Final Blog Post - Samuel Watson

What Community Means

Communities are crucial to our sociality as humans, but the exact implications of that term have not always been what they are now. Over time, the mediums through which knowledge is passed have changed. Along with modifications in thought processes and knowledge institutions, each new knowledge medium has changed the concept of ‘community’ for those people who were able to use it.

Notes for final Salon

No t e s :

I don't know how to make a table in blogger, and while I'm sure I could learn from someone, I don't see an option for it here. Therefore I'm officially plagiarizing Dr. Burton's table design.

:)

Hopefully this is a good method for arranging the notes.

Here's what I think is the most telling source for each section:

(Under self-directed learning, I'm mostly going to just relate it to posts I've made about what I learned. Anything with a link is to a post we've done, mainly for my own benefit later when discussing them, but feel free to explore the connections).

	Unit 1: Folk Knowledge	Unit 2: Oral Knowledge	Unit 3: Written Knowledge	Unit 4: Print Knowledge
Self-directed learning	Dragons, Light	President Packer's Talk	Proto-Sinaitic	Typography
Others' blogging	Andrew's:Rites of Passage	Marc's: Concrete - Scott's: Universitas	Scott's: Confucious	Alicia's:Changes printing caused
Collaborative learning	Learning Japanese from Andrew(1)*	Classroom discussions, first exam	Learning Japanese from Andrew(2)* Posts on the Book of Mormon(1)(2)	In-class peer review of our final paper^
Projects / Activities	Teaching (Photography)	King Benjamin Speech	Rosetta stone (My group's posts: Jenna's, Mine, Brenda's, Tanner's)	Royal Skousen & KJV Exhibit

* I contend that this relates to both sections.

^ I really learned a lot from reading Alyssa's paper, and she helped me refine my own to a much better degree with her comments. I feel like this was more of a joint learning activity than strictly an exercise in editing.

The self-directed learning posts that I made are those that I feel I learned the most from, and that gave me a larger perspective on that section of the curriculum. Basically, my choices in each section worked that way: I picked the things that I remembered expanding my view and my knowledge the most.

So the question I have to ask now is, How do these all relate?

The most interesting thing that I found was how we were using different types of knowledge to learn about different types of knowledge, and how, by learning about them, it is easier to see large scale historical patterns in how things have changed over time.

Here's some interesting ideas I had about what I might discuss on Tuesday:

*By learning the pros and cons of each type of knowledge and knowledge institution, we are able to more fully recognize possible causes and effects with relation to the state of society.

*All societies have had similar developmental patterns over time with relation to these knowledge types, and those that got them first integrated them more slowly than those which followed. Printing in England, Internet in Asia, TV in USSR.

*Each new form of knowledge at first tries almost exclusively to imitate the one before it.

An y w a y, those are my thoughts so far on possible patterns in our study. I'd love any input you guys have!

Brainstorming my paper - an Odyssey

I decided to basically post my thought process as I'm brainstorming for my paper that's due (By the time you read this) today. I'm going to go through how I come up with ideas, and hopefully it'll stay coherent and not turn into a stream-of-consciousness kind of thing (though that might be fun to write sometime).

So, as you might remember, though if you don't I absolutely do not blame you, cause I personally don't remember half of y'all's topics, my topic is typography, which I defined in this post in case you want a short refresher course :)

Anyway: my contention for my paper will be that typography, at least the types that are used in professional endeavors, have gradually become more functional and less decorative. I think this is a pretty universal change.

In fact, "The Book," which I also mentioned in my bibliography post, contends that this change began long ago: With (funnily enough) the Egyptians! Turns out this actually connects to my culture assignment from earlier in the semester.

Anyway, I looked at the Better Thesis Statements website, and it told me (Well... not in audible words. I learned from it, I mean) that my thesis is a "definition claim", which means that I'm just trying to prove the reality of something. In my case, the change. So, to support it, I just need to show evidence of the change, not argue that it was good or bad.

So, I guess that's about all I have in the way of brainstorming right now! Thanks for bearing with me through this post, and please comment with any suggestions you have for format, etc.

PS: There's a double meaning in the word types that is starting to confuse me as I work on this paper

Just as a rambling linguistic side note, I believe that we say there are different "types" of things because there were originally different "types" in printing. Cool, huh?

Such a little thing...

Subtitled: How I found a book in the library that seems to exactly fit a lot of what we've been learning in this class!

That's right. I was looking for books on typography (see this post for my bibliography on that subject) when I came across this little red book, published in 1932.

It was called "Black on White - the Story of Books".

Just for fun, here it is in bibliography form:

Ilin, M. Black on White - the Story of Books. J. B. Lippincolt Company, Philadelphia and London. 1932.

Cool, innit?

It was very weird reading this book and coming across what basically turned out to be a condensed version of several topics we've already covered - oral traditions, transition to writing, printing, etc. (which is why it was so close to the typography area). I realized that there's always going to be someone else out there with similar ideas to many of our own.

In any case, I didn't get as much time to read the book as I would have liked, but if any of you are at all interested in it, go look it up in the library.

Or maybe it can be downloaded online. You never know - they do weird things with books these days.

In any case, I enjoyed another example of how important "browsing" is to us as readers. Would I have ever, in a million years, thought to look up a book like this via an electronic source?

Well, maybe, cause you'd get bored after a million years of reading, I think. But my point is that it's something that's much more likely to be stumbled upon by accident than actually searched for, unless you know what you're trying to find.

One passage I read that was kinda funny was where the author discussed the transition to newer writing utensils, and how now even these newfangled gadgets were becoming obsolete with the even-more newfangled "typewriter". (He didn't say newfangled, actually. I added that particular word. And the book is a translation in any case... But moving on) My favorite quote from that section?

"I do not doubt that soon every school boy will be carrying a little typewriter in his pocket."

Huh. Well, I laughed at first, but then I took a look at my phone...which has a little keyboard on it.

So... maybe he wasn't as far out there with that prediction as I thought at first!

How the times do change, and the mediums of knowledge change with them.

Bibliography - Typography

At first I considered researching censorship for my bibliography. However, inspired by the presentation that we attended today (and also, I guess, by the fact that Marc had already tackled censorship in his bibliography), I decided to change my topic. Therefore, the books that I looked up were related to...

T Y P O G R A P H Y

(I would put a page break here, but I haven't been able to get it to work on my interface thus far. anyone who knows a way that it works, please say how in the comments. Thanks! :) )

Now, you, fellow bloggers and classmates, probably actually know what typography is, unlike all of my friends who couldn't figure out exactly what it was I was researching in the library for hours on end. But in case you'd like a clarification of the term:

"Typography is the art and usage of different type settings and fonts, (including italics etc.) and is the printing equivalent of handwriting in a manuscript."

-Quoted from personal interview with S. B. Watson, November 29, 2011.

Now that you know what it is, I'll tell you where to find out even more about it. Some of these books are very interesting; others were... well, very technical in nature, and therefore a bit difficult to read through like a novel. But I'd expect that's not really how you'd use them anyway!

I began my search for the topic by going to the library.

(NO! REALLY??) I looked down at the floor map board...thingy, whatever it's called... by the elevator, and discovered that the fifth floor had a section on libraries and printing. That sounded like the closest match to my subject, so up I went.

Going up...

On the fifth floor, I wandered for a time among the mysterious realm of books and shelves. There's something kind of mystical about libraries, I've always thought so. This time, though, I couldn't take the time to browse calmly through the shelves, despite all the annoying, temptingly interesting books that kept calling out "READ US! REEEEEEEAD US!!!"

Come to think of it, that part might have been the Restricted Section...

Sorry, couldn't resist.

Anyway, I eventually found the section on printing! (Right next to Science Fiction, oddly enough) At first, the books I found were only vaguely related to printing... there was one written in German called Konnte Adam schreiben? or, near as I can figure it, Did Adam know how to write? But that had nothing to do with typography.

Thus began my epic quest to locate relevant books. The first one I found, creatively titled The Book, I located just by looking through the shelves and browsing each book individually if it showed any promise.

In the bibliography of The Book, I found two more sources! - One a book, (Type designs - their history and development) and one an article in a periodical.

Now all I had to do was hope that the library carried them both. Amazingly enough, it did! We have EVERYTHING here, I swear. But, unfortunately, I couldn't find the periodical. I think it might have been moved to special collections. All was not lost, however, for I found the next edition of the same periodical (The Dolphin) in the "Oversized Books" sections (after getting help from the reference desk on locating it), and it had a very similar article, which actually ended up being more relevant to my topic anyway (On Recognizing the Type Faces)

So, by having an imperfect way of finding the location of what I needed, I ended up with a better source! Odd, isn't it? Perhaps it has to do with what we discussed today in class about browsing, and how physically handling and searching a book can let you get a better idea of its contents.

I had found three relevant books so far, but I knew I needed more. When I'd used the computer system in the library to find the Type designs book, a helpful library employee showed me how, on the opposite side of the shelves from where I'd been looking, there was actually and extensive typography section. I was amazed that there were so many books on this subject!

It was there, on those four or five shelves, that I physically found the rest of my sources, this time without even using the internet catalog of the library (However, I have since located the rest of them there to create links on this post). Since most of the books in the section were about modern typefaces or designing them, I focused on those in the smaller group that discussed historical typewriting in more detail.

So there you have it, my Grand Journey of Discovery. And below, the results of my work:

Bibliography:

Bennett, Paul A. On recognizing the Type Faces. The Limited Editions Club, New York. 1935.

Bennett mentions in his article that "That type is best suited for its purpose when the words it spells may be read without consciousness of the design of the letters," or, in other words, "Good types never intrude." His point here in the article is that a typeface should not be distracting in any way, that it is meant to convey information. This reminded me of the statement by Jean inThe Book about the importance of balancing beauty with function.

Goudy, Frederic W. Typologia - Studies in type design and typemaking, with comments on the invention of typography, the first types, legibility and fine printing. University of California Press. 1940.

Much of this book was a description of the process of making and using type, and its evolution through time. However, there is a chapter called "The First Types" that was focused more on what I had in mind to research. Here he gave an overview of the usage of typefaces in the years following the invention of the printing press.

Jean, Georges. Writing - the Story of Alphabets and Scripts. N. Abrams, inc., New York. 1992.

This book was valuable for its discussion of how early printers tried to imitate handwriting, both in the style of the books and in the typefaces. He goes on to describe how that changed in the 18th Century, when many more people began to read for the information contained in the books, caring less about the pictures and fancy styles of type and lettering.

Johnson, Alfred Forbes. Type Designs - their History and Development. Grafton and Co., London. 1934.

This author wrote an in depth time-line of the changes in type, going into details about the shift from Gothic styles to Roman, from Roman to the more modern Roman type that we know in older books and papers (think of style of the words on the Declaration of Independence, but still with holdovers from the older, more decorated types), and then to various other forms, such as Italics, which he devotes much space to. His final chapter is also interesting - it shows what types were used in early advertisements.

Lane, John A. Early Type Specimens in the Plantin-Moretus Museum. Oak Knoll Press. 2004.

This book was very much a catalog of the museum's type-related specimens. It was a long list of the artifacts, divided by their land of origin, with very detailed technical explanations and descriptions of each type, who created it, what it was written on, what distinguished it from others, and which types it was most similar to. It was interesting to see some of the 'hubs' of where types occurred, as listed in the locations.

McMortrie, Douglas C. The Book - the Story of Printing and Bookmaking. Oxford University Press. 1967.

The author was right to call this one "the book." It's pretty big. Anyway, this book was the first one I found that's listed here. The author gives a general history of book making, from the origin of the alphabet to the time when printing spread in America. He describes in great care his favorite typeface (made by William Caslon), claiming that no other has ever surpassed it. My favorite of his points were his words on the conflict between legibility and beauty in writing - if it's purely legible, it is monotonous and detracts from its message. If it is purely decorative, it detracts even more from the message, for it's very difficult to read. He says of types made only for beauty that they are: "a type of great charm in individual letter forms but tiring in mass." He also adds a discussion of Germany's movement towards using the Roman characters instead of tradition German typeface.

And to top off this (I think) very succesful and informative research trip, I found two books in the conveniently nearby science-fiction section that looked fun too. So now I have something new to read at home!

Anyway, thanks for your time, and have fun with your own topics!

Good night, and good luck.

My post for today is...

So, I'm glad that it's my day to put up a post :) I'm going to let my bibliography post count for this one as well, just for time's sake. But never fear, I have an interesting topic which I'll make a separate post about tomorrow.

See you all in class! Good luck researching!

"In Principio..."

My exploration of the King James Bible Exhibit

Field trip!

'The Translators Presenting the Bible To James I', drawn by George E Kruger. Photograph: Hulton Archive/Getty Images

I had already visited this exhibit once before, on the day our class attended the presentation in the Library next to Special Collections, but when I decided to use it for this field trip post, I realized it would be really helpful if I went back to review the information again.

The timing worked out well, what with our discussion in class today about several very relevant topics.

I could just list all the information I learned for you in an encyclopedia form, but that wouldn't be very interesting. And not incredibly helpful either, since you're not likely to remember much of it as soon as you click away from this post.

So, as a frame on which to hang all the knowledge I will present to you, I present the evolution of the King James Bible and its sources - in picture format:

Source

Some of these versions were mentioned in the exhibit, and some were not. The major Bible used before Wyclife's was the Vulgate, since it was the only Bible with in mainstream use...anywhere. It was translated from the original ancient manuscripts only a few decades after Rome legalized Christianity. St. Jerome is recorded as spending 23 years translating it into Latin.

However, as we all know, Latin really wasn't used as a vulgar (commonly spoken) language anymore after a while. It faded into French, Italian, Spanish, and other languages, but no one except the Catholic hierarchy and other learned men could actually speak the original Latin that the Vulgate was written in. It was unavailable to the populus at large.

This was a problem for Wycliffe, over in England, who had come to believe that the Church should not have unbounded temporal power over the State and the King. Therefore, he began his own translation, the first in English, published in manuscript (handwritten) form.

English Bibles had a convoluted path to take to get to where we have them today. One thing that I thought was especially interesting was how many times when there was a major change in political power, the new leader or the emergent group would want their own translation of the Bible; either they would commission a new translation, or they would "adopt" one that already existed.

I think that this was largely because of the need to establish a controlled cannon over scripture - one separate from or in concordance with whichever power was in control of the land at the time. The exhibit discussed how Henry VIII needed a Bible that would reflect his newly seized control over Christianity in England, mainly to give him the legitimacy that he needed in his new Church of England. In later years, the Geneva Bible became the preferred Bible of the commoners, because commentary had been added in the margins (much like some of our additions to the KJV today) that made it simpler for less learned people to understand it.

I also learned to appreciate the Bible I have now a lot more. It is truly a miracle that we have it today, in a language we can read, and even more importantly, that Joseph Smith's family was able to have a copy that he could read as a young boy. The reforms of years past, each striving for a better knowledge of the truth, for a restoration of knowledge into a language medium that would allow more and more people to read it, eventually paved the way for THE Restoration of the Truth of the Gospel.

Of course, not everyone was happy with the spread of the Word to the common people. It caused questioning of the authority of Catholicism, to which they often responded...harshly.

Related to that, I found a very interesting film scene or Martin Luther's life, taken from the same movie that Dr. Burton showed us a part of today in class.

His actual recorded words are very close to what was portrayed in this clip:

"Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures or by clear reason (for I do not trust either in the pope or in councils alone, since it is well known that they have often erred and contradicted themselves), I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and will not recant anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience. May God help me. Amen."

(Source - Brecht, Martin. Martin Luther. tr. James L. Schaaf, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985–93, 1:204–205.)

Afterwards, Martin Luther was declared an outlaw and "a notorious heretic." The Church made it illegal for anyone in Germany to give him food or shelter, and made it legal for anyone to kill him on sight.

(Source - Bratcher, Dennis. "The Diet of Worms (1521)," in The Voice: Biblical and Theological Resources for Growing Christians. Retrieved 13 July 2007)

So I'm very grateful for the courage of those who faced and sometimes suffered death and deprivation for the sake of Scripture, in which they so fully believed, making it possible for us now to truly believe as well.

"Anti-quity" does not mean you're 'against quitting.'

Isn't this exciting? Another day filled with fun and adventure!

And hieroglyphics, if you're me, Jenna, or the rest of our culture group.

Our group was the African cultures. Since the Bushmen don't have a written language, and no one can read the one for Tanner's culture, we decided to work in Egyptian hieroglyphics.

This was kind of a fun assignment. Those in my group may not have picked this up about me, but I love languages. I think translating things is oddly enjoyable. People might think I'm weird for that, like they do when I tell them I think chocolate covered pretzels taste good dipped in salsa, but I really do enjoy trying to convey the idea of an original text into a new language.

I also like making quasi-ancient artifacts. So this was really, as our friends across the pond might say, my cup of tea.

Here's my group's original clay tablet.

(It's on its side.)

We couldn't find any papyrus, like Jenna told you all in class, and the clay here wasn't good enough, so we had to fly to Egypt and discover a tomb to raid for an actual tablet. Just kidding. Obviously.

But really, we did use clay, which we carved with our chosen phrase, and then we fired it and Brenda was kind enough to paint it and make it look really cool. I only have pictures of it before the paint, but it's still quite nice, I think.

Then we got our tablet to translate. This is what the other group wrote:

Their tablet was also made of clay, though theirs wasn't fired, as you might be able to tell. Their culture was the Greeks, for which I was grateful, since that's a fairly straightforward alphabet to transliterate into the Roman characters that we use in English.

Here's a rough approximation of the Greek writing:

Andra moi ennepe mousa polytropon hos malapolla

One possible translation in English was:

"Tell me muse, of the man of many ways, who..."

However, they left off the last word, "planchthe," which would have made the thought more complete, since what they actually wrote was actually the first line of the Odyssey, and not the first whole sentence.

With 'planchthe' added in, it reads along the lines of:

"Tell me, Muse, of the man of many ways who wandered much."

See my link above for a slightly different interpretation.

I think that this is a funny example of how things are 'lost in translation', or even transcription from one media to another.

In any case, to make the thought they had carved for us more complete, we added in the last word when we put it on our Rosetta Tablet, shown below with the translation into English and Hieroglyphics:

The hieroglyphics were even more interesting to work with this time, since we were using words written by an entirely separate culture and civilization - however, the great thing is that there is actually an Egyptian word for 'muse,' or Hathor, and hence a hieroglyphic.

Literally, our Egyptian translation reads:

"Say/speak, Hathor, (of the) Man (of) many roads (and) large travel."

I think we were able to capture the basic thought pretty well, despite the difficulties of using Egyptian. However, "of many ways" in the original probably had a connotation closer to 'resourceful' or 'skilled in many things' (see here for an alternate translation like these ones). Again, translation will never be quite as good as the real thing, in my opinion (unless it's by the power of God as per the Book of Mormon). I remember reading a book by a German author which had been translated into English, and feeling like the whole thing was oddly... off in how it was written. Not wrong, but it was strangely apparent that it had not been written in the language I was reading it in. Another reason learning many languages would be beneficial to us as learners.

Interestingly, and bringing in our past discussions from class, we were mostly limited to written sources of knowledge in our translation. The internet, obviously, cannot translate words into hieroglyphics very easily, except with the phonetic kind, and even then only to a limited extent. So we had to look through books of hieroglyphics, which were organized not by meaning, but by structure or symbolism, to try to find the right glyphs. And it felt great coming up with the closest ones we could find to the original meaning.

Just for fun, here's a paper from my notebook that shows me trying to work out how to write all the hieroglyphs in rough form:

So you see, there's a lot of work that we put into getting it right before we ever carved it into the clay! I think we've gotten accustomed to disposable media - typing, you can go back and fix things when you mess up, as I've already done SIX TIMES in this one sentence. Eight times now. With rock or clay or even just old fashioned papyrus, mistakes were significantly harder to cover up.

It makes me wonder how the prophets of the Nephites felt about writing on the plates. As one of my seminary teachers said once, it wasn't as though they had a little "liquid gold" vial to pour into the carvings if they made a mistake.

But perhaps that's a topic to delve more deeply into when we have more time.

Until then,

See you in class!

Atra du evarínya ono varda.

“All truth is worth knowing. Some truths are more useful, but there are truths that are most worth knowing.” - President Boyd K. Packer, November 6, 2011

Isn't the internet helpful? Not only are summaries of President Packer's talk available in several places already, but there are pictures of the actual event.

But that's not really a subject from this semester of our class.

What I really wanted to talk about was something rather interesting that President Packer said, something that later reminded me of our discussions here about oral and written knowledge. Near the beginning of his talk, he asked us to 'listen' rather than 'take notes'.

He said if all we took away from his talk was what was said, we had entirely missed the point.

The gospel, and more particularly the Holy Ghost, brings an important new aspect to the idea of this comparison of knowledge mediums.

"When a man speaketh by the power of the Holy Ghost the power of the Holy Ghost carrieth it unto the hearts of the children of men." - 2 Nephi 33:1

We know from several sources that the scriptures we have written down are a primary source of personal revelation (Wherefore, I said unto you, feast upon the words of Christ; for behold, the words of Christ will tell you all things what ye should do” (2 Ne. 32:3, emphasis added)). We also know that the words of the modern prophets can, through the spirit touch each of us personally, especially in General Conference, where we are often promised that we can receive through revelation a spiritual message for our circumstance:

"If we teach by the Spirit and you listen by the Spirit, some one of us will touch on your circumstance, sending a personal prophetic epistle just to you." - Jeffrey R. Holland, April 2011 General Conference.

I know that both of these methods are viable and true, since I have received inspiration or revelation through both ways.

So my question at first was why President Packer asked us to listen more than to record, and I think that this has answered it for me - if we merely "parrot" all that he says onto the paper, it might be more of an in-one-ear-and-out-the-other situation. I know that sometimes taking notes during a lecture or a talk or whatever can actually be detrimental to our overall comprehension.

Here's another point: I believe that he wanted us to listen more to the Spirit's voice than to him. That's a sign of a true servant of the Lord, in my opinion. All missionaries learn that it's really not them that converts people to a knowledge of the truth:

"If ye receive not the Spirit ye shall not teach." - D&C 42:14

The Lord knows all things, including which way is best to teach His children. He makes use of both orality and literacy to bring us the knowledge of His gospel, since each has its own separate applications. I think it's very interesting to note, as I mentioned in this post, that the Lamanites lost their written language for a time, and therefore declined as a society - and in their religious beliefs as well, of course. The Lord knew well beforehand that this would happen without a way to preserve EXACTLY certain truths. Oral knowledge, while incredibly applicable to the here and now, can be ephemeral when it is transmitted through the generations.

(In fact, look what some scholars believe happened to the story of Jesus's visit to the Americas, which, while recorded, was lost except in orality to those who became wicked and lost their records. The story changed quite a bit over time: http://www.crystalinks.com/quetzalcoatl.html)

This also relates to what I thought after reading Marc's post about the First Vision. If we'd only had an oral version of that critical event, it might have been altered slightly despite our best efforts.

Therefore, while the Lord knows how critical it is to have written knowledge of the gospel, the orally transmitted knowledge of His modern prophets is also necessary to the functioning of the Church.

And beyond this, a kind of knowledge that we can't really quantify as easily - spiritual knowledge, the kind communicated directly to us by the Holy Ghost. That's the most important of all, and can be facilitated not only by our faith but also by our study of what has been written or what is being spoken to us now. It allows us to know SPECIFICALLY what we need to know for ourselves.

Isn't the gospel great? :)

Schools of writing

Welcome, fellow members of the Carpe Diem group, to the first of November, 2011; or, as I like to refer to it, 11-1-11.

:)

Now, moving on to the actual content of my post.

____________________________________________________________________

I did a bit of research on schools in Ancient Egypt - you might remember me mentioning something about it in an earlier post. This time I went into a bit more detail.

Relative to our discussion of the idea of restricted or hidden knowledge, schooling in Egypt was very much dependent on wealth.

According to this site (which I used to find much of the information that follows), they would only be taught the subjects that were required for their future careers, instead of the more scholastic spread of subjects that we typically receive schooling in today. Therefore, another limiting factor in the schooling one recieved was their future occupation - decided by their father before they began school

Here's something I definitely didn't know before - 'scribe' refers not only to the person who wrote, but to a specific set of instrumentation used for writing.

Here's a picture of a scribe that would have been used in Egyptian schools:

The scribe consisted of three parts - a brush, a small container of water, and a container with a small amount of red and black inks. The same site I cited above describes it as being similar to waterpaints we use today.

But they didn't paint on papyrus in the schools, and they didn't carve into rocks (Obviously. Brushes aren't great chisels). Since papyrus was so labor intensive to make the students practiced on white limestone tablets.

See here for an example of papyrus making- really, it takes some serious time and effort to make papyrus, even with modern tools to assist you.

Like I also mentioned in that other post, Egyptian teachers were very strict. From that same site:

"The school master had total control over the pupils. The students were expected to work as hard as they could,and were often beaten on their backs with a rod for talking, being sleepy, slow or lazy."

Sheesh. I'd be dead by now if we got beaten for being sleepy in my schools.

This further reduced the number of students who were able to learn writing due to potential drop-outs (again, my previous post), which meant the knowledge of writing was restricted even further.

I saw an odd correlation with something that was mentioned in my Book of Mormon class, of all places. King Benjamin says that Lehi was able to read the brass plates because "he [had] been taught in the language of the Egyptians (Mosiah 1:4)". I had never realized that the brass plates as well as the golden were written in Egyptian characters - this changed a lot of my perspective on them, somehow. Moroni says that Egyptian allowed them to write more in limited space than Hebrew would have, and indicates that he would have felt much more comfortable writing in Hebrew (Mormon 9:33). That explains to me why Egyptian was used for both records, but it also brings up the question of how the general population was able to use scriptures recorded in that form?

Mosiah 1:2 suggests that Benjamin taught his sons Egyptian as well (the "language of his fathers", contrast with 1 Nephi 1:2) and seems to imply that this was not a universal teaching. In fact, we suggested in our book of Mormon class that very few were able to read or write this language - perhaps only those of prophetic or royal descent, until the time of the reign of the judges. Certainly the common people would have been happier with Hebrew, which had many fewer characters (and simpler ones) than heiroglyphic Egyptian. But does that mean they knew less about the scriptures?

I'm curious what ya'll think about that question, but my opinion is that they had adequate access through less permanent mediums, such as papyrus or parchment, on which there was enough room to use Hebrew. In fact, I'm almost certain this is true, since it makes little sense that writing would allow the Lamanites to increase in productivity as a nation unless it was in a fairly commonplace form such as parchment. Stones are great, but not as easy to use.

So how does this relate to us? I think it shows how important it is to be able to learn from as many sources as we can. No doubt those who were schooled in Egyptian had more direct access to some records in the Nephites' times. So I think the lesson is to always try to learn for yourself, like we're being taught to do in this class. That way you can get as much out of things as possible, without blindly trusting instructors or authorities.

The Book of Mormon and Writing

So, though it's not my day to blog, I attended part of the Sidney B. Sperry Symposium last night, and learned some interesting things I wanted to share here.

The symposium was based on speaking about "approaches to Lehi's Dream and Nephi's vision" of the Tree of Life.

Normally, I wouldn't have expected to find much related to written knowledge in an entirely oral symposium. However, the second speaker I listened to, Matthew L. Bowen, pointed out some very interesting things about the Book of Mormon that led me in the right direction.

The Book of Mormon, itself so key to our understanding of the gospel, shows within its pages why written knowledge is so important to a nation. As early as 1 Nephi 4:13, the Spirit implies to Nephi that his people will "dwindle and perish in unbelief" without the brass plates, their scriptural record.

(Okay, so that picture had nothing really to do with it. But it's funny. I'm fairly certain that the brass plates were not hidden in a maze, however...)

This insistence on retaining a scriptural record, even to the point where Nephi is commanded by the Spirit to kill Laban in order to obtain it, shows how vital writing is to the maintenance of the gospel's truths. Indeed, once the Lamanites split from the Nephites, they did "dwindle in unbelief", largely because of Laman and Lemuel's rebellion, of course, but also due to their lack of any sacred records. In fact, they didn't even know HOW to write anymore after a few generations of "idleness."

The people of Mulek had the same problem - they didn't bring any records at all, and by the time the Nephites found them, their language had been "corrupted" and they had lost their knowledge of the ways of the gospel, even to the point of "deny[ing] the being of their Creator", which to me sounds like having either no religion at all or a kind of spiritualism like some more tribal societies (Omni 1:17).

Not only is writing crucial to religion, but the Book of Mormon also shows that it is central to the very civilization of a society. The Lamanites, having lost their writing, were for years a people who were "full of idleness" (1 Nephi 12:23). However, once Amulon and the wicked priests (my roommate says that sounds like a rock band, btw) had integrated themselves among the Lamanites, they "taught them that they should keep their record, and that they might write one to another". This teaching was a very useful thing to their civilization, despite the utter wickedness of the source, and the Lamanites began to "increase in riches", and "to trade one with another and wax great," and they became "a wise people, as to the wisdom of the world,"(Mosiah 24:4-7).

This to me shows how important writing is to a people. In fact, it seems to be only after they learn to write that the Lamanites are able to advance as a society and begin to have their own culture and learning.

So how does this apply to us today? I believe it's a reminder not to take for granted the incredible wealth of written and recorded knowledge that we have, because it may be all that keeps us in the faith in the long term. How many new Christian churches have been started in the past two hundred years? Probably too many to count. How many Christian Churches have been restored with written proof of their validity, translated by the power of God through His Prophet on the Earth today?

Just one. The true Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

That, I think, should tell us more than anything else about the power of the written word, and especially the written Word. God will not send us into the world without guidance. We have the teachings of the prophets always with us. The Book of Mormon is proof that God does love His children, and that He will help us in the way that's best for our needs, whether we realize it or not. He did not restore His Church through the mighty speech of a great orator; that would have gained a swift following, perhaps, but the significance and impact would fade as time went on. He restored His Church instead through the humility of a young man who had enough faith to do whatever the Lord asked of him, and was therefore able to bring us many more of the written Words of God, so that the gospel would never again be lost from the Earth.

To finish up, here's an irony for you: After Alma the Younger's miraculous angelic visitation, he and his friends, the sons of Mosiah, became very valiant missionaries. Ammon in particular was an incredible influence for good because of his steady faith and sure example. And how did he teach the Lamanites of Lamoni's kingdom?

"He laid before him the records and the holy scriptures of the people." (Alma 18:36)

And who taught the Lamanites to read and write, so that they could remember these things once they were taught them, which they accomplished even to the point that those who believed "never did fall away?" (Alma 23:6)

That was Amulon, an incredibly evil man who consistently persecuted all the believers under his power.

Romans 8:28:

28 And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.