Hi folks,
I couldn't pass this one up. In yet another article at Mormontimes.com there is an article which has as its headline: Reformed Egyptian is Evidence for the Book of Mormon. It goes over the usual events, like Martin Harris visiting Prof. Anthon - the Pratt version of course, with Anthon first allegedly saying one thing and then another regarding the strange characters that Harris showed him which Smith claimed were from an ancient language. Here's the link to the story:
http://www.mormontimes.com/mormon_voices/michael_r_ash/?id=11383
Enjoy!
Art
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Ash is quite correct that one should not argue that no such thing as "Reformed Egyptian" existed. "Reformed" versions of many languages have developed: Italian is really "reformed Latin."
ReplyDeleteBut that is NOT evidence for the Book of Mormon.
I deal with his other argument (Hebrew written in Egyptian characters has been found in Palestine) in my general article on Mormon linguistic problems at http://packham.n4m.org/linguist.htm#ENGRAVED.
Hi Richard,
ReplyDeleteI have to disagree with the term "reformed". As one who studied French, Spanish, Italian, and German, it is hardly a linguistic reformation of Egyptian, just as Italian is not a reformation of Latin. Italian is Latin that has gone through a linguistic evolution. One of my French professors, a PhD in French, showed me the evolution of French from Latin, to an early version of French that as far as pronounciation sounded much like Italian, eventually to modern French, with all of its nasal sounds and strangely spelled words.
At our website we will be posting an excellent paper on Smith's reformed Egyptian which describes its probable composition.
I realize that it may sound like I'm playing semantics with the term reformed, but the way I understand the term doesn't work with the way that Smith used it.
Art
Yes, you are playing with semantics.
ReplyDeleteThe term "reformed" in the Book of Mormon seems to imply only that the language of the Nephites changed over the course of a thousand years. That is perfectly natural and to be expected of any language. As non-experts in linguistics, they may have called it "reformed," even though we more sophisticated linguists would call it "Late American Egyptian" or something like that.
My point was merely that the fact that the original "Egyptian" supposedly used by the Nephites would naturally have changed over the course of centuries, exactly as Mormon and Moroni said it had.
Richard,
ReplyDeleteOkay. I agree that authentic Egyptian could have and probably did evolve and get more sophisticated over time, as many languages have done, such as latin, but the gibberish that Harris presented to Dr. Anthon, as well as the claimed "reformed Egyptian" alphabet, isn't any form of Egyptian, either reformed, evolved, mutilated, corrupted, or whatever, which was my point. I also still take issue with the adjective "reformed", as I have yet to see that word used with any other linguistic development or any other language, nor did my good French teacher with his PhD in linguistics ever use that term.
Maybe I'm just being nitpicky, but that's the way I see it.
Art