Joseph Smith having his character talk about reformed egyptian is more evidence of 19th century origin.
Yes, that's why I called it a "tell" above.
I think also that the discussion of "imperfections" in that passage, as well as many other places in the Book of Mormon was also likely a way to excuse the horrible grammar and spelling that pervades the first edition. There are so many basic errors in the text that it very obviously looks like a book composed by an uneducated but imaginative rural farmer.
"How could Joseph have done it" becomes an easy question when you read the original text.
Richard Packham's linguistic analysis is definitive in this regard:
Joseph Smith having his character talk about reformed egyptian is more evidence of 19th century origin.
Indeed it is. What's more, there are no examples or indicators on what they did to alter the original Egyptian language which they claimed to know into the reformed format. Knowledge of the Egyptian language was a matter known only to the scribes and highly educated persons of Egypt and to those persons of other counties who maintained important trade and diplomatic relations with Egypt.
Joseph Smith probably figured that the Egyptian language was a common understanding and that a man of Lehi's means in Jerusalem would know the language. But that is quite farfetched because the language was a well guarded craft within Egypt and evolved within their own schools according to need.
The whole concept that Nephi used Egyptian script whether original or altered is preposterous and utterly stupid. That idea came out of the ignorant head of Joseph Smith who didn't know a goddamn thing about the Egyptian language let along recognize a king's name if it bit him on the nose. Mormon apologists who defend the reformed Egyptian language concept are being stupid; that includes John Gee whose mind has been brainwashed by Mormon stupidly thanks to Nibley and the whole bunch of lying Mormons.
So, no, it's not the obvious giveaway that I thought it was. It is still a weird set of claims. And of course it's just not true that any Egyptian notation was especially compact, or that any writing scheme based upon hieroglyphics would have been space-saving. That's just something that people thought before hieroglyphics were translated. So nobody who really wrote in any Egyptian-based system would have justified it by compactness.
That's just another historical inaccuracy in the Book of Mormon, though, not an especially egregious error of logic, as I supposed above that it was.
What it really shows is that the Book of Mormon is a 19th century creation. In that way it is really glaring. At the time Smith wrote the Book of Mormon, Egyptian (he didn't know the difference between hieratic text and hieroglyphs) was generally thought to be very compact, in that it conveyed a large amount of information compared to the amount of text. People believed that each glyph held a huge amount of information. In his EA (Egyptian Alphabet) we see Smith trying to show this by translating individual glyphs into paragraphs. He did this by breaking down a hieratic glyph into smaller pieces that each had individual meaning that, when assembled together as the finished glyph, held a paragraph or more of information. He used this methodology for Abr 1:1 through Abr 2:18 which we can see in the extant translation manuscripts. More proof that the Book of Mormon is a 19th-century composition. Had Nephi actually existed and was able to read and write in Egyptian it would not have been the language he chose to use over Hebrew.
Yeah, I guess in context it's not so crazy that Mormon is explaining how he wrote his text. In particular he seems to be apologizing because, in order to save space on small plates, he has written in a compact notation that is somehow prone to error, because the compact notation was inherently limited in what it could clearly express. He fears that his text has "imperfections" but claims that it would not have had any, if it could only have been written in the less compact Hebrew characters.
So, no, it's not the obvious giveaway that I thought it was. It is still a weird set of claims. And of course it's just not true that any Egyptian notation was especially compact, or that any writing scheme based upon hieroglyphics would have been space-saving. That's just something that people thought before hieroglyphics were translated. So nobody who really wrote in any Egyptian-based system would have justified it by compactness.
That's just another historical inaccuracy in the Book of Mormon, though, not an especially egregious error of logic, as I supposed above that it was.
Too bad Moroni did not foresee and use Gregg Shorthand on the plates.
Apologists try to shill an explanation to questioning members as though science and reason really explain and buttress their professed faith. It [sic] does not. By definition, faith is the antithesis of science and reason. Apologetics is a further deception by faith peddlers to keep power and influence.
