

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You thought wrong and seem to have difficulties with reading comprehension. He made the bolded statement below. Do you understand what that says? Do you understand that he admitted he could not back it up with the examples he provided?

I think you are pretty desperate to make such unfounded statements as you did.

BigDaddy4 said:

While you may have found some random sources on the internet, you have failed to produce evidence that these same sources once proclaimed Joseph Smith to ignorant and stupid. So, yay for you for being able to use the internet.

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Peter1000 said:

You really have no idea if Reformed Egyptian existed or not. Many people said that they testify that they were real by touching them and seeing the writing on them and lifting them up, but I guess that means nothing to you because it is Mormons speaking and they evil liars. Is that how it works?

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Neither do you---you believe JS---you are going on faith only. I believe the bible, not the writings of JS. The bible mentions no such people or language or anything about the BOM except what he took out of the KJV itself. The bible has archeological proof that the Jews existed, Israel existed, their languages (in several variations) existed, they even have proof that David did, and the other peoples that are mentioned in the bible. These proofs are not discovered by SDA'S or even other Christians, though some are. They are actual archeological finds that exist and are in museums where anyone can see them. Where are yours?

I can't believe this "Reformed Egyptian" stupidity continues on unabated, as though we have not discussed it probably hundreds of times. Talking to Mormons about stuff that is definitively known through the historical record, like what forms of Egyptian actually existed and where and when, is like talking to a wall. A very stubborn wall.

But for the benefit of those who will learn, let's look at the BOM timeline. This is from the LDS website, so there's no accusing me of being "anti-Mormon" for pointing out how it just doesn't work:



As you can see, it is said to start in earnest in 600 BC, and end c. 420 AD. What forms of Egyptian were used during this time?

Written Egyptian emerged during the historical period of the "Old Kingdom", roughly 2800-2150 BC (Lopriento 1997:436), with its earliest identifiable complete sentence dated to approximately 2690 BC (Allen 2013:2), meaning it emerged rather early in this period. This kind of Egyptian is sometimes called "Old Egyptian", "Early Egyptian", or "Ancient Egyptian", depending on the discipline, but it is not quite of the type you would associate with the hieroglyphs of the ancient Egyptian monuments like the temples and pyramids, as it had yet to develop into a fully-fledged writing system (it was not regularized, not all the characters used in hieroglyphic writing were present, etc). Most of the images we see of hieroglyphic writing in popular books and films are more likely to date from the Middle Egyptian period, starting at about 2000 BC (recall that the Ebers papyrus from my other post was dated to 1550 BC, so it within this period), as it is during the Middle Egyptian period that the production of texts and monuments really increased, as the system was regularized and the character set exhibited by this stage of the language (~ 700 total characters) stayed basically the same until the advent of the Coptic alphabet in the early Christian centuries (or perhaps pre-Christian; there is some debate on this) in Egypt. The Middle Egyptian period was also when the Hieratic cursive script developed, which would form the basis of the Demotic (popular) writing of Late Egyptian during the Ptolemaic period, beginning around the 14th century BC. Both Middle Egyptian and Late Egyptian survived in some form into the Christian period, with the last known inscription in the Demotic script dating to 452 AD (notably long after the order to close the pagan temples was given by the emperor Theodosius in the 380s).

While there is some debate as to when Coptic became established as the language of Christian Egypt, pretty much every source I've consulted agrees that it is in place by the 4th century AD. Coptic survived into the Medieval period, probably dying out as a spoken language in around the 14th century AD (reports of an 18th century traveler from Europe meeting people who spoke the language fluently cannot be corroborated, and one guy's personal travel log doesn't really mean anything anyway), but surviving for a few more centuries as a written language, if only for translation purposes (there are actually Coptic-Ge'ez grammars from if I recall correctly around the 17th century, showing that it was still profitable for the Ethiopians to learn the language, since many of their texts were translated from what they had received from Egypt during the Coptic period; they never spoke it themselves, however).

With that short summary, we have covered a period extending well before the beginning of the BOM history and well past its end, and across all that time we can tell what was spoken and written. Nowhere in any of it do we find any 'Reformed Egyptian', and the protestation of the ignorant that "We are reading a Reformed Egyptian (a short hand Egyptian) reformed over a thousand years of time in a completely foreign country, far far away from Egypt" is not possible to take as a defense, because that is simply not how languages work.

I know I've made this comparison before, but if we want to look at a language with an even greater time of separation from its original setting, in a new country surrounded by speakers of other languages (etc., etc., so as to best match Peter's feeble defense), we can look at Cypriot Maronite Arabic. CMA evolved from the Arabic dialects spoken by waves of Maronites immigrating from their traditional homeland in Lebanon and Syria to Cyprus to escape the Muslim invasions of their land in the 7th century, an immigration that lasted up until the 13th century (Versteegh 2011:536-537). As it still exists today (barely; it is reported that all speakers are over the age of 30, and none of the 3,656 people who registered as "Maronites" in the 2011 Cypriot census reported it as their first language), we can say without exaggeration that it is a language that is the product of some ~1,380 years of isolation from its motherland and parent language/dialects (the Muslim conquest of the Levant having taken place 634-638, so 1,385 to 1,381 years ago). 1,380 years is considerably longer than the entire span of the BOM timeline as presented in the above graphic, which is only 1,020 years (600 BC to 420 AD).

So in that time, do we see CMA develop from a mix of Levantine/Eastern Arabic dialects into something completely unintelligible and unrecognizable relative to what its speakers started out with as their phonological and syntactic base(s), in manner similar to how the "Egyptian Grammar" found at the Joseph Smith Papers Project is full of nonsense that is transparently gibberish like "Toan low ee tahee takee toues" and "Enish-go-an=dosh"?

Let's see. Full disclosure: I don't know Levantine Arabic (I was taught Modern Standard Arabic, which is kind of like "newscaster speech" which nobody speaks natively, and have since then only spent large amounts of time around Egyptians, whose dialects are quite different than what is spoken in Lebanon/Syria/Jordan or Iraq), so I'll have to do a comparison with MSA instead.

From the wiki page on CMA, we have the example sentence of:

I ate bread with olives, some honey and drank some cow's milk

In CMA, which has been surrounded by Greek speakers for 1,000+ years, it is

Kilt xops ma zaytun, xaytċ casel u şraft xlip tel pakra

(notes: the C with the dot over it is like the "ch" sound in "church", while the s with the tail is like the "sh" sound in "shop"; x is like the "ch" sound in the German pronunciation of "Bach", or the Scottish "Loch"; c by itself is a sound that we don't have in English or most other European languages called a voiced pharyngeal fricative or voiced pharyngeal approximant; you can listen to it here, if you want to...I will keep to these conventions when writing out the Modern Standard Arabic equivalent below.)

In MSA (simplified with case endings removed, since this is not a lesson in Arabic grammar), it would be something like (I put it through Google Translate so that you can all put that English sentence into the same program and see that I'm not making it up, though I did modify the transliteration to get rid of some of the 'dummy' vowels that it places between consonants and keep the transliteration as used in the CMA sentence):

أكلت الخبز بالزيتون وبعض العسل وشربت حليب البقر
akalat alxubz bilzaytun wa bacḍ alcasl wa şrubt ḥalib albaqar

Here are all the cognates (words with the same origin) in the sentence, with their MSA forms on the right, and their CMA forms on the left:

Kilt = Akalat
xops = xubz
casel = casl
u = wa
şraft = şrubt
xlip = ḥalib
tel pakra = albaqar

Do you notice something? This is every word except for xaytċ (CMA) vs. bacḍ (MSA), which for all I know could reflect some specific Syro-Lebanese vocabulary (perhaps inherited from Syriac?) that I don't know.

Still, the point is clear, is it not? 1,380 years of separation -- geographically, culturally, and linguistically -- from their homeland and the languages they used at the start of their communities in the new land of Cyprus, and what they have developed from the parent language is very far from unintelligible gibberish (though it is true that CMA is not intelligible to mainland Arabic speakers, it is clearly still a form of Arabic; it has not evolved into something else that would not be recognizable as Arabic, as you can clearly see here). It has regular correspondences, like p in CMA for b in MSA (standard varieties of Arabic do not have "p" unless they are in close contact with languages that have it, like Iraqi Arabic which is in close contact with Kurdish and Assyrian, and also borrowed a lot from Turkish during the Ottoman times; Kurdish, Eastern Assyrian, and Turkish all have "p"), and predictable changes, e.g., the definite article "al" in MSA is dropped in CMA, except for in tel pakra, which I suspect it has retained as part of the fixed grammatical construction for genitive clauses, i.e., "milk of the cow"; Maltese, another Arabic descendant that has actually evolved into its own separate language under the heavy influence of Italian, does this: spirtu ta' aħwa "spirit of brotherhood", cf. MSA بروح الاخاء bi-ruḥi al-ixa'; spirtu is obviously an Italian/Romance loanword, but ta' aħwa is their equivalent of the Arabic al-ixa'.

No "eee ma moh hee ha hoh wee woh" or whatever for the Cypriot Maronites, despite over a thousand years of isolation on an island where everyone around them was speaking Greek (which is not genetically related to Arabic).

To our Mormon readers and friends:

I don't make long posts like this explaining patiently why your defenses are not acceptable so that you can reply "WELL, BUT WE DON'T KNOWWWW FOR SUUUURE" or "THAT'S JUST, LIKE, YOUR OPINION, MAN", so if that's all you have to say, save it for the next stake meeting, because I don't want to see it, and frankly it's just really freaking embarrassing. Just don't bother. I am qualified to give these simple, hopefully clear explanations that show how actually existing languages evolve. There are no exceptions to this, because anything that would have evolved in such a short time (and yes, given that Egyptian was first written down over 4,000 years ago, ~1,400 years is a short time) to not resemble its claimed parent can rightly be said to have its true parentage elsewhere. It's the same with all kinds of evolution: modern housecats did not evolve from some animal transparently unrelated to the felidae family in the biological blink of an eye. Their ancestors are much more easily traceable to earlier felidae or felidae-type ancestors than they are to eagles, or lizards, or whatever. You cannot presuppose drastic changes without extremely compelling evidence, and the BOM is not only not at that level, it is not any level of evidence.

And that really is the bottom line. It is long past time for all who believe in the BOM and its narrative to stop abusing a perfectly fine science like linguistics (not to mention all the other sciences its partisans abuse in an attempt to root their religious text in the real world) by proposing things that are absolutely ludicrous and contrary to the way that literally every other language that has ever actually existed has evolved. There is absolutely no shame in deciding to embrace the more honest alternative and say something like "Yes, there is no real evidence for this, but I believe in it because I believe in my religion, and this is what my religion tells me happened. Maybe we'll find evidence for it some day, but we haven't yet, and that's okay. I still believe." That is fine and honorable. It is not honorable, believable, or even really tolerable (to someone who actually knows linguistics, anyway) to have to put up with the kinds of defenses that Mormons usually choose to attempt to forward instead of doing this, which frankly make the Mormon religion far less believable than anything any 'anti-Mormon' source or person could say.

That is seriously the nicest way I can think to put that. Please, as a linguist and as someone who does not like to see Mormons humiliated (because even if I disagree with you, you are still fellow people created by God, and also I am well aware that there is not scientific evidence for all of the beliefs of traditional Christianity, either; God doesn't really like to come into the lab for interviews and testing, y'know?), I am really trying to get you all to understand what an incredible disservice you are doing to your own effort to bolster your religion by grasping at pseudo-scientific straws when that is not necessary or helpful. If you love your God and your religion, stop doing that.

Sources for post #406 (cos it was already long enough as it is):

Allen, James P. The Ancient Egyptian Language: A Historical Study (Cambridge, 2013)
Loprieno, Antonio "Egyptian and Coptic Phonology" in Kaye and Daniels (eds.) Phonologies of Asia and Africa vol. 1, 431-460 (Eisenbrauns, 1997)
Versteegh, Kees Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics (Brill, 2011)


The Joseph Smith Papers Project's digitized version of the Grammar and Alphabet of the Egyptian Language, circa July-November 1835: Grammar and Alphabet of the Egyptian Language, circa July–circa November 1835, Page 0

Omniglot pages for translations of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights into Arabic and Maltese.

The Book of Mormon chronology chart found in the digitized version of the September 1976 edition of The Ensign, accessible here: churchofjesuschrist.org/study/ensign/1976/09/book-of-

Now that's how you provide credible, verifiable sources! Well done dzheremi!

LDS - take note if you want to be taken seriously for your claims of a great apostasy, the BOM events/people actually existing, etc.

Thanks. It'd be even better if there weren't a bunch of typos everywhere, but whatddya gonna do? Hahaha. I'd like to think the point is still clear enough.

dzheremi said:

That's not what I said and you know it. Quit being dishonest. This sort thing is very close to goading.

"He defends Mormonism, while he claims out of the other side of his mouth that Eastern Orthodoxy is true, which is an untenable position and shows his interest to be more in defending Mormonism than actually living out the faith he claims to most closely align with" is not anything like what you've claimed here. Knock it off.

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That answer was not even close to goading. I suppose you don't believe it is alright for someone from any other faith to defend The Church Of Jesus Christ Of Latter Day Saints. Well God gave man the right to choose and no one can take that away. God commanded us to LOVE one another and that is NOT a suggestion, it is a commandment. I think of the way Jesus was treated as a heretic while He was on earth and I see that happening today. I wonder just how many people would have rejected Christ if they lived at that time because His teachings were contrary to what people believed to be true. Well the gospel is about LOVE and keeping the commandments:

(New Testament | John 14:15)

15 ¶ If ye love me, keep my commandments.

dzheremi said:

I can't speak for anyone else, but I do have an advanced degree in a field that makes me qualified to judge what Joseph produced as "Reformed Egyptian", and I find it to be nonsense. There is absolutely zero evidence that Reformed Egyptian ever actually existed, and for the time period that the BOM supposedly covers, we know exactly what forms of Egyptian were being used where. "Reformed Egyptian" is not among them. This is not a matter of opinion at all, and even if it were, mine is informed by actual research in the field (I did my MA thesis on Coptic, the only form of Egyptian that is still used today), not by an 19th century religious text that is claimed to be miraculous. Linguistics is a science, not a religion, so as a science it is constrained by the need for evidence to support its theories and conclusions. Again, there is no evidence that Reformed Egyptian existed, so scientifically-speaking, it is a non-entity. Unless such evidence somehow arises (which will naturally need to be vetted by disinterested/not religiously-motivated actual linguists, not LDS shills like those who teach at BYU and other Mormon-run institutions), this will remain the state of things.

This is Egyptian:


(The Ebers Papyrus, c. 1550 BC, detailing the treatment of asthma)

And so is this:


(Ostracon with Demotic inscription from the Ptolemaic period, c. 305-30 BC, containing a prayer to Amun to heal a man's blindness)

And so is this:

(Coptic Gospel according to St. Luke, 5:5-9, 8th century AD)

This is demonstrably not Egyptian:

(Anthon Transcript/"Caractors" Document, 1828)

This is not a matter of opinion, but a matter of fact. Joseph Smith's creations are obvious to anyone with even a modicum of contact with the Egyptian language. I'm being completely serious right now (i.e., this is not me being "anti-Mormon", but telling what my academic training obliges me to tell) when I say that there is absolutely zero linguistic basis for considering this any kind of Egyptian whatsoever. It's simply fabricated. It does not reflect any stage, type, or dialect of the Egyptian language in any way (it is questionable whether or not it reflects any known language). Joseph clearly knew no Egyptian, and this sort of writing (or the supposed Egyptian grammar that was attempted by a circle of his followers sometime later) does nothing to substantiate the idea that he did, which is a religious belief of the Mormons, not a scientifically valid observation or hypothesis (as it cannot be falsified, since it's not actually based on evidence, but on religious conviction). Period. End of story.

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It is very much an opinion. Saying something did not exist just because they did not actually see it does not mean it did not exist. It is much like saying there was no unicorn:

(Old Testament | Job 39:9 - 11)

9 Will the unicorn be willing to serve thee, or abide by thy crib?
10 Canst thou bind the unicorn with his band in the furrow? or will he harrow the valleys after thee?
11 Wilt thou trust him, because his strength is great? or wilt thou leave thy labour to him?

mmksparbud said:

Everywhere we go, we see the use of other languages being incorporated into everyday use of the dominant language. English is a prime example---we are a melting pot of people and the language uses French, German, Spanish and others mixed in. But the main language is still kept the main one. This reformed Egyptian stuff is not Egyptian with some Hebrew thrown in, or Hebrew with Egyptian thrown in.
When I came to America I had to not only learn English, but Mexican. I spoke Spanish and had never learned slang Spanish. Mexicans us mostly slang Spanish. But it was still Spanish, just some words wore hard to decipher. Mexicans speak English with Spanish slang words thrown in. It was, at times, confusing, but if I took it slow and thought about what they were saying I could usually figure things out. This
reformed Egyptian simply does not follow the pattern of any 2 languages being spoken together anywhere in the world. It is more like the childish gibberish that children invent for themselves to keep everyone else out. Twins have been known to do this---their own private language---between 2 children. Not a whole population. If you go to Mexico, the main language is Spanish, which was not the original language of the people, but their conquerors, the Spaniards. Their Indian dialects, however, are still spoken is some areas. There is no such thing as reformed Spanish, or reformed Hidalgo, or Nahuatl.
It is Spanish with some indigenous Indian words thrown in. Reformed Egyptian did not exist except in the mind of JS.

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Does any of the original language spoken before the tower of Babel was destroyed still exist?

He is the way said:

That answer was not even close to goading. I suppose you don't believe it is alright for someone from any other faith to defend The Church Of Jesus Christ Of Latter Day Saints.

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That's also not what I wrote. You guys are really bad at this.

I didn't say it before in so many words, but since you guys are apparently determined to read words into my posts that aren't there no matter what I do write, I would agree that it is wrong for any Christian to defend Mormonism, but it does happen anyway sometimes, because some people legitimately believe that Mormonism is a type of Christianity, thanks to the blurring of theological lines in modern times and the aggressive propaganda campaign of the Mormon religion that seeks to be classified as such.

That doesn't mean that I'm going to join them in that, because I don't agree that Mormonism is a kind of Christianity. I would venture to guess that historically no non-Mormon did. I know that Orthodox Christianity never has, and that is my standard.

Well God gave man the right to choose and no one can take that away.

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When did I ever imply otherwise?

God commanded us to LOVE one another and that is NOT a suggestion, it is a commandment.

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What does this have to do with whether or not one can be Christian and Mormon at the same time?

I think of the way Jesus was treated as a heretic while He was on earth and I see that happening today.

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Who is treating Jesus as a heretic today? Or are you trying to say that you/other Mormons/this guy with a blog are akin to Jesus?

I wonder just how many people would have rejected Christ if they lived at that time because His teachings were contrary to what people believed to be true.

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No doubt many. What's your point?

Well the gospel is about LOVE and keeping the commandments

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Again, what does this have to do with the specifics of Mormonism vis-a-vis Christianity? The way you're telling it, you'd think that anyone who loves other people is therefore a Christian. That's really ridiculous. Atheists, Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus, Baha'i, etc. are all capable of loving people. That doesn't make them Christians. Christians believe in and practice Christianity. Christians worship the Holy Trinity, the One God. Mormonism does neither of these things. You are trying to muddy the waters with someone who will not accept such cloudy thinking.

I don't know if you think that if you just keep capitalizing the word LOVE over and over and posting the same Bible verse that you don't even understand, everyone here will spontaneously start accepting Mormonism or at least treating Mormonism like it's a kind of Christianity, but if that is your ultimate goal, you should probably try a different method. All that is happening is that I am getting tired of seeing carbon copy posts from you over and over with no real engagement of what is actually being written in other posts, and I highly doubt I'm the only one.

He is the way said:

It is very much an opinion.

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Again, it's not a matter of opinion. It's a matter of knowing how languages work, and knowing something about the specific language involved. (Egyptian.) It is rather you Mormons who are offering your opinions, but your opinions are not backed by any amount of research that you are even capable of doing, since you don't have the training. I do. So again, even if it were a matter of opinion (which it isn't), mine is actually based on something beyond fidelity to a religious narrative, in the actually existing world.

I mean...I guess you could say that belief in little green men living on the moon vs. little green men not living on the moon are both "opinions", in the sense of "stances people can take on the question of whether or not there are little green men living on the moon". But that doesn't mean that they ought to be given equal weight.

It's not that I'm arguing that my stance can't be challenged (in fact, if I actually believed it couldn't, I really wouldn't be a very good scientist), but it's kinda inescapable that none of the defenses that Mormons offer in this area meet even the bare minimum of what is accepted in linguistics. Hence you don't see these papers on "Reformed Egyptian" by Mormon apologists with training in linguistics being published by actual academic publishers like Brill, the various University publishers (Oxford, Cambridge, etc.), Mouton De Gruyter, Otto Harrassowitz, etc. They only get published in BYU-affiliated and otherwise LDS-affiliated contexts, because they do not meet the standard to be published outside of that, since they're not doing actual linguistics. They're doing pseudo-linguistics in defense of the Mormon religious narrative. To the extent that they do actual linguistics, there is nothing stopping them from being published somewhere reputable, and I'm sure there are plenty who have been, but are not widely recognized as having done so due to their not touting their own personal beliefs. (It's not like it would be impossible to take your linguistics training and put it to use doing actual linguistics separate from your belief in Mormonism, after all; plenty of Copts with training in linguistics like Wilson Bishai, G.P. Sobhy, and others have published academically on the Coptic language, for instance, but the key is that they do not confuse that work with the religious defense of their faith).

Saying something did not exist just because they did not actually see it does not mean it did not exist.

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That's not the argument I'm making. I'm not saying "I've never seen it, so it couldn't have ever existed", but rather "There is no evidence of it having existed, and here's some reasons why there is no reason to believe that it did" (e.g., post #406, concerning Peter1000's contention that it was so heavily changed over a thousand years that we shouldn't expect it to look or behave like Egyptian).

It is much like saying there was no unicorn:

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Well, is there evidence for the existence of the unicorn? I'm not asking whether or not anyone believes it to have existed. Obviously Mormons believe that Reformed Egyptian (whatever it was) actually existed, but that's not a valid reason to presuppose that it did.

(Old Testament | Job 39:9 - 11)

9 Will the unicorn be willing to serve thee, or abide by thy crib?
10 Canst thou bind the unicorn with his band in the furrow? or will he harrow the valleys after thee?
11 Wilt thou trust him, because his strength is great? or wilt thou leave thy labour to him?

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I don't mean to shock anyone here, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that a translation of a single Bible verse is not the same as a unicorn skeleton. I believe in the Bible, but I don't believe in the existence of unicorns just because the KJV happened to use that word in its translation of this verse.

But I'm glad you brought this up, because this is actually an interesting case that to me sort of helps show why Mormon apologetics tend to fail when they begin wandering into the field of linguistics.

You don't really need to be a scholar to see a problem here. The book of Job being originally written in Hebrew, if we look at a Hebrew-English interlinear to see what the original form is, we find the following:



The word translated in the KJV as "unicorn" is rêm, which I guess the translation automatically displayed by BibleHub renders as "wild ox", though the text displayed on the tab itself in Google Chrome is "Job 39:9 interlinear: Is a Reem...", so I guess some translations opt for a transliteration rather than a translation. And I happen to like this transliteration myself, because since I know Arabic (a Semitic language related to Hebrew), I know already that this is the cognate for that word in the Arabic language, where it is spelled ريم, which can be transliterated as reem as well.

Just what is a reem, you might ask? I don't think that "wild ox" is necessarily the best translation (though it could have a wider application in the original than I know about), because I know it as a type of gazelle in Arabic (Reem/Rim is also a personal name for women in Arabic, by analogy to its meaning of "gazelle" which is a sort of affectionate term for a woman in that language, just FYI). And indeed, when you look it up on Arabic wikipedia, where it appears under the heading of غزال الريم ("Reem" gazelle), this is what you see:



That sure looks like something that actually exists in the world. It's not a painting or a story, like it would have to be if a reem were a unicorn, since those don't actually exist in the world. (Maybe they could have or did at one point, but we have no evidence of that.)

But that is Arabic. What about Hebrew? Well, if you take away all the little markings around the Hebrew consonantal letters (these only appear in Hebrew or Arabic in religious texts or other texts where exact pronunciation is crucial, not in the everyday written language), you get רים. And if you look that up on Hebrew wikipedia, one of the first results you'll get is this:



Hey, what'dyya know? Another gazelle! Another thing that actually exists in the world!
The two results before this on Hebrew Wikipedia as of this posting are for the German city of Flughafen München-Riem and Palestinian singer Rim Banna, two other things that actually exist in the world (well, one of them still; R.I.P. Rim Banna).

I'm not going to make a big to-do about you not knowing any of this before having used that particular example, because how could you have, but I do want you to seriously think and be honest with yourself about the following question: If you had known beforehand that this was the case with regard to the "unicorn" translation of Job 39:9, would you have perhaps looked for a better/less easily falsifiable example than that? I think you would have, and I think all of us would have likewise if we were in your shoes, and there's no shame in admitting that.

That is sort of what Mormon pseudo-linguistic apologies for their religion are like. I know already about the evidence that is out there and hence the likelihood that Mormon claims concerning the existence of "Reformed Egyptian" are true (or that they are false), and it makes those claims very easy to dispense with. The point is not "I am very smart and you are not" or anything like that, but rather that if you understood how truly weak the Mormon claims concerning "Reformed Egyptian" are, you would never defend it if it was at all possible to claim something else instead. Which it is. You can say "There's no evidence for it, but I believe in it anyway because my religion says so", like I wrote in my other reply. That is infinitely more respectable and less irritating than having actual knowledge, work, and evidence treated as though it is equal to your unfounded, non-academic, religious opinion which is based on nothing more than your personal belief. It's not my personal belief that a "reem" is a type of gazelle, just like it's not my personal belief that there is no evidence for the existence of "Reformed Egyptian".

dzheremi said:

That's also not what I wrote. You guys are really bad at this.

I didn't say it before in so many words, but since you guys are apparently determined to read words into my posts that aren't there no matter what I do write, I would agree that it is wrong for any Christian to defend Mormonism, but it does happen anyway sometimes, because some people legitimately believe that Mormonism is a type of Christianity, thanks to the blurring of theological lines in modern times and the aggressive propaganda campaign of the Mormon religion that seeks to be classified as such.

That doesn't mean that I'm going to join them in that, because I don't agree that Mormonism is a kind of Christianity. I would venture to guess that historically no non-Mormon did. I know that Orthodox Christianity never has, and that is my standard.



When did I ever imply otherwise?



What does this have to do with whether or not one can be Christian and Mormon at the same time?



Who is treating Jesus as a heretic today? Or are you trying to say that you/other Mormons/this guy with a blog are akin to Jesus?



No doubt many. What's your point?



Again, what does this have to do with the specifics of Mormonism vis-a-vis Christianity? The way you're telling it, you'd think that anyone who loves other people is therefore a Christian. That's really ridiculous. Atheists, Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus, Baha'i, etc. are all capable of loving people. That doesn't make them Christians. Christians believe in and practice Christianity. Christians worship the Holy Trinity, the One God. Mormonism does neither of these things. You are trying to muddy the waters with someone who will not accept such cloudy thinking.

I don't know if you think that if you just keep capitalizing the word LOVE over and over and posting the same Bible verse that you don't even understand, everyone here will spontaneously start accepting Mormonism or at least treating Mormonism like it's a kind of Christianity, but if that is your ultimate goal, you should probably try a different method. All that is happening is that I am getting tired of seeing carbon copy posts from you over and over with no real engagement of what is actually being written in other posts, and I highly doubt I'm the only one.

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LOVE is the most important thing in the universe. God is LOVE. The commandments are ALL about LOVE. The Bible is ALL about LOVING Jesus Christ and keeping the commandments of LOVE. Everything else is actually of very little consequence but people seem to try making other things more important than they are. There are really two churches on the earth, God's church and Satan's church. Every denominational church has people who are really of God's church or Satan's church mixed together like the wheat and the tares. When a person sins they are of the church of the devil:

(New Testament | Matthew 16:22 - 28)

22 Then Peter took him, and began to rebuke him, saying, Be it far from thee, Lord: this shall not be unto thee.
23 But he turned, and said unto Peter, Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art an offence unto me: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men.
24 ¶ Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.
25 For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.
26 For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?
27 For the Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels; and then he shall reward every man according to his works.
28 Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.

When people LOVE God and their neighbor they they are of God's church. It is really that simple.
Yes everyone is capable of LOVING others and when they do they are living as God wants them to live. Jesus LOVES everyone. He LOVES the Samaritans as much as He LOVES the Jews. He LOVES the Catholics as much as He LOVES the Protestants. It is our duty to LOVE everyone:

(New Testament | 1 John 2:8 - 17)

8 Again, a new commandment I write unto you, which thing is true in him and in you: because the darkness is past, and the true light now shineth.
9 He that saith he is in the light, and hateth his brother, is in darkness even until now.
10 He that loveth his brother abideth in the light, and there is none occasion of stumbling in him.
11 But he that hateth his brother is in darkness, and walketh in darkness, and knoweth not whither he goeth, because that darkness hath blinded his eyes.
12 I write unto you, little children, because your sins are forgiven you for his name's sake.
13 I write unto you, fathers, because ye have known him that is from the beginning. I write unto you, young men, because ye have overcome the wicked one. I write unto you, little children, because ye have known the Father.
14 I have written unto you, fathers, because ye have known him that is from the beginning. I have written unto you, young men, because ye are strong, and the word of God abideth in you, and ye have overcome the wicked one.
15 Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
16 For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.
17 And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.

mmksparbud said:

Neither do you---you believe JS---you are going on faith only. I believe the bible, not the writings of JS. The bible mentions no such people or language or anything about the BOM except what he took out of the KJV itself. The bible has archeological proof that the Jews existed, Israel existed, their languages (in several variations) existed, they even have proof that David did, and the other peoples that are mentioned in the bible. These proofs are not discovered by SDA'S or even other Christians, though some are. They are actual archeological finds that exist and are in museums where anyone can see them. Where are yours?

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They are in Mexico museums for every one to see, at least, those who will see, lots of people have eyes to see, but still cannot see.

For instance, in the history of Mexico, there is a legend that says that the first people in their land came from the great tower of Babel (Popol Vuh).

In the main historical museum in Mexico city there is a long beautiful tapestry that is a painting of the early history of Mexico. It has at the beginning a portrayal of the beginning of human habitation in Mexico. It looks like the people are coming out of 8 caves out in the water and then step on turtles that bring them to shore.

This is a very interesting tapestry, because the BOM tells the story of the Jaredite people that came from the tower of Babel around 2200bc in 7 barges and landed on the eastern coast of Mexico. I can see that their departure from their barges would be a fairly dramatic event that would have stories told forever.

Today, there are 2 main peoples that are talked about in early Mexican history before Columbus. The Olmec, and the Maya. Of course later were the Aztec. According to the experts, the Olmec (Jaredites) people came here between 1700-2100bc and were pretty much gone by the time the Maya came into prominence, around 300bc.

The BOM also tells us that the Jaradites (Olmec) people were gone because of a civil war. And that Maya (Nephites/Lamanites) got some of their records and published their prophet in the BOM.

So besides the records of the Mexican history that miraculously made it out of the Spanish conquest, the only other record in the world that mirrors their early history is the BOM. How interesting is that? Oh, and JS made it all up. Pretty good guessing, right?

He is the way said:

LOVE is the most important thing in the universe. God is LOVE. The commandments are ALL about LOVE. The Bible is ALL about LOVING Jesus Christ and keeping the commandments of LOVE.

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I never said love was not important, or that God is not love, or any of this. I'm just tired of you posting the same thing over and over as though it's an answer to everything anyone could possibly post. Love is important, and God is love. You know what is not about love? Science and evidence, which is what I've actually been posting about.

Everything else is actually of very little consequence but people seem to try making other things more important than they are.

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When I was at the monastery of St. Shenouda the Archimandrite in 2014, one of the servants of the church who I talked to here said "The first rite of the Church is love. That is the most important thing." And it is true. But it does not mean that we do not have formal (ritualized) rites in the Church which are also important. It's not an either/or proposition; it's both/and.

Besides, I can think of nothing less loving than to sit by and say nothing as Mormonism and other non-Christian religions masquerading as salvific faiths deceive millions and place their eternal souls in jeopardy by feeding them false doctrines and false justifications for said doctrines, so it can be argued very well that everything that is written to Mormons on this website by serious Christians of all stripes is in itself an act of love, which is refused by the Mormons because in truth Mormonism has taught you to love Joseph Smith Jr. and the religion that he started instead of the true Christ.

dzheremi said:

Again, it's not a matter of opinion. It's a matter of knowing how languages work, and knowing something about the specific language involved. (Egyptian.) It is rather you Mormons who are offering your opinions, but your opinions are not backed by any amount of research that you are even capable of doing, since you don't have the training. I do. So again, even if it were a matter of opinion (which it isn't), mine is actually based on something beyond fidelity to a religious narrative, in the actually existing world.

I mean...I guess you could say that belief in little green men living on the moon vs. little green men not living on the moon are both "opinions", in the sense of "stances people can take on the question of whether or not there are little green men living on the moon". But that doesn't mean that they ought to be given equal weight.

It's not that I'm arguing that my stance can't be challenged (in fact, if I actually believed it couldn't, I really wouldn't be a very good scientist), but it's kinda inescapable that none of the defenses that Mormons offer in this area meet even the bare minimum of what is accepted in linguistics. Hence you don't see these papers on "Reformed Egyptian" by Mormon apologists with training in linguistics being published by actual academic publishers like Brill, the various University publishers (Oxford, Cambridge, etc.), Mouton De Gruyter, Otto Harrassowitz, etc. They only get published in BYU-affiliated and otherwise LDS-affiliated contexts, because they do not meet the standard to be published outside of that, since they're not doing actual linguistics. They're doing pseudo-linguistics in defense of the Mormon religious narrative. To the extent that they do actual linguistics, there is nothing stopping them from being published somewhere reputable, and I'm sure there are plenty who have been, but are not widely recognized as having done so due to their not touting their own personal beliefs. (It's not like it would be impossible to take your linguistics training and put it to use doing actual linguistics separate from your belief in Mormonism, after all; plenty of Copts with training in linguistics like Wilson Bishai, G.P. Sobhy, and others have published academically on the Coptic language, for instance, but the key is that they do not confuse that work with the religious defense of their faith).



That's not the argument I'm making. I'm not saying "I've never seen it, so it couldn't have ever existed", but rather "There is no evidence of it having existed, and here's some reasons why there is no reason to believe that it did" (e.g., post #406, concerning Peter1000's contention that it was so heavily changed over a thousand years that we shouldn't expect it to look or behave like Egyptian).



Well, is there evidence for the existence of the unicorn? I'm not asking whether or not anyone believes it to have existed. Obviously Mormons believe that Reformed Egyptian (whatever it was) actually existed, but that's not a valid reason to presuppose that it did.



I don't mean to shock anyone here, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that a translation of a single Bible verse is not the same as a unicorn skeleton. I believe in the Bible, but I don't believe in the existence of unicorns just because the KJV happened to use that word in its translation of this verse.

But I'm glad you brought this up, because this is actually an interesting case that to me sort of helps show why Mormon apologetics tend to fail when they begin wandering into the field of linguistics.

You don't really need to be a scholar to see a problem here. The book of Job being originally written in Hebrew, if we look at a Hebrew-English interlinear to see what the original form is, we find the following:

View attachment 262091

The word translated in the KJV as "unicorn" is rêm, which I guess the translation automatically displayed by BibleHub renders as "wild ox", though the text displayed on the tab itself in Google Chrome is "Job 39:9 interlinear: Is a Reem...", so I guess some translations opt for a transliteration rather than a translation. And I happen to like this transliteration myself, because since I know Arabic (a Semitic language related to Hebrew), I know already that this is the cognate for that word in the Arabic language, where it is spelled ريم, which can be transliterated as reem as well.

Just what is a reem, you might ask? I don't think that "wild ox" is necessarily the best translation (though it could have a wider application in the original than I know about), because I know it as a type of gazelle in Arabic (Reem/Rim is also a personal name for women in Arabic, by analogy to its meaning of "gazelle" which is a sort of affectionate term for a woman in that language, just FYI). And indeed, when you look it up on Arabic wikipedia, where it appears under the heading of غزال الريم ("Reem" gazelle), this is what you see:



That sure looks like something that actually exists in the world. It's not a painting or a story, like it would have to be if a reem were a unicorn, since those don't actually exist in the world. (Maybe they could have or did at one point, but we have no evidence of that.)

But that is Arabic. What about Hebrew? Well, if you take away all the little markings around the Hebrew consonantal letters (these only appear in Hebrew or Arabic in religious texts or other texts where exact pronunciation is crucial, not in the everyday written language), you get רים. And if you look that up on Hebrew wikipedia, one of the first results you'll get is this:



Hey, what'dyya know? Another gazelle! Another thing that actually exists in the world!
The two results before this on Hebrew Wikipedia as of this posting are for the German city of Flughafen München-Riem and Palestinian singer Rim Banna, two other things that actually exist in the world (well, one of them still; R.I.P. Rim Banna).

I'm not going to make a big to-do about you not knowing any of this before having used that particular example, because how could you have, but I do want you to seriously think and be honest with yourself about the following question: If you had known beforehand that this was the case with regard to the "unicorn" translation of Job 39:9, would you have perhaps looked for a better/less easily falsifiable example than that? I think you would have, and I think all of us would have likewise if we were in your shoes, and there's no shame in admitting that.

That is sort of what Mormon pseudo-linguistic apologies for their religion are like. I know already about the evidence that is out there and hence the likelihood that Mormon claims concerning the existence of "Reformed Egyptian" are true (or that they are false), and it makes those claims very easy to dispense with. The point is not "I am very smart and you are not" or anything like that, but rather that if you understood how truly weak the Mormon claims concerning "Reformed Egyptian" are, you would never defend it if it was at all possible to claim something else instead. Which it is. You can say "There's no evidence for it, but I believe in it anyway because my religion says so", like I wrote in my other reply. That is infinitely more respectable and less irritating than having actual knowledge, work, and evidence treated as though it is equal to your unfounded, non-academic, religious opinion which is based on nothing more than your personal belief. It's not my personal belief that a "reem" is a type of gazelle, just like it's not my personal belief that there is no evidence for the existence of "Reformed Egyptian".

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Actually the unicorn is not a gazelle but a Bos primigenius:

(Bible Dictionary | U Unicorn:Entry)

Unicorn. A wild ox, the Bos primigenius, now extinct, but once common in Syria. The KJV rendering is unfortunate, as the animal intended is two-horned.

However thinking that something did not exist because there is no evidence that it did exist is not proof that it did not exist.

He is the way said:

Actually the unicorn is not a gazelle but a Bos primigenius:

(Bible Dictionary | U Unicorn:Entry)

Unicorn. A wild ox, the Bos primigenius, now extinct, but once common in Syria. The KJV rendering is unfortunate, as the animal intended is two-horned.

However thinking that something did not exist because there is no evidence that it did exist is not proof that it did not exist.

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You mean it's something else that actually existed and not a unicorn, of which there is no evidence?!

Oh my gosh, it's almost like that doesn't change my point at all!

Peter1000 said:

For instance, in the history of Mexico, there is a legend that says that the first people in their land came from the great tower of Babel (Popol Vuh).

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First thing:

The K'iche' Maya people, whose book the Popol Vuh is, are among the indigenous people of Guatemala, which is very notable for its being not Mexico.

Second thing: The Popol Vuh has absolutely nothing to do with the story of the Tower of Babel from the Hebrew Bible, nor does it translate to anything like "Tower of Babel". Popol Vuh means "Book of the Community". and it involves, among other things, a group of deities creating people out of out of corn. I don't recall reading that anywhere in the story of the Tower of Babel, or anything like that.

In the main historical museum in Mexico city there is a long beautiful tapestry that is a painting of the early history of Mexico. It has at the beginning a portrayal of the beginning of human habitation in Mexico. It looks like the people are coming out of 8 caves out in the water and then step on turtles that bring them to shore.

This is a very interesting tapestry, because the BOM tells the story of the Jaredite people that came from the tower of Babel around 2200bc

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2200 BC? You mean 490 years after the earliest written evidence of Egyptian? I guess before the Tower of Babel happened, everyone in the world must've spoken Egyptian. I know a few people who will be happy to have their own belief supported like this.

Today, there are 2 main peoples that are talked about in early Mexican history before Columbus. The Olmec, and the Maya.

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Then how come Wikipedia's page on Pre-Columbian Mexico has sentences in it like this?

According to the experts, the Olmec (Jaredites) people came here between 1700-2100bc and were pretty much gone by the time the Maya came into prominence, around 300bc.

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Which experts where? I don't think any of them identified the Olmecs or any other pre-Columbian people with BOM people, and 2100 BC seems awfully early for the Olmecs in particular. I'd like to see some citations.

The BOM also tells us that the Jaradites (Olmec) people were gone because of a civil war. And that Maya (Nephites/Lamanites) got some of their records and published their prophet in the BOM.

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Show me where the BOM uses the word "Maya".

So besides the records of the Mexican history that miraculously made it out of the Spanish conquest, the only other record in the world that mirrors their early history is the BOM. How interesting is that? Oh, and JS made it all up. Pretty good guessing, right?

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Seems like you're the one guessing here, Peter, or rather inserting Mormon presuppositions where they don't belong and have never actually been.