Hi Jeanie

R2: 2 Nephi 22:15 is virtually word for word Malachi 4:1
Jeanie: By gum, you are correct! Actually its from 3rd Nephi, though. (Typo, no doubt).
It was a typo in my copy of the book of mormon Malachi 4:1 is first quoted in 1 Nephi 22:15

Dang, just lost a bunch of stuff I typed. Anyway, I found where, apparently, reformed Egyptian was a type of shorthand. Hebrew in comparison to the English language and other western languages can use 7-10 words to convey what a normal English sentence takes about 15 words to say. Apparently as stated in Mormon 9: 32, 33, in vs. 33 it states that there wasn't enough room on the plates to use Hebrew, so the reformed was an even more compact way to write. It was harder to be as exact or precise, though, as well.

I’ve never heard that answer to this challenge. It still seems like a stretch to me, surely god’s treasuries are not that stretched that they could not afford a few extra gold plates to allow him to write the piece in a language that he and his people would commonly know? It would have the advantage of precision and it would avoid all the translation problems that they would have given that it was unknown among them in the historical record to know reformed Egyptian at all so chances are that at most very few of them did. In fact why not use a material that was cheaper and more durable than gold in the first place and let him be as verbose as necessary to avoid all the confusion that we see today?

R2: That sounds like a stretch. It’s easy for a book to vaguely mention other people’s but you can’t then, rationally, stretch that to include any specific other people’s that are discovered. It needs to be specific to count for anything or he may have been talking about anyone.

Jeanie: But we know those are the people the Book of Mormon was talking about. And also their relatives in the isles, etc.

How do we know?

The temples and pyramids weren't known of at the time this record was found and translated. That is my point....

I don’t rembember the book of Mormon mentioning Pyramids? Can you cite me chapter and verse on that so I can read what it says about them?

Kind of odd as well that EGYPTIAN architecture was found don't you think?

The similarities to the Egyptian architecture is very superficial. The internal structure of the south America pyramids is totally different and their use was also very different. There are only so many ways to build a structure the size of the pyramids or they would, as is seen in a number of locations, simply fall down. The pyramid is a very stable structure so it’s not really surprising that more than one culture built them, their experiments with other shapes fell down to show them the error of their ways. The City of pyramids in the Peruvian desert is around 5000 years old which also seems a problem for the Mormon timeline.

All the best Jeanie

Russell