Another Look at Mormon’s Use of Egyptian Writing – Part III

Continued from the previous post regarding the use of Egyptian writing in Mormon’s writing, and how Hebrew and Egyptian impacted the meanings of the words and phrases Mormon used, including both ellipsis writing and other styles that sometimes changed the apparent meaning of his words.

    The Russian Dmitri Petrov (right), who was an interpreter for Gorbachev, Yeltsin and Putin, is also a scientist, professor, and TV host, who says: “I am familiar with 50 languages; I can speak 30 to various degrees; I teach eight.” But he adds: “It’s impossible to know a language perfectly, even if you are a native speaker.” So consider the difficulty of anyone translating from one language to another if they are unfamiliar with the sense of the foreign language and its people, habits, customs, ideologies, etc.
    Xiufang Xia, of Qingdao University, China, claims that “the study of meaning is closely related to the research of context. One cannot understand the accurate meaning of a sentence without the study of context.” This, he states, combines the two levels of context: 1) context of culture, and 2) the context of situation. In the Book of Mormon, this would translate to the context of Nephite and Lamanite culture, that is, their intellect and customs, characteristics and knowledge, encompassing language, religion, social habits, etc.
    To understand the Nephite culture, we have to know something about the preceding Hebrew and Jewish culture of 600 B.C., from which the Nephites emerged, as well as the religion of the period. In addition, the context of situation would deal with the relationship between the Nephites and their God and the Nephites and their brethren, the Lamanites, and the Lamanite attitude and feelings toward the Nephites.
    In this, then, one can get a better grasp of what is taking place and why, and what the language used to describe events actually means. As an example, when John L. Sorenson and other Mesoamericanists talk about an east-west land orientation to justify their Mesoamerican model, they neglect to understand and really consider what is going on in the Land of Promise at the time Mormon inserts his description of that land being basically north and south.
    Here the context of situation is critical. That is, the Lamanite king is sending out a proclamation of all his people to tell his people how to treat the Nephite missionaries in his land—all his people in all his land. At this point, Mormon is not relating his own views of north and south, but how the land actually sits, one land area to another, so the future reader can get a grasp of where the king was, where he ruled, and where all his people were located compared to where the Nephites were located and who controlled what lands. Mormon is not just describing words to be translated, but an entire concept of the situation that existed at the time (nearly 400 years before Mormon lived) when the Nephite missionaries were laboring among the Lamanites.

John Rupert Firth (left), a British linguist and professor of English at the University of Punjab, stated: “all linguistics is the study of meaning and all meaning is the function in a context. The mode of people's experience determines the mode of meaning.” To understand the translation of the Book of Mormon, one must know a lot about the Nephites, Lamanites, Mormon, Joseph Smith, the Spirit and the translation process of the plates.
    So, since the principle art of an interpreter is to translate meaning, not words, translation, therefore, is not about words, but what the words are about. That is, translation is about meaning, not the exact words. This message seems sometimes lost on the BYU linguists who often try to tell us that the scriptural record says something it does not—not because the words are misunderstood, but because the meaning and intent are misunderstood. It is sometimes impossible to translate meaning when dealing with word-for-word translation, since the sense of the words, and therefore the sense of the whole, can be missed or lost all together.
    In addition, there is a need for the translator to fully understand the concepts of what he is translating so he can convey the correct sense and not just the word meanings.

As an example, in French, the idiom: “Appeler un chat un chat,” literally translates into “to call a cat a cat.” OK, one can make some sensible meaning out of that; however, in French, this is an idiom and means nothing about cats, but about “calling things the way they are.” The idiomatic translation is: “To say things as they are; to call a spade a spade,” or another, fuller translation of meaning would be “to call a spade a spade, to be honest and frank, to tell it like it is.”
    However, to translate “Appeler un chat un chat,” correctly, one would not just need to know French, but also to understand French idioms, and what the speaker or writer of the phrase had in mind in saying or writing it.
    We do not profess to be linguists here, our interest is in better understanding the scriptural record, which was written by a Hebrew-speaking  and Hebrew-thinking person (such as Mormon) who was writing in a “foreign” language, Reformed Egyptian, which, for all we know, was not a spoken language at all to the Nephites, other than perhaps those who kept the record.
    As an example, the Book of Mormon is full of Hebrew idioms (“did reign under his father” Alma 13:18 – meaning in place of his father); Hebrew compound propositions (b∂adh “by the hand of” Mosiah 11:21 – meaning simply “by”); and b∂phî “by the mouth of” 1 Nephi 5:13; “to give up the ghost” Helaman 14:21 – meaning to expire/die). All of these came to us through the Reformed Egyptian, but they were Hebrew in thought and meaning.
    In addition, we talk about Webster’s 1828 dictionary, not because we think Joseph Smith had such a dictionary (which he did by the way, or at least the School of the Prophets did), but because it lists the words that would have been known and used by Joseph Smith in 1829 New England when he translated the Book of Mormon. Similarly, we talk about elliptical writing, not because we think Mormon understood the grammatical concept, but because we believe he used the concept or idea in his writing. In both cases, an explanation of the modern knowledge helps us understand what was going on in the ancient world.
    For those who write to us and say: “The translator on the other had might use a lot of it [elliptical writing] but I don’t think the young Joseph Smith even knew the words Ellipsis or Elliptical or when and how to use them.”
    Again, in the translation of the scriptural record, what either knew was not the issue, but what the Spirit directed Joseph to do in the translation combined with what was normal for a person to do in their normal speech or writing patterns in his day. One does not  have to understand elliptical writing to know that conservation of language is practical, i.e., you don’t have to repeat yourself:

 “I went down to the river, and at the river I threw in my fishing line into the river, and fish in the river swam around the river until they ate my bait and I caught them and pulled them out of the river.”
    You don’t have to be educated, let alone well-educated to know inherently not to speak that way. Conservation of language is something we learn without specifically knowing about it—that is all elliptical grammar is, unless one is an English teacher and has to teach the concept, or a linguist and has to explain its use.
    Sometimes, in wanting to know more about the people of whom we are reading or of whom we are writing about, we can get to over analyzing their words and not their intent.
So much has been written about Mormon’s insert in Alma 22, that it is obvious scholars, historians and theorists have become paralyzed by over analysis, and looking far and wide how to interpret a particular word or statement without including what the write had in mind when he wrote it. The perfect example is the statement by Mormon “from the east to the west sea.” Without considering elliptsis writing, we miss the entire point of that very simple statement. Without realizing why Mormon is describing the land (he is not giving us a geography lesson on the Land of Promise), we again miss the point. And in missing the point, we fail to understand what Mormon is telling us and why.