Ep73: Pt 4: Is Magic The Key to Unlocking The Mysterious Characters of Reformed Egyptian? 

Yeah, I also learned Japanese on my mission, and I kind of laughed because a lot of what Rebecca kept saying was blowing her mind, was something that was already intuitively obvious to me as someone who learned two syllabaries and some of a logosyllabary as a second language. Most Japanese missionaries only ever learned a handful of kanji (the logosyllabary). A few hundred, and most of those are the fairly easy ones, that you see all the time, and/or that actually look like the thing that they represent. (A door is just a square in kanji, it's a picture of a door). I'd say in my mission over two years working with something like 400 total co-missionaries, there were probably single-digit number of people who learned more than 500 characters. They have a subset of "all kanji" called the jouyou kanji, which is a set of 2,136 characters that are kind of the "literary baseline", this is "I can read a newspaper by time I graduate high school." Twelve rigorous years to learn 2k characters. If the characters on the Caractors document is logosyllabic, remember that it's not just "hard" to learn, it requires actual infrastructure. You have to have an educational system that regularly produces scholars who are able to read and write this system of information, and society is structured so that they have the time, space, practice materials, food, housing, etc., that they need to be able to do this. If King Benjamin had his talk written down and copies of the text given to everyone who couldn't hear, implying that a majority of the culture is literate, they would have to have been way beyond just trying to survive in terms of technological achievement. Their GDP (measured with any arbitrary measure of collective productivity) would have had to rival that of modern post-renaissance industrial society to be able to collectively bear that burden. Also, John, you went round and round and round showing evidence indicating that Joseph Smith believed that there was a magic writing system that could contain lots of meaning. Why didn't you ever show the place where Joseph Smith's own scribes state that belief outright?!?!?!? "This is called Za Ki=oan hiash, or chal sidon hisah. This character is in the fifth degree, independent and abitrary. It may be preseved in the fifth degree while it stands independent and arbitrary: That is, without a straight mark inserted above or below it. By inserting a straight mark over it thus, it increases its signification five degrees: by inserting two straight lines, thus: its signification is increased five times more. By inserting three straight lines, thus its signification is again increased five times more than the last. By counting the numbers of straight lines, or considering them as qualifying adjectives we have the degrees of comparison There are five connecting parts of speech in the above character, called Za-ki on hish These five connecting parts of speech, for verbs, participles - prepositions, conjuntions, and adverbs. In Translating this character, this subject must be continued until there are as many of these connecting parts of speech used as there are connections or connecting parts found in the character. But whinever the character is found with one horizontal line, as at (2) the subject must be continued until five times the number of connecting parts of speech are used; or, the full sense of the writer is not conveyed. When two horizontal lines occur, the number of connecting parts of speech are continued five times furthr - or five degrees. And when three horizontal lines are found, the number of connections are to be increased five times further. The character alone has 5 parts of speech: increase by one straight line thus 5x5 is 25 by 2 horizontal lines thus 25x5 = 125; and by 3 horizontal lines thus:- 125x5 = 625." -Joseph Smith Papers (www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/grammar-and-alphabet-of-the-egyptian-language-circa-july-circa-november-1835/7) It's so clear that he was trying to write down rules he could use to convince people that he didn't actually need hundreds of plates, but that a dozen or fewer would have sufficed because 625 words could fit into a single character with 3 horizontal lines over it. But to have a written language where a single character can carry so much meaning, the language has to have more characters in the entire lexicon than there are atoms in the entire universe. John, I was doing this exact same "data compression" (my words, or "textual density" from you) analysis of Joseph's attempts to sell his con while I was deconstructing, because I think my mind works similarly to yours. I was after you of course, but before this podcast so I identified with what you said about it being hard to find anybody else talking about this problem! I feel a lot of kinship with you, and thank you for putting this together. It's been immensely validating to me.

Love the Mormonish podcast/videos. You are my favorite podcast/RU-vid videos on post-mormon and "moronish" topics! This series with Dr. John Lundwall is awesome! Thanks for doing these!

This series with Dr Lundwall has been outstanding and, Book of Mormon aside, so interesting. Please thank him and thank you!

The stylus that you need for writing this small would require a very sharp fine point. This makes the wear issue even worse.

Lundwall delivers!

Names don't have to be spelled out. For example, Mitsubishi, a Japanese surname, means 3 diamonds; instead of spelling it out in 10 Roman characters or 4 syllabary characters, they use the Chinese character for 3 and the Chinese character for diamond. Even with that, you can't get to what is necessary for the Book of Mormon to be true.

This is my 3rd time listening to this series -BRILLIANT

Dr. Lundwall said we need 20-40 words per square inch on rice paper Tumbaga. I don’t know how thick it is (thin enough to roll into an amulet) but the Petelia Orphic gold tablet (gold leaf) is approximately 4.5x2.7 cm and has 450 characters. There is a tear with some missing text so the original inscription is estimated to have had about 489 characters. With an area of about 1.876 in^2, that comes to 260.6 characters per in^(2). The English translation is 117 words which comes to 62.37 English words per in^2. The characters are extremely small because of the simplicity of the ancient Greek alphabet used. More complex characters, such as found in a logosyllabic language, couldn’t be carved as small. However, this Petelia tablet makes the Book of Mormon gold plates ever so slightly more plausible.

The harder the plate, the harder the stylus has to be or it will wear faster. What evidence is there for hard materials other then gold, brass, bronze, or copper. These materials are not that hard. One needs a technology that I don't think they had at that time nor is there any evidence for high technology. Extraordinary claim requires extraordinary evidence.

Wow! I listened and was amazed!

I have thoroughly enjoyed this series. Thank you for these. Learned some Chinese on my mission to Taiwan. Such a different writing system. The puzzle pieces are fitting together for the first time for me too. I was always confused by these "Caracters" it makes much more sense now. Can't wait for the next episode! I have always been fascinated by John Dee as well. The magical world view makes perfect sense. Excellent episode; I am learning so much. A free University level course. ❤🧡💛💚💙💜🤎

I know what I'm listening to tonight!

It's funny how many hoops the apologists have to jump through to fit the text of the BoM onto the plates, only to have Nephi duplicate chapter after chapter of Isaiah with no significant changes, which was available to both the Nephites and to us latter day Christians. 😅

Man you guys need to get Dr. Sledge from esoterica channel on to talk about the magic texts around j.s. time. That would be a cool team up

This was amazing! It all just fits and makes sense.

Hey, John, nice to see you again.

An interesting thing about the cartouche is that it represented the earth being touched by the sky. The king's name was represented as being written in the stars, he was already immortal. His name also included symbols that represented their gods, where the phonetics of his name matched the gods name. Just to reinforce that this high station that is impossibly out of reach of anyone else. From my understanding, this is unique to Egypt. Other god-king cultures used other symbols to denote the grandeur of the king. I don't think it's plausible, considering how seriously all god-king cultures take disrespecting the god-king (death), that there was any form of Egyptian writing where the king's name was written short hand. Using a shortened form of a name denotes familiarity. Who is familiar to the king? Only the gods, of course. Even the god's names could be rendered as merely a symbol. Nothing in Egypt was above the king.

don’t forget that in his own words Joseph smith said that he would look at each character then spell it out if necessary and then give the translation of that character which means one character = one word. it just doesn’t work as described

"The narrative is falsifiable" - mic drop. So many other religious claims are too. Falseness matters.

Amazing analysis! I think the magic angle does explain a lot.

The characters resemble automatic writing, a not uncommon feature of early to mid-19th century spiritualism.

Calls to mind "If we have truth, [it] cannot be harmed by investigation. If we have not truth, it ought to be harmed." J. Reuben Clark, as recorded by D. Michael Quinn, J. Reuben Clark: The Church Years. Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 1983, p. 24 The historical truth matters, and if one wants to embrace "mythical truth," that's fine, but don't confuse the two and then condemn those who call out the confound.

The plates would too heavy to carry according to Mrs Tanner..

So when did this world view fade out of the church? Did early American converts share this world view? Did Brigham Young? Did the wave of English converts? Did John Taylor?

Please do one on the temple ceremony. I have a friend who says she saw the writings on the walls in Egypt showing Egyptus and the ceremony being given to Adam. Is like the information so I can know the real story of possible.

Hangul (Korean script) would then be an abugeeda. Japanese has 2 syllabaries, each with 46 characters. Both also use Chinese characters, so there are modern examples of logo syllabaries being used with other alphabets. It doesn't really allow for higher concentration of words per square inch, though.

1:54:58 The leaders of the Community of Christ came up with the logical conclusion that the entire thing was made up. They moved past it and accepted the BofM as moral stories.

The only way it could work is if the person engraving the plates had to use the interpreter stone to find out how to draw each character so as to encode the desired meaning, and then the translator had to use the interpreter stone to decode each character. It's a sort of spiritual/magic data compression system. Naturally it would be unintelligible to anyone else, and either somehow true or an elaborate fraud. Always so convenient for whoever is in control of the narrative.

Dan Voles early Mormon Doctrine Vol 1 quotes Sidney Rigdon saying there were 14 plates

So......Reformed Egyptian is a hologram (holograph?) I'm not technologically smart enough to use those terms, but my credit card has one of those things...

Roman writing began around 250 BC. only off by 400 years. Almost old enough…like 14 year olds to JS.

Thanks!

OMG, the Zohar is an iPad!

I am hearing John Dee and John Day...which is it?

I am pretty sure that Dr. Lundwall purchased his copy of Charles Anthon's 1841 book from Mark Hoffman. I am surpriised the Mormon Church hadn't already purchased it through front men.

facts > faith

You know he's the king because he's the one killing everybody. The other way you know is that he doesn't have shit all over him. 😆

Syllaberries are so sweet

roman characters are the numbers using I V X and so on

Arrrrbraham

Rebecca, you keep saying, "Dr. Lundwell". Please! It's LUNDWALL. LUND and then WALL. Lundwall. Please Rebecca, get it right. (from Dan, John's older brother (both wiser and better looking)). 🙂

Very interesting episode. I have really enjoyed all your shows and the discussions of how bat crazy Mormon truth claims are. However, it is really not that complicated. If you read the official story of the First Vision, you should know "beyond a shadow of a doubt with every fiber of your soul" that Mormonism is a crock of absurd lies and rubbish. And, if that doesn't do it, the story of Moroni spending the night with Joseph certainly should do the trick. Forget for the moment all of the Mormon Church's astounding lies and deceptions, Mormons who know these stories and still pretend to believe are being intellectually dishonest with themselves, their families and friends and deserve what the church does to them. What kind of god would require "his children" to believe such bullsh*t?

hahaha this is bogus..... AND refuted long ago.

This is just a podcast and an echo chamber. There is no science here, just opinion. You haven't read and studied Grover's work at all. Please read it and do more just cast doubt. There is no science here folks. Sorry, you guys are amateurs.