Evidences of the Book of Mormon—Some External Proofs of Its Divinity: Part II. The Language of the Record

EVIDENCES OF THE BOOK OF MORMON.

SOME EXTERNAL PROOFS OF ITS DIVINITY.

Part II.

THE LANGUAGE OF THE RECORD.

Having brought forward weighty testimony proving the existence of historical records among the ancient inhabitants of this continent, we may next properly consider the question: In what language were they originally written?

The statements in the Book of Mormon on this point are but few, but they are conclusive. Nephi, the founder of the Nephite nation says:1 “I make a record in the language of my father” (Lehi), “which consists of the learning of the Jews, and the language of the Egyptians.” That is how the record was commenced—in the learning of the Jews and the language of the Egyptians. About four hundred years later, the education of the sons of one of the kings (Mosiah), is spoken of. It is written:     “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, that thereby they could teach them to their children.”2

Nearly six hundred years later, Moroni, the last of the Nephite prophets, says with regard to their language at that time: “And now, behold, we have written this record according to our knowledge in the characters which are called among us Reformed Egyptian, being handed down and altered by us according to our manner of speech; 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, we would have no imperfection in our record.”3

The points in Moroni’s statement that are of peculiar importance, are these: That the Nephites wrote in Egyptian; that they also wrote in Hebrew; that the Egyptian written by Nephi and his father when they first came to America, had been changed, and that during the course of their history (nearly a thousand years), the Nephites had changed the Hebrew also. As a remarkable confirmation of this statement we draw attention to the fact that the discoveries of ancient writings and engrav­ings that have been made at different times, and in widely removed regions, buried in the ground and elsewhere, are in Egyptian characters or in Hebrew letters, or in characters that very much resemble the Egyptian, but which are undecipherable to the learned of the present day. That these characters were changed from time to time is proven by the fact that very few are found that are alike, the bell-shaped plates that were found at Kinderhook, Illinois, in 1842, on the breast of a skeleton that was then exhumed, resemble somewhat, but have no very strong likeness to the published characters of the Book of Mormon. But one fact has been drawn attention to by all who have an acquaintance with the subject, and that is, that the various characters that cannot be deciphered, bear a marked resemblance to the ancient Egyptian.

One writer says: “Lastly, the eye of the antiquarian cannot fail to be both attracted and fixed by evidences of the existence of two great branches of the hieroglyphical language—both having striking affinities with the Egyptian, and yet distinguished from it by characteristics perfectly American. One is the picture-writing peculiar to the Mexicans, and which displays several striking traits of assimilation to the anaglyphs, and the historical tablets of the Egyptian temples. The second is a pure hieroglyphical language, to which little attention has hitherto been called, which appears to have been peculiar to the Tultecan or some still more ancient nation that preceded the Mexicans; which was as complete as the Egyptian in its double constituency of a symbolic and a phonetic alphabet, and which, as far as we can judge, appears to have rivalled the Egyptian in its completeness, while in some respects it excelled it in its regularity and beauty.”4

We will first, however, refer to the Hebrew, as that to us, is possibly the most interesting. The earliest account of the discovery of Hebrew characters on this continent is found in the writings of early Spanish historians. “Malvenda says that the natives of St. Michael had tomb­stones which the Spaniards digged up with several ancient Hebrew char­acters upon them, as ‘Why is God gone away?’ and ‘He is dead, God knows.’”5

Between 1860 and 1865, four different stones with Hebrew inscriptions upon them were found in Licking County, Ohio, though not all in the same neighborhood. On one, which some suppose had been worn as an amulet, was a Hebrew inscription, which was translated, “May the Lord have mercy on him a nephel,” that is, one of untimely birth, an abortion. Elder Orson Pratt, however was of the opinion that the final letter was a t, and that the legend should read, “May the Lord have mercy on him a Nephite.”

Another stone, a white one, found in the same place as the first, is of a shape impossible to describe, something between a square and a right angled triangle; its extreme parts being separated by just three and a half inches; while its greatest thickness is about an inch. It is covered with human faces and forms of animals. It has also a Hebrew inscription, but on the meaning, the learned have been unable to agree.

The third is a wedge-shaped stone. It was found in a sink or depression of ground near Newark, which has been compared to the sinking clay that fills up a well. Its length does not reach six inches; its widest part is hardly three inches. Its color approaches near the chocolate. It has the shape of a wedge; at its small end it tapers or is rounded, and the end itself is a flattened surface of about a half inch in diameter. At the other end there rests on the head of the wedge, a handle. A Hebrew inscription is on each of its four sides. These inscriptions when translated read:

The King of the Earth. The Law of the Lord. The Word of the Lord. The Holy of Holies.

It would be difficult to conceive that such an inscription would be put upon a stone by persons not acquainted with the law and with the word of the Lord, or who had not some idea regarding temple ordinances, and what the Holy of Holies implies; but a people like the Nephites are described as having been, in the Book of Mormon, would, in all respects, answer the requirements, as they were trained in both the law and the Gospel.

The fourth stone is the most remarkable of all. There was an extended series of Indian mounds, fortifications, and enclosures around Newark. One of the most remarkable was an enormous stone mound of conical form, eight miles south of the spot where Newark now stands. It is believed that some thousands of loads of stone were taken from it for the Ohio canal and other purposes. It was once five hundred and eighty feet in circumference at the base, and forty to fifty feet high. An impression grew among the workmen that there was a circle of little mounds of pure clay, enclosed within the great mound, and standing round near the periphery at the base. Id the removal of one of these clay mounds, a piece of wood was found, like the shell of an old log, and on it several copper rings were lying. A further examination decided that this piece of wood was only the covering of a lower piece, which had the form of a large trough, and the whole of its interior seemed to have been once lined with a very coarse cloth, so rotten that a piece as large as a thumb nail could not be held together. This trough contained several human bones, a lock of very fine, black hair, about six or eight inches long, and ten more copper rings. It was further found that this coffin lay in a two feet thick bed of very tough fire clay of the color of putty. In digging into this fire clay, a stone box was struck in its lower part. The box was drawn out with care; was found to be of a rounded, oblong shape; and in color, lighter than copper. Its two halves were cemented together. After considerable effort, the cement was broken, and the two halves separated, and in the centre of the box was a stone, on which the Ten Command­ments were engraved. Now, keep these facts in their connection: the stone lodged in the centre of the stone box; this box buried in a stratum of fire clay; above the box the coffin also lodged in the fire clay; the clay mound and then the enormous stone mound covering all.

The stone has for its length about six inches and seven-eighths; for its width, about two inches and seven-eighths, and for its thickness, about one inch and five-eighths. On one side the greater part of the surface is depressed, and a carved human figure is in this depression. On the other side the central surface is a protruded plane, but the protrusion on one side does not correspond exactly with the depression on the other side. The human figure stands out in relief on the depressed plane; it has the appearance of a noble man, dressed in the robes of the Priesthood, and over his head, written in Hebrew, is the name Moses. At the feet of the image there is an empty space through the stone, and then a round handle is united to the main stone at its ends, as if the stone was one carried by a strap passed through this empty space. On the back and on the sides and top are engraved in Hebrew characters, (though inferior to those on the other stones), the Ten Commandments. Not exactly as we have the Ten Commandments in the Bible, but somewhat abridged for want of room; and there is a peculiarity about them—they are not written underneath one another, but in different directions. The Commandments, though not here given at full length, contain all the essential points; that is to say, when you come to the one: “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain,” that is all there is of it. The second clause is not included; but all the Ten Commandments are there. We may here ask: Who, but a people acquainted with the dealings of the Lord with the House of Israel, could have prepared such a stone as this?

But not only have these stones been found, but strips of parchment, covered with texts from the Bible, written in Hebrew, have been dug out of the ground. The Rev. Etham Smith (pastor of a church in Poultney, Vermont), in his work entitled “A View of the Hebrews,” says:

“Joseph Merrick, Esq., a highly respectable character in Pittsfield, Mass., gave the following account: That, in 1815, he was leveling some ground under and near an old wood shed standing on a place of his situated on Indian Hill. He plowed and conveyed away old chips and earth to some depth. After the work was done, walking over the place, he discovered, near where the earth had been dug the deepest, a black strap, as it appeared, about six inches in length, and one-and-a-half in breadth, and about the thickness of a leather trace to a harness. He perceived it had at each end, a loop of some hard substance, probably for the purpose of carrying it. He conveyed it to his house and threw it into an old tool box. After some time he thought he would examine it, but in attempting to cut it, found it as hard as bone. He succeeded, however, in getting it open, and found it was formed of two pieces of thick raw hide, sewed and made water tight with the sinews of some animal and gummed over, and in the fold was contained four folded pieces of parchment. They were of a dark yellow hue, and contained some kind of writing. The neighbors coming in to see the strange discovery, tore one of the pieces to atoms, in the true Hun and Vandal style. The other three pieces Mr. Merrick saved and sent them to Cambridge, where they were examined and discovered to have been written with a pen, in Hebrew, plain and legible. The writ­ing on the three remaining pieces of parchment was quotations from the Old Testament. See Deut. chap, vi, from 4th to 9th verses inclusive; also chap. xi. verses 13th to 21st inclusive; and Exodus chap, xiii, 11th to 16th verses inclusive; to which the reader can refer if he has the curiosity to read this most interesting discovery.”

Another find of the same kind, in a region far from Massachusetts, is recorded in The National Intelligencer, as follows:

“By the politeness of Colonel Lee, Commissioner of Indian affairs, we have been shown a relic of great rarity and interest, left for a few days at the Bureau. It was brought from the Pottawatamie Reservation, on the Kansas River, by Dr. Lykins, who has been residing there nearly twenty years out of thirty he has spent on the frontier. It consists of four small rolls or strips of parchment, closely packed in the small com­partments of a little box or locket of about an inch cubical content. On these parchments are written, in a style of unsurpassed excellence, and far more beautiful than print, portions of the Pentateuch, to be worn as frontlets, and intended as stimulants to the memory and moral sense. Dr. Lykins obtained it from Pategwe, a Pottawatamie, who got it from his grandmother, a very old woman. It has been in this particular family about fifty years.”

Those relics are not only strong witnesses, with regard to the language used by the ancient inhabitants of this continent, but they are also undeniable proofs that the people who lived here were of the House of Israel, and that they observed, as the Book of Mormon tells us they did, the Law of Moses, in its fullness and completeness. They observed it with regard to the ordinances of the temple, with regard to the offering of sacrifices, in the keeping of the feasts; but more than this, they had interwoven with it the higher law of the Gospel.

In these Hebrew discoveries are several wonderfully strong points in favor of the truth of the Book of Mormon. All of them are written in the Hebrew used at the time that that record tells us Lehi left Jerusalem. In later times the Hebrew alphabet was changed. Vowel points were intro­duced and final letters were added; but these changes and alterations were made after the return of the Jews from the Babylonish captivity.6 The Hebrew that is found sculptured on the stone and other mementos, to which attention has been drawn, is always the more ancient kind. Lehi left Jerusalem six hundred years before Christ, a few years before the Jews were carried into captivity by the Babylonians, or before these vowel points and final letters were introduced; and in all the engravings that have been found on this land, there are neither vowels nor final letters, showing that the people who used them were divided from the Jews, as the Book of Mormon states they were, before these latter had been introduced—before the time of the return from the Babylonish captivity. It is also another remarkable fact, as a testimony in favor of the Book of Mormon, that none of the inscriptions that have been found, contain any of the scriptures of a later date than those which it says the Nephites brought with them. Lehi and his party carried a copy of the scriptures, from the commencement of Genesis to the days of Jeremiah, and extracts from none later than these are found anywhere on these inscriptions.

Another testimony is that there is a marked difference in the shape of the Hebrew letters on the different stones. Not The difference that developed on the eastern continent, but one peculiar to this land, demon­strating the truth of the statement of Moroni, that the Nephites had changed the Hebrew as well as the Egyptian.

Equally interesting is the fact that several early Spanish writers claim that the natives of some portions of the land still spoke a corrupt Hebrew. Las Casas so affirms with regard to the inhabitants of the island of Hayti. Lafitu7 wrote a history wherein he maintained that the Caribbee language was radically Hebrew.8 Isaac Nasci, a learned Jew, of Surinam, says of the language of the people of Guiana, that all their substantives are Hebrew.

Montesinos,9 writing to Rabbi Manasseh Ben Israel,10 an account of his visit to America in the sixteenth century, states: “Traveling in the province of Quif, with an Indian, I was overtaken with a violent storm, which occasioned the Indian to exclaim against the Spaniards, whose cruelty and sins drew down these marks of divine vengeance.” He then goes on to state: “I found this Indian to be of presumably Jewish extraction; that his God was Adonai, and that he acknowledged Abraham, Isaac and Jacob for his ancestors. * * * Curiosity engaging me to pursue my voyage with the Indian, we arrived at the banks of a river, and, upon giving a signal, people appeared, who pronounced the words of Deuteronomy: Schemah Israel Adonai Elohim Adonai Ehad: Hear O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord. They told me how Providence had placed them there by incredible miracles.”

Possibly these last named people only retained the memory of a few such salutations as the one given: it is not probable that they spoke Hebrew in their common talk. But it is claimed that such survivals are numerous in the religious songs and ceremonies of many of the tribes. A number of writers who visited or resided among the tribes of the northern continent, assert that the words Yehovah, Yah, Ale and Hallelujah could be distinctly heard in these exercises. And Laet and Escarbotus assure us that they often heard the South American Indians repeat the sacred word Hallelujah, “which made them admire how they first obtained it.” But it is more to the genius or the grammar of these languages and dialects that we must look for Hebraism, if there be any relationship, rather than in the use of Hebrew terms, however numerous they may be; and it must not be forgotten that in most cases we are dealing with peoples or tribes, who have no written language, which makes the resemblance all the more wonderful.

On this question, Adair who, from his long sojourn among the Indian tribes, should be an excellent authority writes: “The Indian language and dialects appear to have the very idiom and genius of the Hebrew. Their words and sentences are expressive, concise, emphatical, sonorous and bold, and often, both in letters and signification, synonymous with the Hebrew language. * * * The Indian nouns have neither cases nor declensions: they are invariably the same through both numbers after the Hebrew manner. In their verbs they likewise sometimes use the preterperfect instead of the present tense of the indicative mood. * * Like the Hebrews, they have no comparative or superlative degree: they express a preference by the opposite extremes. * * There is not, perhaps, any one language or speech, except the Hebrew and Indian American, which has not a great many prepositions. The Indians, like the Hebrews, have none in separate and express words. ** The Indians, for want of a sufficient number of radical words, are forced to apply the same noun and verb to signify many things of a various nature. * * The Jewish rabbins tell us that the Hebrew language contains only a few more than a thousand primitive words, of which their whole language is formed; so that the same word very often denotes various, though not contrary things; but there is one radical meaning, which will agree to every sense that word is used in. * * The Hebrew nouns are either derived from verbs, or both of them are one and the same. * * The Indian method of expression exactly agrees with that Hebrew mode of speech. * * According to the usage of the Hebrews, they always place the accusative case also before the verb. * * The Hebrew and Indian words which express delineating, writ­ing, deciphering, marking and painting convey the same literal meaning in both languages. * * The Indians, according to the usage of the Hebrews, always prefix the substantive to the adjective.”

Having said so much with regard to the Hebrew, let us turn to the Egyptian. Elder Parley P. Pratt, writing to the editor of the Mormon, January 1, 1857, says: “In passing through Cincinnati, Ohio, a short time since, the following facts were communicated to me by Mr. Benjamin E. Styles, of that place, who also exhibited to me a gold plate, found by him at the aforesaid place, in the year 1847, while excavating the earth for a cistern, a few feet above high water mark on the Ohio River. It was thrown out with the loose earth while excavating about nine feet beneath the surface. Said plate is of fine gold, three or four inches in length, averaging about three-fourths of an inch in width and about one-eighth of an inch in thickness, with the edges scalloped; in the face of which was beautifully set, another plate of the same material, and fastened together by two pins, running through both. This latter plate is full of ancient raised letters, beautifully engraved upon its surface, the whole exhibiting fine workmanship.”

Fac-similes of this plate have been published several times. To any one having the least acquaintance with Egyptian the likeness of the char­acters thereto is remarkable. In fact they are Egyptian slightly changed, or, doubtless, as Moroni would call them, “Reformed Egyptian.” Here, at any rate, is one instance of the ancient Americans engraving on gold plates, as was done by the historians of the Book of Mormon. Adair, in his History of the North American Indians, speaks of two brazen tables and five of copper which the Indians, on the Tallapoose River regarded as most sacred. The two brass plates were circular, about a foot and a half in diameter; the five copper plates were not all of the same size, and, in shape, somewhat resembled an ax head. Old Bracket, an Indian, in answer to inquiries regarding these plates, said: “That he was told by his forefathers that those plates were given to them by the man we call God; that there had been many more of other shapes, some as long as he could stretch with both arms, and some had writing upon them which were buried with particular men; and that they had instructions buried with them, viz., they must only be handled by particular people, and those fasting; and no unclean woman must be suffered to come near them or the place where they were deposited. He said none but his own town’s people had any such plates given them, and that they were a different people from the Greeks. He only remembered three more which were buried with three of his family, and he was the only man of the family now left. He said there were Two Copper Plates, under the king’s cabin, which had lain there from the first settling of the town.” This account was taken in the Tuccabatchey-square, 27th July, 1759, by Mr. William Bolsover.

Geo. Reynolds.

[To be continued.]

• 1. I. Nephi 1:2.
• 2. Mosiah 1:4.
• 3. Mormon, 9:32–33.
• 4. Foreign Quarterly Review, October, 1836.
• 5. From Adair’s “History of the American Indians,” London, 1775, James Adair, the author, was an English trader, who resided for forty years (1735–1775) among the Chickasaw and Cherokee Indians.
• 6. “The Jews, who had been in Babylon seventy years, had so corrupted the Hebrew language as to render it necessary to affix a determinate pronunciation by the introduction of vowel points.”—The Ten Tribes of Israel.
• 7. Lafitu, Joseph Francis, born at Bordeaux, 1670; died, 1746. A French Jesuit author. He was a missionary among the Iroquois of Canada.
• 8. See Clavigero “Memories De L’Amerique.”
• 9. This Montesinos is neither Antonio Montesinos, the Spanish Dominican missionary and friend of the Indians, who came to America in 1510; nor Fernando Montesinos, the Spanish historian, who resided for about twenty years in Peru (1629 to 1650), but a Portuguese (?) Jew, named Aaron Levi Montesinos, a correspondent of Manasseh Ben Israel.
• 10. Manasseh Ben Israel, chief Rabbi of the Jewish synagogue of Amsterdam, probably an agent of Oliver Cromwell, who did much to bring about the return of the Jews to England. He published a work entitled “Spes Israel” (The Hope of Israel) and dedicated it to the English parliament in the days of the great Protector, for which he received the thanks of that Puritan assembly.