Lehi and Nephi were scribes! A Josephite or even Manassite scribal school that wrote in Egyptian existed all the way back to Abraham, was passed down to Joseph of Egypt, and down to Lehi and Nephi, explains Book Of Mormon Scholar Noel B. Reynolds.
This scribal school was in the original tradition of the Patriarchs, as opposed to the Judahite school, which "harmonized" various Judahite teachings. The Josephite scribal school produced the Brass Plates and the Book of Mormon, while the Judahite school, which was unfamiliar with the Egyptian language, produced the Old Testament.
manasse ites or josephites at least and really giving you a completely different
look at scripture and how this was passed down Lehi and Nephi appear to
have been scribes would have been a part of a scribal school from the time they were little boys all the way down to
Mormon and Moroni in the same type of school and going all the way back perhaps to Abraham this gives a
completely different meaning to the very opening of The Book of Mormon in 1 Nephi 1 where Nephi talks about who he is and
what he's doing with the learning of the Jews and the language of the Egyptians this also contrasts the manite scribal
school with the judahite scribal school which very well may have been Rivals and
the judahite scribal school is what produces the Old Testament and the manasse scribal school produces the
brass plates and then of course the book of just fascinating fascinating information in this interview now this
episode is brought to you by scripture notes I've talked a lot about scripture notes I'm going to continue talking a lot about scripture notes if you have
not tried this out yet go to scripture notes.com and try out this software it
is an amazing tool it's what I produced my book with and as you delve into it get used to it it is it's really
something else go to scripture notes.com here we go
[Music]
all right welcome to Quick show my name is Greg Matson and I am your host in this episode we have brought on nol B Reynolds nol welcome to the show thank
you just a little bit of background on null he received his Ma and PhD from Harvard University he's been a visiting
professor at Harvard Law School Edinburgh Edinburgh University and the Hebrew University of jerus m one of the
editors of the Encyclopedia of Mormonism from 1920 or 1992 and several articles in the fields
of legal and political philosophy and American founding all right no really happy to have you on here I've had many
people recommend that I bring you on the show as one of the best Scholars today and uh running through your stuff here
it's been a while since I've looked at a couple of your papers but uh really really happy to be on have you on the
show we're going to focus on scribal ISM as specifically Lehi and Nephi scribal
ISM uh why is this important to understand Lehi and Nephi as
scribes as modern uh readers of the Book of Mormon the Bible and so forth uh we
tend to be unaware of the uh oral cultures in which those books were
written uh We've uh since Gutenberg uh reading and writing have
become quite Universal um and we don't realize that
in the ancient world uh writing was important but to get things written you
had to hire somebody to do it for you and the scholars have estimated that uh
less than 5% of the Egyptian Elites were uh uh
literate and uh many of those estimates go down below 1% depends on the kind of
writing you want to talk about so um when we see uh Lehi and Nephi
are custodians of an ancient record number one which becomes the holy
scriptures the brass plates become the holy scriptures of the Nephites and they
contribute to that and they write in both Hebrew and Egyptian
so they're they're literate in two languages to and uh this there's there
in the ancient world there was no other way to be to become literate in multiple
languages than to be taught from an early age in what would be called a
tribal school a family scribal school so this would then this would uh uh tell us
that that lehi's family is an elite family right this is a I mean this is
the these people would be like King's Court type of people that's exactly
right um and of course lehi's family uh migrated to
Jerusalem uh probably before the Assyrian Conquest which would have been
in you know 7:30ish 720 to 7:30 21 yeah yeah and
they would have uh come to Jerusalem with other Elites that fled the Assyrian
conquest and it's during that period of time that Jerusalem population exploded uh some
people think people think it grew 15 times uh so it's was really an important
time but only the elites uh could afford that kind of a move and were in a position to undertake
it so now remind me the original question
make sure I answered it well why is it important that we understand that they're scribes I mean we're talking about why they're probably Elite
individuals right they're so so I mean going beyond that we know some more about the family as an example okay if
they were had to be Elites to be in a scribal school uh they know Metallurgy for
example yeah right defi knows Metallurgy along with this they're obviously very
well educated uh this is not just some family that's uh you know R run out of town
that's exactly right it's uh uh well they had a lot more to lose in The
Invasion uh they were wealthy uh and the Assyrians first thing
they would do is uh strip people of their wealth and send that off to uh
their Capital but it's important because we have them riding reading and
writing and the only way to understand that is if they had had this kind of education and then uh if they were
passing that education on down to their children uh it uh what I've recently
documented uh this isn't fully published yet but uh there are no gaps in nephite
history that Mormon doesn't tell us how the plates and the responsibility of
Chief scribe is passed on from one generation to another he documents that
all through the Book of Mormon um the scribes
uh could be wealthy in multiple ways one is by providing scribal services that
were needed but the other is uh not all the members of the family would necessarily be inclined toward scribal
ISM in fact it usually probably with was a minority of the family and so these tribal families uh in the ancient world
tended to have businesses on the side uh
the um nibi for example speculated that Nephi that Lehi may have been a merchant
uh that was trading with distant cities uh that would be very compatible with uh
a tribal families activities uh they've also speculated people that he was a metallurgist
because for multiple reasons uh and uh but that but Metallurgy also was
commonly associated uh with scribal families uh in uh the scholars who have
documented scribal ISM in ancient ugarit specifically point to the connection
with Metallurgy they were not they could be blacksmiths and scribes
the scribal schools would have a shop uh a workshop in which they would
produce their own materials there was no store you could go to downtown and buy plates that you
could buy writing materials who would who who's the market for writing materials it's just the scribes so they
had to make their own and they had these workshops where they did all of that and
metal was uh commonly uh associated with scribes yeah that's really interesting
another connection I've seen written out before is metallurgy with priesthood uh to be that priesthood and
metallurgies oftentimes go together there are several phrases especially in the Old Testament that bring up this
type of uh you know Iron and and metal that that has to do with the scriptures
and has to do with uh uh the priests as well so there there's also a connection
there well and the point you bring up right there is uh one we could elaborate
on just a little bit and that is now very good evidence that the ancient
world did have writing on metal uh they had iron pens for example was part of a
standard scribal kit uh and they could use it to write on Stone or on metal but
what the the metal writing the writings on metal have not survived unless they
were buried away somewhere uh they were commonly buried in the cornerstones of
temples for example uh but those are you know they not accessible but later
generations would find something written on metal they would not value that
writing sure they would value the metal and so it would be recycled and
and that you even get this in in the uh um the warnings to Joseph Smith when he
gets the plates that's right you know it's like look you got the value here this is great value this is is probably
something that maybe has been repeated over and over again to these scribes and those that held the plates not just to
not just to Jose Smith and that's that makes the point exactly that it's always
been true yeah now you talk about the scribal school here that that goes on so
you've got something that Lehi and Nephi would have but then these these keepers
of the plates that are writing in here may not all necessarily be prophets for
example so I mean you've got all of the the the the writers in the small place I don't know if you know you've got amni
amaron chamish am abadam and am Malachi
uh are these scribes are they prophets are they both obviously after this where
King Benjamin pulls back the uh gets the the it's Benjamin or mosiah gets the
plates back under the under the king they're from then on we seem to see the prophet as the one who has got the
plates that's because we only uh in the Book of Mormon we only are getting the
perspective presented by Mormon uh who was a prophet um in the book of Helman
uh chapter three Mormon gives us a a much broader view into this business of
uh keeping records on plates Among the Nephites and he points out there that
there are plates of there are records of every kind uh it's commercial records military
records uh political records uh and religious records all these the
prophecies and the everything like that was included in those records but it was
a vast collection of records that were handed down uh through the official scri
nephite scribal school all the way down to amaron who selected one of his very
young students Mormon to be his successor uh and so Mormon have a
scribal school then Mormon would have been in a scribal school well uh amaron goes to him when
he's aged 10 and says I obser I I I observe that you're I'm forgetting the
word now serious sober or something sober yeah that was word use thanks
um uh and when you are 24 so you know 14
years go to the hill where I have stashed all of the nephite records uh
because the the scribal school at that point was in disarray uh it had dissolved and Amron
saw the future wanted Mormon to finish off the large plates of Nephi which had
been kept by That official scribal school all the way down to Mormon's time
he wanted want him to finish that off and tell about the final demise of the Nephites which Mormon then did not on
the schedule that amaron gave him because that schedule was interrupted by the lonite
wars yeah yeah that's interesting okay so let me let me back up again back to Nephi
so let's let's go right to the beginning here of of first Nephi 1 yes and we
often times think about Nephi and how he introduces himself he's of goodly parents these are common uh hebraic uh
uh introductions to books the way he does it Paul does something similar sometimes uh what what do we get out of
these here especially the first three verses as I'm looking out it maybe it's beyond this but the fir no first three
verses are very interesting with what you're saying keeping what you're saying
in mind about being a scribe that's uh see Nei once you
understand the role how scribal schools work how scribal ISM worked in the
ancient world uh it's clear that Nephi is a scribe and he's introducing himself
as a scribe in those first three verses uh I was taught somewhat in all the
learning of my father his father is a learned man he is a learned man coming
out of 7th Century Jerusalem and there's only one way you can become a learned
man uh in that world was to be educated in a scribal
school what we're going to find out is that it's not one of the Judi scribal
schools that uh produced the Old Testament he then goes on and says uh uh
having been highly favored of the Lord yay having had a great knowledge of the goodness and Mysteries of God therefore
I make a record nobody can make a record if he isn't a
transcribe the most scribes now this is another thing is the scribes themselves
may have been a very tiny percentage of the total population but most of those
scribes would be involved in writing things for other people like letters uh
military Communications uh more like most likely
um uh commercial Communications business Communications yeah these vast libraries
that we found that have been found in uh Mesopotamia for example on clay tablets
with the cop form script uh these are our biggest libraries and uh they're
primarily commercial records uh and so he's uh so it's really
out of all the scribes there are who are working at all these different levels and a and a young a boy trained for just
four years or more uh could serve some of these scribal functions and get make a Liv living at
it uh writing for people who had money and who needed that writing but he goes
on to say I make a record in the language of my father so all of a sudden
now we're not talking you know he's not writing in the vernacular the Hebrew vernacular uh what
is the language of his father it consists of the learning the Jews and
he's uh probably here using Jews to in he often uses the word Jews when he's
referring to Israelites in general but the learning of the Jews and the
language of the Egyptians now my observation my experience is that as latterday Saints
reading the book of Mormon we tend to skip over that we think he's writing
in Hebrew he tells us straight out he's writing in the language of the
Egyptians now what's the reason for that um the the brass plates are written in
Egyptian and that is his holy scriptures and he's writing Revelations that he and
his father have uh received and teaching their meaning he he sees this as future
scripture and he sees egyp I as the appropriate language for
scripture yeah now I want to get into that a little bit because this is this you know I I tie a lot of I I do tours
out in Egypt and this is I love tying all these things back to Egypt people don't realize the
connections of the Israelites to the Egyptians because there's just that that one story of The Exodus and everybody
thinks well Egypt evil Israelites good and and there's this massive separation
between the two and in reality they were completely intertwined you can't get away from the culture of Egypt you
cannot get away from the culture of Egypt so the language of his father is
Egyptian and and and being that he is a
manasse and and therefore descendant from Joseph that makes all the sense in the world to me well that's uh see
in for Nephi and for the uh writers from the northern kingdom the northern
kingdom uh they go back their their families go back to Joseph of Egypt and
Joseph Married An Egyptian princess yeah that's he has two sons manasse and
Ephraim well language was taught in their home uh what did the servants speak uh
who did they marry they're there for quite a while before uh Jacob and the
other Brothers of Joseph are brought back to Egypt speaking probably
Canaanite uh which is a parent language for Hebrew and the uh but the did um when
they Joseph have spoken Egyptian then absolutely I mean to command and do what
he did he had to have been speaking Egyptian here's the question though is when did he actually learned that uh
yeah now here's here's my theory and it's it's speculation I
haven't any other way of proving it than the reasons I might offer right now uh
but the um it seems to me see Egyptian was the only language available for
Abraham and Moses to write in they wrote in
Egyptian and uh their records were being passed down uh Abraham tells us in first
chapter of the book of Abraham that he's writing this for his posterity well which which one of them
lost it threw it away uh Isaac
Jacob Joseph see I don't think any of them threw it away I think they were passing
it down and teaching the language so that they could use it yeah and I'm
going to get to this because I have a really big question on this because you're talking about a rivalry school
then eventually that may pop up here and and why it would pop up but I wanted to
comment first of all on your theory of Joseph um so looking already at the
samples that we have we've got we know that Nephi was a young man right he's a young man uh at this
time and yet he has all of this knowledge he has all of this skill
and and so you have to imagine that he is at a very very young age when he enters into this type of a school where
where he would gain all of this right now going further now to the very end we get to Mormon who apparently is in a
school already at 10 years old and enough to the point that he's already
been recognized by amaron is someone who can do what he needs him to do already
at that age so you we' got two very young men here at the beginning at the end of The Book of Mormon that seem to
be in a school situation where they are learning all of these things now add
Joseph into this is Joseph a very young man in
Canaan learning these things at a very young age
also that that allows him when he's taken into Egypt possibly an a huge
Advantage for him to be able to flourish exactly uh well there's kind of two two
points to make here one is that uh the um beginning
scribes scribal students often were just four or five years old okay uh that's
been pretty well established for Mesopotamian and Egyptian scribal
schools so they got into it early and by the time they were N9 or 10 years old
they had learned enough uh to be taking on certain kinds of scribal
Labor um and you know to get jobs sure writing things for people and reading
things for people um now going back to
Joseph uh I think the evidence would be that of all of Jacob's children Jacob's
uh Joseph is the obvious one to have received the scribal training he was the
favorite son uh he's not in in the biblical
representation he's not out helping with the Sheep herting uh he's at home in a
nice coat uh and uh
the which would be much more compatible with the scribal activity and then when
he gets to Egypt eypt he shoots to the top Yeah his his first employer puts him
in charge of the whole house well he can't do that if he can't speak Egyptian or have skills honestly I
that's right yeah that's that's really interesting and of course this adds to
some other things in in in with latterday Saints and that is okay well then if there is a tradition of of
scribal ism starting with Abraham and maybe before uh we've got Abraham's
writing where where is Isaac's where is Jacob's and of course where is Joseph's
now we know a little bit about that but uh uh you know there where are those writings if they were scribes did they
write it all I mean Joseph did we know that and Joseph's writings are uh
inserted Into the Book of Mormon in different places the quoted out of the breastplates by different Book of Mormon
writers so that's um so we know he made records uh I've
uh um Jeff Lindsay and I have uh written a series of articles in which we've
argued that the uh the book of Moses version of Genesis that is given to
Joseph Smith without much explanation he doesn't really tell us much about how
that was revealed to him but it contains all kinds of things that are not in the Bible uh a lot of text all the unique
stuff for example um we have got we've
identified at this point of uh I think Jeff's up to 130 some
33 examples of phrases words Concepts
developed in the book of Moses that are not paralleled in the
Bible and they are in the Book of Mormon interesting well the suggest the
conclusion we drew from that is that the Book of Mormon the brass plates contains
the same version or much the same version of the book of Moses Moses's
writings as uh did the brass plates yeah that's that's pretty
interesting there there's another author that's a book that just came out from a friend of mine that he talks about uh uh
the Apocrypha in the Book of Mormon and he's he he he does something similar he says that the Genesis Apocrypha is is
actually seems to be more along the lines of what the brass plates contained yeah so it's um and the other thing is
that I've Advanced a much weaker argument uh to claim that uh even the book of
Abraham is reflected in certain ways in the Book of Mormon that's interesting
but it's but that's a very weak argument uh I don't have anything like the
evidence that we have for saying that about the book of Moses implying that the book of Abraham may have been in the
brass plates also right okay and it and the writings of Moses would have been
written in Egyptian okay yes that that is something I have thought about also is wouldn't
that make more sense that these things were written an Egyptian and then kept an Egyptian which would have been an Israelite not just perhaps then I mean
Moses is a levite but at least an Israelite tradition that that is founded
on the fact that they all lived in Egypt that's right for so long that's right yeah but and and one other very
important Point Greg Egyptian writing was the only script
available in Abraham's time in Joseph's time and in Moses's time there was
no Scholars do not believe that uh Hebrew developed until after really the
time of King David the Hebrew script that is used in the Bible okay not even
like a a Proto Hebrew type uh not not something that would be used for writing
anyway that's that is when Proto Hebrew evolved okay um the actual alphabet if
it might be worth just a little detour here on this topic uh the actual uh
Semitic not Semitic I want to say Well Northwest West Semitic
alphabet which is the one that Hebrew is derived from uh was uh C has been
evidenced at least 1900
BC but there are no continuous
texts coming uh in that uh that have been discovered in that
script uh before uh 800 or uh 700 BC okay and even
those are very short but if the Bible and that's why Bible scholars
believe that the Jewish the judahite scribal schools in Jerusalem during the
seventh century transcribed the
oral traditions of Israel into the books
of scripture that we now have so they the Bible scholars have finally and it's
because of this unavailability of a script to write them in um that they
were transcribed from oral traditions in the sth century that would be during
lehi's Lifetime and and uh and then there's
clear evidence that those Traditions as transcribed were uh there were a variety
of them uh competing Traditions that were harmonized in that Century uh under
the Kings uh at the end of the century and Josiah particularly and the uh when you
say harmonized will you expound on that a little bit Yeah well if there's competing Traditions coming out of these
oral Traditions competing written Traditions then somebody sits down and says okay
let's let's make one version of this and U in so doing they often
Preserve some of the competing versions in and you see that in the Bible you'll see things repeated but somewhat
differently uh in the Old Testament so that's why Bible
scholars uh as a group tend to be somewhat skeptical of the or of the U
validity of the origin stories of the uh Israelite people
uh because they don't it's hard to believe that a a firm scriptural text
could be preserved orally across a Thousand-Year period however though but what about but
but if if Moses can write an Egyptian right and and we're talking
Moses here what what are we looking at about 14 1500 BC uh 12 to 13 12 to 1300
BC why wouldn't the tradition continue on from Moses as he wouldn't he not set up a
scribal school that was focused on Egyptian and and bring that with him and
and have them rewrite everything and keep everything uh in
Egyptian the Jerusalem scribal schools have exhibit no familiarity with
Egyptian that's that's interesting to me so but but look what you've got I mean
and this is the brass plates to the rescue the brass plates claimed to be
written in Egyptian going back possibly even to Abraham right and I believe that I think
that that is right exactly so what so now we're going to go back to the the competing sides here what we end up with
we end up with a josephi tradition and Legacy handed down to the
ephraimites and or menites that would be eventually severed
from Judah into a different Kingdom and and perhaps keeping a
different set of Records than what the Judah ites are keeping it's probably worth inter
interjecting here uh what's going on in
Palestinian archaeology uh for the over the last 30 years the
archaeologists have moved away from the
uh uh version of Israelite history that comes out of the Old
Testament uh based on the following observation that Jerusalem was always a
very very small place mainly agricultural until the invasion or the
uh migration of all those Elites that moved out of the northern kingdom uh in the Assyrian Conquest your
manite school would have been in the northern kingdom all that time uh they
uh they obviously were preserving an Egyptian language
tradition and so when they come to Jerusalem they
have uh a tradition that they see going back in written form all the way to
Abraham yeah and the uh and that would include the Moses
stuff would have been originally written in Egyptian meanwhile the Judit start
collecting um oral traditions in the 7th century and writing those down and that
becomes um are basic books of the Old Testament uh one possibility that occurs
to me you know people have wondered how how did those Traditions oral Traditions
over a thousand years uh how did they last and the uh the answer I would
suggest uh is that in fact that isn't what happened that those that the
judahite oral traditions in Hebrew were their
own uh versions of What the were hearing
from the Manasses out of the northern kingdom so it wasn't a Thousand-Year
lapse it was a maybe even just one generation of oral tradition that was
being transcribed and that's why the Old Testament is as accurate as it is
yeah but it would all saying that it goes back primarily to what was in the
brass plates they the uh the Bible see so I say brass plates to the rescue the
brass plates in that interpretation would be the original
source of the Old Testament but having gone through a generation or two of oral
tradition in Hebrew yeah yeah and it seems to me no
that you know you look at other examples of where these types of where you have schisms right within the people and you
go you go to the Jews and the Christians and and what starts to happen
well you know the Jews have got the septu agent they they they praise it as this incredible document it's amazing
they've compiled all these books together and put it into Greek and and then as the as the Christians grow in
popularity they take the subagent and they say no this thing is almost to the point of saying almost like it's evil
and and they put it away and they move on and somewhere in between that and and the 9th century ad we end up with Matic
text right and and so there's that Schism seems to
force some differences you not not major necessarily but there seems to be some differences that are forced there would
we see the same thing between the josephites the uh of the north and and what the Judah ites are going to compile
do they are they going to have a concern about what the josephites have and and do we need
to make some changes here that's an excellent question and uh here's what
I've come to so far uh on pursuing that
question uh first that it was the josephites who were
dwindling after after immigrating uh immigrating to Jerusalem uh they were
dwindling in their uh Co cohesion among themselves uh they were
uh uh getting uh adapted into the uh the
Jewish society and uh they may very well have had a fear that the
Jewish uh versions of their Traditions that were being Advanced would replace the
true uh manite version and that would be the primary
motivation for creating the brass plates so the brass plates on that view
I I don't see them as something that Abraham started or that Joseph started
rather I see they the manasse scribal school would have done what other scribal schools did and maintained a
library and that library was U probably ENT Papyrus uh
Scrolls that they were passed down from generation to generation and as one
scroll would wear out uh the scribes would create uh would update it they
just make it a clean new copy but when you get down to uh lehi's time uh if
these motivations these concerns about the judahite versions that were
developing became a and and the foreseeable demise of the manite uh
tradition I mean here's come here's babylon's Army marching West 100 miles a
year uh that they may be have been high they may have been highly motivated to
create a permanent tradition that would speak to the ages that would bear
witness to the ages and the Bible uses that kind of language a couple of times
for writing on metal uh to make witness and that's in Jeremiah and so talking
about the Babylonians the Babylonians to Jerusalem so you're talking about you're talking about this something like this
happening maybe in the latter half of the of the 7th Century well it's the Babylonians come in what is it 687 587
when they carry uh the Jerusalem oh yeah when they yeah of course Lehi leaves
before that but yeah not much not much yeah maybe 10 years
but so of course the brass plates also if we look at another parallel we look at the book of Mormon you've got a
thousand years of history there and Mormon is assigned to pull it all together into one book and put it on
plates if you go if you even went to Abraham down to Lehi you've got about 1100
years something similar right it could be something similar in that case where you're drawing all of the records together and putting them into something
permanent that's right and maybe Lehi is involved I don't know he seems
to not know some things about genealogy from the brass plates I I I don't know if that's being read wrong but the
um yes I think it is read wrong in that uh the see what's the word that he use
it's not discover the word that Lehi uses to say found his genealogy there um
we when we read that cold uh we may get the impression that he didn't know his
genealogy before uh but if we look at what the Hebrew word would have been uh it could
easily be um just he read it or confirmed it yeah he found it is what it
says yeah yeah and it doesn't it doesn't mean discover uh and so that's that's one
where the English can mislead us okay U let tell you an interesting
story so uh in this day and age Google Books is
madly digitizing old books and uh thousands of
them so I got on Google and just searched for brass
plates uh I don't know if you saw this before but let let me tell you what I
found the thing that came up was a 17th century experience of an
English sea captain his name Alexander
Hamilton and Alexander Hamilton spent this Alexander Hamilton spent 30 years
of his life in the late 1600s uh taking his ship up and down the
the west coast of India just moving goods from one port to another
uh and then he retired to London and wrote his Memoir and in that Memoir which is
available on Google Books he says that uh there was that the ancient
Jewish colony in carala uh told him that they were
descendants of a of Manasses that were captured by the
Babylonians taken to the Eastern end of the Babylonian
Empire and uh and then abandoned when the Persians took over from the
Babylonians uh 10 20 years later they didn't want all those Jewish
uh uh captives and let him go now some of the the Judes went back
to Jerusalem these man asites went South to
India and found a king a local King in
Southern India who took them in he saw ways he could take use them in
the military and uh they were more learned than his people and he used them
in in various ways but he he took them in and they said they had brought with
them their records on brass
plates very interesting it's very so Manassa a manasi tribe outside of the
Americas heads out goes to India and their their their oral tradition is that
when they came they brought blast brass plates exactly that is really interesting isn't that amazing yeah wa
now you go to par today and the that's part of India right
whatever Jewish population was there is integrated uh or a lot of those people
uh came back to Israel when Israel was founded and and so what you have is a
bunch of abandoned synagogues um but you don't have any brass plates nobody knows what happened
to those and maybe they're in the Cornerstone of one of those buildings who knows there you go get a medal Tor
and go over there and look for it the uh well I've uh the thought that
goes through my mind is if and when the Lord wants that second brass plates witness to surface it will
yeah yeah that's that's fascinating that's that's really interesting uh okay
so I wanna I want to back up here again a little bit and in the uh yeah I want I want to talk
about that the Egyptian that's used here now there you know ni talks about uh you know talking about reformed Egyptian and
he talks about well maybe this is myotic right they were the one some people that uh came into Egypt like several peoples
did and and and took over and and there there was a A variation of the of the Egyptian that was used um but that is
only mentioned in Moroni 9 or Mormon 9 by Moroni right at the very end a thousand
years later it seems to me that and I still think it's htic that they would be
using because that's the holy script that's what they would have been using before and
it's you've got a thousand years from the time that Lehi leaves until you've
got the the you've got Moroni and that's a long time for a language to hold on to
itself I mean you look at Old English a thousand years ago that you know right now you you go to 1024 that's before
Middle English even really starts to come in from the north and so you've got you go back and look
at it and I've done this a lot I cannot understand it I've read it I've studied it I've gone through it I still can't
get it you would have to be an expert to understand English from 1024 oh that's
right and so what maybe we're speaking and writing reformed English right
now um let me try something on you okay uh
the uh the west citic or canite or
Phoenician you can use all those terms the alphabet that was invented in the
19th century uh BC or 20th century BC
um you use the following uh strategy
for each consonant in West Semitic
languages uh they borrowed a htic
sign for an an Egyptian word really that
started with that consonant okay now once you understand that would
it make sense to call the original now this is the first alphabet in the world
as far as we know but you're you're saying the first alphabet is Egyptian no
no the first alphabet uh it's not it's using Egyptian
signs for the consonants in the west citic
languages okay so I mean it's we we we use Phoenician
signs no no the signs are borrowed from hieratic okay that's the that's the
interesting connection so it's somebody in Egypt in the Nile area the Nile Delta
area a who himself is a West Semite is trying to get a way to write
his language West citic and he borrows the signs from the Egyptian
script that begin from words forwards that begin
with a consonant he's trying to represent in West citic okay yeah that's
interesting right it's a genius it's genius I I still wonder
though I mean wouldn't Joseph have been speaking and writing in heretic yes and
wouldn't he have passed that on to Ephraim and Manasseh no it's yes I I I
think the brass plates are written in hieratic okay but what you've got now is some
West semites learning how to write their language using signs borrowed from
Egyptian not signs that mean the same thing signs from words that have the
same consonant right yeah that's interesting no meaning there's no meaning connection that's interesting
it's just the sounds so that's what an alphabet is the sounds right the different letters represent sounds you have what 23 24
consonants and so you need to borrow those from 23 or 24 Egyptian words yeah
the all the the only connection is the same sound right
so what would you call that script very possibly reformed Egyptian
yes does that make sense sure yeah absolutely that's a great now you got to add one more you got to extend that a
thousand years of nephite history in which the nephite language
changes a lot now we're talking about the nephite vernacular which would have started out as
Hebrew but notice when they uh come to zerla and meet
the those the munites uh they can't understand each
other M they both started with um with Hebrew and in 450 500 years their their
languages are in uh not mutually intelligible and so Nea and Moroni tells
us at the end he says no one knows our
language so now we're dealing with three languages and three
scripts in more time Egyptian the brass plates they've
got to be able to read that to be able to teach out of the brass
plates the Hebrew because some of the brass plates is probably in Hebrew we
almost certainly Isaiah and Jeremiah were written in
Hebrew and thirdly nephite and the large plates have been
kept in nephite and he tells us that we've adjusted the we've adjusted
that that writing to fit the changes in our language The Book of Mormon tells us
that so they may have started off reading writing in Egypt in nephite and
pardon me in Hebrew the the large plates probably were written in Hebrew in the
first few Generations but as the defi language
evolved how do you think they changed the writing to fit the
evolving language right if they did the same thing that the inventor of the West
Semitic alphabet did if they searched from in the they
knew Egyptian they could go to Egyptian find the new consonants they needed and
use those to reform uh the nephite script
yeah and continue to call it reformed Egyptian yeah does that make
sense that makes sense I'm gonna have you look into the camera though I've got you to the side there oh I'm sorry you're the wrong
screen but when you moved I saw something behind you now I can see it barely over is that the Judgment scene
from The Book of Joseph yes so no it's from uh it's just from an
Egyptian pyramid okay a scroll it looks a little like what you
what what the the uh the book of Joseph judgment scene uhuh interesting yeah
okay um all right now that's I want to go back to Abraham for a second because this is something I've always you know you've got kind of two
schools on Abraham's Origins his Geographic Origins yes one is ur that's
you know it would be in today's Iraq right and and one is ur which is and I don't remember the full names of these
but the one is or that would be in southeast turkey and the Syrian area Northern Syrian area yeah right I've
always thought and and I saw that in your writings that you say the same thing that this is pro geographically it
seems like it has to be up in the north because of the of where Haron is the uh
that well that's exactly I think the the best source on that we've uh John G has
pointed this out and it's the uh the reference to
olim in the book of Abraham there is an nishim in uh that Northern Syria
Northwest Syria okay and which fits in fits very well uh with the book of
Abraham it's also the case that uh uh sonle
Ura uh ancient Aleppo um is today called s
era and it is still claimed in that City
that Abraham was born there uh and that's all in Northwest Syria right up there at the
very tip of that little piece of the uh Mediterranean Sea that reaches up it's
right there yep and U that's uh that version of the geography
as as ji and sub Steve SM smoo have
argued um is makes far more sense than a
southern or for uh book of
Abraham uh and other reasons yeah yeah and that's I think also just just
looking at the uh you know why are they going all the way up to haran down from down in Iraq right you know when they
that doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me but anyway way yeah I want to push back a little bit on the manasse I
scribes okay and and and tell me what I don't know if you've
heard these things or but there are there are several references in church history you've got uh you've got
Franklin D Richards you've got arus snow you've got um parley Patt those three are are
few of them that all reference ishmail right that that they go back for
ishmael's family to get his daughters uh ishmail as an ephraimite and and and that his sons you
know his his kids are all ephraimites now there's also a fourth corroboration on that from a a convert from
1835 that knew Joseph Smith personally and said that he heard Joseph in 1835
say these same things about ishmail yes but also
um that zoram was an ephraimite yeah and and that therefore it is
implied that laan was an ephraimite and and and that even the
sword of there's also some some uh newspaper articles and another testimony
from early Saints of those that knew Martin Harris who was the Scribe for the last 116
pages that that even the sword was supposed to Joseph's sword that carried
down all the way to Joshua who conquered Canaan with the sword and then that it comes down to
Laban now I don't know if a sword can last that long but but that's that's what they said that it was it was
originally Joseph sword so he would have if that were the case right he would have the the sword of Joseph and the
plates or the records of Joseph as from an because Joshua was an ephraimite
right through an ephraimite line would it be not just a Manassa
manasse school but maybe a josephite school
the there there's no way to know about that for sure uh that i' aware of but uh keep in
mind the geography of Israel north of
Jerusalem uh ephraimite territory came down right really close to Jerusalem
there there's a benjamite area there but when you go look at your map there you
see Ephraim is only a days walk from Jerusalem and that that manasse was
given the U the tribe of manasse was assigned by Moses uh to the premier area
north of the ephraimites uh and the E Manasses were given the largest area they were given
the ancient sacred sites where Abraham built altars and so
forth um and Samaria which eventually is
the capital of the northern kingdom uh how many miles is that from
Jerusalem 50 yeah I would guess maybe somewhere around there yeah we're the these are
all small distances yeah so uh
and uh very possibly ephraimites and
Manasses would have come to Jerusalem it's also the case that uh the capital
of the Manasses shifted the sacred sites I should say the uh uh and even a temple
uh a manite temple was uh in uh
many people think they found a manite temple or E an Israelite temple in
Shiloh that predates uh Jerusalem okay so and and
certainly uh they had that farther north uh there was a temple uh there when the
Manasses were assigned to sheim and sheim was the central holy site yes and
uh yeah yeah so that's all
uh if the Manasses were established there in sheim they within one or two
centuries had moved South to Shiloh area and there's a couple of different
places down there where may have been their scribal and religious Center
uh and so uh now the
ephraimites were conspicuous in the government of the northern
kingdom uh more but the uh and so and there's no tracking of this because the
we have the judahite version of the Old Testament that was
composed in Jerusalem in the 7th century which glorifies the judahite tradition
through David and Solomon and which is why they might not
talk much about a temple in Shiloh and and appreciates the tradition of the
northern kingdom and what I was trying I started to say earlier and I got myself
off off the argument but the what the archaeologists think is that the
northern kingdom was far wealthier far more important politically and even
dominant over the southern Kingdom for
centuries uh and that's what the archaeology argues when they start digging these
places up and looking at them uh the northern kingdom actually
was uh the kind of Empire with with long distance uh influence that the Testament
describes for Solomon so it it looks and the other
thing that happens in the Old Testament that we have the judahite Old Testament is that there was the uh just straight
out attempt to centralize all legitimate Worship in the Jerusalem
Temple and so the the northern kingdoms temples were uh uh disqual ified by King
Josiah's reforms and those holy sites were
devalued um so it's it we don't have the answer to that but that's what over the
last 30 years Palestinian archaeologists are pretty much shifting to that point
of view yeah whereas they had always used the Old Testament as a guide for
interpreting archaeology they're now saying no the Old Testament is a rewriting of History so so that yeah it
was a rewriting of Israel the Old Testament is a rewriting of Israel now a lot of people will say also biblical Scholars will also say that it wasn't
actually until a post-exilic period that they wrote the the Old Testament because you have things like dudo or or trto
right Isaiah that that is postexilic and or claimed to be postexilic and yeah it
was compiled afterward after I think and some of the some of the more radical
critiques argue that basically all of the old test is post exilic
yeah the the oldest actual writing that we have from Israel is like the Dead Sea
Scrolls and that's you know things that are 300 BC yeah well that's three
centuries after the Exile yeah yeah so so the oldest is 300 BC that we were of
writings that we actually have and that's not far from the subagent so obviously there's something in place before that but they're translating
these things into into into Greek but uh okay so what's interesting to me because
I I follow the Josiah reforms and all that I've read barer and all those things uh and other other archaeologists
obviously I think most AR or most archaeologists and biblical Scholars will say that you know there was a deuteronomic reform and um many people
say that the deuteronomist come from the north and that they probably influenced even uh King Hezekiah and and at the
time of Isaiah and they were already down south at that point and may maybe it's because they came from the Assyrian
attack previously but um you would then have if that's the case a a a
religion that is very Antichrist in a sense coming from the
same source that we get the brass plates from not the same Source I mean I mean geographically the same
Source right if if they come from the north so you'd have the deuteronomist coming down into Jerusalem but then you
you've also got the tradition of of the josephites with the brass plates both
infiltrating the Jews at Jerusalem the uh the idea of the deuteronomist came from the north now
I'm not I'm not an Old Testament specialist and so I just go along I just
use what other people say uh that that are well informed in those areas uh but
um but my recollection is that that's based on just a few minor things some of
which are linguistic that would but it's the uh but it is the the
deuteronomists that are pushing the uh glory and veracity of the Southern
religious and political Traditions uh at the expense of the northern
reputation so that's those you're correct to point out that those seem to
be contradictory points and uh and I'm certainly not qualified to judge over
you know settle it uh but my my impression is that the uh that it's it
doesn't have to be a contradiction what what do we know going back even further about an abrahamic sc
scribal tradition I mean you're said you you mentioned that likely he's writing
an Egyptian well that makes a lot of sense okay he's writing an Egyptian uh maybe
whatever if he's getting this from his father who was a priest right and what not are we where
are they borrowing this from does this go further back in his yes it must go further back uh I'm actually working on
that problem right now trying to reconstruct uh the writing tradition
back through Abraham Abraham says he gets the record from the fathers um and that he's going to pass
it down with his additions to phrases start to mean something different based on what you're saying he gets the
records from the fathers yeah this is not just a pass it down this is a scribal tradition yes yeah and uh
there's evidently a problem with his immediate father uh but how he winds up with with
the records of the fathers uh is he doesn't articulate that
he doesn't give us um blowby blow account uh he just says he wound up with
it so it's um
uh the other thing that needs to be factored in here is that when you place
uh Abraham's Ur uh in Northwest Syria there H Southeast turkey that area
uh that is an area that during Abraham's lifetime would have been an Egyptian
Province and and we the evidence of that is also in the book of Abraham or we've
got the Egyptian priest who is running the show religiously and sacrificing
people but also there would have been a uh an Egyptian
uh overseer for that area uh governmentally and um it would seem very
likely that Abraham uh and his father were
associated with that administrative unit and that's why Abraham is uh learning
Egyptian himself uh as a child yeah uh
that his father is integrated into the Egyptian uh provincial government at a
high level and why they would know him as someone that would eventually be sacrificed I mean the other person that
the other ones that are being sacrificed are royalty also from ham that the daughters that's right they're they're
uh they're prominent people uh now there's a whole range of
other evidence uh that is
um hard to evaluate there all kinds of Legends about
Abraham um uh about his youth um the education he was getting how brilliant
he was uh that they were involved with the Egyptian uh
government uh but none of these are can be validated by any continuous written
tradition so how they you know where they come from uh
a lot of them are clearly spous and it's just almost impossible to
sort that out certainly I'm not qualified to do that um I think uh it should be recognized
we're talking so much about Abraham and this we should mention you know John G's
uh most recent uh introduction uh to the book of
Abraham is uh probably our best source and Ste Smoot is uh he's still in
graduate school I think he's a Catholic University now but um in the time he's
had he's uh worked a lot on these Egyptian things and uh is uh trying to U
uh improve our understanding of Abraham as well so we do have some LDS Scholars
who uh are actually to be taken very seriously on all these topics um
uh they haven't focused on the kind of thing you and I have been talking about uh but uh but they these these re if
people are interested in that kind of thing they really should read ge's book and some of the articles that Smoot has
published yeah which are all available free at scripture Central yeah Stephen's
been on the on the program before okay good thanks yeah he's great does this
you know finishing up here uh is this when you read about the scribes in Jesus's time does this change your idea
and context of who these individuals are and and and what they represent at that
time because they're definitely one of the groups that are called out by Jesus
yeah it's uh well I don't think we can aside scribes and non-rib with good guys
and bad guys uh that that would never hold up what you have uh the scribes are
earning a living using their uh literacy and their training in literacy and their
knowledge of uh the law uh the scriptures and so forth uh for good or
bad purposes uh and a lot of that has to do with who's paying the
piper and that's certainly what we see in Jesus's time uh that the uh the
Pharisees and others are uh are paying the piper and the the scribes and and
also the monarchy uh all of these uh have scribes
so who the scribes were that Jesus was interacting with uh they weren't paid by
him and uh they weren't uh uh they were
very much in the Traditions say of the different uh Jewish
sexs uh but they but they also serve Why much broader uh function in society and
they are in many cases they function as lawyers that's what I was thinking yeah
exactly it's it's like lawyers today they they a lot of them never go to court even they're they're writing documents that's right yeah so
it's um so but they are the intellectuals of their society yeah they
are the ones that have a broad background they have uh time on their
hands to think about things and they are
good with words uh and they can influence uh uh
the government they can influence the religious leaders they can influence the populace um they are educated to speak
and write yeah well this is all fascinating stuff it opens up the doors
to so many new things to consider throughout the scriptures and throughout history is there anything else we're
missing that you really wanted to get across well uh You' hit the main points uh you may have noticed I've got
five or six different papers uh that and especially it pushed this down into Nephi times we've touched on a little of
that but it's I've also got a paper on the breast plates the uh I think one of
the big takeaways for me is that we can see that uh Le Lehi prophesied that the
brass plates would uh come to all people at some point in time they would retain
their brightness is his phrase and when they
do uh my vision of that is that the brass plates will uh rescue the Bible
from all the skepticism uh about a abam about the
prophets uh about Adam and Eve these things will that we'll get a
record that will completely change how the educated world will see uh the uh
that history uh I yeah just let me I'll make
this as a final Point um go back to chapter 29 of second Nephi and in that
chapter the Lord tells Nephi repeatedly I will speak to the Jews I will speak to the uh
Nephites I will speak to the Lost tribes of Israel and I will speak to All Peoples throughout the Earth and they
shall write it and that all these things will come together in the end times as
uh testimonies of Jesus Christ and uh uh and it that gets reiterated
multiple times in that chapter 29 and so but those things were said to people in
oral societies uh who depended on scribes to write and I think that uh
that kind of reinforces the connection between uh scribes and Prophets uh that
we see in the Book of Mormon and probably in the Bible but in the Bible
we don't get anything uh like what we have in the Book of Mormon in the Book of Mormon we actually know who's writing
what and the Bible uh hardly ever does
that uh Jeremiah says he's using a scribe Isaiah probably was writing for
himself and after that we you know it's we don't know so it's
uh uh but the brass plates uh having a written tradition back at
least to Abraham uh will change the ball game for
understanding the Bible yeah yeah that would be uh well that would be it would change everything because it would it
would it would turn the Old Testament period it seems to me obviously into a Christian period yes that that we do not
have right now and that is carried on from the book of Mor you one thing I say
is uh you know what your dad said right was was well when you pick up one end of the stick you pick up the other yeah and
and so when I think about the Book of Mormon as the Stick of Joseph I think we need to remember the other end of the
stick that you're picking up is the brass plates yeah right that is that is part of the stick really because that's
where everything's drawn from good point is out of those breast plates so no thank you so much really appreciate this
maybe we can talk about this another time as you continue to enjoy bus your research on this okay good night it's
fun stuff appreciate it you [Music]
