Not gonna lie, this one is a stretch so I will apologize in advance. I sincerely do believe that there has to be something that is really worth having in every verse of the Book of Mormon though, so lets get right into it.
2. Yea, I make a record in the language of my father, which consists of the learning of the Jews and the language of the Egyptians.
This verse gets super interesting when you dig a little deeper into it. Obviously the main thing to study here is language. Luckily the first time language is mentioned in this verse it comes with a footnote. Mosiah 1:4 is far down the road when King Benjamin is addressing his people. He talks about it being impossible that Lehi could have remembered all of the things that were on the plates of brass. King Benjamin also states that Lehi was taught the language of the Egyptians so he is able to read the plates. So it seems like people learned Egyptian but it was not a common thing. We have to remember that this is Nephi talking though. Even though he is talking about the language of his father, it is Nephi saying that he is writing this in the language of his father. The other footnote takes us to the very end of the Book of Mormon to Mormon 9:32 where I believe it is Mormon stating that the book is written in reformed Egyptian. They were handed down by the people and altered according to their manner of speech. Isn't it cool that we have documentation within this book of the development of an entirely new language? The fact that over time they tweaked and altered this language to make sense for the way that they spoke is really interesting.
Back to the verse, there is one more thing that I think is worth mentioning. Nephi says that the language of his father consists of the learning of the Jews, and the language of the Egyptians. Now I will be honest. I have no idea what that means. I wonder if this means that although Lehi knows Egyptian, he is Jewish by birth and has been taught Egyptian by Jews. I have first hand experience of learning a second language and I will be the first to say that it is hard to ever feel 100% fluent because there are always word sets that you don't really have exposure to. Maybe Nephi is siting that although they speak Egyptian and write in Egyptian, they still really know what pertains to the learning of the Jews? Like I said, I'm not sure. Maybe I will add an update to this one after I have let this marinate for a while or if I come across something that clarifies.
THE BIG THING
These people were so real! They would have had to make so many conscious decisions about how to logically go about the writing of this record. Maybe it was inspiration or maybe it was just a stylistic choice, but it seems obvious that Egyptian was not the most popular vernacular for people to communicate in. I think it helps us humanize Lehi and Nephi as we look at some of these little decisions. It is also really interesting to note that the Native American Indians as well as the Egyptians operated on pictographic languages. Maybe I am extremely naive but I don't think there are a ton of languages that have pictograms as a core part of their language. Pretty cool.
2. Yea, I make a record in the language of my father, which consists of the learning of the Jews and the language of the Egyptians.
This verse gets super interesting when you dig a little deeper into it. Obviously the main thing to study here is language. Luckily the first time language is mentioned in this verse it comes with a footnote. Mosiah 1:4 is far down the road when King Benjamin is addressing his people. He talks about it being impossible that Lehi could have remembered all of the things that were on the plates of brass. King Benjamin also states that Lehi was taught the language of the Egyptians so he is able to read the plates. So it seems like people learned Egyptian but it was not a common thing. We have to remember that this is Nephi talking though. Even though he is talking about the language of his father, it is Nephi saying that he is writing this in the language of his father. The other footnote takes us to the very end of the Book of Mormon to Mormon 9:32 where I believe it is Mormon stating that the book is written in reformed Egyptian. They were handed down by the people and altered according to their manner of speech. Isn't it cool that we have documentation within this book of the development of an entirely new language? The fact that over time they tweaked and altered this language to make sense for the way that they spoke is really interesting.
Back to the verse, there is one more thing that I think is worth mentioning. Nephi says that the language of his father consists of the learning of the Jews, and the language of the Egyptians. Now I will be honest. I have no idea what that means. I wonder if this means that although Lehi knows Egyptian, he is Jewish by birth and has been taught Egyptian by Jews. I have first hand experience of learning a second language and I will be the first to say that it is hard to ever feel 100% fluent because there are always word sets that you don't really have exposure to. Maybe Nephi is siting that although they speak Egyptian and write in Egyptian, they still really know what pertains to the learning of the Jews? Like I said, I'm not sure. Maybe I will add an update to this one after I have let this marinate for a while or if I come across something that clarifies.
THE BIG THING
These people were so real! They would have had to make so many conscious decisions about how to logically go about the writing of this record. Maybe it was inspiration or maybe it was just a stylistic choice, but it seems obvious that Egyptian was not the most popular vernacular for people to communicate in. I think it helps us humanize Lehi and Nephi as we look at some of these little decisions. It is also really interesting to note that the Native American Indians as well as the Egyptians operated on pictographic languages. Maybe I am extremely naive but I don't think there are a ton of languages that have pictograms as a core part of their language. Pretty cool.
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