Is 'reformed Egyptian' a made-up language?
The Bible answers
The language of Canaan in Egypt. Scripts mix.
King James Version
In that day shall five cities in the land of Egypt speak the language of Canaan, and swear to the Lord of hosts; one shall be called, The city of destruction.
NRSVUE
On that day there will be five cities in the land of Egypt that speak the language of Canaan and swear allegiance to the Lord of hosts. One of these will be called the City of the Sun.
The Book of Mormon answers
Mormon 9:32–33
Reformed Egyptian because Hebrew would not fit the plates.
We have written this record according to our knowledge, in the characters which are called among us the reformed Egyptian… if our plates had been sufficiently large we should have written in Hebrew.
Dead Sea Scrolls and related extra-biblical texts that illuminate the same pattern the Restoration restores.
Elephantine papyri; DSS paleo-Hebrew and mixed scripts
Jewish colonies in Egypt wrote Aramaic in Egyptian settings; Qumran copies biblical books in paleo-Hebrew beside square script.
Israelites adapted scripts. 'Reformed Egyptian' is exactly the kind of name a bilingual remnant would use for a compact learning-script.
Scripture Central
Scripture Central
Critics once treated the phrase as comic. Then we learned how commonly Near Eastern peoples modified Egyptian hieratic and demotic for other languages, and how Jews in Egypt lived and wrote in mixed cultures. Mormon’s point is practical: space on plates is limited, so they used a denser script than Hebrew.
Reformed Egyptian is not a lost world language. It is a scribal shorthand — Egyptian characters carrying Nephite (Hebrew) meaning.
Faithful voices only. Most of these are independent — not official Church productions unless marked as such.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
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