Learning Of The Jews, Language Of The Egyptians

[Bernard Gui]

Any thoughts why Lehi taught his children "the learning of the Jews" and the "language of the Egyptians?"

Was this something that was done at that time by others?

[PeterPear]

Any thoughts why Lehi taught his children "the learning of the Jews" and the "language of the Egyptians?"

Was this something that was done at that time by others?

Well, since the Children of Israel were at one time residents then captives of Egypt.....

[nealr]

I have a paper on exactly this that had been submitted to Interpreter. I recently finished revising it based on reviewer feedback and resubmitted it. I haven't heard back from them, but I would guess it will be published in the next couple of months, so stay tuned.

The short version is that Nephi's phrasing is a fitting description of how hieratic (an Egyptian script) was being used in Judah in the late 7th century BC.

[CV75]

Others?

 

 

!!!

[Robert F. Smith]

Others?

 

 

!!!

Easy:  WYF is an acronym and internet slang for "What's Your Favorite?" while MWTI is the Madrasah Wak Tanjong Al-Islamiah in Singapore.

[Nevo]

The short version is that Nephi's phrasing is a fitting description of how hieratic (an Egyptian script) was being used in Judah in the late 7th century BC.

 

I look forward to seeing your evidence for this, as I was under the impression that hieratic wasn't used at all in Judah in the late 7th century except to write numbers. If Nephi somehow mastered the complicated hieratic numeral system it might point to a scribal education but it wouldn't mean that he was conversant in "the language of the Egyptians" (whether hieratic or some form of demotic).

 

Even if we envision Nephi having a scribal education, which might conceivably have included training in "Egyptian" of some description, it's hard to see how this would also apply to Lehi, as required by 1 Nephi 2. The text seems to require that Lehi be a trained scribe (whence "the language of the Egyptians"), a skilled metalsmith/jeweller (whence the family's supply of "gold and . . . silver"), and a caravaneer (whence the ready availability of tents and provisions and pack animals for an extended journey). It's an incongruous combination of occupations to say the least.

[Bernard Gui]

I look forward to seeing your evidence for this, as I was under the impression that hieratic wasn't used at all in Judah in the late 7th century except to write numbers. If Nephi somehow mastered the complicated hieratic numeral system it might point to a scribal education but it wouldn't mean that he was conversant in "the language of the Egyptians" (whether hieratic or some form of demotic).

Even if we envision Nephi having a scribal education, which might conceivably have included training in "Egyptian" of some description, it's hard to see how this would also apply to Lehi, as required by 1 Nephi 2. The text seems to require that Lehi be a trained scribe (whence "the language of the Egyptians"), a skilled metalsmith/jeweller (whence the family's supply of "gold and . . . silver"), and a caravaneer (whence the ready availability of tents and provisions and pack animals for an extended journey). It's an incongruous combination of occupations to say the least.

Nephi demonstrated metalworking skills when he fabricated tools, replaced his bow, and made plates. He probably learned that from his father. Both men were highly capable and literate, judging from the quality and quantity of their writings. About Lehi and caravans, Nephi said Lehi had lived in Jerusalem in all his days. Wouldn't that indicate he was not a frequent traveller? The knowledge of the Jews mean scripture, laws, and tradition, but would it not also include such things as manufacture, science, trade, commerce, etc,? Edited May 27, 2015 by Bernard Gui

[Bernard Gui]

I have a paper on exactly this that had been submitted to Interpreter. I recently finished revising it based on reviewer feedback and resubmitted it. I haven't heard back from them, but I would guess it will be published in the next couple of months, so stay tuned.

The short version is that Nephi's phrasing is a fitting description of how hieratic (an Egyptian script) was being used in Judah in the late 7th century BC.

Thanks for the advance notice. I'll be anxiously watching for it. So you are saying it was not out of place for a Jew to teach his son Egyptian at that time?

[Bernard Gui]

Others?

 

Sorry to be dense, but please explain?

 

!!!

[Bernard Gui]

Well, since the Children of Israel were at one time residents then captives of Egypt.....

You are saying that once being liberated, they maintained their knowledge of the language over that many years?

[CV75]

 

Others?

 

Sorry to be dense, but please explain?

 

!!!

 

It's a rough translation of "Oy vey" in response to "others" (non-Jews) carrying on a Jewish practice... but of course Lehi didn't speak Yiddish.. two jokes for the price of one... I'll be at Kutsher's all week...

[CV75]

Easy:  WYF is an acronym and internet slang for "What's Your Favorite?" while MWTI is the Madrasah Wak Tanjong Al-Islamiah in Singapore.

Oy veh!

[oremites]

The text seems to require that Lehi be a trained scribe (whence "the language of the Egyptians"), a skilled metalsmith/jeweller (whence the family's supply of "gold and . . . silver"), and a caravaneer (whence the ready availability of tents and provisions and pack animals for an extended journey). It's an incongruous combination of occupations to say the least.

 

So anyone with a supply of gold and silver is, of necessity, a skilled metalsmith/jeweller?  And where does it say the tents, provisions and pack animals were ready available?

 

Anyway, everyone knows how to do things outside the scope of their occupation.  I have a ready supply of tools and wood even though I'm not a carpenter by occupation.  My garage holds a good amount of gardening supplies even though I'm not a farmer by occupation.  I certainly hope you have a variety of skills that don't directly apply to your main occupation.

[Nevo]

So anyone with a supply of gold and silver is, of necessity, a skilled metalsmith/jeweller?

 

For the argument that Lehi (and Nephi) were metalsmiths, see http://publications.maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/fullscreen/?pub=1081&index=3. As Chadwick notes, "to possess gold was very rare—gold was not used as a medium of common monetary exchange. For Lehi to possess both gold and silver suggests that he worked with gold, which in turn suggests gold smithing." Furthermore, "expertise in smithing precious metals such as silver and gold, particularly in smithing iron and hardening it into steel, is not something a person picked up as a hobby or sideline skill. Smithing, and in particular iron and steel smithing, was the high-tech profession of Lehi's day—the period that archaeologists call Iron Age II. Evidence of Lehi's and Nephi's expertise in all sorts of metals—in other words, evidence that smithing was their profession—is found in several passages of Nephi's writings."

[Calm]

So anyone with a supply of gold and silver is, of necessity, a skilled metalsmith/jeweller? And where does it say the tents, provisions and pack animals were ready available?

Anyway, everyone knows how to do things outside the scope of their occupation. I have a ready supply of tools and wood even though I'm not a carpenter by occupation. My garage holds a good amount of gardening supplies even though I'm not a farmer by occupation. I certainly hope you have a variety of skills that don't directly apply to your main occupation.

Tools were a bit more expensive to own back then when mass production was not as effective.

If Lehi was a metalsmith, he likely was familiar with people who sold his product. Perhaps the tents, etc. were easily gotten from some of them.

I think the assumption they were readily available is based on the lack of discussion of preparation and that they were able to get away without attracting unwanted attention.

Edited May 26, 2015 by calmoriah

[oremites]

So you're saying that there are several clues in the text that they were metalsmiths.   What about scribes?  Caravaneers?

[oremites]

I think the assumption they were readily available is based on the lack of discussion of preparation and that they were able to get away without attracting unwanted attention.

 

Since Nephi's account isn't an exhaustive diary, the lack of discussion can easily be attributed to Nephi leaving out what he felt were unimportant details.  We have no idea how much attention was attracted, wanted or unwanted.

 

Anyway, I'm just playing devil's advocate here.  I believe that they did have those things readily available.  I just think we need to be careful about reading things into the text that, while logical and likely, are just assumptions and then later building arguments on those assumptions as if they were facts stated in the text.

[Calm]

Yep.

[Nevo]

What about scribes?

 

See Brant Gardner, "Nephi as Scribe."

 

Caravaneers?

 

Nibley made this argument in Lehi in the Desert and elsewhere. One of the odd things about Lehi's wilderness journey is that the family doesn't go to Egypt, as people fleeing Jerusalem typically did. It is especially odd given their apparent familiarity with Egyptian culture. Instead they head south-east, more or less following the Frankincense Trail. The only suitable pack animals for that environment would have been camels (see S. Kent Brown, Voices from the Dust), which most Jerusalem families did not keep on hand.

[cinepro]

 

See Brant Gardner, "Nephi as Scribe."

 

 

Nibley made this argument in Lehi in the Desert and elsewhere. One of the odd things about Lehi's wilderness journey is that the family doesn't go to Egypt, as people fleeing Jerusalem typically did. It is especially odd given their apparent familiarity with Egyptian culture. Instead they head south-east, more or less following the Frankincense Trail. The only suitable pack animals for that environment would have been camels (see S. Kent Brown, Voices from the Dust), which most Jerusalem families did not keep on hand.

 

 

Honestly, I think if you're comfortable with the idea of Nephi and co. being able to build a ship capable of a trans-oceanic voyage carrying several dozen people, the question of where they got camels from seems rather...small?

[Nevo]

Honestly, I think if you're comfortable with the idea of Nephi and co. being able to build a ship capable of a trans-oceanic voyage carrying several dozen people, the question of where they got camels from seems rather...small?

 

So you're saying that I'm straining at the gnat of a camel and swallowing the camel of a ship?

 

(Actually, I think the ship is problematic too. Not least because none of the proposed sites for Bountiful would have supplied suitable timber for a transoceanic crossing).

Edited May 26, 2015 by Nevo

[nealr]

I look forward to seeing your evidence for this, as I was under the impression that hieratic wasn't used at all in Judah in the late 7th century except to write numbers. If Nephi somehow mastered the complicated hieratic numeral system it might point to a scribal education but it wouldn't mean that he was conversant in "the language of the Egyptians" (whether hieratic or some form of demotic).

 

Even if we envision Nephi having a scribal education, which might conceivably have included training in "Egyptian" of some description, it's hard to see how this would also apply to Lehi, as required by 1 Nephi 2. The text seems to require that Lehi be a trained scribe (whence "the language of the Egyptians"), a skilled metalsmith/jeweller (whence the family's supply of "gold and . . . silver"), and a caravaneer (whence the ready availability of tents and provisions and pack animals for an extended journey). It's an incongruous combination of occupations to say the least.

 

I will admit upfront that the evidence is slim, but we have more than hieratic numerals, and the various scraps of hieratic script we have only make sense if we assume that a full hieratic writing tradition existed within Israel/Judah (per David Calabro's MA thesis). And the hieratic signs are all used with Egyptian meanings. In fact, per Stephen Ricks and John Tvedtnes, some of the texts we have intersperse Hebrew and Hieratic scripts, but read fully as Egyptian. So yes, I think the evidence points to Egyptian language being familiar to Israelite scribes, and perhaps business men as well. It wasn't "pure" Egyptian, however. It had been syncratized with Hebrew elements. Hence it was after "the learning of the Jews."

 

A quick comment on all the "incongruous combination of occupations." Lehi was, I am quite certain (though others are not), a metalsmith. There is simply nothing else to explain the skills Nephi clearly has with metals. I find Chadwick's paper on this persuasive. Chadwick also talks about Lehi's land of inheritance being up in the Manasseh, being ancestral land lost ca. 715 BC which his grandparents or great-grandparents fled Assyrian invasion. Chadwick argues that Lehi's family would have handed down the deed in successive generations, and when Josiah reclaimed some of the Northern territories, Lehi would have presented the deed and got the land back. Maintaining that land (and keeping his raw materials like gold and silver on that property) would require travel back and forth from Jerusalem. Hence he owns tents and has some experience traveling through the desert. Lehi also would have traveled to the mines in Timna (near the gulf of Aqaba) to get raw copper ore, and possibly even could have lodged there and worked there (seasonally perhaps?). So he would have had basic travel supplies and experience. It is also possible that he traded he products (jewelery and trinkets, etc.) in Egypt, though that is uncertain and possibly something that would have involved a middle-man (like an actual caravaneer). In any case, it seems to me there are plenty of ways to accommodate his possession of tents and some travel experience (really the only evidence for caravaneer) without assuming that was what he did for a living.

 

As for writing, at least some of the scraps of hieratic we have appear to be business transactions. And the use of hieratic does not appear to have been a government controlled phenomena. It seems to have been perpetuated though business transactions, and thus naturally passed down each generation within the family. Nephi, I think, clearly has training as a scribe (his writing is much to polished for it to be otherwise), and I follow Gardner's line of thinking that this was a profession he was being educated for because there was not enough of the family business to divide up among all of Lehi's sons. As the youngest, Nephi was naturally being prepared for something else (perhaps Sam was too, but we don't know enough about him or the other brothers). So while I don't think he gained all his skill in writing from his father, I think he initially learned to write and use hieratic (and the Hebraized Egyptian language) from his father while helping with the family business. Hence, to him, it was the "language of my father." The one difficulty this hypothesis has is that scribes may have been a family trade as well, which would make it more difficult to explain where and how Nephi was getting the training. So this depends on their being scribal schools. (Or perhaps Lehi had kin that were scribes and were willing to train Nephi? If Lehi had, say, a cousin or an uncle that was a scribe but had no sons, then this kin might have been willing to train a nephew to take his place. Seriously just came up with this idea just now, so I would need to to look into it more.) 

 

So I think we can account for everything just fine with Lehi as a metalworker. Caravaneer cannot do that, and in fact is by far the weakest of the three possibilities. I could be persuaded to go with scribe, if a plausible account for Nephi's interest and skill in metalworking, and Lehi's possession of the raw materials (i.e., gold and silver) could somehow be a accounted for. (Perhaps change the above scenario with kin as metalworkers? But there is still the issue of Lehi having the raw materials.) 

[nealr]

So you're saying that I'm straining at the gnat of a camel and swallowing the camel of a ship?

 

(Actually, I think the ship is problematic too. Not least because none of the proposed sites for Bountiful would have supplied suitable timber for a transoceanic crossing).

 

Look, I don't want to derail this thread, but I take issue with the assertion that there was no suitable timber in Dhofar region (where all proposed Bountiful sites are). And yes, I've read Terry Ball's letter. I like Dr. Ball, he seems like a good botanist, and I appreciate his comments. Like I said, I don't want to derail this thread, but here are just a few quick notes:

 

1. Ball himself says that his reasons for doubting the tamarind's presence in Dhofar ca. Lehi's time are "hardly conclusive" (n. 4). Yet nearly everyone who leans on Ball misses this nuance. The work that he and others have done in Dhofar on taxa of flora is important, but wholly inadequate for drawing hard and fast conclusions about when species first arrived in the area. Nothing definitive has been done.  

 

2. What Ball says about the Sycamore Fig is at odds with eye-witness reports of Lynn and Hope HIlton in terms of the species size, hardness, and actual use as shipbuilding wood. While Ball is the botanist, and the Hiltons just amateurs, I am reluctant to doubt their direct observations. It was also used for shipbuilding in Egypt (including exterior of the ship) at least as early at 500 BC. 

 

3. Ball does not mention palm (date and coconut) trees at all. Kelley DeVries mentions that they were used for shipbuilding in the area, but nevertheless dismisses them as a possibility. Yet they were used for ocean-going ships in pre-modern times. In fact, Warren Aston has done research and found that some seafarers in the Arabian Sea/Indian Ocean actually made their entire ship out of products from the coconut tree. The timber, the rope, the sails, etc. all from the coconut palm. And these boats sailed in the ocean. 

 

4. As a general note, I think we ought to be cautious about the assumptions about what makes suitable wood, etc. I don't want to lean too heavily on Thor Hayerdahl, but I do think the voyage of the Kon-Tiki is instructive in that is illustrates that rather small vessels made of materials that are not supposed to be able withstand rigors of ocean travel, can make long voyages across oceans. (Granted, the Kon-Tiki just barely made it, after multiple attempts by Hayerdahl, but those kinds of issues can presumably be mitigated by the Lord's instructions on how to build the craft, and in navigating it). Less safely, less securely, and less likely? Yes, but not impossible. Not that I think Nephi's vessel was something like this made from less-than-ideal materials (I lean toward the coconut palm myself), but it is something to keep in mind while thinking about such issues. 

 

I'll admit it is not certain, but I think it is quite probable that suitable wood was there in Dhofar ca. 600 BC. I really don't want to get into a long debate on this (especially not on this thread, since that would be a major derail), but I hope you can understand why I am reluctant to lean too heavily on the opinions expressed by Ball in his brief letter. 

[Bernard Gui]

It's a rough translation of "Oy vey" in response to "others" (non-Jews) carrying on a Jewish practice... but of course Lehi didn't speak Yiddish.. two jokes for the price of one... I'll be at Kutsher's all week...

My question was if there is evidence that other Jews did what Lehi did.....taught his family Egyptian. I'm not sure how to take your joke.

Edited May 27, 2015 by Bernard Gui

[Robert F. Smith]

Nephi demonstrated metalworking skills when he fabricated tools, replaced his bow, and made plates. He probably learned that from his father. Both men were highly capable and literate, judging from the quality and quantity of their writings.

Highly skilled metalsmiths and literate in Egyptian would suggest advanced training in both, perhaps part of a wide-ranging family (clan) business (note the Qenite smithing specialty).  Their possession of jewels and gold and their deep interest in the Brass Plates further indicate their elite status, and suggests a reason for their training in Egyptian (scribal work on the Plates).  Because we lack the book of Lehi, we cannot place these things in context.

 

However, we could speculate that the Manassite clan from which Lehi came were once scribes (a century before) at the royal court in Samaria of the Northern Kingdom.  Based on the widespread use of hieratic Egyptian in Israel and Judah before and during the lifetime of Lehi, non-Mormon scholar Stefan Wimmer has suggested that Egyptians could have come to Judah, or Jewish scribes could have been sent to Egypt for training.  Others have suggested Phoenicia as the likeliest venue for an Egyptian scribal school.  The late non-Mormon scholar, Anson Rainey, concluded from the evidence that professional Hebrew scribes were using hieratic Egyptian at that very time.

 

Of course, the Bible gives no such hint of Egyptian usage.

 

 

About Lehi and caravans, Nephi said Lehi had lived in Jerusalem in all his days. Wouldn't that indicate he was not a freguent traveller?

Well, he also had another estate outside of Jerusalem where his wealth was secreted (I Ne 3:22).  His official residence and business may have been centered in Jerusalem all his life, but that does not mean that he did not travel widely.  We simply do not know.