Rare Document Reveals What Gold Plates' Reformed Egyptian Characters Looked Like

[ALarson]

I received this link in an email today (from LDSLiving):

 

http://www.ldsliving.com/Rare-Document-Reveals-What-Gold-Plates-Reformed-Egyptian-Characters-Looked-Like-Photo/s/79695?utm_medium=email&utm_source=ldsliving

 

Is this new or old news?  I have to admit that this is not an area of church history where I'm very well read, so I thought I'd post this and see what others know about it.

 

Here is what the article states (along with some photos):

 

Even though Joseph Smith returned the gold plates to the angel Moroni, thanks to The Joseph Smith Papers, we can still see what the writing on the plates looked like.  There are several surviving documents containing characters believed to have been drawn off of the gold plates. None of these documents is the same one that Martin Harris took to Samuel Mitchill and Charles Anthon, but they were likely copied from early transcriptions of the characters from the plates.

 

This is the first known publication of characters copied from the gold plates. Editors of the Prophet, a Mormon newspaper published in New York, produced and sold this broadside after Joseph Smith's death.

 

 

[jkwilliams]

I believe those are from the so-called Anthon transcript, which was originally owned by David Whitmer.

 

http://www.cometozarahemla.org/graphics/anthon.jpg

Edited August 14, 2015 by jkwilliams

[ALarson]

I believe those are from the so-called Anthon transcript, which was originally owned by David Whitmer.

 

http://www.utlm.org/images/anthontranscript.jpg

Oh, ok.  Thanks for the link and info.  All very interesting. 

 

 It states in the article that: "None of these documents is the same one that Martin Harris took to Samuel Mitchill and Charles Anthon..."

 

Here is the photo of the characters:

 

The photo in the article is of a book titled Stick of Joseph:

 

Edited August 14, 2015 by ALarson

[ALarson]

Ok, so nearly 80 views and only 1 comment?  What does this mean?

 

Is this old news....new news....bad news....good news...or what?  Is this something that is great for the church or something that has already been discussed?

Why is it in today's issue of LDSLiving? 

 

I usually do not even click on the link to read what they send, but this one caught my eye.  After reading it, I was curious and that's why I posted it here.  I'll try to do some searches on this book too (Stick of Joseph).

Edited August 14, 2015 by ALarson

[mfbukowski]

Old news.

Edited August 14, 2015 by mfbukowski

[Paradox_58]

Old news...there's a comparison between these characters and a stone found in Latin America called "The Lock" in a book by Jerry L. Ainsworth, The LIves and Travels of Mormon & Moroni. (p. 22) Interestingly there are a number of matches...characters that are seen clearly to be on both. 

[ALarson]

Old news.

Thanks!

 

So when they state, 

"This is the first known publication of characters copied from the gold plates."

that's not real accurate.

 

Got it and thanks again

Edited August 14, 2015 by ALarson

[jkwilliams]

Thanks!

 

So when they state, 

"This is the first known publication of characters copied from the gold plates."

that's not real accurate.

 

Got it and thanks again

 

It is the first known publication. 

[ALarson]

It is the first known publication. 

Ok.  Meaning the book, Stick of Joseph?  Any opinion on this book?

[jkwilliams]

Ok.  Meaning the book, Stick of Joseph?  Any opinion on this book?

 

I think it's a broadside, or advertisement for the Book of Mormon, not a book.

[Brian 2.0]

Is their a general assumption that Reformed Egyptian was a form of writing known and used outside the Nephite civilization?  Or was is something created by the Nephite group?

[JulieM]

Is LdsLiving magazine comparable to the online one called Meridian? (If so, that might explain a lot).

[Bobbieaware]

I received this link in an email today (from LDSLiving):

 

http://www.ldsliving.com/Rare-Document-Reveals-What-Gold-Plates-Reformed-Egyptian-Characters-Looked-Like-Photo/s/79695?utm_medium=email&utm_source=ldsliving

 

Is this new or old news?  I have to admit that this is not an area of church history where I'm very well read, so I thought I'd post this and see what others know about it.

 

Here is what the article states (along with some photos):

Thanks for posting this. The information is new to me. I'm wondering why there seems to be no date of publication posted anywhere in the LDS Living article? Based on the times posted with the comments, it seems the article was published today. From what I can see, the script in the photo is definitely not from the Anthon Transcript. For those who are saying this is old news, I!d be interested to read the earlier articles on this subject, so please post links to those earlier articles if you are able to do so. Am I mistaken in thinking the reason why some are saying the material in the article is old news is because they mistakenly think the article's photo of the ancient looking script is taken from the Anthon Transcript?

[Calm]

Am I mistaken in thinking the reason why some are saying the material in the article is old news is because they mistakenly think the article's photo of the ancient looking script is taken from the Anthon Transcript?

 

 

Not for me, I am pretty sure I've seen the photo of the Stick of Joseph before.

 

From wiki:

 

 

"Stick of Joseph"[edit]

In 1844, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints published a broadside about the Book of Mormon called "The Stick of Joseph", which reprinted some "reformed Egyptian" characters that resemble those on the Anthon transcript.^[15]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reformed_Egyptian

 

Also discussed here:

 

http://www.mormondialogue.org/topic/52912-the-stick-of-joseph/

Edited August 14, 2015 by calmoriah

[Bobbieaware]

Not for me, I am pretty sure I've seen the photo of the Stick of Joseph before.

 

From wiki:

 

 

"Stick of Joseph"[edit]

In 1844, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints published a broadside about the Book of Mormon called "The Stick of Joseph", which reprinted some "reformed Egyptian" characters that resemble those on the Anthon transcript.^[15]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reformed_Egyptian

 

Also discussed here:

 

http://www.mormondialogue.org/topic/52912-the-stick-of-joseph/

Thank you.

[Calm]

See here as well for the JSP's info:

 

http://josephsmithpapers.org/paperSummary/appendix-2-document-3-stick-of-joseph-1844?locale=eng&p=2#!/paperSummary/appendix-2-document-3-stick-of-joseph-1844&p=1

[mfbukowski]

Also discussed here:

http://www.mormondialogue.org/topic/52912-the-stick-of-joseph/

I had seen that before, hence old news. Not first publication.

[hagoth7]

Thanks!

 

So when they state, 

"This is the first known publication of characters copied from the gold plates."

that's not real accurate.

 

Got it and thanks again

The 1844 broadside shown in the image provided actually is believed to be the first known general publication of Nephite characters.

 

Ok.  Meaning the book, Stick of Joseph?  Any opinion on this book?

The Stick of Joseph is a reference to a passage in Ezekiel 37. As you may be aware, historically, LDS teaching has been that Ezekiel 37 foretells the coming of the Book of Mormon (the record of the tribe of Joseph [who was Jacob's son]). Lehi and his family were descendants of Jacob through his son Joseph, and their record, the Book of Mormon, is thereby considered the stick of Joseph.  Ezekiel 37 also foretells the combining of that record with the record of the tribe of Judah (also Jacob's son), and the Bible is considered the stick of Judah in the LDS church. The eventual outcome of those two combined testimonies, according to LDS understanding, would be a united people under one shepherd. I suggest a careful reading of the verses linked to above if you're not familiar with them.

 

It's interesting that a number of critics of the church claim the LDS interpretation is wrested out of context. However...

 

The LDS church also teaches that John 10:16 is a parallel passage, where Jesus told his disciples he would soon visit other Israelites, and that the eventual outcome of those visits would bring about an eventual united flock, under one shepherd.

 

Critics of the church claim that interpretation was a stretch too.

 

However, on my foreign mission, the Bible put out by the Bible society of the main protestant body in that country (where 95+ percent of the population were born into that protestant church) just happened to print in the bible a direct cross-reference between John 10:16 and Ezekiel 37, affirming for members of their faith a correlation between those two passages. It made teaching the prophetic fulfillment of the Book of Mormon a little bit easier.

 

Thoughts?

Edited August 15, 2015 by hagoth7

[Avatar4321]

Interesting. Anyone else feel the presence of the Spirit looking at the characters?

Has anyone tried translating them since?

[ALarson]

Has anyone tried translating them since?

I'd love to know the answer to this too.  Does anyone have information on this? (I'll see what I can look up too).

[boblloyd91]

On a somewhat related note there is a new article at the interpreter regarding Reformed Egyptian by Neal Rappleye. It's a good read

[oremites]

Interesting. Anyone else feel the presence of the Spirit looking at the characters?

Has anyone tried translating them since?

 

I know this isn't much information, but I skimmed through a book at my local library about this.  The book was the author's explanation of his attempted translation of those characters based on his experience working with ancient languages.  If I remember correctly, he identified them as a specific verse in Ether which had something to do with boats crossing the ocean.

 

It is possible that was some sort of drug-induced hallucination, but that's what I recall.

[ALarson]

Here's this ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reformed_Egyptian):

Mormon studies of reformed Egyptian

Mormon studies of reformed Egyptian are necessarily limited to whatever linguistic evidence can be obtained from the text of the Book of Mormon plus the extant seven-line "Caractors" document that may be or may not be the symbols said to have been copied from the gold plates.^[16] Although some Mormons have attempted to decipher the "Caractors" document, according to Brigham Young University Egyptologist John Gee, "the corpus is not large enough to render decipherment feasible."^[17]

 

Edited August 15, 2015 by ALarson

[ALarson]

And this from the same source ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reformed_Egyptian):

 

Mainstream scholarly view of reformed Egyptian

Standard language reference works contain no reference to "reformed Egyptian".^[3] No non-Mormon scholars acknowledge the existence of either a "reformed Egyptian" language or a "reformed Egyptian" script as it has been described in Mormon belief. For instance, in 1966, John A. Wilson, professor of Egyptology at the University of Chicago, wrote, "From time to time there are allegations that picture writing has been found in America… In no case has a professional Egyptologist been able to recognize these characters as Egyptian hieroglyphs. From our standpoint there is no such language as 'reformed Egyptian'."^[10] Klaus Baer, another Egyptologist at the University of Chicago, called the characters of the "Caractors" document nothing but "doodlings".^[11] An early-twentieth-century scholar said that the "Caractors" document looked more like "deformed English."^[12] Anthropologist Michael D. Coe of Yale University, an expert in pre-Columbian Mesoamerican studies, has written, "Of all the peoples of the pre-Columbian New World, only the ancient Maya had a complete script."^[

 

Edited August 15, 2015 by ALarson

[CA Steve]

Old news.

This is correct, it is old news.

 

https://archive.org/details/improvementera4501unse

 

 

Turn to page 15

Edited August 15, 2015 by CA Steve