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I have read this article a few times and often thought of it. It is rare to find a source that conjoins so much useful information. I must say that I often mix your papers on scribes up as there are so many of them. This is the exact sort of information we need to understand the Book of Mormon. I would love to know more of your thoughts on Nephi’s profession and scribal culture in general.
You wrote that it makes perfect sense for scribes to make their own materials. “The skill required to manufacture and engrave metal plates or other writing materials could only be learned in a scribal school and its workshop.” Thus, Nephi learned metal smithing. A problem with that is that steel is too durable to write on…
Nephi’s question to God isn’t “how do I make tools” but “where do I go for ore?” It seems Nephi learned how to make steel in Jerusalem. This seems to be a perishable skill as the metal isn’t listed in lists of metals after the Book of Jarom.
I don’t have a problem with scribes learning about steel. It follows that one would seek steel workers from people who are already skilled in metal production.
However, then again, I have to ask if being a “scribe” is more akin to being a college graduate. We call them “scribes” but perhaps the connotation in the day didn’t imply they wrote a lot. As you mention scribal schools taught “geography, arithmetic, and geometry” Also, you mention “scribes” tended to have another (primary) vocation. Is it more appropriate to think of “scribes” as modern “college graduates.” Today I hear “scribe” and I think “writer”. I would never assume the same upon hearing the term “college grad.”
More on steel: one of the best sources I have found to understand steel in Nephi’s day is “Early Evidence for Steelmaking in the Judaic Sources” by Dan Levene. He discusses there is no Hebrew word that we know of for steel. Rather, references of steel include: ‘iron from the north’, ‘worked iron’ and ‘iron that breaks iron.’ The former two references are talking about Judah’s northern trading partners. The latter is talking about Babylonian weapons. So it doesn’t seem the Judean culture of the time has a uniform way or referring to steel, additionally they don’t seem to have a word for steel. Of course, there may have been a word for steel in specific groups. The former references are directed at the general population. Perhaps the general population is aware of it but not overly familiar.
But Nephi is not only familiar with steel, he knows how to make steel. It does not appear this knowledge is wide-spread in his day. Also, consider when Nephi talks about the gold and silver and precious things brought to Laban. Read as a list, it appears “precious things” does not refer to gold or silver. Another time Nephi uses the word precious to describe Laban’s (steel) sword. Does Nephi’s family have a lot of steel? Altogether Nephi doesn’t seem to represent only one of the best scribes but also one of the foremost metal smiths. Alternatively, perhaps they are more of steel merchants.
Regardless, Nephi suggests initially he did not believe his father. Why would this observant upper-class man not believe Jerusalem would fall to a much more populous world power? His rare knowledge of steel (if we decide it is rare) suggests he had intimate knowledge of cutting-edge weapons. Perhaps for the moment he thought Jerusalem had the superior technology. Certainly, a common aspect of biblical culture was putting trust in military strength. The references we have to steel in the Bible (Levene’s article) suggest the source was north of Judah. It doesn’t seem to be associated with Babylon. Of course, that changes later as Nebuchadnezzar attacks Jerusalem with “iron that breaks iron”.
In sum: 1) could “scribes” be more comparable to a modern-day “college graduate”? In that a scribal education merely means a person is literate and has professional/vocational training. I would hardly hear “college graduate” today and assume the person is a writer. Is that how I should think of a scribe?
2) Based on the contemporary culture and the applications of steel, what implications does Nephi’s familiarity with steel suggest?
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Wonderful and thought provoking analysis. I found it interesting to consider the possibility that Lehi and Nephi may have helped in the creation of the brass plates. However, there is one possible sticking point with this idea. The contents of the plates (5 books of Moses, etc.) seem to have been unknown to Lehi until he sat down to study them. Also, when he learned that he was a descendant of Joseph, that seems to have been novel information (1 Nephi 5:10-16). If Lehi and Nephi participated in the creation of the plates it seems they would have been more aware of their contents.
Fascinating and illuminating, as always. On the comment that “the Kerala Jews on the southeast coast of India who told a 17th century British sea captain that they were descendants of Manasseh that had been carried by Nebuchadnezzar’s forces to the east end of the Babylonian empire after the fall of Jerusalem”, I was reminded that Margaret Barker once alerted me to a book by Reverend Thomas Torrence called China’s First Missionaries: Ancient Israelites (London, Thynne & Co., 1937) making a case that a community in Western China were descendants of the tribes of Israel, and maintained the customs of pre-exilic Israelites. I found a copy for myself. And similarly near the same time, a Japanese-American student gave me a copy of a paper he had written called “Shinto-Judaism Common Origin Theory in Light of Margaret Barker’s Scholarship” (2004), 80 pages.
As usual, Noel Reynolds’ unique skills at reading the Book of Mormon bring more insight into the relationship between the ability to read and understand the brass plates as an important skill for the special prophetic writers of the Book of Mormon.
This method of reading invites us to seek important answers to questions about how the Book of Mormon was written, why the authors employ the rhetorical modes they do, and possible reasons why the gift and power of God is necessary to translate the sacred language employed by the Lord’s servants in writing it. All this suggests that receiving the plates also required learning special linguistic and rhetorical skills in order to read what came before and to write the next part of the record.
Much praise to Noel Reynolds for blazing this new trail that takes us back to the historical context of the writing of the brass plates and how they are closely connected to the writing of the Book of Mormon.
I read your paper and was fascinated with the implications! Thank you. However, I was also amazed that you made no mention of the Lachish Letters and their implications for literacy among the more common folk. In addition, from Ancient Aramaic and Hebrew Letters by James M. Lindenberger, I got the impression that not only the military found reading and writing of value but its value to commerce was indispensable. The doubled sealed documents that date back to the Sumerians and on to the Romans and the abundance of commercial documents in cuneiform should clue us moderns that the ancients were much more literate than we want to admit. I must assume that Laman and Lemuel must have had the basic ability for commercial purposes, if nothing else. Just an old bankers perspective. Thank you for a stimulating read.
Thanks for reading the paper. I am not an expert on Hebrew epigraphy, so I depend heavily on scholars in that field. In recent decades they seem to have moved on to the view that Israel was very much an oral culture, like its ANE neighbors, and that developed literacy was not widespread. Trained scribes were highly literate, but constituted a tiny percentage of the population.
An error in footnote 118 (referenced by 70): I think you mean pp. 321-322, not 323-324. I assume you’re referring to this passage (transcribed as best I can):
They have a Synagogue at Couchin, not far from the King’s Palace, about 2 Miles from the City, in which are carefully kept their Records, engraven on Copper-plates in Hebrew Characters; and when any of the Characters decay, they are new cut, so that they can they can show their own History from the Reign of Nebuchadnezzar to this present time.
Outstanding piece, as usual.
“It also appears that Nephi may have been the only one of Lehi’s sons who received that scribal training in Jerusalem.”
I was struck by a similar thought a few years ago, reading those same chapters in 1 Nephi, since Laman and Lemuel never quote or allude to the contents of the brass plates, and are never described as reading such. I also wondered if Nephi’s decision to take the brass plates with him (2 Nephi 5:12) was in part because he knew that Laman and Lemuel couldn’t read them and would probably just melt them down for the metal.