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EspañolREFORMED EGYPTIAN
(Redirected from Anthon transcript)
According to the ''Book of Mormon'', this scripture of the Latter Day Saint movement was originally written in 'reformed Egyptian' characters[1] on plates of "ore"[1] by prophets living in the Western Hemisphere between 600 B.C. and A.D. 421. Joseph Smith, Jr., the founder of the movement, published the ''Book of Mormon'' in 1830 as a translation of these plates. Scholarly reference works on languages do not, however, acknowledge the existence of a "reformed Egyptian" language as it has been described in Mormon belief.[3]
The Book of Mormon uses the term "reformed Egyptian" in only one verse, , which says that "the characters which are called among us the reformed Egyptian, [were] handed down and altered by us, according to our manner of speech" and that "none other people knoweth our language."[4] The Book of Mormon prophet Moroni also implies that his record is written in "reformed Egyptian" both because it took less space on the plates than Hebrew and because of the evolution of his own language since his ancestors left Jerusalem.[5]
Although accounts of the process differ, Smith is said to have translated the reformed Egyptian characters engraved on golden plates into English through various means including the use of a seer stone and/or the Urim and Thummim.[6] When Smith finished the translation, he said that he returned the plates to the angel Moroni, and therefore they are unavailable for study.[7]
There are only two extant samples of what "reformed Egyptian" may have looked like. The most famous of these is the so-called Anthon transcript or Caractors document. In 1887, David Whitmer said that he had a paper containing characters that had been transcribed from one of the golden plates, which Martin Harris had once showed to Charles Anthon, a Columbia College linguist and classicist. [8]
What transpired between Harris and Anthon is unclear. According to an account attributed to Harris by Smith,[1] Anthon "stated that the translation was correct, more so than any he had before seen translated from the Egyptian. [Harris] then showed him those which were not yet translated, and he said that they were Egyptian, Chaldaic, Assyriac, and Arabic; and he said they were true characters." According to the same account, Anthon provided Harris with a certificate as to the veracity of the characters but then had torn up the certificate after learning that the characters were copied from a book said to have been delivered by an angel.[10] Anthon, however, said he never made any such certification and had been immediately suspicious of the document.[11]
Regardless of what occurred between the two, it is unlikely that Anthon would have been able to read Egyptian hieroglyphs in the late 1820s when Harris showed him the writing specimen because during this period Egyptology was in its infancy.[12]
In the same letter in which he denied the Smith–Harris account of events, Anthon also gave a description of the paper that Harris—whom Anthon called "a plain, and apparently simple-hearted farmer"—showed him:
Because Anthon's delineation seems inconsistent with the "caractors document," it is possible that Anthon saw a different paper than the Whitmer copy. It is also possible that the Whitmer paper (now in custody of the Community of Christ) may be only a portion of the material that Harris took to Anthon. The professor could also have erred in his description of the "caractors document."
During the early 1980s, forger Mark Hofmann sold alleged Mormon materials to Mormon investors and the LDS Church, including a sample of reformed Egyptian characters probably copied (somewhat recklessly) from the Caractors Transcript in a manner intended to make them more closely agree with the description given by Anthon.[14]
In 1844, the LDS church published a broadside about the Book of Mormon called "The Stick of Joseph," which reprinted some "reformed Egyptian" characters that resemble those on the Anthon transcript.[15]
LDS studies of "reformed Egyptian" are necessarily limited to whatever linguistic footprints might be discovered in the translated text plus the extant seven-line Anthon transcript that may be the characters Joseph Smith said he copied from the gold plates.[16] Some Mormons have attempted to decipher the Anthon transcript but, according to John Gee, "the corpus is not large enough to render decipherment feasible."[17] Nevertheless, various LDS scholars and one RLDS scholar, have made the attempt, including Ariel L. Crowley,[18] Blair Bryant,(RLDS)[19] and Stan and Polly Johnson.[20] It has been hypothesized that the characters resemble those of other languages[21] including Hebrew[22], Gregg shorthand[23], Demotic[24], Hieratic[25], Coptic[26], and Mayan/Olmec.[27] Nevertheless, to make such identifications, the characters often have to be turned upside down or sideways.
1.
2.
3. Standard language references such as Peter T. Daniels and William Bright, eds., ''The World's Writing Systems'' (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996) (990 pages); David Crystal, ''The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language'' (Cambridge University Press, 1997); and Roger D. Woodard, ed., ''The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World's Ancient Languages'' (Cambridge University Press, 2004) (1162 pages) contain no reference to "reformed Egyptian." "Reformed Egyptian" is also ignored in Andrew Robinson, ''Lost Languages: The Enigma of the World's Undeciphered Scripts'' (New York: McGraw Hill, 2002), although it is mentioned in Stephen Williams, ''Fantastic Archaeology: The Wild Side of North American Prehistory'' (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991).
4. . The book says that its first author, Nephi, was taught both the "learning of the Jews and the language of the Egyptians." .
5. Some LDS scholars have interpreted this to mean that while one of the original written languages of Lehi's group was Egyptian, that language evolved (possibly due in part to contact with other cultures) into a language that became a modified or reformed Egyptian. See Reformed Egyptian by William J. Hamblin, "In fact, the word reformed is used in the Book of Mormon in this context as an adjective, meaning "altered, modified, or changed." This is made clear by Mormon, who tells us that "the characters which are called among us the reformed Egyptian, [were] handed down and altered by us" and that "none other people knoweth our language" (Mormon 9:32, 34). Other LDS scholars note that other languages evolved from Egyptian through the centuries and have speculated that the term "reformed Egyptian" might refer to a form of Egyptian writing similar to other modified Egyptian scripts used to write non-Egyptian languages such as hieratic, a priestly shorthand for hieroglyphics thousands of years old by the first millennium B.C., or early Demotic, a derivative of hieratic, perhaps used in northern Egypt fifty years before the time that the Book of Mormon prophet-patriarch Lehi is said to have left Jerusalem for the Americas. See William J. Hamblin, Egyptian However, Richard Packham, a linguist and former LDS, argues that Hebrew is more compact than hieratic Egyptian.Packham website Other critics argue that Smith chose "reformed Egyptian" since it would be an even safer creation than "Egyptian," and since claiming that New World Hebrew had also been modified over time would have provided additional insurance that no linguist might call such a language into question. In "Three Strikes, You're Out! The Quick and Dirty Case Against Mormonism," Kyle J. Gerkin argues that Smith identified "reformed Egyptian" as the source language because many early nineteenth-century scholars knew Hebrew and no one in 1830 could read Egyptian hieroglyphics: "Joseph's choice of 'reformed Egyptian' was a calculated move. At the time, Egyptian was generally believed to be indecipherable, as the grammar worked out from the Rosetta Stone would not be published until 1837." The Secular Web
6. Michael Morse, Smith's brother-in-law, said that he watched Smith on several occasions and said his "mode of procedure consisted in Joseph's placing the Seer Stone in the crown of a hat, then putting his face into the hat, so as to entirely cover his face." Michael Morse interview with William W. Blair, May 8, 1879, in ''EMD'', 4: 343. Morse was clearly awed by Smith's ability to dictate as he did and called it "a strange piece of work." David Whitmer said that at one point "the plates were not before Joseph while he translated, but seem to have been removed by the custodian angel." David Whitmer Interview with the ''Chicago Times'', August 1875, in ''EMD'', 5: 21. Whitmer also stated that "after affixing the magical spectacles to his eyes, Smith would take the plates and translate the characters one at a time. The graven characters would appear in succession to the seer, and directly under the characer, when viewed through the glasses, would be the translation in English." ''Chicago Tribune'', 15 December 1885 in ''EMD'', 5: 124. Isaac Hale said that while Joseph was translating, the plates were "hid in the woods." Hale said that Martin Harris demanded that Smith give him a "greater witness," and Smith told Harris to "go into the woods where the Book of Plates was, and that after he came back, Harris should follow his track in the snow, and find the Book, and examine it for himself. Harris informed me afterwards, that he followed Smith's direction, and could not find the Plates, and was still dissatisfied." "Mormonism, ''Susquehanna Register and Northern Pennsylvanian'' 9 (May 1, 1834): 1 in ''EMD'' 4: 286-87. "No primary witness reported that Joseph used [the plates] in any way." Grant H. Palmer, ''An Insider's View of Mormon Origins'' (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2002), 2-5.
7. "Joseph Smith Interview with Peter Bauder, October 1830" in ''EMD'', 1: 17; "Joseph Smith Interview with Leman Copley, 1831" in ''EMD'', 1: 24-25. Yet even after Smith had returned the plates to the angel, other early LDS Church members testified that an angel had also showed them the plates. Grant Palmer, ''An Insider's View of Mormon Origins'' (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2002), 201. In 1859, Brigham Young referred to one of these "post-return" testimonies: "Some of the witnesses of the Book of Mormon, who handled the plates and conversed with the angels of God, were afterwards left to doubt....One of the Quorum of the Twelve, a young man full of faith and good works, prayed, and the vision of his mind was opened, and the angel of God came and laid the plates before him, and he saw and handled them, and saw the angel." ''Journal of Discourses'', June 5, 1859, 7: 164.
8. "Address to All Believers," 11. This "Caractors document" is currently owned by the Community of Christ.
9.
10. The full account reads, "I went to the city of New York and presented the characters which had been translated, with the translation thereof to Professor Anthony (sic), a gentleman celebrated for his literary attainments;-Professor Anthony (sic) stated that the translation was correct, more so than any he had before seen translated from the Egyptian. I then showed him those which were not yet translated, and he said that they were Egyptian, Chaldeac, Assyriac, and Arabac [Arabic], and he said that they were true characters. He gave me a certificate certifying to the people of Palmyra that they were true characters, and that the translation of such of them as had been translated was also correct." Martin Harris, "Times and Seasons," III, 773.
11. "The whole story about my having pronounced the Mormonite inscription to be 'reformed Egyptian hieroglyphics' is perfectly false. Some years ago, a plain, and apparently simple-hearted farmer, called upon me with a note from Dr. Mitchell of our city, now deceased, requesting me to decypher, if possible, a paper, which the farmer would hand me, and which Dr. M. confessed he had been unable to understand. Upon examining the paper in question, I soon came to the conclusion that it was all a trick, perhaps a hoax. [...] On hearing this odd story [of the provenance of Smith's plates], I changed my opinion about the paper, and, instead of viewing it any longer as a hoax upon the learned, I began to regard it as part of a scheme to cheat the farmer of his money, and I communicated my suspicions to him, warning him to beware of rogues. 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. This paper was in fact a singular scrawl. Charles Anthon to E. D. Howe, February 17, 1834.
12. In 1814, the Briton Thomas Young finished translating the enchorial (demotic) text and began work on the hieroglyphic alphabet. From 1822 to 1824, Jean-François Champollion greatly expanded this work, and he is usually considered the decipherer of the Rosetta Stone. In 1858, the Philomathean Society of the University of Pennsylvania published the first complete English translation of the Rosetta Stone. Allen, Don Cameron. "The Predecessors of Champollion", ''Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society'', 144, No. 5. (1960), 527–547. and Adkins, Lesley; Adkins, Roy. ''The Keys of Egypt: The Obsession to Decipher Egyptian Hieroglyphs'' (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2000 [hardcover, ISBN 0-06-019439-1); 2001 (paperback, ISBN 0-00-653145-8).
13. Charles Anthon to E. D. Howe, February 17, 1834, in ''EMD'', 4: 380.
14. Blair Bryant explains:"Find a copy of that forgery and you can easily compare and see how Hofmann did it. Just turn a copy of the Caractors Transcript 90 degrees clockwise. Now compare the right-hand most column (line A) with Hofmann's left-hand most column. Reorient the individual characters as in the original (rotate each individual character 90 degrees counterclockwise) and you can identify every character.... Then Hofmann added a couple of additional squiggles to the bottom. Then, go to the line B and compare it from top to bottom with Hofmann's second column and so on. He copied it character-by-character with a few changes in flourishes or combinations of elements. He did that for the first four lines. In his fifth column he took elements in sequence from line E at the top and segments of other lines for the circular figure at the bottom. In a letter written several years after the Martin Harris meeting (1834, if memory serves), Professor Anthon described the document characters as being like mixtures of ancient alphabets jumbled and that there was a circular figure similar to an Aztec calendar at the bottom. It seems apparent that Hofmann rearranged the pattern to agree with Professor Anthon's description."
15. James B. Allen and Glen M. Leonard, ''The Story of the Latter-day Saints'' (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1992), 57.
16. Some LDS members also accept the Kirtland Egyptian papers and Frederick G. Williams note as genuine. [1]; [2]
17. See Some Notes on the Anthon Transcript by John Gee
18. In the February 1942 issue of the Improvement Era magazine, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Ariel L. Crowley, a LDS attorney from Boise, presented evidence that the Anthon Transcript characters could be of Egyptian origin. See The Anthon Transcript.
He discussed Chaldaic, Assyriac, and Arabic in relation to hieratic and demotic Egyptian, the Anthon Transcript characters, and Martin Harris's report that Anthon mentioned those languages when he reviewed the transcript. He also presented 194 pairs of photographs comparing characters from the Anthon Transcript with similar or identical characters in recognized Egyptian works such as the ''Book of the Dead'' and the Rosetta Stone.
19. Community of Christ adherent Blair Bryant claims to have found correlation between the Caractors (Anthon) document and the Book of Mormon title page. See Blair Bryant's Caractors Translation.
20. In the book ''Translating the Anthon Transcript'' (Parowan, Utah: Ivory Books, 1999) by Stan and Polly Johnson, the authors argue that the Anthon transcript corresponds to Ether 6:3–13 in the present Book of Mormon. However, John Gee notes that if the so-called Anthon transcript is the actual piece of paper that Martin Harris took to Charles Anthon, it is safe to assume that the characters came from the text they were then translating (the 116 missing manuscript pages, which contained a record from the time of Lehi to the time of King Benjamin). Thus Ether should not be a logical source for the transcript's contents. See Some Notes on the Anthon Transcript by John Gee.
21. See for example these anecdotal comparisons: http://www.utlm.org/onlinebooks/trackingch6a.htm, http://thedigitalvoice.com/enigma/essays/AAffair1.htm, http://www.shields-research.org/Scriptures/BoM/BYUSAntn.html http://www.lightplanet.com/mormons/book_of_mormon/language.html, http://www.meridianmagazine.com/ancients/060228egyptians.html
22. http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/display.php?table=jbms&id=124 and http://www.shields-research.org/Books/Sperry/AChap09.PDF
23. http://latayne.tripod.com/Chapter4.htm
24. See High Nibley, ''Since Cumorah'', 2nd ed. (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book and FARMS, 1988), 149–150, http://www.exmormon.org/mormon/mormon028.htm and http://www.geocities.com/rameumptom/bom/demotic.html
25. Later in E.B. Howe's Mormonism Unveiled, Anthon recalled that the characters were not Hieroglyphics. See http://www.utlm.org/onlineresources/anthon.htm and http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/display.php?table=jbms&id=124
26. http://farms.byu.edu/display.php?table=jbms&id=128
27. A number of researchers, including Anthon himself in ''Mormonism Unveiled'', compared the characters to Mexican calendars. See http://farms.byu.edu/display.php?table=jbms&id=188 for example. See also David H. Kelley, "Cylinder Seal from Tlatilco," American Antiquity 31 (July 1966): 744–46. And also http://www.utlm.org/images/tracking/trackingp72sup_ensignanthontranscript.jpg.
★ John Gee, Some Notes on the Anthon Transcript, Mormon apologetics.
★ William J. Hamblin, Reformed Egyptian, Mormon apologetics.
★ Brant Gardner,Searching for Reformed Egyptian, Mormon apologetics.
★ Richard G. Grant, Reformed Egyptian: 'In the Language of My Fathers', Mormon apologetics.
★ Jerald and Sandra Tanner, A book excerpt critical of Book of Mormon archeology
★ Martin Harris testimony in "Times and Seasons".
★ Summary of skeptical material about the Anthon Transcript from Utah Lighthouse Ministries.
According to the ''Book of Mormon'', this scripture of the Latter Day Saint movement was originally written in 'reformed Egyptian' characters[1] on plates of "ore"[1] by prophets living in the Western Hemisphere between 600 B.C. and A.D. 421. Joseph Smith, Jr., the founder of the movement, published the ''Book of Mormon'' in 1830 as a translation of these plates. Scholarly reference works on languages do not, however, acknowledge the existence of a "reformed Egyptian" language as it has been described in Mormon belief.[3]
| Contents |
| Reformed Egyptian and the Book of Mormon |
| The Anthon transcript or "Caractors" document |
| "Stick of Joseph" |
| Mormon studies of reformed Egyptian |
| References and Notes |
| External links |
Reformed Egyptian and the Book of Mormon
The Book of Mormon uses the term "reformed Egyptian" in only one verse, , which says that "the characters which are called among us the reformed Egyptian, [were] handed down and altered by us, according to our manner of speech" and that "none other people knoweth our language."[4] The Book of Mormon prophet Moroni also implies that his record is written in "reformed Egyptian" both because it took less space on the plates than Hebrew and because of the evolution of his own language since his ancestors left Jerusalem.[5]
Although accounts of the process differ, Smith is said to have translated the reformed Egyptian characters engraved on golden plates into English through various means including the use of a seer stone and/or the Urim and Thummim.[6] When Smith finished the translation, he said that he returned the plates to the angel Moroni, and therefore they are unavailable for study.[7]
The Anthon transcript or "Caractors" document
Caractors document. Also known as the ''Anthon Transcript''
What transpired between Harris and Anthon is unclear. According to an account attributed to Harris by Smith,[1] Anthon "stated that the translation was correct, more so than any he had before seen translated from the Egyptian. [Harris] then showed him those which were not yet translated, and he said that they were Egyptian, Chaldaic, Assyriac, and Arabic; and he said they were true characters." According to the same account, Anthon provided Harris with a certificate as to the veracity of the characters but then had torn up the certificate after learning that the characters were copied from a book said to have been delivered by an angel.[10] Anthon, however, said he never made any such certification and had been immediately suspicious of the document.[11]
Regardless of what occurred between the two, it is unlikely that Anthon would have been able to read Egyptian hieroglyphs in the late 1820s when Harris showed him the writing specimen because during this period Egyptology was in its infancy.[12]
In the same letter in which he denied the Smith–Harris account of events, Anthon also gave a description of the paper that Harris—whom Anthon called "a plain, and apparently simple-hearted farmer"—showed him:
It consisted of all kinds of crooked characters disposed in columns, and had evidently been prepared by some person who had before him at the time a book containing various alphabets, Greek and Hebrew letters, crosses and flourishes, Roman letters inverted or placed sideways, were arranged in perpendicular columns, and the whole ended in a rude delineation of a circle divided into various compartments, decked with various strange marks, and evidently copied after the Mexican Calender given by Humboldt, but copied in such a way as not to betray the source whence it was derived. I am thus particular as to the contents of the paper, inasmuch as I have frequently conversed with my friends on the subject, since the Mormonite excitement began, and well remember that the paper contained any thing else but 'Egyptian Hieroglyphics.'"[13]
Because Anthon's delineation seems inconsistent with the "caractors document," it is possible that Anthon saw a different paper than the Whitmer copy. It is also possible that the Whitmer paper (now in custody of the Community of Christ) may be only a portion of the material that Harris took to Anthon. The professor could also have erred in his description of the "caractors document."
During the early 1980s, forger Mark Hofmann sold alleged Mormon materials to Mormon investors and the LDS Church, including a sample of reformed Egyptian characters probably copied (somewhat recklessly) from the Caractors Transcript in a manner intended to make them more closely agree with the description given by Anthon.[14]
"Stick of Joseph"
In 1844, the LDS church published a broadside about the Book of Mormon called "The Stick of Joseph," which reprinted some "reformed Egyptian" characters that resemble those on the Anthon transcript.[15]
Mormon studies of reformed Egyptian
LDS studies of "reformed Egyptian" are necessarily limited to whatever linguistic footprints might be discovered in the translated text plus the extant seven-line Anthon transcript that may be the characters Joseph Smith said he copied from the gold plates.[16] Some Mormons have attempted to decipher the Anthon transcript but, according to John Gee, "the corpus is not large enough to render decipherment feasible."[17] Nevertheless, various LDS scholars and one RLDS scholar, have made the attempt, including Ariel L. Crowley,[18] Blair Bryant,(RLDS)[19] and Stan and Polly Johnson.[20] It has been hypothesized that the characters resemble those of other languages[21] including Hebrew[22], Gregg shorthand[23], Demotic[24], Hieratic[25], Coptic[26], and Mayan/Olmec.[27] Nevertheless, to make such identifications, the characters often have to be turned upside down or sideways.
References and Notes
1.
2.
3. Standard language references such as Peter T. Daniels and William Bright, eds., ''The World's Writing Systems'' (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996) (990 pages); David Crystal, ''The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language'' (Cambridge University Press, 1997); and Roger D. Woodard, ed., ''The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World's Ancient Languages'' (Cambridge University Press, 2004) (1162 pages) contain no reference to "reformed Egyptian." "Reformed Egyptian" is also ignored in Andrew Robinson, ''Lost Languages: The Enigma of the World's Undeciphered Scripts'' (New York: McGraw Hill, 2002), although it is mentioned in Stephen Williams, ''Fantastic Archaeology: The Wild Side of North American Prehistory'' (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991).
4. . The book says that its first author, Nephi, was taught both the "learning of the Jews and the language of the Egyptians." .
5. Some LDS scholars have interpreted this to mean that while one of the original written languages of Lehi's group was Egyptian, that language evolved (possibly due in part to contact with other cultures) into a language that became a modified or reformed Egyptian. See Reformed Egyptian by William J. Hamblin, "In fact, the word reformed is used in the Book of Mormon in this context as an adjective, meaning "altered, modified, or changed." This is made clear by Mormon, who tells us that "the characters which are called among us the reformed Egyptian, [were] handed down and altered by us" and that "none other people knoweth our language" (Mormon 9:32, 34). Other LDS scholars note that other languages evolved from Egyptian through the centuries and have speculated that the term "reformed Egyptian" might refer to a form of Egyptian writing similar to other modified Egyptian scripts used to write non-Egyptian languages such as hieratic, a priestly shorthand for hieroglyphics thousands of years old by the first millennium B.C., or early Demotic, a derivative of hieratic, perhaps used in northern Egypt fifty years before the time that the Book of Mormon prophet-patriarch Lehi is said to have left Jerusalem for the Americas. See William J. Hamblin, Egyptian However, Richard Packham, a linguist and former LDS, argues that Hebrew is more compact than hieratic Egyptian.Packham website Other critics argue that Smith chose "reformed Egyptian" since it would be an even safer creation than "Egyptian," and since claiming that New World Hebrew had also been modified over time would have provided additional insurance that no linguist might call such a language into question. In "Three Strikes, You're Out! The Quick and Dirty Case Against Mormonism," Kyle J. Gerkin argues that Smith identified "reformed Egyptian" as the source language because many early nineteenth-century scholars knew Hebrew and no one in 1830 could read Egyptian hieroglyphics: "Joseph's choice of 'reformed Egyptian' was a calculated move. At the time, Egyptian was generally believed to be indecipherable, as the grammar worked out from the Rosetta Stone would not be published until 1837." The Secular Web
6. Michael Morse, Smith's brother-in-law, said that he watched Smith on several occasions and said his "mode of procedure consisted in Joseph's placing the Seer Stone in the crown of a hat, then putting his face into the hat, so as to entirely cover his face." Michael Morse interview with William W. Blair, May 8, 1879, in ''EMD'', 4: 343. Morse was clearly awed by Smith's ability to dictate as he did and called it "a strange piece of work." David Whitmer said that at one point "the plates were not before Joseph while he translated, but seem to have been removed by the custodian angel." David Whitmer Interview with the ''Chicago Times'', August 1875, in ''EMD'', 5: 21. Whitmer also stated that "after affixing the magical spectacles to his eyes, Smith would take the plates and translate the characters one at a time. The graven characters would appear in succession to the seer, and directly under the characer, when viewed through the glasses, would be the translation in English." ''Chicago Tribune'', 15 December 1885 in ''EMD'', 5: 124. Isaac Hale said that while Joseph was translating, the plates were "hid in the woods." Hale said that Martin Harris demanded that Smith give him a "greater witness," and Smith told Harris to "go into the woods where the Book of Plates was, and that after he came back, Harris should follow his track in the snow, and find the Book, and examine it for himself. Harris informed me afterwards, that he followed Smith's direction, and could not find the Plates, and was still dissatisfied." "Mormonism, ''Susquehanna Register and Northern Pennsylvanian'' 9 (May 1, 1834): 1 in ''EMD'' 4: 286-87. "No primary witness reported that Joseph used [the plates] in any way." Grant H. Palmer, ''An Insider's View of Mormon Origins'' (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2002), 2-5.
7. "Joseph Smith Interview with Peter Bauder, October 1830" in ''EMD'', 1: 17; "Joseph Smith Interview with Leman Copley, 1831" in ''EMD'', 1: 24-25. Yet even after Smith had returned the plates to the angel, other early LDS Church members testified that an angel had also showed them the plates. Grant Palmer, ''An Insider's View of Mormon Origins'' (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2002), 201. In 1859, Brigham Young referred to one of these "post-return" testimonies: "Some of the witnesses of the Book of Mormon, who handled the plates and conversed with the angels of God, were afterwards left to doubt....One of the Quorum of the Twelve, a young man full of faith and good works, prayed, and the vision of his mind was opened, and the angel of God came and laid the plates before him, and he saw and handled them, and saw the angel." ''Journal of Discourses'', June 5, 1859, 7: 164.
8. "Address to All Believers," 11. This "Caractors document" is currently owned by the Community of Christ.
9.
10. The full account reads, "I went to the city of New York and presented the characters which had been translated, with the translation thereof to Professor Anthony (sic), a gentleman celebrated for his literary attainments;-Professor Anthony (sic) stated that the translation was correct, more so than any he had before seen translated from the Egyptian. I then showed him those which were not yet translated, and he said that they were Egyptian, Chaldeac, Assyriac, and Arabac [Arabic], and he said that they were true characters. He gave me a certificate certifying to the people of Palmyra that they were true characters, and that the translation of such of them as had been translated was also correct." Martin Harris, "Times and Seasons," III, 773.
11. "The whole story about my having pronounced the Mormonite inscription to be 'reformed Egyptian hieroglyphics' is perfectly false. Some years ago, a plain, and apparently simple-hearted farmer, called upon me with a note from Dr. Mitchell of our city, now deceased, requesting me to decypher, if possible, a paper, which the farmer would hand me, and which Dr. M. confessed he had been unable to understand. Upon examining the paper in question, I soon came to the conclusion that it was all a trick, perhaps a hoax. [...] On hearing this odd story [of the provenance of Smith's plates], I changed my opinion about the paper, and, instead of viewing it any longer as a hoax upon the learned, I began to regard it as part of a scheme to cheat the farmer of his money, and I communicated my suspicions to him, warning him to beware of rogues. 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. This paper was in fact a singular scrawl. Charles Anthon to E. D. Howe, February 17, 1834.
12. In 1814, the Briton Thomas Young finished translating the enchorial (demotic) text and began work on the hieroglyphic alphabet. From 1822 to 1824, Jean-François Champollion greatly expanded this work, and he is usually considered the decipherer of the Rosetta Stone. In 1858, the Philomathean Society of the University of Pennsylvania published the first complete English translation of the Rosetta Stone. Allen, Don Cameron. "The Predecessors of Champollion", ''Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society'', 144, No. 5. (1960), 527–547. and Adkins, Lesley; Adkins, Roy. ''The Keys of Egypt: The Obsession to Decipher Egyptian Hieroglyphs'' (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2000 [hardcover, ISBN 0-06-019439-1); 2001 (paperback, ISBN 0-00-653145-8).
13. Charles Anthon to E. D. Howe, February 17, 1834, in ''EMD'', 4: 380.
14. Blair Bryant explains:"Find a copy of that forgery and you can easily compare and see how Hofmann did it. Just turn a copy of the Caractors Transcript 90 degrees clockwise. Now compare the right-hand most column (line A) with Hofmann's left-hand most column. Reorient the individual characters as in the original (rotate each individual character 90 degrees counterclockwise) and you can identify every character.... Then Hofmann added a couple of additional squiggles to the bottom. Then, go to the line B and compare it from top to bottom with Hofmann's second column and so on. He copied it character-by-character with a few changes in flourishes or combinations of elements. He did that for the first four lines. In his fifth column he took elements in sequence from line E at the top and segments of other lines for the circular figure at the bottom. In a letter written several years after the Martin Harris meeting (1834, if memory serves), Professor Anthon described the document characters as being like mixtures of ancient alphabets jumbled and that there was a circular figure similar to an Aztec calendar at the bottom. It seems apparent that Hofmann rearranged the pattern to agree with Professor Anthon's description."
15. James B. Allen and Glen M. Leonard, ''The Story of the Latter-day Saints'' (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1992), 57.
16. Some LDS members also accept the Kirtland Egyptian papers and Frederick G. Williams note as genuine. [1]; [2]
17. See Some Notes on the Anthon Transcript by John Gee
18. In the February 1942 issue of the Improvement Era magazine, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Ariel L. Crowley, a LDS attorney from Boise, presented evidence that the Anthon Transcript characters could be of Egyptian origin. See The Anthon Transcript.
He discussed Chaldaic, Assyriac, and Arabic in relation to hieratic and demotic Egyptian, the Anthon Transcript characters, and Martin Harris's report that Anthon mentioned those languages when he reviewed the transcript. He also presented 194 pairs of photographs comparing characters from the Anthon Transcript with similar or identical characters in recognized Egyptian works such as the ''Book of the Dead'' and the Rosetta Stone.
19. Community of Christ adherent Blair Bryant claims to have found correlation between the Caractors (Anthon) document and the Book of Mormon title page. See Blair Bryant's Caractors Translation.
20. In the book ''Translating the Anthon Transcript'' (Parowan, Utah: Ivory Books, 1999) by Stan and Polly Johnson, the authors argue that the Anthon transcript corresponds to Ether 6:3–13 in the present Book of Mormon. However, John Gee notes that if the so-called Anthon transcript is the actual piece of paper that Martin Harris took to Charles Anthon, it is safe to assume that the characters came from the text they were then translating (the 116 missing manuscript pages, which contained a record from the time of Lehi to the time of King Benjamin). Thus Ether should not be a logical source for the transcript's contents. See Some Notes on the Anthon Transcript by John Gee.
21. See for example these anecdotal comparisons: http://www.utlm.org/onlinebooks/trackingch6a.htm, http://thedigitalvoice.com/enigma/essays/AAffair1.htm, http://www.shields-research.org/Scriptures/BoM/BYUSAntn.html http://www.lightplanet.com/mormons/book_of_mormon/language.html, http://www.meridianmagazine.com/ancients/060228egyptians.html
22. http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/display.php?table=jbms&id=124 and http://www.shields-research.org/Books/Sperry/AChap09.PDF
23. http://latayne.tripod.com/Chapter4.htm
24. See High Nibley, ''Since Cumorah'', 2nd ed. (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book and FARMS, 1988), 149–150, http://www.exmormon.org/mormon/mormon028.htm and http://www.geocities.com/rameumptom/bom/demotic.html
25. Later in E.B. Howe's Mormonism Unveiled, Anthon recalled that the characters were not Hieroglyphics. See http://www.utlm.org/onlineresources/anthon.htm and http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/display.php?table=jbms&id=124
26. http://farms.byu.edu/display.php?table=jbms&id=128
27. A number of researchers, including Anthon himself in ''Mormonism Unveiled'', compared the characters to Mexican calendars. See http://farms.byu.edu/display.php?table=jbms&id=188 for example. See also David H. Kelley, "Cylinder Seal from Tlatilco," American Antiquity 31 (July 1966): 744–46. And also http://www.utlm.org/images/tracking/trackingp72sup_ensignanthontranscript.jpg.
External links
★ John Gee, Some Notes on the Anthon Transcript, Mormon apologetics.
★ William J. Hamblin, Reformed Egyptian, Mormon apologetics.
★ Brant Gardner,Searching for Reformed Egyptian, Mormon apologetics.
★ Richard G. Grant, Reformed Egyptian: 'In the Language of My Fathers', Mormon apologetics.
★ Jerald and Sandra Tanner, A book excerpt critical of Book of Mormon archeology
★ Martin Harris testimony in "Times and Seasons".
★ Summary of skeptical material about the Anthon Transcript from Utah Lighthouse Ministries.
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