Comparable to the Bible: Nephi IS Captain Obvious

Well, if you read my previous post on the first sentence of the Book of Mormon, you know that my first impressions of the book were not favorable.  Sometimes first impression are misleading...but sometimes they're actually spot on.  Unfortunately, this seems to be a case of the latter.

After a jarring, awkward, grammatically incorrect, and pointless opening sentence, Nephi (the narrator of the first book, and supposedly its author) proceeds to waste two additional verses relaying information which his contemporaries would have found completely pointless.

First, he tells us what language he's writing in.  That's right: he feels the need to tell the people who are already reading this account in its original language (Nephi would have had no idea it would be translated into English--a language which would not even exist for a couple thousand years or so--, and like all authors, would have written to be understood by the people around him living at that time) what language they're reading.  It would be as if I felt the need to introduce this blog by saying--in English--, "I'm writing this blog in modern English, the language of America."  What would be the point of such a statement?  If you could read it, then obviously you know that I'm writing in English and are already extremely familiar with the language since you can read it!  If you can't read English my "this is in English" notice will do you no good--you won't understand it because you don't read English.  The only way you'll be able to guess that it is English is if you know enough about the appearance and characteristics of the language to guess its identity without being able to read the notice.  So it is with 1 Nephi 1:2, which tells the reader, "I write a record [the book of 1 Nephi] in the language of my father which consists of the learning of the Jews and the language of the Egyptians."  If you can't read that language (presumably reformed Egyptian) then you can't decipher Nephi's little language notice.  If you can, you already know that what you're reading is reformed Egyptian, you probably know as much of its linguistic background as he tells here, and if you don't do you really care?  Seriously, what would be the point of an historian or prophet telling his readers what language it is they're reading and what its rough origins are?  Shouldn't he instead be spending his time actually writing history and or prophesies?

Compare to the Bible.  The Bible was originally written in three different languages.  Most of the Old Testament was written in Hebrew, the language of the Jews.  A few parts of it (in Daniel and Ezra) were written in Aramaic, one of the chief languages of the Babylonian and Persian Empires in which they were written--which eventually became the main language of the region.  The New Testament was written in Greek, which was, at the time supplanting Aramaic as the main language of the area and had become the language of trade throughout the then-known world.  Despite having been written in three different original languages and sometimes having those languages juxtaposed (as in the Aramaic sections of Daniel and Ezra), the authors of the Bible did not feel the need to explain what language they were using and give its background.  There are two mentions of Aramaic near the Aramaic sections, but they don't talk about the language the books are written in, but the language the characters within the books are using.  For example, at the beginning of Daniel's Aramaic section, it says that the King of Babylon's advisers asked him a question in Aramaic (as would be proper of them, since it was the court language, thereby showing their decorum).  In Ezra, it mentions that the king of Persia's decree was written in Aramaic (by then a major language of the empire, and therefore an important detail because it establishes the scope of the decree's audience) and then translated into further languages, which remain unnamed.  At no point does an author start telling the reader that they are presently reading Hebrew, Greek, or Aramaic in that language since such a declaration would be totally pointless.

However, all of this assumes that Nephi was, in fact, the author of the book that bears his name.  If instead Joseph Smith was the author, suddenly, Nephi's remarks on language become meaningful and relevant.  Nephi, of course, has no reason to tell his audience what language he's using--it's their language too and they already know it.  Smith, on the other hand, (if he is the author) writes to early 19th century Americans, telling them stories about the Hebrew ancestors of the American Indians supposedly retrieved from the records of the same.  One question his audience will have (which would never have occurred to Nephi or his readers) is "what language do these people speak?  What is it like?"  Well, Smith could (as he did) describe the writing (supposedly) on the plates and let that suffice.  But if Smith is not so experienced, he may be tempted to throw similar details into his narrative, putting them in Nephi's mouth as a form of bad exposition, popularly called "As you know"--since in it a character takes time to reveal to the audience beyond the fourth wall something that would be perfectly obvious to the other characters that they're (supposedly) actually addressing.  The first verse arguably also contains a moment of As you know, pointlessly recapping Nephi's life and childhood--which would be well known to his descendants, the Nephites, since they were named after him.  So I suppose I should not be surprised, since further bad exposition fits with Smith's style as a writer.

Moving on from the language notice, there's the matter of the language itself.  It's said to be the language of Nephi's father: "which consists of the learning of the Jews and the language of the Egyptians."  Lehi (Nephi's father) is then established to be a Jew who has "dwelt at Jerusalem all his days" (1 Nephi 1:4).  Anyone know what the language of Jerusalem was in 600BC?  Well, what language were all the books of the Bible penned at that time (including Jeremiah, Lamentations, and 1 and 2 Kings) written in?  They were written in Hebrew.  Even this Mormon article (scroll down to "What languages do people speak here?") get's it right.  Based on the writing of the Bible books at the time, the language of Nephi's father was Hebrew.  The city had just been conquered and pillaged by the Aramaic-speaking Babylonian Empire, who installed Zedekiah as the new (and last) king of the tributary state (the Book of Mormon supposedly opens in the first year of Zedekiah's reign, before his fateful rebellion against Babylon), so it's possible Nephi knew Aramaic too.  Since he had lived there all his life, he was probably lived through the brief period when the city paid tribute to Egypt, their sometimes-ally turned conqueror, briefly, so he may have know the Egyptian language as well.  But the only language we can be sure a Jew living all his life in Jerusalem would know would be Hebrew and--it is very probable--he would not have know any other languages at all.  If he did, it's highly unlikely he would have been literate in them, since that would have been far less useful than being able to speak them.  But let's say he did: the language of Nephi's father would still be Hebrew and he would still write in Hebrew, not some weird hybrid of Hebrew and Egyptian--since those languages were distinct and no hybridization of them existed.  If one did and was in use in Jerusalem at the time, archaeologists would have found plenty of evidence of it.  Since Lehi lived his entire life in Jerusalem, we can't even theorize about developments of Hebrew and Egyptian over centuries in the isolation of the Americas--since Nephi, his son, explicitly says he's writing in the language his father used (meaning there are no centuries nor isolation to foster development).  In fact, the only possible interpretation of Nephi's words that makes any sense is that the language of his father refers not to Lehi's native language (Hebrew--which is obviously not an admixture of anything), or some language he knew from living in Jerusalem (where there was no such admixture), or even to some language which developed later in the Americas (since development in isolation takes time) but to a language Lehi made up completely on his own while living in Jerusalem or shortly thereafter.

Why would he invent his own language from two existing languages and then teach his sons to keep records in it?  I invent languages because I'm a fantasy writer and I use them in my stories--but when I want to write something down for use by people I know I use English not some language I made up.  The only plausible reason I can think of for Lehi making up a language and teaching it to his sons was if he was paranoid and used it as some sort of a code to keep everything he wrote secret.  When Lehi and the kids moved to the Americas (as, I gather, happens eventually), they could have been left using dad's old code out of habit, I suppose--but this only makes Nephi even more of a Captain Obvious for taking up a verse telling his readers what language he's using and where it came from in the first place (I have a bad feeling that I'll find more in common with this book and bad pages from TV Tropes.org than the Bible).  They would all have known for their entire lives that this was Dad's wacky old code that he made up from Egyptian and Hebrew!  Further, if we consider Joseph Smith the author, hasn't he been telling everybody around that the plates are written in Reformed Egyptian, which is a strange mix of Hebrew and Egyptian languages?  We suppose that hearers might ask how he knows this, and he could (as he did) simply claim a divine gift of languages that allows him to determine it is so and this will suffice...but since Smith has an established love for pointless exposition he will further make sure to cram a description of the language into Nephi's mouth.

Unfortunately, this is the explanation that makes the most sense.  It also answers the question of why Nephi was (supposedly) writing in a mixture of Hebrew and Egyptian and felt the need to explain that it was so to his readers.  Everyone knew that ancient Jews wrote in Hebrew, but Hebrew was known and decipherable to scholars of 19th century America.  If Smith claimed it was Hebrew he was deciphering, someone could test him by giving him actual Hebrew text with a known meaning.  However Egyptian hieroglyphs had been indecipherable for centuries and was only just becoming understandable to European scholars through study of the Rosetta Stone.  Since no one yet reliably knew what Egyptian writing meant, if Smith claimed to be reading it, no one could challenge him.  If he claimed it was a mixture of the two (Egyptian and Hebrew), he was doubly safe since no one had any idea what that would even look like.  Furthermore, Egyptian was exotic, unknown, and exciting, adding to the appeal of the already reported awesome-but-impractical gold plates--and someone with a con artist upbringing (which we know Smith had) would surely learn to appeal to people's sense of awe and mystery whenever possible.  Hence, he sees fit to remind readers of this mysterious hybrid language that the book was supposedly written in, in an effort to build mystery and intrigue--an effort which ultimately backfires because writing a good book is different from pulling off a good con.

Even after all of this, though, Nephi still has to play Captain Obvious for at least one more verse for the sake of helping Smith establish his credibility and mystery as a narrator.  "And I know that the record which I make is true; and I make it with mine own hand; and I make it according to my knowledge," he says in verse three.  The first two lines are forgivable.  He might well state that he knows the truthfulness of what he's writing.  This is not so different from how some Bible authors have supported their veracity.  He might also clarify that he is writing this himself rather than through a scribe, if scribes are common enough (which remains to be seen).  But that third line?  That's Nephi being Captain Obvious.  Of course he's writing stuff that he knows--he already said he's writing stuff he knows is true!

After that, Nephi finally gets the ball rolling, but even then, he remains Captain Obvious.  He begins relating his father's spiritual experiences in Jerusalem, but is obviously leaving things out, saying things like "he saw and heard much; and because of the things he saw and heard he did quake and tremble exceedingly" (1 Nephi 1:6), "Yea, and many things did my father read concerning Jerusalem" (1 Nephi 1:13), "And it came to pass when my father and read and seen many great and marvelous things" (1 Nephi 1:14), "And after this manner was the language of my father in the praising of his God" (1 Nephi 1:15).  But then, in verse 16, Nephi feels the need to tell us--in case we hadn't caught on--that he's leaving stuff out: that he's not giving a "full account" of everything his father did, said, and wrote (for bonus points, he actually says this twice).  He spends verse seventeen explaining that he's actually abridging his father's work, after which he will talk about his own life (which he says he'll do twice in this verse and once in verse 1, making him fully qualified for a position in the Department of Redundancy Department).  Why he's bothering to abridge his father's records is never explained.  However, once one considers Smith as the author, the reason is obvious: the Lost 116 Pages.  Smith had a previous draft where he'd used Lehi (Nephi's father) as the narrator and he'd lost it (presumably to critics).  Fearing that his critics would expose him as a fraud if he made any changes in rewriting the same passage (or, as the LDS official story goes, if the critics forged any changes while he retranslanted the same passage), he came up with the clever idea of an abridgment (or god conveniently had Nephi abridge things thousands of years ahead of time, even though Nephi never says this is his reason). Smith needed to reproduce the missing pages because that was how his story started, but he didn't want to risk contradicting himself, so he not only abridged but was painfully obvious about it, leaving out many no-doubt-important details so that he could never find himself facing a contradictory copy of the original manuscript.  No one ever did.  It was probably destroyed.

Of course, actual prophets in the Bible faced the problem of missing manuscripts.  Jeremiah wrote a prophesy on a scroll (or more accurately, dictated it to the scribe Baruch, who wrote it on a scroll) and gave it to King Jehoiakim.  Jehoiakim was not a fan of what God had to say and had the thing burned.  In Jeremiah 36:27-32 God has Jeremiah dictate the scroll again to Baruch, and he adds words to it!  That the new scroll was not an exact copy of the old was not a problem for a legitimate prophet.  However, Smith was not acting as a legitimate prophet.  If he'd been prophesying with legitimate power from God, he wouldn't have needed to reproduce his former words exactly.  If he'd been translating with legitimate power from God, he would have been able to reproduce the lost section (that he didn't try is as good as an admission that he couldn't do it).  However, since neither of these were true, Smith was forced to improvise.

It shows.  Nephi's abridgment compares horribly with abridgment in the Bible.  The books of 1 and 2 Chronicles are transparent about the fact that they abridge other records, frequently reminding the reader that if they want to know more about something they can read this other source (2 Chronicles 36:8 for example). Yet the reading is always smooth.  You don't feel like vital parts are being overlooked: you feel like your getting the whole picture, or at least the Cliffnotes version thereof.  Though these frequent reminders let you know that details are being left out, Chronicles doesn't tease you the way Nephi does by starting to get detailed only to grow unexpectedly vague just when something important was about to happen (1 Nephi 1:6, for example, where a vision starts in stunning detail and then we are told simply that Lehi saw and heard lots of things and cut to him going to bed overwhelmed with the enormity of them...which we unfortunately can't share because Smith couldn't remember enough of the details to be confident in rewriting that part).  Comparison between the two serves only to highlight how much of a Captain Obvious and a poor historian Nephi really is (or would be, if he were real and not just an unfortunate character in Smith's hack fiction).