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Hebraisms in the Book of Mormon


Daniel Peterson

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I know Dr. Peterson is out of town on some R&R at the moment. I'm sure he'll have some interesting responses to the comments so far.

I was also a bit surprised at the apparently cursory nature of the argument in the article that he linked to. I'm also assuming that the claim is better documented in the Skousen materials and that Dr. P was just summarizing.

Dr. P writes in the article:

But an ancient Hebrew speaker would have, and I suspect that what we may have in these instances is a kind of contamination
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The Dude wrote: For example, a good science paper has a chiastic structure: introduction(tell what you are going to tell them), results (tell them), discussion (tell them what you told them). I don't think this should be taken as evidence of ancient Hebrew roots.

Um, that's form, but not really a chiasmus.

So you think that JS wrote a chiasmus much more complicated than Hebrew poets??

MC, I think you answer a lot of your own questions--take another look at what you wrote.

And there is much more to hebraisms than "if/ and", and I'm sure much of the grammatical language in the BoM is influenced by the original language and will be understood as such after much more work and discovery.

I had mentioned before Nephi's use of personalizing family relations when talking to others who shared those same relations--which I have never seen or heard in English, but I have heard in Chinese more than once. (Not to say Chinese relates to it, but shows how it can happen.)

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The Shakespeare Festival was, as always, very enjoyable.

Life away from message boards is very good.

I even ran into our own Will Schryver at Room Service on Monday afternoon and, along with his daughter (who enters the MTC next month), at Hamlet last night.

I was also a bit surprised at the apparently cursory nature of the argument in the article that he linked to. I'm also assuming that the claim is better documented in the Skousen materials and that Dr. P was just summarizing.

It was intended to be cursory. I don't believe in rehashing every argument fully every time I allude to it.

But I wonder what, exactly, you think is missing that would be important to your evaluation. Somewhere -- I can't remember where -- I published a list of, I believe, six occurrences of the "if/and" conditional structure from the Hebrew book of Genesis. I can't think of any natively English instances of such conditional sentences.

That's rather the point, actually.

I don't know how to present evidence of nothing.

If Might-C or The Dude are able to offer examples of native speakers using "if/and" conditionals anywhere, I'll be impressed. Neither Professor Skousen nor I have been able to locate any such instances.

Dr. P writes in the article:
But an ancient Hebrew speaker would have, and I suspect that what we may have in these instances is a kind of contamination
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5- You cite Moroni as one of your examples of the if/and construction. If we set aside the whole Reformed Egyptian bit, and assume Moroni was a Hebrew speaker, we still run into a little problem. Lehi and his tribe arrived in the New World around 600 BC. By the time Moroni makes his if/and statement, it was around 400 AD. That's 1000 years of liguistic isolation; 1000 years of linguistic evolution. Whatever Moroni was speaking, the chances are virtually nil that he just happened to be use the same if/and construction that Old World ancient Hebrews would have used. For all practical purposes, Moroni would have been speaking a completely different language.

I have to agree with MC that it doesn't seem much more likely that an ancient Nephite, 600 - 1000 years removed from his ancient Hebrew culture, would be that much more likely to use if/and conditional sentences than any possible 19th century authors.

Dan's argument is based on his own preference for what is incredible/credible, and kind of a bare presentation of the case at that. Maybe the original argument from Skousen does a better job but I don't have access to that. As it stands, the most incredible thing to me is that Dr. Peterson elected to support ancient BoM authorship with this kind of example. There has to be something better...right?

Oh, I would love to see some actual statistical evidence for that claim.

Since I know of utterly no evidence for "if/and" constructions in English from any period of the language's history, and since such constructions are common in biblical Hebrew, and since the authors of the Book of Mormon (if, as postulated, they actually existed) were self-consciously heirs to the biblical tradition, the reasoning above strikes me as completely vacuous. Pious Jews today still read and write in Hebrew and Aramaic. They still study Talmud in its original languages. Hebrew didn't reappear in modern Israel out of a vacuum.

I don't say, of course, that this is the best evidence extant for the Book of Mormon. But the topic raised was Hebraisms. The Dude airily asserted that all Book of Mormon Hebraisms are derivable from the English Bible. But this one is, quite simply, not so derivable. At least, I'm aware of absolutely nothing in any English Bible that would suggest it.

Which means that, pending actual evidence from The Dude or one of his allies, at least one airy claim has been revealed as such. Not bad.

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I might mention that my copy of View of the Hebrews arrived yesterday....

William, your writing style is starting to mirror that of Dr. Peterson. I expect you will soon be dropping teasers about your forthcoming mopologetics film? :P

No evidence of Hebrew-like "if/and" conditionals in any English text by a native English speaker from any period of the history of the English language, The Dude. Except in the Book of Mormon. That's the bottom line, thus far.

Incidentally, The Dude, I like the quotation in your signature from Mr. Shades. Like so much of his sloganeering, it's clever and, even, superficially credible.

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No evidence of Hebrew-like "if/and" conditionals in any English text by a native English speaker from any period of the history of the English language, The Dude. Except in the Book of Mormon. That's the bottom line, thus far.

Strange, but not as strange as crop circles.

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I am not familiar with if/and conditionals besides a few things I read awhile back while I was exploring hebraisms, certainly not enough to speak intelligibly on the subject.

You shouldn't regard that as an impediment to pontificating on them. Others plainly don't.

If you have no empirical evidence at your disposal, no data, simply let your ideology (whatever it is) do the work for you. A useful strategem is to pronounce any proposed parallel mere insignificant coincidence.

The fact that insignificant coincidences do in fact occur will clinch your case for you, no other evidence required.

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A useful strategem is to pronounce any proposed parallel mere insignificant coincidence.

Nah, that's just the first step in accepting a theory, according to JBS Haldane.

Then, perhaps, there's hope for you after all.

Hope for me? No, you got it backwards. You are the one promoting the significance of if/and constructs (and other Hebraisms), and while most people scoff and dismiss, there is hope for the idea if you view it's current difficulties through the model of JBS Haldane.

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I was ready to voice my thoughts on the implications of such hebraisms, but lo, Mighty Curelom has already expressed my thoughts. Especially this one:

5- You cite Moroni as one of your examples of the if/and construction. If we set aside the whole Reformed Egyptian bit, and assume Moroni was a Hebrew speaker, we still run into a little problem. Lehi and his tribe arrived in the New World around 600 BC. By the time Moroni makes his if/and statement, it was around 400 AD. That's 1000 years of liguistic isolation; 1000 years of linguistic evolution. Whatever Moroni was speaking, the chances are virtually nil that he just happened to be use the same if/and construction that Old World ancient Hebrews would have used. For all practical purposes, Moroni would have been speaking a completely different language.
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This sounds fairly familiar. Let me tinker with it just a bit.

If you have no empirical evidence at your disposal, no data, simply let your ideology (whatever it is) do the work for you.  A useful strategem is to pronounce any proposed parallel to be extremely significant.

The fact that incredibly rare coincidences do in fact occur will clinch your case for you, no other evidence required.

There, that's it.

Sauce for the goose and all that...

Best.

CKS

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I've already responded to Might-C's comment, above.

How much linguistic evolution do you suppose has occurred in the Aramaic used in the rabbinic schools since the commitment of the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds to writing?

I don't assume that Moroni was a Hebrew speaker. He may or may not have been. But, as the elite educated and trained keeper of a record that saw itself as explicitly within the biblical tradition, he would certainly have been familiar with the idioms of the literary tradition within which he was working.

This is not difficult. If I sat down to write in the style of the Arabic Qur

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As for cksalmon: It's cheap and easy to simply pronounce parallels either significant or not. It's much harder to present an argument.

Is nobody here really capable of, or willing, to make an attempt?

This is the part that get really tiresome Dan. Really. All of us are presenting arguments to support why we do or don't share your sense of significance re: particular Hebraisms. Nobody is just proclaiming "I don't buy it."

You earn respect by giving credit to other participants.

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I don't assume that Moroni was a Hebrew speaker. He may or may not have been. He may or may not have been. But, as the elite educated and trained keeper of a record that saw itself as explicitly within the biblical tradition, he would certainly have been familiar with the idioms of the literary tradition within which he was working.

But, of course, the "pronounced parallels either significant or not"

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No evidence of Hebrew-like "if/and" conditionals in any English text by a native English speaker from any period of the history of the English language, The Dude. Except in the Book of Mormon. That's the bottom line, thus far.

(clause 1) Yea, and if he say unto the earth, move, and it is moved;

(clause 2) Yea, if he say unto the earth Thou shalt go back, that it lengthen out the day for many hours, and it is done;

(conclusion) and thus, according to his word the earth goeth back, and it appeareth unto man that the sun standeth still; yea, and behold, this is so; for surely it is the earth that moveth and not the sun.

This construction, while grammatically awkard and probably not technically correct, isn't so foreign that it couldn't be derived by an English speaker. It follows a standard conditional pattern:

(clause 1) If you do x, and b happens,

(clause 2) and if do y, and z happens,

(conclusion) then doing x makes b happen and doing y makes z happen.

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But, as the elite educated and trained keeper of a record that saw itself as explicitly within the biblical tradition, he would certainly have been familiar with the idioms of the literary tradition within which he was working.

There is nothing in the Book of Mormon, as far as I can see, that reflects any knowledge of the Hebrew literary tradition. Are there are any non-LDS Hebrew scholars who have weighed-in on the Book of Mormon and the rich Hebrew literary tradition? These scholars abound because nearly a full one-third of the OT is represented by the Hebraic forms of poetry (and this of course probably only represents a fraction of the entire body of Hebrew poetry produced during the time of the OT). Where in the Book of Mormon do we find the formal characteristics of Parallelism (synonymous, antithetic, formal and climatic in the internal or external/complete or incomplete forms), Meter (2/2, 3/2 - Qinah or lament meter, etc), and Strophic Arrangement (distichs or tristichs)??

Has anyone been able to discern examples of acrostic patterns, alliteration, assonance, onomatopoeia, and paronomasia? A serious discussion of Hebraic forms should be based on an understanding of Hebraisms as seen in the ancient war songs and dirges, the love poems, hymns, laments, and thanksgivings (as in the Psalter). Where in the Book of Mormon are these idioms of the literary tradition???

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But, as the elite educated and trained keeper of a record that saw itself as explicitly within the biblical tradition, he would certainly have been familiar with the idioms of the literary tradition within which he was working.

There is nothing in the Book of Mormon, as far as I can see, that reflects any knowledge of the Hebrew literary tradition. Are there are any non-LDS Hebrew scholars who have weighed-in on the Book of Mormon and the rich Hebrew literary tradition? These scholars abound because nearly a full one-third of the OT is represented by the Hebraic forms of poetry (and this of course probably only represents a fraction of the entire body of Hebrew poetry produced during the time of the OT). Where in the Book of Mormon do we find the formal characteristics of Parallelism (synonymous, antithetic, formal and climatic in the internal or external/complete or incomplete forms), Meter (2/2, 3/2 - Qinah or lament meter, etc), and Strophic Arrangement (distichs or tristichs)??

Has anyone been able to discern examples of acrostic patterns, alliteration, assonance, onomatopoeia, and paronomasia? A serious discussion of Hebraic forms should be based on an understanding of Hebraisms as seen in the ancient war songs and dirges, the love poems, hymns, laments, and thanksgivings (as in the Psalter). Where in the Book of Mormon are these idioms of the literary tradition???

Many studies have been published regarding the various Hebraic literary forms in the Book of Mormon. I might suggest this first one from my friend, Matt Nickerson:

Nephi's Psalm: 2 Nephi 4:16-35 in the Light of Form-Critical Analysis

as also Nibley's study of Lehi's poetic expertise in An Approach to the Book of Mormon.

In addition, this is a link to several articles regarding the literary features discovered in the Book of Mormon:

Book of Mormon Literary Features

Your post manifests a considerable unfamiliarity of the many scholarly studies that have been done along these lines.

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Your post manifests a considerable unfamiliarity of the many scholarly studies that have been done along these lines.

My post reflects a pretty good familiarity with the list of articles you provided, thus my question if there were any non-LDS scholars of Hebrew literary forms who found merit in the Book of Mormon as a source of hebraic study and consideration? Thanks for the links, though.

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Your post manifests a considerable unfamiliarity of the many scholarly studies that have been done along these lines.

My post reflects a pretty good familiarity with the list of articles you provided, thus my question if there were any non-LDS scholars of Hebrew literary forms who found merit in the Book of Mormon as a source of hebraic study and consideration? Thanks for the links, though.

My sincere apologies for misunderstanding your query. I was concentrating on the second paragraph when I made my reply.

I doubt that there are very many, if any, non-LDS authors who have taken an interest in the topic. It just isn't something they would be motivated to do. However, unless you are suggesting that LDS authors are disingenuously claiming Hebraisms in the Book of Mormon, I must argue that most, if not all, of them are certainly qualified to speak to the topic, and have manifest their expertise in numerous non-LDS publications.

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Well, as long as we're confessing to weariness, I'll confess mine.

It seems, though, that the original claim that all Book of Mormon Hebraisms are derivable from the English Bible has been dropped (for the quite understandable reason that the "if/and" conditional sentence seems to be absent not only from all English Bibles but from the entire history of the English language) in favor of the notion that Book of Mormon Hebraisms are of no real significance, since, apparently, an elite steeped in a scriptural tradition in a learned language would not likely preserve the basic syntactical forms and structures of that language over the course of a millennium -- a historical claim that is not merely implausible but is, in fact, demonstrably false.

I don't assume that Moroni was a Hebrew speaker. He may or may not have been. He may or may not have been. But, as the elite educated and trained keeper of a record that saw itself as explicitly within the biblical tradition, he would certainly have been familiar with the idioms of the literary tradition within which he was working.

But, of course, the "pronounced parallels either significant or not"

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It seems that a lot of the Hebraisms were removed from the 1830 Book of Mormon- these were seen as grammaterical errors- but indeed were just the result of a literal translation of an ancient language into English.

For example-

In the 1830 edition of the Book of Mormon Alma 46:19 reads, "When Moroni had said these words, he went forth among the people, waving the rent of his garment in the air." Of course, the rent is the hole, the tear, the space that now separated what was once a whole. Yes, the Prophet made an error which has been corrected in later printings to read, "rent part." But, perhaps not foolish. Rather, this almost silly omission has become one thread in a tapestry of evidence pointing to the truth of this young prophet's claim: he was really translating a Hebrew text. "Waving the rent," may be ludicrous English but it is a literal translation of perfectly good Hebrew. John Tvedtnes explains that in Hebrew, the noun modified by a verbal substantive like rent is assumed from its context. Thus, "part" would not be included in the Hebrew text. It must be supplied by the translator.(1) Yes, Joseph failed to supply the missing word, thus leaving us this interesting evidential strand.

http://www.cometozarahemla.org/hebraisms/hebraisms.html#_1_6

Also-

There have been 188 instances of the word that removed from the Book of Mormon since its 1830 publication. Even a casual reference to the original edition would confirm the need for this drastic revision. Yet, many instances of this Hebraic phrasing still remain in the current text. Here are two examples:

"And because that they are redeemed from the fall" (2 Nephi 2:26)

"because that my heart is broken" (2 Nephi 4:32)

John Tvedtnes explains that Hebrew "begins subordinate clauses with prepositions plus a word that translates into that in English." This "that" is generally totally redundant in English. But, if the translation is literal, and the translator just doesn't know any better, that's what happens.

Also-

While rare in the English Bible, the Hebrew compound preposition is found throughout the Book of Mormon. Here are some examples:

by the hand of your enemies instead of "by your enemy's hand"

by the mouth of all the prophets instead of "said by all the prophets," or "by the prophet's mouth"

down into the land of Nephi instead of "down to Nephi," or "down to the land of Nephi"

fled from before my presence instead of "fled from me," or "fled from my presence"

And there are plenty more examples than those-I think it's very interesting- I'm no expert on this- but it seems like there is something more than mere coincedence going on here. I'll have to read more about this.

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In the 1830 edition of the Book of Mormon Alma 46:19 reads, "When Moroni had said these words, he went forth among the people, waving the rent of his garment in the air." Of course, the rent is the hole, the tear, the space that now separated what was once a whole. Yes, the Prophet made an error which has been corrected in later printings to read, "rent part." But, perhaps not foolish. Rather, this almost silly omission has become one thread in a tapestry of evidence pointing to the truth of this young prophet's claim: he was really translating a Hebrew text. "Waving the rent," may be ludicrous English but it is a literal translation of perfectly good Hebrew. John Tvedtnes explains that in Hebrew, the noun modified by a verbal substantive like rent is assumed from its context. Thus, "part" would not be included in the Hebrew text. It must be supplied by the translator.(1) Yes, Joseph failed to supply the missing word, thus leaving us this interesting evidential strand.

This sort of usage of an adjective used as a noun, or, in concept, with an implied noun, is also fairly common in German.

I propose that this is evidence that Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon from German.

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