Item Detail
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32369
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3
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3
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English
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Learning Nephi’s Language : Creating a Context for 1 Nephi 1:2
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Interpreter : A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship
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2015
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16
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Orem, UT
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Interpreter Foundation
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151-159
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"It was not long after the Book of Mormon was published before Nephi’s statement that he wrote using 'the learning of the Jews and the language of the Egyptians' (1 Nephi 1:2) started raising eyebrows. It has continued to perplex even the best LDS scholars, who have put forward no fewer than five different interpretations of the passage. Some have even pointed out that there seems to be no logical reason for Nephi’s statement, since anyone who could read the text would know what language it was written in.
"I suggest that the reason the phrase has remained hard to interpret is that Nephi’s statement continues to be interpreted without any context. And this is so despite the fact that Egyptian writing by Israelite scribes has been known and attested to in Nephi’s very time period since at least the 1960s. Though Latter-day Saint scholars have known and written about these writings, they have generally used them just as evidence for the Book of Mormon or to bolster support for preexisting theories about Nephi’s language, rather than using those texts to create a context in which Nephi’s statement can be interpreted." [Author]