Egyptologist speaks on the golden plates of Joseph Smith with Dr. David Falk

I ask Dr.David Falk for his take on the Mormon claims about the golden plates of Joseph Smith.

[webslinger]

First comment, always great to see more content from David a flak👍.

[jacobmayberry]

I would like to see Dr. Falk actually engage with the work of LDS Egyptologists like Stephen Smoot, Kerry Muhlstein, and John Gee.

[RichardHolmes-llii]

Joseph Smiths translation was never supposed to match up with the translation from that of the Egyptologists to begin with.

[DKWalser]

How does the good doctor know there isn't such a thing as reformed Egyptian? At best, all he can say is it is an unknown language. The fact it is unknown does not prove it didn't exist. There are probably lots of ancient languages that are unknown to modern scholars. Note: This is NOT an argument in favor of the existence of reformed Egyptian. I'm merely pointing out the logical fallacy Falk is making here. Absence of evidence of a thing is NOT proof the thing does not (or did not) exist. Nor is it possible to prove a negative.

Let me add a quibble: The Book of Mormon does not claim that reformed Egyptian was a language. Instead, it claims the language was Hebrew which was written using Egyptian hieroglyphs. The hieroglyphs had been changed to make engraving them easier. We do something similar with Japanese, writing it using the modern English alphabet's 26 letters. Using the English alphabet does not change the language from Japanese to English. Neither does writing Hebrew in reformed Egyptian characters make it the reformed Egyptian language.

[RichardHolmes-llii]

If Joseph Smith translated everything the way the Egyptologists say then you anti-Mormons would say that it doesn't have anything to do with Abraham.