Two (or more) Anthon Transcripts

[Zosimus]

An interesting presentation during the most recent virtual FAIR conference
John Thompson: Looking Again at the Anthon Transcript(s)

The video has since been set to private, but here's a summary from my notes. 

From the few witness accounts and contemporary sources we have, Thompson's idea is that there were two (or more) transcripts. For example, James Gordon Bennett (correspondent for the Morning Courier and Enquirer) said:

“Harris with several manuscripts in his pocket, went to the city of New York. And called upon one of the Professors of Columbia College for the purpose of shewing them to him”

And the following is from Joseph Smith's History, 1838–1856, volume A-1 [23 December 1805–30 August 1834], p. 9.

“I went to the City of New York and presented the Characters which had been translated [C1], with the translation thereof [T], to Professor < Charles > Anthony a gentleman celebrated for his literary attainments. Professor Anthony stated that the translation was correct, more so than any he had before seen translated from the Egyptian [R1]. I then shewed him those which were not yet translated [C2], and he said that they were Egyptian, Chaldeak, Assyriac, and Arabac, and he said that they were true characters [R2].”

In the quote, Thompson labeled the different manuscripts and/or elements of the manuscripts:

• C1 (Following Thompson's analysis these were in an Egyptian shorthand like hieratic, not reformed Egyptian)
• C2 (Thompson suggests these were reformed Egyptian characters that, according to Joseph Smith's history, resembled "Egyptian, Chaldeak, Assyriac, and Arabic")
• T (Joseph Smith's translation of C1)

So What Did Harris Present to Anthon? Thompson provides four options to answer this questions:

1. a single document with two sets of characters and a translation of one of the sets
2. two documents with a set of characters on each and a translation on one of them
3. two documents with one containing the two sets of characters and the other the translation
4. three documents with a set of characters on two documents and a translation on the third

Based on Joseph Smith's account, it does seem to me that Harris had at least two manuscripts. One with hieratic characters that had been translated, and one with untranslated reformed Egyptian that looked like true Egyptian, Chaldean, Assyriac, and Arabic characters. 

Edited October 19 by Zosimus

[Dario_M]

How interesting. One would think that only Josep Smith had all the manuscripts in his possession. 

[The Nehor]

Why would Anthon say the translation was correct when he couldn’t read ancient Egyptian. His specialties were Latin and Greek.

[Pyreaux]

11 hours ago, The Nehor said:

Why would Anthon say the translation was correct when he couldn’t read ancient Egyptian. His specialties were Latin and Greek.

Speaking from ignorance, or the academia of his era and nearly as ignorant, as no one was an expert nor could translate Egyptian at that time, so whatever Anthon's opinion was, he would have been wrong, It doesn't mean he didn't say what he allegedly said. Even if Anthon is the fulfillment of Isaiah, Isaiah said the one who was learned couldn't read the book.

[The Nehor]

1 hour ago, Pyreaux said:

Speaking from ignorance, or the academia of his era and nearly as ignorant, as no one was an expert nor could translate Egyptian at that time, so whatever Anthon's opinion was, he would have been wrong, It doesn't mean he didn't say what he allegedly said. Even if Anthon is the fulfillment of Isaiah, Isaiah said the one who was learned couldn't read the book.

Even if he was trying to impress Martin in the moment out of hubris writing up a certification that the translation is authentic is academic disgrace if it got out to other academics. It is also hard to think it is hubris when Anthon is supposedly just approving Joseph’s work.

[Stargazer]

12 hours ago, The Nehor said:

Why would Anthon say the translation was correct when he couldn’t read ancient Egyptian. His specialties were Latin and Greek.

Many academics who are full of themselves, tend to say things for which they have no basis. If you look at the history of academia there are lots of similar cases, though most of them tend to just dismiss things they don't like, either because the person presenting the information doesn't have the proper degrees, or because they themselves are supposed to be the experts, and "how dare this hick come forward to challenge me?" In the case of Anthon, he may very well have known what eastern alphabets looked like, and only claimed the translation was good because he didn't want to look ignorant. That would be why he tore up his endorsement once he realized that the source of the translation was not a fellow academic, and angels were involved.

The Rosetta Stone was discovered in 1799, and its decipherment led eventually to a general ability to read ancient Egyptian, but at the time the Book of Mormon came forth there had not been a lot of progress. Anthon was no doubt knowledgeable about that progress.

[Pyreaux]

1 hour ago, The Nehor said:

Even if he was trying to impress Martin in the moment out of hubris writing up a certification that the translation is authentic is academic disgrace if it got out to other academics. It is also hard to think it is hubris when Anthon is supposedly just approving Joseph’s work.

Well, Anthon's two letters of his denial were contradictory. If this means his denials are false suggests he was professionally embarrassed by what he actually said if he couldn't bring himself to say a consistent truth.

Edited October 19 by Pyreaux

[Calm]

Or maybe Martin misunderstood in his desire to have proof.  Maybe it was simply a recognition they were actual script.

Edited October 19 by Calm

[CV75]

Both sets were planarized.

[Robert F. Smith]

On 10/18/2024 at 7:10 PM, Zosimus said:

An interesting presentation during the most recent virtual FAIR conference
John Thompson: Looking Again at the Anthon Transcript(s)

The video has since been set to private, .............

His abstract can be found at Understanding and Defending the History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints - FAIR ,

On 10/18/2024 at 7:10 PM, Zosimus said:

From the few witness accounts and contemporary sources we have, Thompson's idea is that there were two (or more) transcripts. For example, James Gordon Bennett (correspondent for the Morning Courier and Enquirer) said:

“Harris with several manuscripts in his pocket, went to the city of New York. And called upon one of the Professors of Columbia College for the purpose of shewing them to him”

And the following is from Joseph Smith's History, 1838–1856, volume A-1 [23 December 1805–30 August 1834], p. 9.

“I went to the City of New York and presented the Characters which had been translated [C1], with the translation thereof [T], to Professor < Charles > Anthony a gentleman celebrated for his literary attainments. Professor Anthony stated that the translation was correct, more so than any he had before seen translated from the Egyptian [R1]. I then shewed him those which were not yet translated [C2], and he said that they were Egyptian, Chaldeak, Assyriac, and Arabac, and he said that they were true characters [R2].”

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

Based on Joseph Smith's account, it does seem to me that Harris had at least two manuscripts. One with hieratic characters that had been translated, and one with untranslated reformed Egyptian that looked like true Egyptian, Chaldean, Assyriac, and Arabic characters. 

We do know of two sets of characters, (1) the well-known "Caractors" Transcript, and (2) some hieratic characters reading "Book of Mormon" and "Interpreters of Languages."  I discuss each of them on pp. 45,50-56, of my book Egyptianisms in the Book of Mormon, online at https://books.google.com/books?id=y4IdzgEACAAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&hl=en

[Robert F. Smith]

2 hours ago, CV75 said:

Both sets were planarized.

Planarization is defined as the process of removing surface topologies by flattening, and smoothing the rough surface.

??

[Robert F. Smith]

6 hours ago, Pyreaux said:

Well, Anthon's two letters of his denial were contradictory. If this means his denials are false suggests he was professionally embarrassed by what he actually said if he couldn't bring himself to say a consistent truth.

Correct.  I and two colleagues discussed this briefly in May 1985, online at What did Charles Anthon really say (1).pdf.     A more thorough discussion is available online at https://archive.bookofmormoncentral.org/content/martin-harriss-visit-charles-anthon-collected-documents-anthon-transcript-and-shorthand

[The Nehor]

8 hours ago, Pyreaux said:

Well, Anthon's two letters of his denial were contradictory. If this means his denials are false suggests he was professionally embarrassed by what he actually said if he couldn't bring himself to say a consistent truth.

Not that contradictory. Just whether he wrote something out or not. If this standard disproves things I think the First Vision might get the chop.

[Pyreaux]

29 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

Not that contradictory. Just whether he wrote something out or not. If this standard disproves things I think the First Vision might get the chop.

The standard for Anthon is a bit higher, I'd say, they should be unified if they are both supposed to be public rebuttals of one established account by Harris that he did or didn't nearly give Harris a career ending piece of paper. Joseph variances in his elaboration of one highly detailed vision could only compare if any two of the iterations were both written as to refute a third vision account by someone else as a rebuttal and then still differ on an important point inside the third account.

[Zosimus]

On 10/19/2024 at 2:04 PM, The Nehor said:

Why would Anthon say the translation was correct when he couldn’t read ancient Egyptian. His specialties were Latin and Greek.

I'm skeptical that there was any ancient Egyptian on the manuscripts that were shown to Anthon.

Before Harris visited either Anthon or Mitchill he met with Luther Bradish, a family friend, in Albany. Luther Bradish would have been the only person in America at the time capable of giving a critical and fair assessment of the claim that there was hieratic or reformed Egyptian on any of the manuscripts. Bradish lived and traveled extensively in Egypt. He would have seen hieroglyphs on the temple walls and he would have been fairly current on the efforts to translate hieratic. Yet afaik there's no mention of reformed Egyptian, or any Egyptian, on the manuscripts before JS History in 1838

Is there anyone, other than Harris and Joseph Smith in 1838, that even hints at the characters being any form of Egyptian? 

George Crane via JS Sr. via Lapham: Arabic, similar to Ottoman Empire passport
Luther Bradish via JS Sr. via Lapham: Bradish could not read the characters
Samuel Mitchill via JS Sr. via Lapham: Arabic, with few exceptions, but can't translate
Martin Harris via Butler via Bennet: Characters were of a known nation now extinct in the east. Harris doesn't name the nation.
Charles Anthon personal accounts: Greek, Hebrew and inverted and sideways Roman letters arranged in columns like the Chinese mode of writing with crosses and flourishes, half moons, stars, ending in a rude representation of the Mexican zodiac
Martin Harris account via JS History: Egyptian, Chaldaic, Assyriac, and Arabic

If Joseph Smith Sr's interview with Lapham is correct, I don't think it possible that any manuscript with true Egyptian or Arabic characters could pass through Bradish's hands without being recognized immediately as Egyptian or Arabic. Even though Bradish was the most familiar with Egyptian hieratic and hieroglyphs and Arabic, JS Sr. says Bradish did not recognize them. Since Anthon and Mitchill would have known Bradish was more familiar with Egyptian than they were, I really doubt either would have claimed the characters were Egyptian if Bradish didn't claim it first

Unless I'm missing an account somewhere, I don't think there was anything resembling Egyptian on any of the manuscripts

Edited October 20 by Zosimus

[CV75]

12 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Planarization is defined as the process of removing surface topologies by flattening, and smoothing the rough surface.

??

Yes, after making the first copy, Joseph over-burnished the plates, resulting in a second different-looking copy. For example, what was formerly read as "g" now appeared as  "n".

[Calm]

3 hours ago, CV75 said:

Yes, after making the first copy, Joseph over-burnished the plates, resulting in a second different-looking copy. For example, what was formerly read as "g" now appeared as  "n".

Cfr please

[CV75]

2 minutes ago, Calm said:

Cfr please

Sorry, that was a joke -- I misspelled "plagarized" in the first post so RS commented on "planarized," and I made a joke of my mistake by saying that flattening the plates slightly by burnishing resulted new letters (n for g). Just being foolish.

[Calm]

Just now, CV75 said:

Sorry, that was a joke -- I misspelled "plagarized" in the first post so RS commented on "planarized," and I made a joke of my mistake by saying that flattening the plates slightly by burnishing resulted new letters (n for g). Just being foolish.

I thought that was the original error, a typo, but I was too slow to catch the n for g hint and it sounded quite interesting, lol. Your wit is very dry at times and quite intelligent, it would probably work great for me in person. I have a nephew whose humor is somewhat like that who I adore. 

[Zosimus]

19 hours ago, Pyreaux said:

The standard for Anthon is a bit higher, I'd say, they should be unified if they are both supposed to be public rebuttals of one established account by Harris that he did or didn't nearly give Harris a career ending piece of paper.

The two versions are:

1834: "He requested an opinion from me in writing, which of course I declined giving, and he then took his leave carrying the paper with him."

1841: "On my telling the bearer of the paper that an attempt had been made to impose upon him, and defraud him of his property, he requested me to give him my opinion in writing about the paper which he had shown to me. I did so without any hesitation, partly for the man’s sake, and partly to let the individual “behind the curtain” see that his trick was discovered. The import of what I wrote was, as far as I can now recollect, simply this, that the marks in the paper appeared to be merely an imitation of various alphabetic characters, and had in my opinion no meaning at all connected with them. The countryman then took his leave, with many thanks, and with the express declaration that he would in no shape part with his farm or embark in the speculation of printing the golden book."

Although I agree there's a contradiction there, I don't feel it discredits everything else in Anthon's letters. The 1834 version could have been his way of saying he declined giving an affirmative answer in writing. What makes no sense to me is if Anthon's reply was intended to be a message to Smith that the "trick was discovered" it wouldn't make sense that Anthon would have asked for it back to tear it up. 

There's an element to the story that I don't believe has been discussed before. In 1836, Charles Anthon wrote a letter to JN Reynolds, who had just been appointed secretary of the United States Exploring Expedition, a Lewis and Clark style expedition to the islands of the Pacific and Australasia. In the letter, Anthon proposes that Reynolds appoint an anthropologist or linguist to join the expedition so that they might investigate Anthon's "favorite theory" that the moundbuilders of America originated with the same population that peopled the Pacific. Anthon discusses in the letter his speculation that Native Americans were fairly recent arrivals, and that the older moundbuilders were related to the Egyptians.

Anthon's favorite theory that the moundbuilders were Australasian obviously comes from Mitchill. His belief that the first people in the Americas were connected to Egypt could have persuaded him that the story Harris told him of ancient characters on plates found in a mound were possibly Egyptian.

Before finding this letter, I definitely didn't have Charles Anthon down as a believer in Egyptian-American moundbuilders from Atlantis. But its pretty certain now that Anthon would have been very open to the possibility of Egyptian artifacts being recovered from American burial mounds.

I've posted the full letter here.

Edited October 21 by Zosimus

[Robert F. Smith]

9 hours ago, CV75 said:

Sorry, that was a joke -- I misspelled "plagarized" in the first post so RS commented on "planarized," and I made a joke of my mistake by saying that flattening the plates slightly by burnishing resulted new letters (n for g). Just being foolish.

But also very clever . . .

[Robert F. Smith]

23 hours ago, The Nehor said:

Not that contradictory. Just whether he wrote something out or not. If this standard disproves things I think the First Vision might get the chop.

Exactly.  However, such claims require formal demonstration within the canons of real historiography.  We have plenty of ancient examples:  Acts contains 3 versions of Paul's First Vision, with actual contradictions.  Does this mean that he or Luke lied?  The Gospels all tell a different story about Jesus, with contradictions.  Are the 4 Gospel writers/editors liars?  The students of Socrates (Xenophon and Plato) differ in their descriptions of him.  Are they therefore liars?

[Kevin Christensen]

And there is this from Jerry Grover, a serious attempt to translate the caractors document that includes all of the legwork involved in such an endeavor.  I've started taking a look.

https://bmslr.org/translation-of-the-caractors-document/

FWIW,

Kevin Christensen

Canonsburg, PA

[Stargazer]

1 hour ago, Kevin Christensen said:

And there is this from Jerry Grover, a serious attempt to translate the caractors document that includes all of the legwork involved in such an endeavor.  I've started taking a look.

https://bmslr.org/translation-of-the-caractors-document/

FWIW,

Kevin Christensen

Canonsburg, PA

Ward Radio featured an interview with him about 6 months ago:

 

[Robert F. Smith]

On 10/20/2024 at 2:26 AM, Zosimus said:

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

Charles Anthon personal accounts: Greek, Hebrew and inverted and sideways Roman letters arranged in columns like the Chinese mode of writing with crosses and flourishes, half moons, stars, ending in a rude representation of the Mexican zodiac
....................................

That description was used by Mark Hoffmann as the model for his forgery of the "original" Anthon Transcript -- which fooled me at the time.

On 10/20/2024 at 2:26 AM, Zosimus said:

If Joseph Smith Sr's interview with Lapham is correct, I don't think it possible that any manuscript with true Egyptian or Arabic characters could pass through Bradish's hands without being recognized immediately as Egyptian or Arabic. Even though Bradish was the most familiar with Egyptian hieratic and hieroglyphs and Arabic, JS Sr. says Bradish did not recognize them. Since Anthon and Mitchill would have known Bradish was more familiar with Egyptian than they were, I really doubt either would have claimed the characters were Egyptian if Bradish didn't claim it first

Unless I'm missing an account somewhere, I don't think there was anything resembling Egyptian on any of the manuscripts

Since it is possible to see strong resemblances to ancient Egyptian cursive in two different copies of Book of Mormon characters, your opinion seems quite odd.  When and where did you study ancient Egyptian?