The Anthon Manuscript

[Queolby]

Hey there, I always wondered how Charles Anthon validated Joseph
Smith's interpretation of the characters on the manuscript. The reason
why is because the Book of Mormon purports to be reformed Egyptian so
how could he have validated the interpretation? Also do we know
exactly what scripture Joseph Smith translated from our own Book of
Mormon that he gave an interpretation to; to see if Charles Anthon
could validate it?
Another question. Has anyone ever tried interpreting the manuscript?
if Charles Anthon supposedly validated it, why can't modern scholars
do the same? Or have they?
Thanks a lot and can't wait to hear back from you guys. Love ya!

[The Folk Prophet]

2 minutes ago, Queolby said:

Hey there, I always wondered how Charles Anthon validated Joseph
Smith's interpretation of the characters on the manuscript. The reason
why is because the Book of Mormon purports to be reformed Egyptian so
how could he have validated the interpretation? Also do we know
exactly what scripture Joseph Smith translated from our own Book of
Mormon that he gave an interpretation to; to see if Charles Anthon
could validate it?

You gotta remember this was in a time where doctors still leached people to cure diseases and celery tonic was considered a cure all. Point being, I think people oft times were more comfortable coming up with a "definitive" answer with much less definitive backing as we're used to in our day and age.

[Just_A_Guy]

The “Anthon Manuscript”, if it exists, has not been located.  (One that was talked about extensively thirty years ago turned out to be a late-20th-century forgery). There are a couple of “characters” documents that are at best copies of copies, and are not tied to any known English translation.  

I daresay Harris *thought* Anthon was vouching for the authenticity of the translation; when in fact Anthon was merely affirming that some of the characters in the transcript came from actual old-world languages—something Anthon freely acknowledged to others later (though he also alleged that there were a number of nonsensical characters included in the transcript he saw).  And interestingly, some of the languages Harris reported Anthon as identifying (Arabic, Chaldaic, Assyrian) had no business being in document produced by a Hebrew culture that severed its geographical ties with the rest of Israel pre-Diaspora.  Nephi notes that he was taking the rather novel step of expressing the Hebrew language in the Egyptian writing style, but notes that he had also changed the Egyptian some—rather like trying to write Shakespeare using Chinese characters, throwing in the Deseret Alphabet at random for good measure.  I wouldn’t expect anyone to make much sense out of the resulting document.

IIRC Joseph Smith biographer Richard Bushman suggests, in Rough Stone Rolling, that up to this point Joseph was primarily interested in finding someone else to translate the plates; and that he didn’t fully comprehend yet that he would be expected to undertake the work himself.  In this view, it was only after Anthon’s demonstration of scholarly inability (not to mention unwillingness) to make any meaningful headway, that Smith’s role in the process became clear to him.  

Edited December 12, 2018 by Just_A_Guy

[mordorbund]

14 hours ago, Just_A_Guy said:

 There are a couple of “characters” documents that are at best copies of copies, and are not tied to any known English translation.  

Relevant documentation: https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/appendix-2-copies-of-book-of-mormon-characters-introduction/1