Well, in the previous posting that I made on the Book of Mormon, I briefly mentioned an account of Martin Harris taking characters copied from the Golden plates to be verified as actual Egyptian characters. Again, I would like to note that at the time, Egyptian was in it's beginning stages. There was enough information for people to be able to read and recognize Egyptian characters, however, it was not until 1836 that grammar rules were finally made known to the public and published. There were, however, at the time people who had enough knowledge of Egyptian to be able to recognize it and read it.
Another thing I would like to point out is that there are many, many forms/stages of Egyptian characters. Egyptian was in it's 4th stage, a form of shorthanded Egyptian called "Demotic Egyptian", when the historical record began to be made by the ancient prophets.
One question that might be asked is "Why Egyptian?" or another common one is "How did someone on the American continent have knowledge of the Egyptian language?" First, let us point out that the historical record begins in Jerusalem, at the time of the first year of the reign of Ezekial from the bible (600 B.C.). The Book of Mormon actually begins in Jerusalem, not in the Americas, but they are later on led to the American Continent by the Lord Himself. These people spoke Hebrew, however this short handed form of Egyptian was used to save space on the plates. It is a very hard task to engrave characters on something that it metal.
Now let's begin. I'll give you a brief historical background. In 1827 Joseph and Emma Smith were being heavily persecuted in their hometown. Everyone knew that Joseph had the golden plates, and everyone was after them. The heavy persecution made things very hard for the family, and made it hard for Joseph to be able to fulfill his assignment and translate the plates. In December of 1827 they decided to pack up and leave their town, and move to Harmony, PA. The original plan that they had was to live with the parents of Emma. Her parents were alright with the idea, however the father had a lot of pride and agreed to have them stay with them, but under the condition that he could see the plates with his own eyes. The Lord prohibits Joseph from showing the plates to his father-inlaw, so they find a house up the street from them and live there. It is when they arrive to their new home that Joseph can finally begin the translation of the Book of Mormon. He still though does not get a lot accomplished, but does get some of it done.
A few months later, in February 1828, Martin Harris shows up to the house of Joseph and Emma. Martin had received a revelation from the Lord commanding him to take a sample of the characters to a specialist. Joseph also receives the same instructions of the Lord allowow him to do so. A lot of people think that Martin Harris was doubting, and that was the reason why he wanted to get the Egyptian characters verified, however that is a false statement. Martin Harris had a pretty solid testimony of the work, and he only did so because of the Lord's command. There are a few accounts of what actually happened when the hieroglyphics were verified. I will first tell the story from the perspective of Martin Harris.
Martin Harris went to someone by the name of Charles Anthon, and well known Egyptian specialist at the time. Martin showed Anthon a copy of the characters that had been directly copied from the plates. After studying the characters Anthon agreed that the characters were indeed real Egyptian characters, and signed a letter of authenticity as evidence that he found the characters to be true. When Martin Harris was leaving Anthon asked questions as to where the characters came from, and Martin Harris explained to him the story. Anthon suggested that he be the one to translate the plates, and Martin Harris responded that he could not for the book was sealed. Anthon then ripped up the letter that he wrote saying that he could read a sealed book. This is the only account given by Martin Harris.
There are 2 recorded stories given by Charles Anthon on his point of view of the event. The first was was given in 1834. Anthon claimed at the time that he had met with Martin Harris and that at "one glance" he "could tell it was a fraud." He also said in the first account that he did NOT give his opinion in writing.
The second answer given by Anthon was in 1841. He responded that previously NO ONE had ever asked for his account on the series of events. (Note that he had...). He also said that he DID give his opinion in writing to Martin Harris. (Notice that the 2 accounts that he gave do not match up at all)
My point is not to bash on Charles Anthon, he has attributed many great books to our society and has a great impact on the world. You would not believe how many useful books that this guy has written.
Lets think about this for a second. What motives did Martin Harris have to lie? The truth is that Martin Harris had absolutely no motives to lie. He was just this farmer boy who already knew that the characters were true before even arriving, he was only going to Anthon because the Lord commanded him to. On the other hand, Charles Anthon was a well known figure, and he had his reputation at stake. He probably did not want his signature attached to the work. Another thing to take in account is maybe, because Egyptian was in it's early stages as far as knowledge of it goes, he really was not able to make a decision on wither or not they were true characters and simply slapped his signature on paper so that he wouldn't look like he didn't know Egyptian that well. His thought process might have been "This is an unlearned farmer boy. What difference would it make if I sign or not." But, when he heard that Joseph was directed to the plates by an Angel he panicked and realized that if he attached his signature to something and later it turned out not to be real Egyptian, he could be in big trouble as far as his reputation goes. If you heard a crazy story about Angels and God Himself talking to a boy and directing him to golden plates would you not be skeptical too? Would it not be hard for you to believe it? Would you want to attach your signature to something that you were not sure of? Many of you have probably realized while reading this that you yourself have had to make that same decision in your life, of wither or not to believe the story or not. I myself thought it was weird when presented to me, even know I was born into the Church I too had to come to my own decision. That decision to believe has made all the difference in my life, and the truth of it has verified itself to me time and time again during my life.
This is not the end of the story. Remember that the Lord always verifies the truth of things through 2-3 witnesses. Martin Harris then took the characters to another Egyptian specialist who also verified the characters to be true Egyptian characters and signed a certificate of authenticity.
In 1844, after the death of Joseph Smith, there was an article posted in the newspaper known as the "Anthon Transcript". It is claimed to be the characters presented to him by Martin Harris, however there is no source to this transcript and there is no way of knowing if is real or not. Most scholars that look at it see it as giberish and it is not believed to be a real copy of the Egyptian characters contained in the golden plates.
One last intersting things I would like to point out is this story was prophisied to happen in the scritpures themselves. If you have the time read 2 Nephi 27. This story fuffils prophecy made in the Book of Mormon.

The Book of Mormon is the thing that is most attacked about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. The reason for this is simple: it's the "key-stone" of the religion. This means that it has a direct effect on the truthfulness of the religion. If the book is true, then Joseph Smith automatically was called of God to be a prophet (because he translated by the power of God), and if he was a prophet of God then the church is true. If the Book of Mormon were to be incorrect then none of it would be true. This is the reason why I have chosen to speak about the Book of Mormon first.
There are 2 ways of going about "knowing things". You can know something to be true from a logical perspective. Or 2nd, you can also know something to be true by "the Holy Ghost." The Holy Ghost is the 3rd member of the Godhead (Heavenly Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost; each distinct beings... we'll get to this another day) and one of the functions of the Holy Ghost is to testify to us, God's children, the truth of all things. It is through the Holy Ghost that we can know that Jesus is the Christ, that God exists, and even that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God, and that the Book of Mormon is true.
There are many people who try to discredit the spiritual way of knowing things, so I would first like to talk about the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon at a logical standpoint. (NOTE: Spiritual is better, but we will get to that next)
Many people try to discredit the Book of Mormon by saying that Joseph Smith wrote the book. After studying out the situation carefully you will learn that it would be impossible for him to even have written such a book. To start off we are going to have to know some of this historical background of Joseph's point in time, as well as some facts about the Book of Mormon.
On the night of the 21st of September 1823, young Joseph Smith received a visitation from an angel named Moroni. There are many details that goes into this story, so in order to stay on topic and not lead us into a huge tangent, I will simply say that in this visitation that Joseph Smith was told the location of the "golden plates", which were the metal plates of which the ancient record, the Book of Mormon, were recorded upon by ancient prophets that lived long ago on the American continent. It is not until 1827 when Joseph is finally permitted by God to retrieve the plates from the Hill Cummorah.
The plates that Joseph received were written in Hebrew grammar, but using an old Egyptian script. Characters from the plates were copied by Joseph to paper that was taken to Egyptian specialists to verify that the characters were Egyptian, and the specialists said that the characters were in fact real Egyptian characters. The Egyptian characters were verified in 1828. (That is a very summed up version of the story).
It was only 4 years prior to this event that someone by the name of Champollion is able to decipher hieroglyphics and creates an introduction to the language. This did not at the time include the grammar rules. It was not until 1836 that Greek Grammar rules were published.
The reason that the Book of Mormon was written that was (with the Hebrew syntax and Egyptian script) because it did not take as much space on the plates to engrave Egyptian on it, as it would have to write out Hebrew. At the time that the Book of Mormon began to be written (600 B.C.) a shorthand version of original Egyptian (called Demotic Egyptian) was created and was becoming popular because it did not take as much writing, thus it's called shorthand. Less writing = less time to write as well as more space conserved.
The interesting thing about the Book or Mormon is it's grammar usage. Lets look at a few things. Often in the Book of Mormon it uses something called "cognate accusatives". This would be saying something like "I dreamed a dream". In our English there is no need to say dreamed a dream, however in Hebrew the use of cognate accusatives is a very common thing.
Another interesting thing to point out is the use of condition sentences in the book (originally published). A conditional sentence put into simple terms is an if then statement. In English we say:
If .... then...... or If I study then I will get good grades
In Hebrew they do it this way:
If.....and.... or If I study and I will get good grades
That statement as it is sounds terrible to our English ears, but is how it is done in Hebrew. If you can get a hold of an original Book of Mormon all of the conditional sentences in there were formed this way. Joseph after the original publication went through the Book of Mormon and changed all of the "and"s to "then"s and that is why they no longer exist in our version today. He did this to make it more understandable to the English reader.
Lets move on to another grammar rule- possessives. In English we have a few ways to put our possessive sentences. We can say:
The Lord's way.
or we can also say: The way of the Lord.

In Hebrew the only way that a possesive can be formed is by using the structure of the 2nd example: The way of the Lord. They can not simply put an 's at the end of the noun and make it possesive, they must write it out the long way.
In the Book of Mormon it says: "The Lord's ________" a total of TWO times in the entire book. However, it says "__________ of the Lord" over 300 times.
Let's look at how we form a list of items in English compared to Hebrew now. In English when we are making a list we normally form a list using this structure:
Item A, Item B, Item C, Item D, and Item E
In Hebrew it's like this:
Item A, and item B, and item C, and Item D, and item E (there is an excessive use of the word "and")
As you read the Book of Mormon pay close attention and you will notice that when forming lists that they use the Hebrew way of doing things with an excessive use of the word and.
This last things is the one that is the most interesting. You will notice in the Book of Mormon that there are some pretty interesting names. Nephi, Lehi, and Corihor just to name a few. Two things that we can say about names are that names generally last forever, and they cross cultures. Lets take some of our common names for example: David, Adam, and Joshua. I'm sure you have all met a few people that have these names. How long have these names been around? Well David is at least 3,000 years old, we know that Joshua is at least 3,300 years old, and Adam is at least 6,000 years old. I guarantee that the original name holders were not from our culture.
Recently, in the 1960's, some ancient Egyptian texts have been found. From it we learn a few things. One thing that we learn is that Hebrew makes contact with Egyptian names. Another thing that is learned from these documents is that the strange names in the Book of Mormon were in fact actual names used long long ago. Many names used in the Book of Mormon are found in these ancient texts. Some of them include: Abish, Amoniha, Jerum, Sam, Alma, Malaki, Josh, Isabell, Corihor, Paanchi, and Nephi.
Here are a few examples of the hieroglyphics found in some of these texts: (Note: Excuse the quality of this, it's not exact to the original drawings, I had to draw it myself in ms paint)


Alright, now lets think about this for a minute. Let's say that you wanted to write a complex historical document covering about a thousand years in time. Lets also say that you are going to use the grammar of another language that you do not know and not only that, but you are going to use actual names from that culture. Do you think that you are going to be able to do it? It was not until the 1960's that the names used in the Book of Mormon have been brought to life. It was not until years after the translation of the Book of Mormon that we even had grammar rules to Hebrew. It would have been IMPOSSIBLE for Joseph Smith to have written the book.
I know that he had power from God that allowed him to translate the golden plates. I know that the book was written by ancient prophets from the American continent. And if you can not believe me, or anyone else that can testify of these things, why not trust God and ask him. Logically it makes sense, maybe not to some, but to me it does. However, logical is not enough. I know because God himself has given me an answer. 13 Million + other people living on this Earth at this time also can testify of the same. If you do not have a spiritual testimony of this or if you have any doubts about it, ask of God, just put it to the test.