Comments on: BCC Papers 1/2: Barney, Deseret http://bycommonconsent.com/2006/11/03/bcc-papers-1-2-barney/ A Mormon Blog Mon, 13 Feb 2012 20:38:28 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: Christopher Smith http://bycommonconsent.com/2006/11/03/bcc-papers-1-2-barney/#comment-115292 Tue, 09 Jan 2007 00:34:09 +0000 http://www.bycommonconsent.com/2006/11/bcc-papers-12-barney-deseret/#comment-115292 Kevin,

I think you are altogether too deferential to Webb-Nibley. Their argument, frankly, is absurd; yours is much better. On the other hand, I will echo Dr. Stewart’s observation that precedent for a B -> S consonant shift is hard to come by.

-Chris

]]> By: David Stewart http://bycommonconsent.com/2006/11/03/bcc-papers-1-2-barney/#comment-115291 Thu, 07 Dec 2006 15:12:29 +0000 http://www.bycommonconsent.com/2006/11/bcc-papers-12-barney-deseret/#comment-115291 Kevin, thanks for the interesting read. Clearly there are some sound shifts that occur in ancient languages. The Egyptian R-L transformation seen in modern Japanese, Chinese, and Korean, the Akkadian and Hebrew double A -> O or U transformation that is seen today in the Scandinavian languages, the Egyptian and Sumerian P(h)/R and M/N shifts that are dictated by certain rules and the later dialectical Greek T/S shift, are examples of sound shifts that can be documented.

It is important for proposed shifts to be ones that can be documented or at least reasonably explained. As you acknowledge, B-S however does not appear to be documentable beyond speculations of mispronunciation by foreigners, which hardly make for a good linguistic fit. A linguistic “Pandora’s Box” would be opened if two consonants in a three-consonant base were considered an adequate match. The final “t” as you know is a feminine suffix in Egyptian (cf. the Paut Khemennu). If one assumes that the transliterations in the Book of Mormon may not be accurate, that opens the Pandora’s box even further.

It is interesting to see that Nibley is close, but not complete. Fortunately, Book of Mormon transliterations appear to be correct as they stand. To correctly derive “Deseret,” one needs to look back earlier to the language of the Jaredites (the language of Adam) and languages immediately descended from it, i.e. Sumerian cuneiform, Phoenician, and early Egyptian Hieroglyphic.

]]> By: By Common Consent » Deseret Part Deux http://bycommonconsent.com/2006/11/03/bcc-papers-1-2-barney/#comment-115290 Wed, 08 Nov 2006 03:21:46 +0000 http://www.bycommonconsent.com/2006/11/bcc-papers-12-barney-deseret/#comment-115290 [...] Seven posts beneath this one is a little paper I wrote, Kevin L. Barney, “On the Etymology of Deseret,” BCC Papers 1/2, November 2006, in which I argued for a possible Semitic etymology of the word deseret. In the comments, Matt W. mentioned that his father-in-law, Walt Cowart, had written Hugh Nibley asking about a similar idea back in December of 1981, and had received a response. I assumed Matt had misunderstood the nature of the correspondence, but he produced it, and indeed Walt had posed basically the same idea I put forward in my paper. So this is an amazing opportunity to see Nibley critique this idea, from beyond the grave, as it were, in a letter he wrote 25 years ago. As a long-time Nibleyophile, I thought this was incredibly cool, so rather than bury it in the comments to the original thread, I am posting a new thread here. [...]

]]> By: Matt W. http://bycommonconsent.com/2006/11/03/bcc-papers-1-2-barney/#comment-115289 Mon, 06 Nov 2006 21:43:22 +0000 http://www.bycommonconsent.com/2006/11/bcc-papers-12-barney-deseret/#comment-115289 I got a scanned copy, shoot me an email at
L
M
W
I
T
T
E
N
(AT)
prodigy.net

and I will send it to you.

]]> By: Matt W. http://bycommonconsent.com/2006/11/03/bcc-papers-1-2-barney/#comment-115288 Mon, 06 Nov 2006 16:42:22 +0000 http://www.bycommonconsent.com/2006/11/bcc-papers-12-barney-deseret/#comment-115288 He has them. I’ll see if I can get a scanned copy.

]]> By: Kevin Barney http://bycommonconsent.com/2006/11/03/bcc-papers-1-2-barney/#comment-115287 Mon, 06 Nov 2006 02:51:21 +0000 http://www.bycommonconsent.com/2006/11/bcc-papers-12-barney-deseret/#comment-115287 I would love to be able to see the letter and the response. Does your FiL still have them?

]]> By: Matt W. http://bycommonconsent.com/2006/11/03/bcc-papers-1-2-barney/#comment-115286 Mon, 06 Nov 2006 02:42:16 +0000 http://www.bycommonconsent.com/2006/11/bcc-papers-12-barney-deseret/#comment-115286 Kevin, in a bit of irony, my Father-in-law should me a letter he had written to Hugh Nibley 25 years ago regarding the s replacement in deseret/deberet. He also showed me Dr. Nibley’s response. It was extremely cool. I can’t reproduce it verbatim, but Dr. Nibley pretty much sighted a bunch of examples where over time languages changes letter sounds, and ended with “So why not?…This is just off the cuff though, no time for deep stuff.”

Anyway, thanks for the bonding moment with my Father-in-Law….

]]> By: Kevin Barney http://bycommonconsent.com/2006/11/03/bcc-papers-1-2-barney/#comment-115285 Sun, 05 Nov 2006 04:04:47 +0000 http://www.bycommonconsent.com/2006/11/bcc-papers-12-barney-deseret/#comment-115285 Thanks for reporting Royal’s double checking. I was reasonably certain there was no possibility of modern scribal error, but it is good to have that confirmed by the expert.

]]> By: Matt W. http://bycommonconsent.com/2006/11/03/bcc-papers-1-2-barney/#comment-115284 Sun, 05 Nov 2006 03:52:51 +0000 http://www.bycommonconsent.com/2006/11/bcc-papers-12-barney-deseret/#comment-115284 Royal “checked the actual photograph of Ether 2:3 in the printer’s manuscript, and it reads “deseret” in Oliver Cowdery’s hand. Later, in pencil, John Gilbert, capitalized the initial “d” to “D”. The “s” is clearly an “s”; there is no way that it could be a “b”. One interesting aspect, however, is that Oliver Cowdery makes his n’s and r’s quite similarly, so one could possibly interpret the word “deseret” as actually being “desenet” (or vice versa). I would go with “r”, but “n” is not impossible.”

]]> By: HP/JDC http://bycommonconsent.com/2006/11/03/bcc-papers-1-2-barney/#comment-115283 Fri, 03 Nov 2006 22:20:03 +0000 http://www.bycommonconsent.com/2006/11/bcc-papers-12-barney-deseret/#comment-115283 Jonathan Green,
“The Domesticated Termites” is now officially the name of my soon to be formed hippie rock band.

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