The use of "reformed Egyptian" and the Ambiguities of non-vocalised Hebrew

Moroni, in Mormon 9:32-33 wrote the following:

And now, behold, we have written this record according to our knowledge, in the characters which are called among us the reformed Egyptian, being handed down and altered by us, according to our manner of speech. And if our plates had been sufficiently large we should have written in Hebrew; but the Hebrew hath been altered by us also; and if we could have written in Hebrew, behold, ye would have had no imperfection in our record.

Brant Gardner, in his 6-volume commentary on the Book of Mormon (an absolute must-read, by the way!) wrote the following about the use of “reformed Egyptian”:

Culture: Moroni has testified that it is his hand and his father’s hand that have written the text. That statement establishes his filial relationship. Now he talks about the writing itself. He begins by explaining that Hebrew would have taken up too much room on the plates. Written Hebrew is certainly already a condensed writing system, omitting vowels present in spoken Hebrew. While typically the full text is easy to reconstruct, ambiguities in meaning can emerge when the context would support two different words with only the vowel’s difference. (An English example would be “farm” or “form.”) Thus, Hebrew writing is inherently prone to this kind of error; and Moroni is acknowledging that his own writing system is even more prone to error than standard Hebrew. Moroni attributes at least some of the imperfections in his father’s work to the difficulty in communicating accurately in writing, but he fails to supply enough information to allow conjecture about that writing system.

However, the very fact that Moroni says that he and his father did not use Hebrew communicates that it was preserved as a scholarly language. There must have been some writings in Hebrew that continued from Lehi’s day, or Moroni could not have learned Hebrew or know that it had been a rejected option for his father.

Verse 32 identifies what he and Mormon used instead of Hebrew: “the characters which are called among us the reformed Egyptian, being handed down and altered by us, according to our manner of speech.” The fact that it is “reformed” means that it is somehow different from the Egyptian in Nephi’s record (1 Ne. 1:2; Mosiah 1:4). The most important detail is the relationship between the characters and the Nephite “manner of speech,” apparently one that does not carry over to Hebrew. As I read this statement, reformed Egyptian seems to represent the Nephite spoken language, but the fact that reformed Egyptian best represents it suggests that we should not seek Hebrew meanings beneath the English translation. (Brant A. Gardner, Second Witness: Analytical and Contextual Commentary on the Book of Mormon, volume 6: Fourth Nephi-Moroni [Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2007] 136)

 On the topic of the ambiguities caused by written Hebrew lacking vowel pointings can be seen in Psa 110:3 (LXX: 109:3). The KJV OT (which is dependent upon the MT tradition) reads:

Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power, and in the beauties of holiness from the womb of the morning: thou hast the dew of thy youth.

Brenton's translation of the LXX reads:

With thee is dominion in the day of thy power, in the splendours of thy saints: I have begotten thee from the womb before the morning.

Both “your youth” and “I have begotten you” are spelt using the same consonants, ילדתיך. The difference between these two terms is down to vocalisation, which would have been added by the Masoretes in the medieval period. That the ancient Jews understood the correct vocalisation to be “I have begotten you” is seen in the LXX’s use of the verb, “To beget,” εκγενναω (remember that all translation is interpretation). Why did the Masoretes “fudge,” for lack of a better term, the vocalisation of this passage? Psa 110:1, 4 are the most commonly cited verses in the New Testament to demonstrate Jesus’ being the promised Messiah and the superiority of his priesthood and his once-for-all sacrifice against the priests and sacrifices of the Old Covenant, among other things. “I have begotten you” may have been understood by Christians to be an allusion to a then-future miraculous conception of the Davidic King par excellence, with Jesus being the ultimate fulfilment of this coronation text. In an effort to off-set this as a “proof-text” for the virginal conception, the Masoretes vocalised the term differently than how the LXX translators understood it to be rendered, although it is a rather nonsensical reading.

Another example can be seen in the use of the LXX of Psa 102:25-27 (102:26-28 in the Hebrew; 101:26-28 in the LXX) in Heb 1:10-12, and its application to Jesus.

The Greek of Heb 1:10-12, addressing Jesus, reads:

καί· σὺ κατ᾽ ἀρχάς, κύριε, τὴν γῆν ἐθεμελίωσας, καὶ ἔργα τῶν χειρῶν σού εἰσιν οἱ οὐρανοί αὐτοὶ ἀπολοῦνται, σὺ δὲ διαμένεις, καὶ πάντες ὡς ἱμάτιον παλαιωθήσονται, καὶ ὡσεὶ περιβόλαιον ἑλίξεις αὐτούς, ὡς ἱμάτιον καὶ ἀλλαγήσονται· σὺ δὲ ὁ αὐτὸς εἶ καὶ τὰ ἔτη σου οὐκ ἐκλείψουσιν.

And, "In the beginning, Lord, you founded the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands; they will perish, but you remain; they will all wear out like clothing; like a cloak you will roll them up, and like clothing they will be changed. But you are the same, and your years will never end." (NRSV)

It is true that the Masoretic text understands the psalmist to be speaking to Yahweh; however, the translators of the LXX understood the vocalisation of the verb ענה differently than the later MT scribes. The MT vocalises the term as ‘innah, meaning “he [Yahweh] weakened [the suppliant].” However, the LXX understood the vocalisation to be “he [Yahweh] answered [the suppliant],” therefore, introducing a second lord (κυριος) who is addressed in vv.25-27 of the LXX.

Sir Lancelot Brenton, in his translation of the LXX, translates the LXX as:

He answered him in the way of his strength: tell me the fewness of my days.

The author of Hebrews, as he is using the LXX, is not applying a “Yahweh” text from the LXX to Jesus; instead, he is using a text that has connotations of “Messianic eschatology.”

F.F. Bruce, in his New International Commentary on the New Testament (Eerdmans), writes:

In the Septuagint text the person to whom these words [“of old you laid the foundation of the earth”] are spoken is addressed explicitly as “Lord,” and it is God who addresses him thus. Whereas in the Hebrew text the suppliant is the speaker from the beginning to the end of the psalm, in the Greek text his prayer comes to an end with v. 22, and the next words read as follows: “He [God] answered him [the suppliant] in the way of his strength:
‘Declare to Me the shortness of My days: Bring Me not up in the midst of My days. Thy [the suppliant’s] years are throughout all generations. Thou, lord [the suppliant, viewed here as the Messiah by Hebrews], in the beginning didst lay the foundation of the earth

 Benjamin Bacon, in his essay, "Heb. 1:10-12 and the Septuagint Reading of Ps. 102:23" in the Zeitschrift fur die Neutestamentliche Wissenschaft vol. 3 (1902), pp.280-85, concludes his fascinating study with the following comment (here, p.284):

Thus instead of the application of these verses of Ps 102 to messiah being an audacious innovation on the part of the author of Hebrews, we find evidence (1) that the psalm itself was a favorite resort of those who sought in even pre-Christian times for proof-texts of messianic eschatology. This is a result which might have been anticipated from the suggestive reference to "the set time" for Jehovah's deliverance and glorification of Zion, v. 13, and the challenge to cryptographic interpretation of v.18, "this shall be written for the generation to come: and a people which shall be created shall praise the Lord." (2) We have specific evidence of the application of verses 23-24 to the Messiah by those who employed the Hebrew or some equivalent text. (3) Finally, in the LXX and the Vulg. rendering of ענה by απεκριθη, respondit, we have the explanation of how, in Christian circles at least, the accepted Messianic passage could be made to prove the doctrine of [the Messiah's personal pre-existence].

While this pericope may not be an Old Testament Yahweh text being applied to Jesus, at least due to the use of the LXX in Heb 1:10-12, there are many that understand, correctly, that this passage teaches the personal pre-existence of Jesus. Some, such as Andrew Perry, a Christadelphian apologist and author of Before He was Born, a work arguing that Jesus did not personally pre-exist, argues that this passage it to be understood as Jesus pre-existing typologically in the person of Hezekiah, who he believes to be the author of Psa 102(!), which is utterly absurd (at least he tries to deal with the passage; Duncan Heaster and other proponents of such a Christology don’t deal with this pericope [cf. Heaster’s The Real Christ]). Thomas Farrar has a very good paper on the Christological implications of this pericope here, which refutes the arguments of Parry and other proponents of such a Socinian Christology. Of course, I would disagree with Farrar on some points (he is a Trinitarian; I am clearly not; also, he rather glibly dismisses pre-millennial eschatology), but overall, the paper is sold at showing that, in the theology of the author of Hebrews, Jesus personally pre-existed.