Comments on: Hives and Honeybees

By: Julie in Austin

Julie in Austin — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

fix

By: Measure

Measure — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

My main question after reading your article is as follows. Who first proposed naming the state “Deseret?”

I think If we could answer that question, we would also find the answer of why the residents of the territory embraced the name.

By: William Morris

William Morris — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Thanks, Melissa. The Deseret as industry thing has never resonated with me much — perhaps because I’m so lazy — even though I really like honeybees [my grandfather kept bees]. Now it’s taken on a richness I can appreciate — whether originally intended or not.

Sidenote: I love that the Deseret alphabet has been encoded in Unicode. Note that if you scroll down to the bottom of that page you can download font sets.

By: William Morris

William Morris — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Addition: The formal Unicode proposal has a list of the characters as well as a brief history of the alphabet and a few images of it in use.

By: Frank McIntyre

Frank McIntyre — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

So now any LDS web site concerned about becoming too big can just switch their blog to the Deseret Alphabet. Problem solved, guaranteed!

By: Nate Oman

Nate Oman — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Melissa: My dad did an article in the Encyclopedia of Mormonism on the Beehive. It turns out that Brigham Young discussed its significance in a couple of sermons. The references to the JD are in the article. Also, I know that Fred Collier (a fundamentalist who has produced some pretty decent collections of 19th century documents) claims that the Beehive had some esoteric (Masonic?) meaning for 19th century Mos.

By: William Morris

William Morris — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I have to admit that I made a half-hearted [read: half hour] attempt to learn it several years ago by using a reproduction of the original Deseret Alphabet setting of the Book of Mormon that my family had inherited from my grandfather. It had a handy character guide in the front and I figured that it wouldn’t take too long since I knew the text quite well. After all, it’s just a matter of learning the symbol-sound relationship well enough to recognize the words at a rate fast enough for reading comprehension.

But my love of esoteric knowledge wasn’t strong enough to keep my mind focused on the project.

By: Kevin Barney

Kevin Barney — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Nibley famously proposed an Egyptian etymology for “Deseret,” in both his Era articles from the late 60s and his Message of the JS Papyri.

But I have always wondered whether the term might not have a Semitic derivation.

As Melissa mentions, the Hebrew word for bee is *deborah* (and thus the name). The -ah is a feminine ending. But in archaic Hebrew, the feminine ending was -t, not -h. So the -et in Deseret might simply be the archaic equivalent to the -ah in Deborah.

But I’ve never been able to figure out how the s (or sh) of Deseret becomes a b in later Hebrew Deborah.

By: lyle

lyle — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

my brother can read/rite Deseret fluently. maybe we can use it as a code when the Church is being persecuted again? ;)

By: Adam Greenwood

Adam Greenwood — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Thank you, much, Melissa P. What a suggestive post.

From time to time in the bloggernacle or in the larger Tabernet (Desernet, whatever) one always comes across a debate on what a mormon symbol should look like. What to do instead of the cross? i always wonder why the beehive is not more mentioned on these occasions.