Some Book of Mormon Characters and Their Interpretations

[_CaliforniaKid]

The following are excerpts from documents written, respectively, in the hand of Frederick G. Williams and Oliver Cowdery. Unfortunately my copies of these documents are from crummy microfilm and are very poor quality. Nevertheless, I provide them for your interest. These two documents, which appear to have been made at the same time for the scribes' private reference, are the only documents of which I am aware that offer interpretations for Book of Mormon characters. If you know of any other such documents, please bring them to my attention!

Williams:


Cowdery:


Transcription from Williams document:
Characters on the book of Mormon---
The books of Mormon The interpreter of Languages
[chars.] [chars.]

[_Runtu]

Hey, Chris,

Where did you find these? Fascinating.

[_CaliforniaKid]

Hi Runtu,

The Cowdery document is available in Mike Marquardt's edition of the Joseph Smith Egyptian Papers. The Williams document I found in the book Re-Exploring the Book of Mormon, which is basically a re-publication of ten years' or so worth of FARMS Insights (a small newsletter that summarizes ongoing apologetic research).

I agree; these documents are fascinating! Particularly so because of their similarity to the Kirtland Egyptian Papers: they involve some of the same scribes, making simultaneous copies of Egyptian symbols with their interpretations, just as in the KEP project. The KEP are not an isolated incident; they coincide with the prophet's efforts to study Hebrew, Adamic, and the Book of Mormon characters. Joseph involved his scribes and closest followers in all these projects, which allowed the scribes a taste of what it meant to be sacred translators. I actually think the language studies were more for the benefit of others than for Joseph's own benefit, though these studies also clearly helped spark his imagination and may have been the source of some of his major theological innovations during this period.

Best,

-Chris

[_Ray A]

I think this is a clearer view (?):

[_CaliforniaKid]

Hi Ray,

That is a different document, and includes no English translation for any of the characters. But the characters are definitely similar to the ones on Cowdery's and Williams' manuscripts!

As long as I'm providing images of Mormon documents, by the way, here's another one that may be of interest. It is called the "holiness to the Lord" parchment-- a magical document belonging to the Smith family-- and fits Anthon's description of the transcript Harris showed him quite a bit better than the "Caractors" document does. The image here is excerpted from page 33 of Equal Rites by Clyde Forsberg; Forsberg takes it, in turn, from Quinn.



Best,

-Chris

[_CaliforniaKid]

By the way, an interesting implication of the Williams/Cowdery documents is that we may have here a copy of Mormon's signature! The only question, then, is whether it's the roller skate or the squiggle!

[_Runtu]

Hi Runtu,

The Cowdery document is available in Mike Marquardt's edition of the Joseph Smith Egyptian Papers. The Williams document I found in the book Re-Exploring the Book of Mormon, which is basically a re-publication of ten years' or so worth of FARMS Insights (a small newsletter that summarizes ongoing apologetic research).

I agree; these documents are fascinating! Particularly so because of their similarity to the Kirtland Egyptian Papers: they involve some of the same scribes, making simultaneous copies of Egyptian symbols with their interpretations, just as in the KEP project. The KEP are not an isolated incident; they coincide with the prophet's efforts to study Hebrew, Adamic, and the Book of Mormon characters. Joseph involved his scribes and closest followers in all these projects, which allowed the scribes a taste of what it meant to be sacred translators. I actually think the language studies were more for the benefit of others than for Joseph's own benefit, though these studies also clearly helped spark his imagination and may have been the source of some of his major theological innovations during this period.

Best,

-Chris

Thanks for posting that. My daughter and I thought it was pretty cool to see our ancestor's handwriting.

[_CaliforniaKid]

Thanks for posting that. My daughter and I thought it was pretty cool to see our ancestor's handwriting.

You're an FGW descendant? Way cool!

[_Runtu]

Thanks for posting that. My daughter and I thought it was pretty cool to see our ancestor's handwriting.

You're an FGW descendant? Way cool!

That's what the "W" is in "John W."

[_Chap]

... these documents are fascinating! Particularly so because of their similarity to the Kirtland Egyptian Papers: they involve some of the same scribes, making simultaneous copies of Egyptian symbols with their interpretations, just as in the KEP project.

Wait a sec - the characters on the KEP are real hieroglyphs, copied from the genuine ancient papyrus scrolls we have today (or, rather, that the CoJCoLDS has today). Right?

If you are saying that Smith's scribes had access to genuine Egyptian characters at the time they were working on the Book of Mormon, well before the time that Smith had access to any papyri, that would be, shall we say, quite interesting ...

But am I not right in suspecting that when you say "copies of Egyptian symbols" you mean "squiggles of a random nature purporting to be "Reformed Egyptian" characters", as shown for instance below?