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If Scientists Had The Plates Joseph Used Would You Believe?


ckonrad

Would you believe?  

25 members have voted

  1. 1. If you are not LDS would you believe if scientists had the plates and found them to be authentic?

    • Yes
      17
    • No
      9


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Hello ckonrad,

I voted yes but I could have gone either way depending on what "believing in the book of mormon" entailed. I was an lds about 35 years ago. It was during my introduction to the world of religion. The book of mormon is about the world of religion and it was very helpful to me during this time period. It no longer has anything to bring to the table for me. Very seldom does a mormon ever say that the book of mormon helped them in some way. The comments always seem to revolve around whether the book is true. So if the book of mormon doesn't provide anything of value I see no reason to bother reading it regardless of what proof is available.

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I've spoken to professionals of linguistics and egyptology and they agree that the characters look like a form of Demotic or Hieratic. -corey
Do you have any proof of this bold and unprecedented claim? I'm sure you would be willing to tell us how many of these professors there were, because you imply there were several. PM me their names and I will personally call them to verify.
Thai Hindi and Pali, Tibetan, etc all have common origins in regards to the writing system, all those writing systems were created by people who sat down and used similar scripts as a foundation. Tibetan is a good example, it was created by using the Brahmi script of India.-corey
And? Maybe you are suggesting that the are strongly related because they have common origins. I don't see how this helps your argument. If anything it suggests that Joseph's characters should show strong resemblance to known Egyptian scripts.
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I also wish to point out that Russell Littlecreek is unfamiliar with the basics of the history of written languages and language formation and it shows.

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This really isn't supported by your next two statements.

One thing that Russell has done is look through the characters in the Anthon Transcript and find graphics that seem to be similar or match Egyptian characters from several different time periods and scripting styles.

The irony is: What you say is true for Ancient Egyptian but it doesn't support your argument. Egyptian Glyphs are strikingly persistent over time so one would not be surprised to see them turn up in different time periods (persistence). This is complicated by the fact that different scribes in different locations wrote them slightly differently (variation in samples). The process of finding a glyph match is what researchers need to to do justify their research. A good example of that is the research for: Man with both arms raised You can see how the glyph appears in many different time periods by different scribes. The 3 references from two different Hieratic Paleographies is a good example of variation in sample. It also establishes a one to one correspondence of that particular reformed Egyptian glyph with one in Egyptian hieratic orthography. Critics argue that there is NO evidence in Egyptian so his references would refute that. Lacking any other research one must start somewhere and has to first provide references.

You can actually do the same thing with any other language.

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That's beside the point. The claim is that it is reformed Egyptian. The proof of the Anthon Transcript will probably mostly stand on it's relationship to Egyptian orthographies-hieratic, abnormal hieratic, demotic and hieroglyphic that existed around and before 600 B.C (before because Lehi was older when they made their journey so I suppose he would have had a few score years of education writing these orthographies) or glyphs whose use had persisted since that time.

I can see similarities to characters in all of these languages. That does not establish any sort of connection in and of itself.

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Saying it does not establish any sort of connection in and of itself, doesn't make the comparison not true unless you can show that it doesn't. Beyond their say-so, critics present no research beyond the statement.

When you think about it, there are only so many ways to draw a little character ...

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"When you think about it..." pardon me, but, I hear statements like that alot when people attempt to win a discussion in the absence of research. In this case, if we are trying to prove something, there is no replacement for research. (I acknowledge faith is a different issue!) In addition, your argument might be true if one were only talking about one character in one orthography. But in the Anthon Transcript there are apparant hieratic and demotic glyphs. From the transcript it is just as reasonable to assume that Lehi and Nephi used whatever was convenient for them from at least two of the four orthographies. For example, The principle of using a dot to represent a glyph too complicated to draw inside of another glyph or a line to represent a more complex glyph exists in both hieratic and demotic. Also the principle of simple ligaturing two glyphs together to produce a third glyph exists in hieratic and the principle of of ligaturing two or more glyphs to produce a complex glyph which only vaguely looks like any of the glyphs from which it was created, exists in demotic. So, where Egyptian, and by extension, reformed Egyptian is concerned, there may be many ways to draw a little character.

...any two languages are bound to have several similarities due to constraints of readability and production methods which imply no cultural contact.

[/quote

For the sake of the discussion, Ariel Crowley came up with 94 glyph matches in demotic alone. Pick reformed Egyptian and any one other language that existed at 600 B.C. because supposedly this was the last time the Nephites had contact with the old world, and come up with a similar number of glyph matches and we'll have something to consider. Until then, The Ariel Crowley site and the reformed-Egyptian site appear to be the only researched backed sites available.

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Do you have any proof of this bold and unprecedented claim? I'm sure you would be willing to tell us how many of these professors there were, because you imply there were several. PM me their names and I will personally call them to verify.And? Maybe you are suggesting that the are strongly related because they have common origins. I don't see how this helps your argument. If anything it suggests that Joseph's characters should show strong resemblance to known Egyptian scripts.

I don't know their personal contact information off hand but i will do my best to contact them (it has been several years) and see if i can provide you with phone numbers or email address and then i will PM you, chances are you will just get email address for the most part, unless they don't mind having me send a phone number to some person i have talked to in an online forum, i doubt that they would feel comfortable with that.

Also regarding the scripts i quoted as having relations it was in response to what you were saying, you were trivializing how the similarities that exist between the Anthon script characters and those of various Egyptian shorthand scripts such as Hieratic and Demotic could be explained by coincidence because writing systems have seemingly coincidental similarities. Well that is true there are many coincidences out there however Thai has similarities with Hindi script because they are related, most of the writing systems you were finding similarities with are related. The similarities between the script used on the Anthon transcript and writing systems such as Demotic and Hieratic as well as other time period versions of these scripts could also be something else besides coincidence.

Could Joseph have copied those characters from one of the papyri he owned? yes, but if he did then the Egyptian shorthand script used is one that hasn't been discovered yet with similarities to Egyptian shorthand that has been discovered. The other option is that Joseph took some symbols he saw on one of the papyri he owned and changed them a little bit in order to mess with peoples heads, or perhaps Joseph had nothing to to do with the Anthon transcript, someone else with devious intent might have taken Demotic and Hieratic characters from a papyri and changed them a little bit and perhaps they also decided to make up a few more characters in order to trick people. What a person believes about it really just comes down to their bias and disposition. I don't know what to believe regarding it but i don't believe they are just made up gibberish symbols. Also the Anthon transcript isn't something talked about very often and most Mormons don't even know anything about it.

-corey

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