Egyptian, Abraham, and Joseph

[notHagoth7]

I know almost nothing about Egyptian, or PofGP translation discussions. 

Just curious whether there's been any discussion in all of that of Abraham perhaps having used/adapted Egyptian similar to how Japanese and Koreans used/use Han/Chinese characters. If so, I would imagine some have already suggested that such a utilization/adaptation might explain some divergences between translations by Egyptologists and Joseph's translation of Abraham.

In short, did Abraham himself begin, among his people, a reform of Egyptian writing for Semitic use, a reform continued among his great-grandson Joseph? Two main ancestral prophets of Lehi's people.

If so, does that help explain passages such as these? https://www.lds.org/scriptures/bofm/mosiah/1.2?lang=eng#p1

Are Abraham and Joseph two of the main prophetic "fathers" hereby referred to? (Things like 2 Nephi 3 would suggest so.)

Thoughts?

[Robert F. Smith]

10 minutes ago, notHagoth7 said:

I know almost nothing about Egyptian, or PofGP translation discussions. 

Just curious whether there's been any discussion in all of that of Abraham perhaps having used/adapted Egyptian similar to how Japanese and Koreans used/use Han/Chinese characters. If so, I would imagine some have already suggested that such a utilization/adaptation might explain some divergences between translations by Egyptologists and Joseph's translation of Abraham.

In short, did Abraham himself begin, among his people, a reform of Egyptian writing for Semitic use, a reform continued among his great-grandson Joseph? Two main ancestral prophets of Lehi's people.

If so, does that help explain passages such as these? https://www.lds.org/scriptures/bofm/mosiah/1.2?lang=eng#p1

Are Abraham and Joseph two of the main prophetic "fathers" hereby referred to? (Things like 2 Nephi 3 would suggest so.)

Thoughts?

Yeh, verse 4 confirms that Egyptian was used to engrave the Plates of Brass, and this was clearly an expensive practice which had been going on for a long time.  Non-Mormon scholars attempting to account for the extensive use of Egyptian hieratic in 8th and 7th century B.C. Israel & Judah have argued that there was professional scribal training going on in Egyptian, just as there was Assyro-Babylonian cuneiform scribal training for some Israelites and Jews.

Would they have adopted their own form of hieratic for these purposes?  Perhaps, but not likely.  Why?  Because the whole point of learning and using ancient Egyptian would be that it would remain standard and readable to all those trained anew.  This would apply to Abraham, Joseph, Moses, and their successors.  The permanent Brass Plates would only be useful if there were continuity in the writing style.

This does not address the possibility that some sort of cryptographic methods were applied to ancient Egyptian by Abraham, but the risk there is that subsequent generations might not understand how to decrypt it.  Still, some kind of special interpretive scheme might have been used to understand the facsimiles.  However, I am not comfortable with such a notion, since it might be applied so loosely that any ideogram could mean virtually anything.

[probablyHagoth7]

I appreciate your initial thoughts.

But am I hearing you correctly? If you prefer to discount the possibility of assumed-Egyptian character/characters being able to convey different meanings when used among different peoples/tongues (very much like they do in our modern reality), how then do you address those occasions where there are difference between what Joseph Smith provided and what modern Egyptian translators see? 

[notHagoth7]

10 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

...This does not address the possibility that some sort of cryptographic methods were applied to ancient Egyptian by Abraham, but the risk there is that subsequent generations might not understand how to decrypt it...

? Yet is that not precisely what happened with reformed Egyptian among the Nephites? 

And is that not precisely what God was apparently very OK with happening?

32 And now, behold, we have written this record according to our knowledge, in the characters which are called among us the reformed Egyptian, being handed down and altered by us, according to our manner of speech....

34 But the Lord knoweth...that none other people knoweth our language;...therefore he hath prepared means for the interpretation thereof.

This does not address the possibility that some sort of cryptographic methods were applied to ancient Egyptian by Abraham, but the risk there is that subsequent generations might not understand how to decrypt it.  Still, some kind of special interpretive scheme might have been used to understand the facsimiles.  However, I am not comfortable with such a notion, since it might be applied so loosely that any ideogram could mean virtually anything.

Then, if you're comfortable rejecting that notion, perhaps I occasionally post to discomfit the comfortable.  ;0)

(When no one knows your language, any ideogram *could* mean virtually anything.) 

[Robert F. Smith]

1 hour ago, notHagoth7 said:

? Yet is that not precisely what happened with reformed Egyptian among the Nephites? 

And is that not precisely what God was apparently very OK with happening?

32 And now, behold, we have written this record according to our knowledge, in the characters which are called among us the reformed Egyptian, being handed down and altered by us, according to our manner of speech....

34 But the Lord knoweth...that none other people knoweth our language;...therefore he hath prepared means for the interpretation thereof.

Then, if you're comfortable rejecting that notion, perhaps I occasionally post to discomfit the comfortable.  ;0)

(When no one knows your language, any ideogram *could* mean virtually anything.) 

I am less concerned with the legitimate prophetic interpretation of such an encrypted text, than I am with modern pretenders to know how to understand such encrypted texts.  I have seen some pretty awful examples of pretense in such interpretation, without the application of any method, logic, or scholarship.  Just because "none other people knoweth" the Reformed Egyptian language at the end of Nephite history, does not mean that scholars do not know it today.  The loss of knowledge of ancient Egyptian did take place at about that time, and the decipherment of it took place in modern times -- after the time fo Joseph Smith.

[probablyHagoth7]

3 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said:

I am less concerned with the legitimate prophetic interpretation of such an encrypted text, than I am with modern pretenders to know how to understand such encrypted texts.  I have seen some pretty awful examples of pretense in such interpretation, without the application of any method, logic, or scholarship....

A few examples please, if you don't mind.

[Robert F. Smith]

2 hours ago, probablyHagoth7 said:

A few examples please, if you don't mind.

Deleanu, Daniel, Reformed Egyptian and Its Decipherment (Toronto: LogoStar Press, 2012); 117pp.  ISBN 978-1-300-36566-2

My review of that pretentious book is online at https://www.scribd.com/document/213930318/REVIEW-BY-ROBERT-F-SMITH-OF-TWO-BOOKS-ON-REFORMED-EGYPTIAN-BY-DANIEL-DELEANU , and Deleanu himself replied to my review in a 42-page booklet, available online at http://www.lulu.com/shop/daniel-deleanu/a-few-notes-on-reformed-egyptian-a-polemical-response-to-robert-f-smith/paperback/product-21726858.html?ppn=1 .  I didn't bother to purchase a copy, but do note that he connected me with the Maxwell Institute, which is also nonsense.

Other such nonsense has been reviewed by me in private, as well as on this board.

[Ahab]

http://publications.mi.byu.edu/book/abraham-in-egypt/

Short answer: Yeah

...and there are multiple ways to validly interpret Egyptian.

[theplains]

On 19/03/2017 at 10:15 PM, Robert F. Smith said:

Yeh, verse 4 confirms that Egyptian was used to engrave the Plates of Brass, and this was clearly an expensive practice which had been going on for a long time.  

What's the difference between Egyptian and Reformed Egyptian?

Thanks,
Jim

[Robert F. Smith]

8 hours ago, theplains said:

What's the difference between Egyptian and Reformed Egyptian?

.................................

Moroni's description in Mormon 9:32-33 is helpful: He indicates that the rationale for altering the Egyptian characters was to make them more abbreviated, to save space on the precious plates.  The only way to do this is already well known:  Use single logograms for whole words.  Egyptian already had the capacity for doing this in its increasingly abbreviated versions of formal hieroglyphs:  Hieratic and then Demotic, which Champollion described as tachygraphie "short-hand" Egyptian in his 1824 Précis.[1]   

Speaking of Israelite use of Hieratic Egyptian, non-Mormon scholar Raz Kletter says that “the reform of the inscribed [Judean] weights was probably initiated by state officials or scribes,” using “‘a-normal’ Hieratic script, but sometimes written in a peculiar way.”[2] 

Likewise, non-Mormon Tomer Persico, a modern Israeli scholar, renders this in Hebrew as Miṣrit mešudreget “upgraded Egyptian.“[3]

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[1] Jean-Francois Champollion, Précis du système hiéroglyphique, I:18, 20, 354-355, "abréviations d'hiéroglyphiques," and "hiératique, véritable tachygraphie," and "simple tachygraphie des hiéroglyphes."

[2] Kletter, Economic Keystones, 139, 142, 146.

[3] T. Persico, “Niknesu lePardes, ‘abal ‘eik?  Polmos beyn Rashi, Tosafot, Idel, and Margolin,” Lulat ha’El,  online at http://tomerpersico.com/2012/03/04/pardes_inner_religion/ (Hebrew).