Joseph Copied Parts Of The Book Of Mormon From The Kjv Bible (Church Source)

[Robert F. Smith]

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03. Moroni delivers Golden Plates to Joseph who then stickes them in a hollow log in the woods

04. Moroni's translation is so perfect that Joseph can translate it (with the Golden Plates still in that hollow log out in the woods)

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Joseph rec'd the plates at midnite on 1 Tishri 1827 (Sept 22) while Emma waited with Joseph Knight's carriage on the road. Joseph then hid the plates in a hollow log, before returning to Emma and going home. Joseph was afraid that someone would steal the plates from him going to or from that hill "convenient to the village of Manchester" (JSH 51). Ten days later, on 10 Tishri, Joseph retrieved the plates and encountered some thieves in the woods who tried to intercept him. Joseph carried the 50 lb plates wrapped in a smock as he ran to get away.

You'll note that Joseph cleverly arranged for those dates (Rosh haShana, and Yom Kippur), just as he did later at the Kirtland Temple, when Elijah came to him at Passover (as he was supposed to). Joseph was probably a student of the rabbi at the synagogue over in Rochester, except that there was no rabbi or synagogue in Rochester then.

[canard78]

So, how does one determine if the Book of Mormon, the Book of Moses, the Book of Abraham, or the Bible is from God?

Glenn

Alma 32 and By their fruits, not root, ye shall know them. And I say that fully knowing I spend more time at the moment digging for the root than eating the fruit.

[canard78]

The ultimate claim the Book of Mormon makes for itself is that it is from God. I'm not sure I'm allowed to start new threads yet, but I will follow if one is started.

Go to the social all and have a 3 word story with yourself to get up to 25 posts. Then you can start a thread.

I'm fine with you posting a link. As long as it's not hosted on a website that breaks the board rules (eg temple content) you can link to most things - your own original work is especially impressive.

[tagriffy]

Go to the social all and have a 3 word story with yourself to get up to 25 posts. Then you can start a thread.

I'm fine with you posting a link. As long as it's not hosted on a website that breaks the board rules (eg temple content) you can link to most things - your own original work is especially impressive.

My question was directed to the moderators. I don't want to step on the wrong toes. Blogspot may well host blogs that would break board rules, but since it is an open forum like Wordpress, I'm not sure that counts. I now have a button for posting new threads, but I don't have a particular topic in mind to go with.

[Hamba Tuhan]

So all 500 charactors...which I'm assuming was about 100 words...with the exception of that synonym were identical?

Correct

It would be interesting to know what those 100 words were...if they were common Mormon speak, scripture or merely random words of advice

Words of advice, definitely, though I don't know what you mean by 'random' here. Certainly not scripture.

but in either case I'm sure that it was a faith confirming experience for you.

More comforting than 'faith confirming', as I indicated above. It left me feeling that my words aren't always as wide of the mark as I often fear they are. Other than than, I frankly don't know what to make of the experience. Did the patriarch somehow 'plagiarise' me? Did I 'plagiarise' him? Were we both inspired? (As I mentioned, I hadn't felt necessarily inspired.) Was it the most unlikely of coincidences?

I feel rather certain, though, that anyone who might analyse the situation purely from a position of 'textual analysis' would unavoidably reach the wrong conclusion.

Edited May 31, 2013 by Hamba Tuhan

[bcuzbcuz]

True enough. However, you seem to restrict translation only to words/characters, rather than to extend it to illustrations -- which is central to Egyptology.

You haven't studied Hierogyphs. Joseph and many of his contemporaries thought Egyptian heiroglyphs were illustrations, but that is totally incorrect. As Champollion and his counterpart, Thomas Young, were finally, after more than 30 years of studying the Rosetta Stone, able to correctly interpret the heiroglyphs, the figures represent an alphabet and syllabic sound, along with a picture to confirm gender, or clarify meaning if necessary. Egyptian language has over 700 characters. There is also a shorthand cursive script called Hieratic. Both rely on sound to identify. But if two words had the same sound and the context did not clarify, such as when lists were compiled, then a picture was added. A picture of a woman would follow a name if the person in question was female. A picture of a boat followed the word boat which also had the same sound as a person's name. (boat was spelled with three characters representing the letters/sounds dpt followed with a symbol drawing of a boat. The name Depet was spelled the same way and, if space permitted a picture of a man was included)

So your supposition that symbols needed some kind of "interpretation" is why it took so long to actually read heiroglyphs. The idea is wrong.

You also seem to posit that the "Grammar and Alphabet of the Egyptian Language", which now can be found on a church site, was not composed by Joseph, merely because it isn't in his handwriting. Whoever wrote it hadn't a clue about heiroglyphs.

[canard78]

My question was directed to the moderators. I don't want to step on the wrong toes. Blogspot may well host blogs that would break board rules, but since it is an open forum like Wordpress, I'm not sure that counts. I now have a button for posting new threads, but I don't have a particular topic in mind to go with.

Blogspot's fine. I've often linked to blogs like mormanity.blogspot.com

But understand a desire to be cautious.

[ERayR]

Joseph and many of his contemporaries thought Egyptian heiroglyphs were illustrations,

I hadn't heard that one. Please list references.

[Vance]

Vance, you're going to have to come down to the telestial kingdom so we can play a game of raquet ball. I think it would be fun.

I'd be glad to go up to the telestial kingdom to shoot some hoops with you, (sorry I don't do raquet ball), but they won't let me out.

[Nevo]

I hadn't heard that [Joseph and many of his contemporaries thought Egyptian hieroglyphs were illustrations]. Please list references.

Here's one:

Though Jean-Francois Champollion (1790–1832) had deciphered the Rosetta stone by 1822, culture changed slowly, and the mystique of those inscrutable pictograms persisted—if increasingly metaphorically—inspiring the literati of the American Renaissance, Emerson and his Transcendentalist peers, and a host of other observers. Champollion’s phonetic Egyptian was slow to find traction because hieroglyphs had so long been understood to function as secret pictographic codes rather than an alphabetic system. Though often attributed to the German Jesuit Johannes Kircher (1602–1680), by the nineteenth century this belief had moved well beyond the esoteric literature from which it sprang. Noah Webster (1758–1843), defining the term for his compatriots in 1828, explained:

In antiquity, a sacred character; a mystical character or symbol, used in writings and inscriptions, particularly by the Egyptians, as signs of sacred, divine, or supernatural things. The hieroglyphics were figures of animals, parts of the human body, mechanical instruments, &c., which contained a meaning known only to kings and priests. It is supposed they were used to vail morality, politics, &c., from vulgar eyes.

. . . Central to the mystique of hieroglyphs was their pictographic nature. As no phonetic language could, these signs represented actual objects in Nature. Understanding hieroglyphs as pictographic ciphers for the mysteries of human origin and religion provides the most immediate context for understanding Phelps’s and Smith’s Egyptian grammar project. The KEP nearly overflow with creative pictographic interpretations of Egyptian characters. As the simplest example, a dot represents the human eye (Iota, “the eye or to see or sight”), while similar references to vision in association with dots or circles are scattered throughout the manuscripts, and a “compound” of Iota looks like an eye with a horizontal lash. Geographic interpretations are also represented in a convex arc translated as the earth's horizon (Sue, “the whole earth” and by extension “the whole of anything”) or a concave arc as its antipodes (Toan tau ee tahee tahee toues, “under the sun; under heaven; downward … going down into the grave; going down into misery = even Hell”). Many of the KEP glyphs are semantic and syntactic composites of simpler glyphs, evincing a combinative pictography. A stick figure (Ho hah oop) represents Jesus, an “intercessor”; his left leg is the glyph for delegation (Jah-ni-hah), anticipating the Abraham account of a Jesus chosen as God's legate to earth in the cosmological drama. The glyph for Kiahbroam appears to be a combination of the character for Zub Zool oan (“first man or father of fathers”) with the eye (ki) and a horizon-determining Sue. Thus the composite glyph meant “a father of many nations.” There seems to be implicit within this gloss the image of Abraham seeing his posterity and thereby comprehending the earth.

In many cases, Phelps's and Smith's interpretations combined physical and metaphorical meanings, as the glyph Zi, which means both “upright” (it looks like an upside-down “T”) and “modest and chaste being taught most perfectly.” The identical glyph is later transcribed as Zub, extending another pictographic interpretation, this time vertical ascent: “leading up or to: the time for going up to the altar to worship; going up before the Lord[;] being caught up.”

The funerary vignettes within the Chandler papyri confirmed the connection between pictures and objects. Smith offered interpretations of these vignettes, published in the church organ as “Fac-similes” (the name by which modern Latter-day Saints know them), similar to the approach within the KEP. Circulating in some respects as published predecessors to the anticipated Egyptian Grammar, these vignettes spanned the hieroglyphic project and the ultimate Book of Abraham. These vignettes—“the figures at the beginning” of the official Book of Abraham—were the very definition of hieroglyphs, pictures telling sacred stories. In support of this project, the Book of Abraham would reveal an ancient name—Rahleenos—for hieroglyphs themselves. The Latter-day Saints delighted in the circulation of these facsimiles within the exchange papers, even as they battled with critics who mocked their prophet's interpretations. In their visual, material interpretations of the glyphs on their papyri, Phelps and Smith emphasized the strict correspondence of primal languages and objects in Nature, mediated through their conception of ancient pictography.

— Samuel Brown, "Joseph (Smith) in Egypt: Babel, Hieroglyphs, and the Pure Language of Eden," Church History 78, no. 1 (March 2009): 44-47.

Edited May 31, 2013 by Nevo

[ERayR]

Here's one:

I am sorry but this is not a reference that Joseph Smith thought Egyptian hieroglyphs were illustrations. Something a little more substantial would be nice.

[tagriffy]

Blogspot's fine. I've often linked to blogs like mormanity.blogspot.com

But understand a desire to be cautious.

All right, here is the direct link. I suppose if the moderators don't like it, the can just delete this post.

[cdowis]

Maybe the Tanners knew it by that title, but that is in fact not its title, and Joseph wrote very little of it. Responsible scholars see it as a failed secular attempt to create either a translation key to Egyptian or a cipher. In any case, it was never completed, which is the best indicator of its failure.

Or it was like using the physical plates in the translation of the BOM. It was a useful tool (exercise) in the beginning of the translation process, but became unnecessary later on. We can only speculate, and I think calling it a "failure" is pre-mature. Tvedtnes has demonstrated to my satisfaction that it should cannot be dismissed out of hand.

May I note that Nibley pointed out that "reasonable scholars" can be very mistaken. A scholar's opinion is just that, an opinion. I have learned to understand the difference between opinion/ assertion and fact.

Edited May 31, 2013 by cdowis

[Nevo]

I am sorry but this is not a reference that Joseph Smith thought Egyptian hieroglyphs were illustrations. Something a little more substantial would be nice.

I guess the joke is on me for responding to your post. I should have known better.

[ERayR]

I guess the joke is on me for responding to your post. I should have known better.

Sorry you are having a bad day. It is just that what you posted and bolded does not provide a basis for your statement that Joseph Smith thought Egyptian hieroglyphs were illustrations. The paper you referenced may contain some evidence but I don't have the luxury of expending $30 for one article.

[Nevo]

Sorry you are having a bad day. It is just that what you posted and bolded does not provide a basis for your statement that Joseph Smith thought Egyptian hieroglyphs were illustrations. The paper you referenced may contain some evidence but I don't have the luxury of expending $30 for one article.

I've added more text from the article for your consideration. I think it's pretty clear that Joseph Smith viewed Egyptian hieroglyphs as pictures that represented things ("illustrations") rather than as components of an alphabetic system.

[ERayR]

I've added more text from the article for your consideration. I think it's pretty clear that Joseph Smith viewed Egyptian hieroglyphs as pictures that represented things ("illustrations") rather than as components of an alphabetic system.

It may be but what significance is it? A distinction without a difference. An alphabetic system is only a method of representing things (illustrate).

[Nevo]

It may be but what significance is it? A distinction without a difference.

Well, you were the one challenging bcuzbcuz on this issue. If you don't think it matters whether Joseph had a correct understanding of hieroglyphs or not then why did you issue a CFR?

[ERayR]

Well, you were the one challenging bcuzbcuz on this issue. If you don't think it matters whether Joseph had a correct understanding of hieroglyphs or not then why did you issue a CFR?

I'm sorry your still having a bad day.

You are misstating what I said. My challenge was to your assertion that Joseph thought hieroglyphics were merely illustrations. After I understood what you were talking about I think you are making a distinction with no difference. I thought I was pretty plain.

[Nevo]

My challenge was to your assertion that Joseph thought hieroglyphics were merely illustrations. After I understood what you were talking about I think you are making a distinction with no difference. I thought I was pretty plain.

So you're saying your original objection to bcuzbcuz was based on a misunderstanding. And now that you understand the point bcuzbcuz was making, you think it's a distinction without a difference. Got it.

[ERayR]

So you're saying your original objection to bcuzbcuz was based on a misunderstanding. And now that you understand the point bcuzbcuz was making, you think it's a distinction without a difference. Got it.

Bless you.

[Johnnie Cake]

Joseph rec'd the plates at midnite on 1 Tishri 1827 (Sept 22) while Emma waited with Joseph Knight's carriage on the road. Joseph then hid the plates in a hollow log, before returning to Emma and going home. Joseph was afraid that someone would steal the plates from him going to or from that hill "convenient to the village of Manchester" (JSH 51). Ten days later, on 10 Tishri, Joseph retrieved the plates and encountered some thieves in the woods who tried to intercept him. Joseph carried the 50 lb plates wrapped in a smock as he ran to get away.

You'll note that Joseph cleverly arranged for those dates (Rosh haShana, and Yom Kippur), just as he did later at the Kirtland Temple, when Elijah came to him at Passover (as he was supposed to). Joseph was probably a student of the rabbi at the synagogue over in Rochester, except that there was no rabbi or synagogue in Rochester then.

You see Rosh haShana, and Yom Kippur...I see the Fall Equinox...a day that fits in well with Joseph's folk magic...something he actually did believe in...as opposed to your Jewish synagogue suppositions?

And don't forget what Joseph was wearing (according to some accounts) and why...not exactly a Jewish Tallit.

Edited June 1, 2013 by Johnnie Cake

[volgadon]

And don't forget what Joseph was wearing (according to some accounts)

Reference, please.

[bcuzbcuz]

It may be but what significance is it? A distinction without a difference. An alphabetic system is only a method of representing things (illustrate).

"An alphabetic system is only a method of representing things (illustrate)." What a marvelouly obscure and unqualified confused jumble of nonsense that does absolutely nothing to address the issue at hand. I'm sure that given enough words and enough time you could somehow assemble your thoughts to defend and clarify your statement but i'm not willing to spend the time or interest to listen.

[canard78]

Reference, please.

I genuinely love how you seem to sit quietly observing threads and not getting drawn into tittle tattle. But at the hint of a spurious comment about things of Jewish association and you're on it. Like an owl that quietly glides before a deadly drop onto a field mouse.