Neal Rappleye: “Put Away Childish Things”: Learning to Read the Book of Mormon Using Mature Historical Thought

[Robert F. Smith]

40 minutes ago, RevTestament said:

If you would be so kind, could you provide sources for your Egyptian cursive experts?

While a visiting scholar at Brown University, Prof. Richard Bushman spoke with Egyptologist Richard A. Parker about the Caractors Transcript, Parker commenting that it appeared to be a copy of a real document in Egyptian script, but possibly in an unknown language such as Meroitic (Indeed, Hugh Nibley thought many names in the Book of Mormon not only sounded like Meroitic, but that the writing on the Caractors Transcript itself looked "most like Meroitic"^[1]).   In a letter to Marvin W. Cowan, March 22, 1966, Richard A. Parker likewise stated that “the signs purportedly from the Book of Mormon . . . could well be the latest form of the written language – demotic characters.”

Dr. William C. Hayes (Metropolitan Museum of Art) suggested to doctoral student Stanley B. Kimball on Monday, February 6, 1956, that the "Caractors Transcript" begins with a date formula in hieratic Egyptian, as found at the beginning of so many inscriptions and papyri.  Hayes there and then provided the notes to Kimball, and Kimball eventually sent a copy of those notes (along with his journal entry for that day) to FARMS.^[2]

^[1] Nibley, Since Cumorah, CWHN VII:170-171.

^[2] Hayes also wrote a letter to Paul M. Hanson of the RLDS Church later that year (June 8, 1956) saying that the Caractors Transcript “could conceivably have been an inaccurate copy of an Egyptian account or something of the sort written in hieratic script.  With some imagination the beginning of the inscription could be taken as a date, and many of the other groups look like hieratic numerals” – quoted in Hanson, “The Transcript from the Plates of the Book of Mormon,” Saints’ Herald, 103 (Nov 12, 1956):6.  Hayes provided Kimball with notes on the hieratic along with a hieroglyphic transcription (copy in my possession, along with the Sunday, February 5, 1956, personal journal entry of Stanley B. Kimball). 

40 minutes ago, RevTestament said:

as well as your comment about Judaean scribes using Egyptian? IIRC there is some evidence of that in the Elephantine records, but I am unfamiliar with any materials reflecting what you are claiming here.................................................

The 5th century BC Elephantine Papyri are in Aramaic.  However, many non-Mormon scholars now argue that professional Israelite scribes in Judah and Israel had been trained to read and write Egyptian as part of the normal requirements of royal courts throughout the ancient Near East.  

Stefan J. Wimmer, “’Palestinian Hieratic’: Egyptian Impact on Ancient Hebrew Writing,” Willes Center lecture delivered August 31, 2012, at BYU, citing Bernd Schipper, “Egyptian Imperialism After the New Kingdom: The 26^th Dynasty and the Southern Levant,” in S. Bar, et al., eds., Egypt, Canaan and Israel: History, Imperialism, Ideology and Literature, Proceedings of a Conference at Haifa University, May 2009 (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 268-290; cf. Wimmer, Palästinisches Hieratisch: Die Zahl- und Sonderzeichen in der althebräischen Schrift, Ägypten und alten Testament 75 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2008); Anson F. Rainey, "The Saga of Eliashib," Biblical Archaeology Review, 13/2 (Mar-Apr 1987):37, 39; John Thompson, “Lehi and Egypt,” in Welch, Seely, and Seely, eds., Glimpses of Lehi’s Jerusalem (Provo: FARMS, 2004), 267, citing Orly Goldwasser, "An Egyptian Scribe from Lachish and the Hieratic Tradition of the Hebrew Kingdoms," Tel Aviv, 18 (1991):248-253.

[Rajah Manchou]

21 hours ago, Calm said:

There is just one problem: there is no archaeological evidence for this Jerusalem. According to Margreet Steiner, “No trace has ever been found of any city that could have been the [Jerusalem] of the Amarna letters.”[3] And yet, the letters are unquestionably authentic, and there is no doubt they mention Jerusalem.

This is common in Southeast Asia. There are countless references to cities, and even entire kingdoms, that have left no archeological evidence. One example is Srivijaya, one of the most powerful city-states in the world at various points between 600 CE and 1400 CE. The name of the kingdom is found in numerous Arabic and Chinese texts, and in a few inscriptions, but there is no archaeological trace. It is suspected that what little evidence that was left of the capital city was destroyed by a fertilizer plant that was built over what could have been the location.

In tropical climates, it is normal for bones, palaces, swords, etc. to vanish. There are several such lost cities and kingdoms on the Malay Peninsula.

 

[RevTestament]

1 hour ago, Rajah Manchou said:

This is common in Southeast Asia. There are countless references to cities, and even entire kingdoms, that have left no archeological evidence. One example is Srivijaya, one of the most powerful city-states in the world at various points between 600 CE and 1400 CE. The name of the kingdom is found in numerous Arabic and Chinese texts, and in a few inscriptions, but there is no archaeological trace. It is suspected that what little evidence that was left of the capital city was destroyed by a fertilizer plant that was built over what could have been the location.

In tropical climates, it is normal for bones, palaces, swords, etc. to vanish. There are several such lost cities and kingdoms on the Malay Peninsula.

Indeed, even in dry climates things disappear. I don't believe there has ever been a single pre-Christ chariot excavated in the Middle East. We know they had them because of art and writings. Old iron swords found can be counted on one hand. Iron was an extremely valuable metal, and wasn't left to rust on the field. For the most part all the surviving swords were later models made of carbon steel or other alloys.

[nealr]

On 8/24/2017 at 5:03 AM, Physics Guy said:

Rappleye claims that there is no archaeological evidence for the Jerusalem mentioned in the 14th century BCE Amarna letters. He calls it "this Jerusalem", and two of the section titles in his article refer to "two Jerusalems". Perhaps this is just unfortunate choice of language on Rappleye's part, and all he really means by "this Jerusalem" or "two Jerusalems" are cities in the same place (namely, Jerusalem) at different times. It seems like a natural reading of his article as it stands, however, to conclude that archaeologists are sure that the Jerusalem of the Amarna letters was some quite different city from the later Jerusalem, and no-one knows where that earlier Jerusalem was.

That would then be a very nice example with which to begin an apologetic article on Book of Mormon archaeology, because even though the later Jerusalem is well attested in archaeology (and is still there today), one could point to this other, earlier Jerusalem as a major city mentioned in ancient writings but now lost without trace—just like, say, Zarahemla. If Rappleye could merely say, however, that we haven't yet found any remains in Jerusalem that can be dated with confidence as far back as the 14th century BCE, but only back to the 10th century, then the parallel with Zarahemla would not be nearly so impressive. It's not as though Zarahemla is still there, a populous city in central America, with archaeological digs going back to just 400 years after Nephi. It's not as though archaeological skeptics of Book of Mormon historicity are only complaining about a four-century gap.

Rappleye's footnote [3] attributes the key sentence from Steiner to a book chapter on "Jerusalem in the tenth and seventh centuries BCE". Those are much later eras than the Amarna letters, so I doubt that the sentence about "no trace has ever been found" is really a stand-alone summary statement of one of Steiner's main points. It seems more likely to be a background remark that depends on its immediate context. So I wish Rappleye could have given us a longer extract from Steiner. Did she really mean that archaeologists are still looking in vain for the site of the lost first Jerusalem? Or did she only mean that the oldest strata of Jerusalem still lie buried beneath younger layers? In the second case the message from archaeology for Book of Mormon historicity would not be so reassuring.

The Wikipedia page on "Jerusalem" seems to think that the Jerusalem of the Amarna letters was the same Jerusalem we know now. I realize this is just Wikipedia. But it's something.

Since there is some confusion, just let me be clear:

It had frankly never occurred to me that the Jerusalem of the Amarna letters was anywhere other than the current and long standing location of Jerusalem. In speaking of "two Jerusalems" I was employing what I thought was a fairly obvious rhetorical gimmick, which I refer to the same place as portrayed in different sources from different time periods as if they are two different cities, the same way a person might go back to their home town many years later and lament that it is "not the same town" they grew up in anymore. That I understood both Jerusalems to ultimately be in the same place was, I thought, evident from the map attached to the very beginning, as a visual on the section about the Amarna letters, showing Jerusalem in the same place it always is, with a caption that says: "An archive of 14th c. BC letters found in Amarna, Egypt, includes six letters from the King of Jerusalem, despite there being no archaeological evidence for Jerusalem at that time." Or the fact that when returning to part 2 of the "tale of two Jerusalems" I said: "I would now like to take us back to Jerusalem, but we are going to fast forward to the 7th century BC," i.e., I was going back to the same place, but moving us to a different time period. Or when I mention Jerusalem yet again, and say, "We’ve already seen that Nephi’s Jerusalem fares better than Amarna’s, but you could argue it does better than David’s and Solomon’s too." Surely, I hope, this makes clear that I am not talking about physically different locations for various "Jerusalems" but rather Jerusalem in different time-periods, i.e., the time of Amarna, the time of David and Solomon, and the time of Nephi.

I was already quite aware that strata from both before and after the Amarna period attest to occupation of Jerusalem, which frankly makes it all the more bizarre that evidence of occupation is missing for the Amarna period. I never made or intended any comparisons to Zarahemla. My intended comparison was quite explicit, I thought: Jerusalem as portrayed in the Amarna letters vs. Jerusalem as portrayed in 1 Nephi. The one has zero archaeological evidence to support it (at least, so far as I could find), and yet the written sources are indisputably authentic. The other actually does pretty well, archaeologically, at least in my opinion, despite the seemingly strange circumstances of its discovery, despite the fact that it is attested no earlier than the 19th century, and despite the fact that several of the details now confirmed were points of criticism for the Book of Mormon when it first came out. I think, at the very least, that is pretty interesting, but I suppose others may disagree.

If I had wanted to use a toponym for which we cannot identify the physical location (and thus the ruins), and compare that to Zarahemla, there are plenty of examples I could have chosen from. My purpose in using Jerusalem and the Amarna letters was precisely because we knew exactly where and when to look---an ideal connection, which should make it easy to find the evidence---and yet we still found nothing. To me, that is a fairly powerful illustration of how very complicated  the relationship to archaeology and textual sources can be, and why it is overly simplistic to suppose that just because we can't find something mentioned in a text, does not mean it was not there.

This should especially caution us when we are dealing with additional mitigating factors, such as uncertainty about exactly where to look, lack of excavation (as I mention, 95+ percent of Maya sites remain unexcavated, and the Maya region is the most excavated region in Mesoamerica, and probably all of the Americas), and a lack of toponyms in general (we have the native, pre-Columbian names of ~12 out 6,000 sites in the Maya area, and none for other regions and cultures in Mesoamerica before Aztec times), and so forth.  Anyone who wants to ask, "Where is Zarahemla?" or insist that we should have "found it by now" has to take these facts into consideration.

[Physics Guy]

Thanks for the clarification. As I noted in my follow-up post later on in this thread, Margreet Steiner actually did think for a while that Jerusalem and the Urusalim of the Amarna letters were two different places. That was one obvious possible resolution of the apparent discrepancy between ancient text and archaeology, so I don't think I was just being obtuse in seeing it as one possible reading of your paper.

Do you think your paper would need any revising in light of Margreet Steiner's later re-reading of the Amarna letters as not really referring to Jerusalem as a city? Her current view seems to be that the Amarna letters are not in conflict with archaeology, but were just over-interpreted. I quoted what seem to be her latest views in my follow-up post.

(I'm not insinuating that your paper is severely damaged by Steiner's rethinking. The conflict between ancient text and archaeology over 14th century BCE Jerusalem seems to really just be an initial hook for your paper, so revising what you say about it would be a minor change.)

 

Edited August 27, 2017 by Physics Guy

[Physics Guy]

On 8/24/2017 at 10:07 PM, Robert F. Smith said:

Any record-keeper or later editor (including Nephite ones) could inflate the importance of historical events and persons.  Biblical and other ancient writings do that all the time.  In fact hyperbole seems de rigueur.

I accept that, about ancient texts in general. And I was sincere in suggesting that perhaps Mormons could think about their Book of Mormon as being exaggerated in that way. But after noticing the other thread here, about an ahistorical Book of Mormon, a question occurred to me.

Suppose the Book of Mormon may be an authentically ancient document which features wildly exaggerated history. Is there really that much difference between suggesting that Mormon fibbed, and suggesting that Joseph Smith made it up? Either way, the events described within the Book of Mormon would be fictional, at least to some significant degree. So are exaggerated Nephite accounts really any more acceptable to Mormons than a Book of Mormon that was authored by Joseph Smith?

I guess the other thing that I find a bit incongruous, about supposing that Nephite writers exaggerated, is that the Book of Mormon is supposed to have been revealed by an angel and translated by miracle, rather than being transmitted through history in a more ordinary fashion like the Old Testament. If God were willing to transmit the Book so miraculously, why not inspire the Nephite writers to be more accurate?

It just seems inconsistent of God, to me, to be simultaneously keen to circumvent the naturalistic mode of text transmission, and yet willing to tolerate its grave defects. It seems like miraculously multiplying five loaves and two fishes into thousands of moldy fish sandwiches. Sandwiches do naturally often go moldy, but they don't absolutely have to be moldy, and if you're making them by miracle anyway, why not make them fresh? Writers often exaggerate, but not all of them do, and if you're transmitting ancient scriptures by miracle, why not make them exact?

Or does this not seem at all inconsistent, from a Mormon perspective?

[Robert F. Smith]

8 minutes ago, Physics Guy said:

I accept that, about ancient texts in general. And I was sincere in suggesting that perhaps Mormons could think about their Book of Mormon as being exaggerated in that way. But after noticing the other thread here, about an ahistorical Book of Mormon, a question occurred to me.

Suppose the Book of Mormon may be an authentically ancient document which features wildly exaggerated history. Is there really that much difference between suggesting that Mormon fibbed, and suggesting that Joseph Smith made it up? Either way, the events described within the Book of Mormon would be fictional, at least to some significant degree. So are exaggerated Nephite accounts really any more acceptable to Mormons than a Book of Mormon that was authored by Joseph Smith?

I guess the other thing that I find a bit incongruous, about supposing that Nephite writers exaggerated, is that the Book of Mormon is supposed to have been revealed by an angel and translated by miracle, rather than being transmitted through history in a more ordinary fashion like the Old Testament. If God were willing to transmit the Book so miraculously, why not inspire the Nephite writers to be more accurate?

It just seems inconsistent of God, to me, to be simultaneously keen to circumvent the naturalistic mode of text transmission, and yet willing to tolerate its grave defects. It seems like miraculously multiplying five loaves and two fishes into thousands of moldy fish sandwiches. Sandwiches do naturally often go moldy, but they don't absolutely have to be moldy, and if you're making them by miracle anyway, why not make them fresh? Writers often exaggerate, but not all of them do, and if you're transmitting ancient scriptures by miracle, why not make them exact?

Or does this not seem at all inconsistent, from a Mormon perspective?

There is a world of difference from admitting that BofM writers and editors had axes to grind and engaged in typical biblical style hyperbole and the all out fictional creation you suggest.  A pseudepigraphon from the 16th century (Joseph is too late to have done it) would be a wholesale work of fiction, not simply exaggeration for effect.  Even Jewish midrash and pesher work with actual events.  Take for example the Josephus account of the conquest of Masada by the Romans, which he witnessed personally.  That is a real historical event, but Josephus invented much of the dialogue just the way Hollywood writers imagine historical events to have taken place.  They are merely filling in the blanks.  It would be inconsistent of God to override human free agency in such matters.

We should be able to differentiate history from fiction via close examination of the text.  Doesn't matter which text.  Only that we bring science and logic to bear on the question of authenticity.

[nealr]

1 hour ago, Physics Guy said:

Thanks for the clarification. As I noted in my follow-up post later on in this thread, Margreet Steiner actually did think for a while that Jerusalem and the Urusalim of the Amarna letters were two different places. That was one obvious possible resolution of the apparent discrepancy between ancient text and archaeology, so I don't think I was just being obtuse in seeing it as one possible reading of your paper.

Do you think your paper would need any revising in light of Margreet Steiner's later re-reading of the Amarna letters as not really referring to Jerusalem as a city? Her current view seems to be that the Amarna letters are not in conflict with archaeology, but were just over-interpreted. I quoted what seem to be her latest views in my follow-up post.

(I'm not insinuating that your paper is severely damaged by Steiner's rethinking. The conflict between ancient text and archaeology over 14th century BCE Jerusalem seems to really just be an initial hook for your paper, so revising what you say about it would be a minor change.)

 

No, I don't think so. I read through the portion of the paper dealing with Amarna, and frankly wish I had found that paper before giving the presentation. It had some much better quotes stating the initial problem---the first paragraph on p. 348 is basically making the very same point I am. Her ultimate conclusion is, as she herself admits, just one way to reconcile the evidence. I am not sure I buy her interpretation in this case, but I've also ultimately spent very little time studying the Amarna letters and that time period. In any case, I would consider that portion of her paper to be an excellent example of exactly what I am suggesting needs to be done with the Book of Mormon: instead of dismissing the Amarna letters (which, admittedly, is a less-viable option than dismissing the Book of Mormon), she reviewed different possibilities and reinterpreted the data in the letters to what she thinks best fits with the archaeological data.

Whether it would be convincing to non-Mormons or not, I think that at the very least, believers who accept the historicity of the Book of Mormon should approach the text in the same way. After all, what does it really mean to believe the text is a genuine, ancient historical document if you don't read and interpret it the way genuine, ancient historical documents are properly read and interpreted?

Of course, if everything in the Book of Mormon were like the Amarna letters and Jerusalem---no points of convergence at all---I'd agree with have a bit of problem. But just as there are other reasons to accept the genuineness of the Amarna letters, and thus justify the efforts of Steiner and others to reconcile its mention of Jerusalem with the absence of archaeological evidence, I do think there are enough points of convergence between the text and archaeology---even if some reinterpretation of the text is necessary---to justify times when reconciliation (i.e., the horses and chariots kind of stuff) is necessary. I tried to briefly sketch some of these in my presentation: Nephi's depiction of Jerusalem, Nahom, Mulek, and cement in ancient America. Anyone looking for more of that kind of stuff, I would recommend Brant A. Gardner's book Traditions of the Fathers: The Book of Mormon as History (Greg Kofford Books, 2015) as the best book-length treatment to date. Others don't find this kind of stuff convincing, and that is OK by me. I've gotten past the urge to try to prove things to other people. I can offer my own point of view, and try to do so as persuasively as I can. I hope it is helpful, especially to those struggling with faith, but ultimately people will take it or leave it, and there is nothing I can really do about that. 

[Physics Guy]

Fair enough. Thanks very much for the answer.