DiscussMormonism.com

In case anyone is interested, Sam Brown's new paper in the March issue of Church History is available for free download from Cambridge Journals Online. The paper is titled "Joseph (Smith) in Egypt: Babel, Hieroglyphs, and the Pure Language of Eden," and looks very interesting. I've not read it yet, but once I have I may report back here and give a few highlights.

.
.
.
.
ad

The KEP have proved controversial—the documents contain no recognizable Egyptian words and are often maintained to be the source of the published Book of Abraham, thereby proving both fraudulent.16 This is the thrust of the disclaimer in a polemical reprinting of GAEL: “Note: This is not an authentic Grammar and Alphabet of the Egyptian language. It does not contain any grammar or any genuine or reliable analysis of the Egyptian language.”17 The polemics surrounding the KEP have deflected attention from their meaning as religious documents per se. That these documents are not Egyptian according to any standard linguistic metric is beside the point.

(Emphasis added)

Shall we rather say "beside the kind of point that Sam Brown is interested in making"? And the words "according to any standard linguistic metric" are wholly superfluous. The documents are not Egyptian, period.

"Polemic" = "discussion of the KEP drawing attention to the totally baseless nature of Smith's claim to be able to translate Egyptian, and hence deducing conclusions as to his good faith or lack of it"?

I leave it to others to evaluate Brown's claims that Smith and Co. were interested in restoring a pure, pre-Babel, Adamic speech. They may have been trying to do that. But from a quick look at this paper, I do not see that it offers any reason to think that they did not pursue this commendable project by making up a whole lot of stuff on the fly.

Who is Sam Brown? Is he an up and coming LDS apologist?

harmony wrote:Who is Sam Brown? Is he an up and coming LDS apologist?

Samuel Brown is a physician who is an up-and-coming LDS historian. You can find some of his earlier work here.

Nevo wrote:

harmony wrote:Who is Sam Brown? Is he an up and coming LDS apologist?

Samuel Brown is a physician who is an up-and-coming LDS historian. You can find some of his earlier work here.

He's a physician... who is trying to be a historian? So he's trained in medicine, and being a LDS historian is his hobby?

harmony wrote:He's a physician... who is trying to be a historian? So he's trained in medicine, and being a LDS historian is his hobby?

Right. Kind of like Lester Bush or Gregory Prince.

Nevo wrote:

harmony wrote:He's a physician... who is trying to be a historian? So he's trained in medicine, and being a LDS historian is his hobby?

Right. Kind of like Lester Bush or Gregory Prince.

So, since he's not a professional historian, does this mean that the Mopologetic crowd will dismiss him the same way they dismiss Dan Vogel, Brent Metcalfe, and Ed Ashment?

Dr. Shades wrote:does this mean that the Mopologetic crowd will dismiss him the same way they dismiss Dan Vogel, Brent Metcalfe, and Ed Ashment?

I'm sure his acceptance or rejection by LDS (or antis, for that matter) will depend entirely on his conclusions.

Dr. Shades wrote:So, since he's not a professional historian, does this mean that the Mopologetic crowd will dismiss him the same way they dismiss Dan Vogel, Brent Metcalfe, and Ed Ashment?

Rather the way we don't dismiss Leonard Arrington (an economist), Bill Mackinnon (a lawyer and retired corporate executive), Lester Bush (a physician), Scott Faulring (a military officer), Larry Morris (an editor), Richard Turley (a lawyer), Gregory Prince (a physician, if I'm not mistaken), and etc., and etc.?

For the record, we like Sam Brown's paper. We always have.

And, since it was published in a prestigious, peer-reviewed journal, we expect all of you to genuflect before it, as some have asked that we do before the Criddle paper.

Chap wrote:

The KEP have proved controversial—the documents contain no recognizable Egyptian words and are often maintained to be the source of the published Book of Abraham, thereby proving both fraudulent.16 This is the thrust of the disclaimer in a polemical reprinting of GAEL: “Note: This is not an authentic Grammar and Alphabet of the Egyptian language. It does not contain any grammar or any genuine or reliable analysis of the Egyptian language.”17 The polemics surrounding the KEP have deflected attention from their meaning as religious documents per se. That these documents are not Egyptian according to any standard linguistic metric is beside the point.

(Emphasis added)

Shall we rather say "beside the kind of point that Sam Brown is interested in making"? And the words "according to any standard linguistic metric" are wholly superfluous. The documents are not Egyptian, period.

"Polemic" = "discussion of the KEP drawing attention to the totally baseless nature of Smith's claim to be able to translate Egyptian, and hence deducing conclusions as to his good faith or lack of it"?

I leave it to others to evaluate Brown's claims that Smith and Co. were interested in restoring a pure, pre-Babel, Adamic speech. They may have been trying to do that. But from a quick look at this paper, I do not see that it offers any reason to think that they did not pursue this commendable project by making up a whole lot of stuff on the fly.

Agreed, Chap. Immediately after the portion you quoted, Dr. Brown writes,

The KEP are not a grammar of hieroglyphs; they are themselves a hieroglyphic grammar. These manuscripts point beyond themselves to a place and time, imminently to be repeated, where the confusion of language could no longer tear the human family apart.

The distinction between a "grammar of hieroglyphs" and a "hieroglyphic grammar" lay not in the semantics of the phrases, but between two uses of the word hieroglyph. In the first phrase it is meant literally, to refer to the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs that Joseph claimed to be translating. In the second phrase it is meant non-literally. Modern linguists use the term "hieroglyph" metaphorically to refer to any word or linguistic symbol. It was sometimes used similarly in the 19th century, except that in that century it was used to describe symbols of a "natural language": symbols that communicate purely and obviously, whose shape and sound is suggestive of their profound meaning. This is what Dr. Brown means by "hieroglyphic grammar": Joseph Smith was inventing a "natural language".

I can appreciate Dr. Brown's point here. And in fact, I have done quite a bit of research on my own about the idea of the Grammar as a "natural language"; I might have written this paper myself if Sam hadn't. But using word-play to avoid drawing any controversial conclusions is too coy for my tastes.

I'll probably post some more later.

Best,

-Chris