THE BOOK OF MORMON COMIC BOOK - PART 1 THE STORY OF LEHI (1 NEPHI 1: 1-20))

His Reign and Ministry

An account of Lehi and his wife Sariah, and his four sons, being called, (beginning at the eldest) Laman, Lemuel, Sam, and Nephi. The Lord warns Lehi to depart out of the land of Jerusalem, because he prophesieth unto the people concerning their iniquity and they seek to destroy his life. He taketh three days’ journey into the wilderness with his family. Nephi taketh his brethren and returneth to the land of Jerusalem after the record of the Jews. The account of their sufferings. They take the daughters of Ishmael to wife. They take their families and depart into the wilderness. Their sufferings and afflictions in the wilderness. The course of their travels. They come to the large waters. Nephi’s brethren rebel against him. He confoundeth them, and buildeth a ship. They call the name of the place Bountiful. They cross the large waters into the promised land, and so forth. This is according to the account of Nephi; or in other words, I, Nephi, wrote this record.

 

 

Chapter 1

Nephi begins the record of his people—Lehi sees in vision a pillar of fire and reads from a book of prophecy—He praises God, foretells the coming of the Messiah, and prophesies the destruction of Jerusalem—He is persecuted by the Jews. About 600 B.C.

 1 I, Nephi, having been ^aborn of ^bgoodly ^cparents, therefore I was ^dtaught somewhat in all the learning of my father; and having seen many ^eafflictions in the course of my days, nevertheless, having been highly favored of the Lord in all my days; yea, having had a great knowledge of the goodness and the mysteries of God, therefore I make a ^frecord of my proceedings in my days.

 2 Yea, I make a record in the ^alanguage of my father, which consists of the learning of the Jews and the language of the Egyptians.

 3 And I know that the record which I make is ^atrue; and I make it with mine own hand; and I make it according to my knowledge.

 4 For it came to pass in the commencement of the ^afirst year of the reign of ^bZedekiah, king of Judah, (my father, Lehi, having dwelt at ^cJerusalem in all his days); and in that same year there came many ^dprophets, prophesying unto the people that they must ^erepent, or the great city ^fJerusalem must be destroyed.

 5 Wherefore it came to pass that my father, Lehi, as he went forth prayed unto the Lord, yea, even with all his ^aheart, in behalf of his people.

 6 And it came to pass as he prayed unto the Lord, there came a ^apillar of fire and dwelt upon a rock before him; and he saw and heard much; and because of the things which he saw and heard he did ^bquake and tremble exceedingly.

 7 And it came to pass that he returned to his own house at Jerusalem; and he cast himself upon his bed, being ^aovercome with the Spirit and the things which he had seen.

 8 And being thus overcome with the Spirit, he was carried away in a ^avision, even that he saw the ^bheavens open, and he thought he ^csaw God sitting upon his throne, surrounded with numberless concourses of angels in the attitude of singing and praising their God.

 9 And it came to pass that he saw One descending out of the midst of heaven, and he beheld that his ^aluster was above that of the sun at noon-day.

 10 And he also saw ^atwelve others following him, and their brightness did exceed that of the stars in the firmament.

 11 And they came down and went forth upon the face of the earth; and the first came and ^astood before my father, and gave unto him a ^bbook, and bade him that he should read.

 12 And it came to pass that as he read, he was filled with the ^aSpirit of the Lord.

 13 And he read, saying: Wo, wo, unto Jerusalem, for I have seen thine ^aabominations! Yea, and many things did my father read concerning ^bJerusalem—that it should be destroyed, and the inhabitants thereof; many should perish by the sword, and many should be ^ccarried away captive into Babylon.

 14 And it came to pass that when my father had read and seen many great and marvelous things, he did exclaim many things unto the Lord; such as: Great and marvelous are thy works, O Lord God Almighty! Thy throne is high in the heavens, and thy ^apower, and goodness, and mercy are over all the inhabitants of the earth; and, because thou art merciful, thou wilt not suffer those who ^bcome unto thee that they shall perish!

 15 And after this manner was the language of my father in the praising of his God; for his soul did rejoice, and his whole heart was filled, because of the things which he had seen, yea, which the Lord had shown unto him.

 16 And now I, Nephi, do not make a full account of the things which my father hath written, for he hath written many things which he saw in ^avisions and in ^bdreams; and he also hath written many things which he ^cprophesied and spake unto his children, of which I shall not make a full account.

 17 But I shall make an account of my proceedings in my days. Behold, I make an ^aabridgment of the record of my ^bfather, upon ^cplates which I have made with mine own hands; wherefore, after I have abridged the record of my ^dfather then will I make an account of mine own life.

 18 Therefore, I would that ye should know, that after the Lord had shown so many marvelous things unto my father, Lehi, yea, concerning the ^adestruction of Jerusalem, behold he went forth among the people, and began to ^bprophesy and to declare unto them concerning the things which he had both seen and heard.

 19 And it came to pass that the ^aJews did ^bmock him because of the things which he testified of them; for he truly testified of their ^cwickedness and their abominations; and he testified that the things which he saw and heard, and also the things which he read in the book, manifested plainly of the coming of a ^dMessiah, and also the redemption of the world.

 20 And when the Jews heard these things they were angry with him; yea, even as with the prophets of old, whom they had ^acast out, and stoned, and slain; and they also ^bsought his life, that they might take it away. But behold, I, Nephi, will show unto you that the tender ^cmercies of the Lord are over all those whom he hath chosen, because of their faith, to make them mighty even unto the power of ^ddeliverance.

FIRST NEPHI 1 & THE LANGUAGE OF THE EGYPTIANS

First Nephi 1 and the Language of the Egyptians

The Book of Mormon, according to some critics, is little more than a dull regurgitation of Bible verses. Plagiarism from the Bible and other sources in Joseph's environment is offered as the source for the text. It's interesting though, how little of the text can be "explained" from such a process, and how many of the attacks against the Book of Mormon are based on claiming that the Book of Mormon departs from Bible facts and theology. The opening verses of the Book of Mormon provide an example of this. Nephi's reference to having been schooled in the "language of the Egyptians" shocks some of our critics, who claim that no self-respecting Jew would have anything to do with Egyptian language. The argument continues when we read the Book of Mormon plates were actually written in "reformed Egyptian" (Mormon 9:32-34), which again violates the deep-seated antipathy for all things Egyptian that the ancient Jews are alleged to have had, and also violates common sense and scholarship since there is not and never was any such thing as "reformed Egyptian."

These arguments are typified in the anti-Mormon book, Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Mormonism by "Dr." John Ankerberg and "Dr. Dr." John Weldon (neither one of which appears to have a legitimate Ph.D.):

"Mormonism has never explained how godly Jews [sic] of A.D. 400 allegedly knew Egyptian, nor why they would have written their sacred records entirely in the language of their pagan, idolatrous enemies" (p. 284). "How likely is it that the allegedly Jewish [sic] Nephites would have used the Egyptian language to write their sacred scriptures? Their strong antipathy to the Egyptians and their culture makes this difficult to accept. When modern Jews copy their scripture, they use Hebrew. They do not use Egyptian or Arabic, the language of their historic enemies" (pp. 294-95). "[N]o such language [as reformed Egyptian] exists and Egyptologists declare this unequivocally" (p. 294).

Today we know that there was a lot of healthy exchange between ancient Jews and Egypt. Jewish communities existed in Egypt, even a Jewish temple was built, and Jewish people in Egypt in Thebes about 2000 years ago may have even been part of the unfolding Book of Abraham story.

As for the common charges against "reformed Egyptian" in the passage cited above, Ankerberg and Weldon are wrong on several counts--grossly wrong, as shown by Daniel C. Peterson in a noteworthy book review in Review of Books on the Book of Mormon, Vol. 5, 1993, pp. 43-45 (available online). Several modified or "reformed" Egyptian scripts are well known, including forms called Demotic and Hieratic. "Reformed Egyptian" is clearly an appropriate generic term for those writing systems. However, the "Reformed Egyptian" used by the Nephites is described as a language system unique to them (Mormon 9:32-34), having evolved with their culture over a 1,000-year period. It was apparently used for sacred writings, and should have been almost wholly lost with the destruction of Nephite civilization. How can we expect Egyptologists, with typically no training in Central American matters, to know whether such a language ever existed there? Daniel Paterson gives further analysis (Peterson, pp. 44-45):

[W]ho says that the Nephites wrote in Egyptian? That is certainly one possibility, but several scholars (e.g., Sidney Sperry, John Sorenson, and John Tvedtnes) suggest, rather, that the language of the Nephites was Hebrew, written in Egyptian characters. The practice of representing one language in a script commonly associated with another language is very common. Yiddish, for instance, which is basically a form of German, is routinely written in Hebrew characters. Swahili can be written in either Roman or Arabic scripts. Judeo-Arabic, as written for instance by Moses Maimonides, was medieval Hebrew written with Arabic letters. In fact, almost any textbook of colloquial Arabic or Chinese or Japanese aimed at Western learners will use the Latin alphabet to represent those languages. Language and script are essentially independent. Turkish, which used to be written in a modified Arabic script, has been written in Latin letters in the Republic of Turkey since the 1920s. However, in the areas of the old Soviet Union, it is now usually written in Cyrillic (Russian) characters. Likewise, perhaps the major difference between Hindi and Urdu may be the mere fact that the former uses a Devanagari writing system, while the latter uses a modified Arabo-Persian script. So this phenomenon of changing the script with which one writes a language is by no means unusual.

But we need not speak only in theoretical terms. We have, in fact, an ancient illustration that comes remarkably close to the Book of Mormon itself. Papyrus Amherst 63, a text from the second century B.C., seems to offer something very much like "reformed Egyptian." It is a papyrus scroll that contains Aramaic texts written in a demotic Egyptian script. (Aramaic is a language closely related to Hebrew. of the Old Testament book of Daniel is written in Aramaic, and it was the spoken language of Jesus and his apostles. Incidentally, however, a Christian form of the language, Syriac, came to use an alphabet related to Arabic--again illustrating the independence of script and tongue.) Interestingly, one of the items found on Papyrus Amherst 63 is a version of Psalm 20:2-6. Ankerberg and Weldon wonder why "godly Jews [sic] . . . would have written their sacred records entirely in the language of their pagan, idolatrous enemies." Perhaps they should ask them some day, for godly Jews most certainly did (see "Language and Script in the Book of Mormon," Insights: An Ancient Window, March 1992, p. 2).

By the way, Peterson gives a footnote on Ankerberg's claim about Jews exclusively using Hebrew:

The statement "When modern Jews copy their scripture, they use Hebrew. They do not use Egyptian or Arabic, the language of their historic enemies" is quite an astonishing display of ignorance. Since the Egyptian language has been dead for centuries, it is hardly remarkable that modern Jews do not read the Bible in Egyptian. On the other hand, "the first and most important rendering [of the Old Testament] from Hebrew [into Arabic] was made by Sa'adya the Ga'on, a learned Jew who was head of the rabbinic school at Sura in Babylon (died 942)" (George A. Buttrick, ed., The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible [hereafter IDB], 4 vols. and supplement [Nashville: Abingdon, 1962-1976], 4:758b). Thus, Jews have indeed translated the Bible into "Arabic, the language of their historic enemies." They also have translated it into the language of their "historic enemies" the Greeks (IDB 4:750b on the Septuagint) and Aramaeans (IDB 1:185-93; 4:749-50, on the Aramaic Targums).

More information and relevant examples are given in the article, "Jewish and Other Semitic Texts Written in Egyptian Characters" by John A. Tvedtnes and Stephen D. Ricks, Journal of Book of Mormon Studies, Vol. 5, No. 2, 1996, and also the excellent FARMS article "Reformed Egyptian" by William Hamblin. And for fun, be sure to see the site, Ancient Scripts--a marvelous collection of information on scripts of the ancient world.