Culture: The problem of language in the Book of Mormon begins in the second verse of the text. Nephi states that the record is in the “language of his father,” which has two elements: “the learning of the Jews” and “the language of the Egyptians.” We are naturally very interested in what the original language of the plates might have been, but the text itself is too cryptic to allow the confirmation of any hypothesis. Historical and archaeological research in recent years has confirmed that Egyptian script had a strong presence in Israel during Lehi’s time. John S. Thompson, a Ph.D. student of Egyptology at the University of Pennsylvania, suggests:
Egyptian or Egyptian-trained scribes, cut off from their homeland, well acquainted with Egyptian decorum as well as the Canaanite language, educated local scribes who in their turn passed on their knowledge to their successors. Such a view, bolstered by the Egyptian title “scribe” appearing in hieratic on an artifact from Lachish, suggests the possibility that by Lehi’s day, scribes having a knowledge of Egyptian had existed in the area for quite some time and had maintained a scribal tradition of writing Egyptian. The fact that an Egyptian scribal tradition existed locally could imply that Lehi learned Egyptian from a local scribe or even from his own father, just as Lehi presumably taught Nephi (see 1 Ne. 1:1–2).
Thompson further notes the type of script that was most prevalent in Israel:
The kind of Egyptian script being employed on those artifacts dating around the time of Lehi is hieratic, but since Demotic was the script of the day in northern Egypt and “abnormal hieratic” was predominant in southern Egypt, the normal hieratic tradition in Canaan must have been adopted from an earlier time—possibly, Goldwasser suggests, during the reigns of David and Solomon or even earlier in the tenth century B.C.—and was in continued use in Israel. This last point may have some bearing upon the script that Lehi and Nephi used when making their records. It has generally been assumed that Demotic was the script of choice for Lehi and Nephi, for it is the most compact of the Egyptian characters and was the most predominant in Egypt at this time; however, the archaeological record to date reveals that hieratic was the more commonly used Egyptian script in Israel.
It is the relationship of this script to the actual language of the plates that has received much attention. A standard misperception of the text, however, is that it is consistently written in “reformed Egyptian.” Monte S. Nyman, emeritus professor of ancient scripture at Brigham Young University, attempts to justify reformed Egyptian as the language of all of the plates:
Nephi’s writing follows the thought pattern of the Hebrews but is written in reformed Egyptian. Moroni, a later writer, tells us why they wrote in this manner: “if our plates had been sufficiently large we should have written in Hebrew” (Morm. 9:33). Moroni also writes, “we have written this record… in… the reformed Egyptian, being handed down and altered by us” (Morm. 9:32). Note that Moroni uses the plural “we” in his explanation, thus indicating that at least his father and he used reformed Egyptian and implying that such was the case from Nephi down.”
While Nyman is correct for Moroni and Mormon, he appears to miss the significance of Moroni’s statement that “being handed down and altered by us” is the most likely explanation of the appended “reformed” to Nephi’s straightforward “Egyptian,” which is not qualified in any way. Moroni is telling us that there have been changes in the “Egyptian” sufficient that it is called in his day “reformed Egyptian.” That suggests that it is not the language of Nephi, contra Nyman. Thompson confirms the probability of dual scripts on the plates:
Assuming that Mormon simply inserted Nephi’s small plates intact into the compilation of gold plates that Joseph Smith later received—a point that can be argued from Words of Mormon 1:6, in which Mormon states that he “shall take these [small] plates… and put them with the remainder of my record” (note that he does not mention “copying” or “abridging” these plates)—then the plates that Joseph Smith received may have been written using two different scripts. One—containing regular, identifiable features of the Egyptian language contemporary to Lehi—would have been used by Nephi on the small plates. The rest of the record (Mormon and Moroni’s abridgement of Nephi’s large plates and the plates of Ether) would have been written using the altered script of Mormon’s day.
John L. Sorenson agrees with Nyman that “Nephi’s writing follows the thought pattern of the Hebrews but is written in… Egyptian,” though Sorenson does not repeat the idea that the entire text is in reformed Egyptian. Sorenson attempts to understand the language of the Book of Mormon by interpreting this concept of the thought process versus the script. He considered the “learning of the Jews” to mean the cultural content of Lehi’s teaching, including Lehi’s spoken language, or Hebrew. As for the “language of the Egyptians,” Sorenson interprets it as the written characters themselves. This emphasis on the characters versus the language represented by the characters finds support in Moroni’s description in Mormon 9:32: “And now, behold, we have written this record according to our knowledge, in the characters which are called among us the reformed Egyptian, being handed down and altered by us, according to our manner of speech.”
According to Sorenson, “the characters” could mean that Mormon used Egyptian glyphs to depict Hebrew words, a hypothesis accepted and elaborated by William Hamblin. Sorenson’s position finds some corroboration in Mormon 9:33: “And if our plates had been sufficiently large we should have written in Hebrew; but the Hebrew hath been altered by us also; and if we could have written in Hebrew, behold, ye would have had no imperfection in our record.”
These verses create a temporal bridge between the first known Book of Mormon text (Nephi’s), and the last (Moroni’s, written in his father’s book). The salient point is that the recordkeepers share a spoken (and presumably written) knowledge of Hebrew and some relationship to whatever is meant by “language of the Egyptians.” For whatever reason, the “reformed” part of the description of “Egyptian” is not part of Nephi’s description but appears only later. One theory would suggest that changes were made in the spoken language, and another that the changes were in the script that encoded that language.
While this linguistic hypothesis is tempting because it would permit attempted reconstructions of an underlying Hebrew, it remains only a tantalizing hypothesis. The idea that one language might be written in the characters of another is not unusual. Modern Japanese can be written in Chinese characters (kanji), for instance, and examples from the Old World are also known. Our problem is not that such combinations of language and characters could not occur, but that the text does not necessarily support that analysis.
Moroni adds: “But the Lord knoweth the things which we have written, and also that none other people knoweth our language; and because that none other people knoweth our language, therefore he hath prepared means for the interpretation thereof” (Morm. 9:34). Thus, according to Moroni, the language in which the plates are written is unknown, and Mormon 9:33 specifies that it is not Hebrew. Nephi undoubtedly assumed that what he wrote could be read; but nearly a thousand years later, Moroni explains that their language will require special interpreters.
The thousand-year gap between Nephi and Moroni should caution us against assuming that any meaning of “reformed Egyptian” in Moroni’s time must be relevant to Nephi’s writings. A thousand years is a long time—roughly the difference between modern English and the Anglo-Saxon spoken by the residents of England subdued by the Norman William the Conqueror. According to Moroni, the normal process of change has altered the language or the writing system or both. As a result, it is no longer “Egyptian,” but “reformed Egyptian.”
Our problem at the beginning of the Book of Mormon is to understand what this “Egyptian” might have been. Interestingly, Mosiah 1:4 provides another Egyptian connection: “For it were not possible that our father, Lehi, could have remembered all these things, to have taught them to his children, except it were for the help of these plates; for he having been taught in the language of the Egyptians therefore he could read these engravings, and teach them to his children.”
Mormon is here referring to the brass plates, which cannot be read without knowing the “language of the Egyptians.” Nephi apparently used those plates as the model—in material, size, and language—for his own scriptural records. (See commentary accompanying 1 Nephi 5:14–16.) The connection between Lehi and Egypt suggests that the brass plates are tied closely to the Egyptian heritage of Joseph, prompting Nibley to suggest that the text was actually written in Egyptian. Lehi was a descendant of Joseph, and Joseph’s sojourn in Egypt provides a plausible link to the Egyptian language, reinforced by the suggested etymology of “Nephi.” Perhaps it is more than coincidence that Joseph traditionally “teaches writing and wisdom.”
Our difficulty in interpreting the Book of Mormon passages describing its language is compounded by the expanded meaning apparently attached to the concept of “language.” Several verses use “language” as a synonym for “learning.”
The first is Enos 1:1: “Behold, it came to pass that I, Enos, knowing my father that he was a just man—for he taught me in his language, and also in the nurture and admonition of the Lord—and blessed be the name of my God for it.… ” A child does not require to be “taught” the language of his parents. Without conscious effort, most children are fluent in their home language by age five, although, of course, refinements of grammar and increased vocabulary continue. Therefore, Enos’s father must have taught him something more than the ability to speak.
The second example similarly involves a father taking pains to instruct his sons: “And it came to pass that he had three sons; and he called their names Mosiah, and Helorum, and Helaman. And he caused that they should be taught in all the language of his fathers, that thereby they might become men of understanding; and that they might know concerning the prophecies which had been spoken by the mouths of their fathers, which were delivered them by the hand of the Lord” (Mosiah 1:2).
What is “all the language of his fathers” and why must it be taught explicitly rather than simply picked up in the course of growing up? In both examples, either “language” is a synonym for “culture,” or the linguistic drift has already begun so that the children must be taught Hebrew in the same way that a modern American pupil would have to study the Anglo-Saxon, French, Latin, or deeper roots of his or her Indo-European linguistic heritage. I lean toward the first interpretation—that “language” embodies a larger learning—because it is consonant with ancient Mediterranean culture. Malina and Neyrey observe:
In the contemporary world, education is almost always about instruction, the mastering of some information, or the development of some skill. In contrast, ancient education focused on the moral, mental, and “personality” formation of a human being. The education process aimed to produce a well-rounded person of character and integrity, someone worthy of the label “human being.”
If Nephi is describing his education when he says “language,” then he would be describing the elements that were most essential in his formation as a person. Naturally, that would include his understanding of his two cultural traditions, Hebrew and Egyptian, both of which are connected to him by lineage. However, the linguistic world of the early Nephites is complicated, not necessarily amenable to simple explanations. Ultimately, we have no definitive answer about the language of the plates.
Culture: In naming his children, Lehi follows Hebrew practice for Laman, Lemuel, Sam, Joseph, and Jacob, but Nephi is not a known Hebrew name. Where might the name come from? Nibley suggests:
Nephi (BM) [Book of Mormon], founder of the Nephite nation.
Nehi, Nehri (OW) [Old World], famous Egyptian noblemen. Nfy was the name of an Egyptian captain. Since BM insists on “ph,” Nephi is closer to Nihpi, original name of the god Pa-nepi, which may even have been Nephi.
John Gee extends Nibley’s research: “The name element NPY seems to be the Semitic (i.e., Aramaic, Phoenician) transcription of the Egyptian nfr, a common element of Egyptian personal names. The medial p in the Semitic form would have been taken as a /f/, so the vocalization of NPY as Nephi poses no problem.” Thus, it appears quite possible that “Nephi” is related to an Egyptian name; if so, he would preserve in his name a remnant of the cultural connection to Egypt that included the “language of the Egyptians.”