Cumulative Review Of Book Of Mormon Correlations

[maklelan]

Cumorah and Moroni aren't the topic right now. It was useful in making the coincidence argument, but if we chase down every tangent and beat it with a stick we won't get anywhere. I'm happy with a 7.5 for sheum. 24 to lodge an objection, then we move on.

[The Dude]

cdowis-

I don't know for a fact that the origins I posted are correct. It is just something I read on the internet... From a thread in the RfM archive:

'Moroni' has a meaning in the local language, viz. "at the place of fire." It is constructed of the root 'moro,' which means "fire" or "heat" and the locative '-ni,' which means "at the place of" or "in." This is a logical name constructed from the morphemes of the language reflecting the fact that the community is located at the base of an immense, active volcano. Likewise, the name 'Comoro' has a meaning. It is composed of an old Swahili locative 'ko-' and the word 'moro.' It's meaning is also "the place of fire."

It is a fact that the native language of Comoran is a blend of Arabic and Swahili (see here.

The lingustic roots are interesting but the actually do not matter for the reason I brought this up. They could just as well be Arabic. This still wouldn't answer my question about how the two names became associated in the story told by Joseph Smith (notwithstanding your insinuation about Lehi knowing some Arabs). It is, at the very least, an incredible coincidence.

****

freakin a man-

Please re-read the post you were responding to. I never said Joseph Smith read the names off a map. I'm fine with a coincidence if you are, but if you have a better explanation, I would love to hear it.

****

maklelan-

Thanks for indulging me. Just one more thing. What is the correlation score for Moroni/Cumorah? I'd call it a "10".

[Olavarria]

The trouble with this suggestion, of course, is that Mosiah 9:9 places the term on the lips of a Mulekite who has been instructed in the Nephite language some 2000 years later. That this word could survive 2,000 years of transmission by Jaredites-- who (if FARMS is to be believed) lived among and interacted regularly with other Mesoamerican cultures-- is frankly hard to believe

Lets not forget that a few of jaredite names made their way into the nephites after Mosiah's exodus from Nephi. Let us not forget that Moroni was able to identify Ramah with Cumorah. How would that happen if ALL the jaredites were killed? I suspect that the "mulektites" partly composed of Jaredite outlying survivors. I think the jaredites lived among and interacted regularly with meso american cultures,as did the nephite/lamanites. However, no body knows the exact nature of the interaction. I think the name sheum made its way into the nephite lexicon from the jaredites via the "mulekites". Lets not forget, it was Zerahemla who was definatly identified as a descendant of Mulek. The origin of his people was not explained;all that we know is that they had contact with at least one jaredite, a literate noble.

[Uncle Dale]

Cumorah and Moroni aren't the topic right now.... we move on.

Yes PLEASE could we move on, and post here a listing the locations of a couple of dozen

of the most striking examples of Hebraic literary forms in the BoM. ????

????????????????

UD

[Olavarria]

uncle dale

1) None of the BoM names begin with F or contain q,x,w. Biblical names are the same. Mosiah 12:3 Alma 46:21

2)Use of parrallelisms including but not limited to chiasmus(Alma:36), Synonmous parallels(2 Nephi 9:52), anti thetic parrallels(1 Nephi 17:45 ) and repeated alternates.

3)Profetic speech formulas:the proclamation formula, oath formula, revelation formula, woe oracle

4)simile curses

5)compund prepositions:from before, from behind and to behind.

6)plural amplification: the English Bible transkaters turn these into the singual tense but Joseph Smith didn't. 2 Nephi 1:12, Moroni 1:19 and many more.

7)profetic perfect tense

8)Like biblical Hebrew the BoM lacks bi-, di-,multi- and poly- when numbering things. Rather it uses cardinals, ordinals, multiplicatives and fractions.

9)number without the noun: 1 Nephi 3:31, Alma 57:19, 2 Nephi 11:3, Alma 57:25

Often in biblical hebrew an expected noun does not follow a number. In order to fix this awkwardness, King James tranlaters inserted words like "pieces" or "shekels".

10) Construct state: "rod of Iron" not iron rod

11)Repitition of the defininate article: Unlike English, Hebrew repeats the definiate

for every noun. 2 Nephi 5:10

12) Cognate accusative: "dreamed a dream", "fear exeedingly with fear", "will curse even with a sore curse"

13)Many ands: Biblical Hebrew uses the conjunction "and" much more than english does, especially in historical narrative and prose but also in poetry and prose and direct speech.

14)repetition of the possesive pronoun: 3 Nephi 30:2, Mosh 11:3, Mosh 4:30, Alma 32:42, Alma 38:3, Helaman 3:14. The hebrew language repeats the possesive pronoun before each noun to which it refers.

15)Emphatic pronoun: Mosh 2:26, "amd I, even I,"

The former was taken from Don Parry's "Hebraisms and Other Ancient Peculiarities in the Book of Mormon".

[Uncle Dale]

uncle dale

1) None of the BoM names begin with F...

I guess I have not beein making myself clear. What I would really like to know is

WHERE IN THE BoM DO THE HEBRAICISMS OCCUR?

I will post here a chart of where I GUESS they probably occur, but it may be incorrect.

Please let me know the Chapers and Verses in the 1830 BoM (or even the modrn LDS BoM)

where the major instances of Hebrew literary forms occur. You gave me a few examples,

but I'd really, really like a book-by-book, chapter-by-chapter tabulation.

Thank you,

UD

[Chris Smith]

Dale,

The four chiasms in the Book of Mormon have been identified by BYU statisticians as statistically significant (i.e. the probability that they occurred accidentally is ridiculously low) are in Mosiah 3:18-20, Mosiah 5:10-12, Alma 36:1-30, and Helaman 9:6-11. Besides these statistically-confirmed examples, hundreds of other smaller chiasms have been proposed throughout the Book. According to John Welch, there is very little chiasmus in the writings of Mormon and Moroni. Most of it is in Mosiah, Alma, Helaman, and Nephi. Minor chiasms have been identified in D&C 88:34-39, Abraham 3:26-28, some of Joseph Smith's letters, and once also in Ether. Edwards and Edwards (BYU Studies 43-2) dismiss these as statistically insignificant, but their analysis utilizes only four of the fifteen criteria John Welch proposed for "assessing the likelihood that the chiastic structure of a passage in any body of literature was created intentionally by its author". E&E favor these four criteria because they are easily quantifiable, but they do say on p. 109 that chiasms that are not statistically significant on the basis of their 4 criteria may still be heuristically defensible on the basis of Welch's 11 others. (cf. JBMS 4-2, 1995)

-CK

[Uncle Dale]

Dale,

The four chiasms in the Book of Mormon have been identified by BYU statisticians as statistically significant (i.e. the probability that they occurred accidentally is ridiculously low) are in Mosiah 3:18-20, Mosiah 5:10-12, Alma 36:1-30, and Helaman 9:6-11. Besides these statistically-confirmed examples, hundreds of other smaller chiasms have been proposed throughout the Book. According to John Welch, there is very little chiasmus in the writings of Mormon and Moroni. Most of it is in Mosiah, Alma, Helaman, and Nephi. Minor chiasms have been identified in D&C 88:34-39, Abraham 3:26-28, some of Joseph Smith's letters, and once also in Ether. Edwards and Edwards (BYU Studies 43-2) dismiss these as statistically insignificant, but their analysis utilizes only four of the fifteen criteria John Welch proposed for "assessing the likelihood that the chiastic structure of a passage in any body of literature was created intentionally by its author". E&E favor these four criteria because they are easily quantifiable, but they do say on p. 109 that chiasms that are not statistically significant on the basis of their 4 criteria may still be heuristically defensible on the basis of Welch's 11 others. (cf. JBMS 4-2, 1995)

-CK

OK -- that is a good start -- are those the only major chiasms? -- I mean of more than four lines? When

I took biblical Hebrew in seminary for two semesters, we had to read the text and identify various ancient

literary structures. Couplet, or quadruplet Hebrew "inverse poetic parallelism" was so common that we

could hardly read a page from the Hebrew Bible, without coming upon this sort of thing.

I surmise that the writer of the 4 texts you mention would NOT have been Sidney Rigdon -- for several

reasons; but one of which was Rigdon's inability to see the numerous Hebrew mentions of "Jerusalem" and

"Zion" in close proximity as examples of couplet "inverse poetic parallelism." --- Thus Rigdon came up with

the patent absurdity, that all of those biblical mentions refer to a Jerusalem in Palestine and to a new

Jerusalem (or "Zion") in Jackson County, Missouri. The Latter Day Saints are saddled with this Rigdonite

blunder to this very day --- but Rigdon's faulty deduction helps assure me that he knew little or nothing of

Hebrew chiastic structures.

So -- you have given me four major examples, all of which fall in BoM textual blocks which I previously

determined to be insertions into Spalding's original story, and all four of which appear to coincide with

text I have recently marked as similar to the known non-contextual words patterns of Oliver Cowdery.

However, the posters here list many other types of Hebraic literary examples than chiastic structures --

has anybody yet charted out all of these remarkable LDS BoM discoveries in a tabulation or a graphic?

Uncle Dale

[The Dude]

-- has anybody yet charted out all of these remarkable LDS BoM discoveries in a tabulation or a graphic?

I like your graphic, Uncle Dale. It supports my earlier contention -- which both Dan Peterson and Bill Hamblin started threads about -- that Hebraisms and King Jamesisms go hand in hand.

[Chris Smith]

Dale,

There are other chiasms that are longer than four lines. In fact, the one in the D&C is five lines. However, a nine-line chiasm has also been detected in a computer manual, where it obviously appears by accident. Edwards & Edwards' point is that in any highly repetitive text, there are pretty good odds that you'll get a chiasm somewhere in there. Given that both the computer manual and the Book of Mormon are highly repetitive texts, Edwards and Edwards determine that wherever there are many repeated elements that do not participate in the chiastic structure, proposed chiasms may be due at least as much to the creativity of the interpreter as to the intentionality of the author. That doesn't mean that the proposed chiasms are unintentional; it means only that they might be unintentional. The four examples I listed above, from a statistical standpoint, simply cannot be accidental.

-CK

[Uncle Dale]

The four examples I listed above, from a statistical standpoint, simply cannot be accidental.

-CK

I am assuming here that the BoM text was translated back into Hebrew for the analysis you are here

talking about -- ???

Hebrew inverse poetic parallelism is not just the rote repetition backwards of a set of ideas or key-words.

The structure also involves such things as word-puns, alliteration, metre, and possibly even some rhyme

(none of which would show up in the English language text).

Back to the for examples you cited -- I am not yet so far along in my studies that I can firmly relate them

to Cowdery, but it may be worthwhile here to note that Oliver's great uncle was the noted American religious

figure, Nathaniel Emmons (who was a close friend of Ethan Smith, endorsed Ethan's books and conducted his

wedding, by the way). I've recently purchased an old 8-volume set of Emmons' sermons and will look

through them for examples of chiastic structures (as well as that can be done in English).

Just out of curiosity, what did the LDS scholars mark as the reverse parallel for the "garb of secrecy" in

the example you cited? Was the garb of secrecy itself somehow stabbed? I do not see that in the text.

Uncle Dale

[Chris Smith]

The four examples I listed above, from a statistical standpoint, simply cannot be accidental.

-CK

I am assuming here that the BoM text was translated back into Hebrew for the analysis you are here

talking about -- ???

Hebrew inverse poetic parallelism is not just the rote repetition backwards of a set of ideas or key-words.

The structure also involves such things as word-puns, alliteration, metre, and possibly even some rhyme

(none of which would show up in the English language text).

Just out of curiosity, what did the LDS scholars mark as the reverse parallel for the "garb of secrecy" in

the example you cited? Was the garb of secrecy itself somehow stabbed? I do not see that in the text.

Uncle Dale

Unk,

I am aware that chiasmus can include the other elements you mentioned, but I don't think it necessarily has to include those things in order to be chiasmus. Chiasmus, in the most basic sense, is "the rote repetition backwards of a set of ideas or key-words." E&E admit (though probably not explicitly or often enough) that they are not evaluating every aspect of chiasmus in their analysis. They are simply calculating the probability, within a given text, that a chiasm of a certain length will occur accidentally within a certain text. For these four examples, they come out with very low probabilities of that happening.

-CK

P.S. - I don't know about your other question. I'll check out Welch's analysis later; right now it's dinner time with the family.

[Uncle Dale]

Unk,

I am aware that chiasmus can include the other elements you mentioned, but I don't think it necessarily has to include those things in order to be chiasmus...

Well, yes and no --- if the Mormon scholars are publishing their findings on this topic in the ANE journals,

Biblical literature journals and peer-reviewed publications devoted to ancient Hebrew, I would expect that

they are there presenting a Hebrew text (if only a conjectural, re-constructed Hebrew text).

Or, is all of this reporing restricted to the "faith-promoting" genre of LDS self-study?

If the Mormons' goal is to convince the world that the BoM is indeed an ancient Hebrew text, based upon

its literary structure, then what has been their success to date, in "convincing" anybody?

Uncle Dale

[maklelan]

If the Mormons' goal is to convince the world that the BoM is indeed an ancient Hebrew text, based upon

its literary structure, then what has been their success to date, in "convincing" anybody?

Uncle Dale

Haim Rabin of the Hebrew University seemed convinced, and he found it on his own.

[Olavarria]

that Hebraisms and King Jamesisms go hand in hand.

We would expect to find KJ-isms for Joseph translated the book into english and the Holy Book he grew up with wa written in KJ English, so it would be reasonable for him to translate the BoM with KJ-isms in mind.

Hebraisms, however, should not be in the book(assuming Joseph wrote it of course).

The Apocalypse of Abraham(whose oldest copies are in Slavonic) is a book scholrs agree wa written in hebrew(or aramaic) in the 1st centuary. Why do they think this? Hebraisms.

[cksalmon]

Are we onto chiasmus now?

That's fine with me.

I just didn't realize we'd moved on.

Best.

CKS

[Chris Smith]

Sorry, Dale and I jumped the gun a little bit. But I hear no objections about the 7.5 sheum rating, so I think it's ok to move on.

[Warship]

Did somebody say chiasmus?

I have found many chiasms including some that fit all your criteria U Dale..alliteration and all. I have posted some of them here and they don't fall into the Spalding sections of your BOM graphic as many are in Nephi and I know you think that to be a later addition by Rigdon. If you would like me to link you to some Nephi chiasms I can.

The 600 word chiasm I found in Helaman is far more than 9 lines. But there are many that are more than nine lines. John Welch's Alma 36 is far more than 9 lines.

The entire Book of Mosiah is supposed to be chiastic as well.

The literary devices and structures in the bom were a significant factor in my convincing.

[Chris Smith]

Having read some of the literature on this subject, here are my thoughts:

1) Alma 36, if it is a Hebrew chiasm, is not particularly well-executed. It fails Welch's tests for "density" and "balance". The lines Welch identifies as the "main girders" are parallel to each other, but do not generally constitute the major points of the passage. There's a lot of extraneous text that doesn't have a counterpart. The first and last lines, which in Hebrew chiasmus are supposed to be particularly important, are not particularly important here.

2) The Alma 36 chiasm does pass the centrality test, which means that the center of the X-shape is the main point of the passage.

3) The Alma 36 chiasm is not a freak, random, unintentional accident. Edwards and Edwards demonstrate that if the 16 sections in the passage that they identify as "chiastic" were randomly rearranged, the odds of getting a chiasm are ridiculously poor.

4) However, critics need not appeal to freak accident, and randomness doesn't really fit the situation. Wunderli argues that since the passage describes Alma's leaving the church and coming back to the church, it will naturally have a chiastic structure. It will also naturally have Alma's conversion at its center.

5) Even given Wunderli's argument, the sheer length of the chiasm is impressive. I don't think we should dismiss it out of hand too quickly.

6) There are also several other proposed chiasms in the BoM, some of which are better-executed-- if not as long-- as this one.

7) Chiasms in the BoA, the D&C, and Joseph Smith's other writings are short, and might occur by accident.

8 ) Some Mormon authors explain its presence in the D&C and BoA by saying that God is its author, and that he dictates chiastically-structured revelations to all of his prophets. In these scholars' opinion, neither modern-day prophets nor the ancient Hebrew prophets intentionally crafted the poetic structures that appear in their revelations. God, not the prophet, was the poet.

9) Loftes Tryk suggests that Satan was the author of BoM chiasmus.

10) Chiasmus was known to scholars in Joseph's day, but it was not well-known, and we have no reason to believe that Joseph would have been aware of it. He might have picked up on it in his KJV Bible, if he was a child prodigy.

Given these points, I give chiasmus a 9.5. The bottom line is that its presence in the Book of Mormon is very convincing. I have deducted .5 for possible chiasms in the BoA and D&C and for the possibility that Joseph figured it out by reading the KJV.

-CK

[Olavarria]

bump

[Uncle Dale]

If the Mormons' goal is to convince the world that the BoM is indeed an ancient Hebrew text, based upon

its literary structure, then what has been their success to date, in "convincing" anybody?

Uncle Dale

Haim Rabin of the Hebrew University seemed convinced, and he found it on his own.

Let me get this straight ---- Profesor Rabin agrees that the Book of Mormon is an ancient

Hebrew text? If so, has he published that conclusion in any reputable scholarly journal?

Or...... are we saying here that Rabin concurs that there are ENGLISH chiasms in the

1830 Book of Mormon, which he does not argue came directly from ancient Hebrew?

Uncle Dale

[Uncle Dale]

Did somebody say chiasmus?

I have found many chiasms including some that fit all your criteria U Dale..alliteration and all. I have posted some of them here and they don't fall into the Spalding sections of your BOM graphic as many are in Nephi and I know you think that to be a later addition by Rigdon. If you would like me to link you to some Nephi chiasms I can.

The 600 word chiasm I found in Helaman is far more than 9 lines. But there are many that are more than nine lines. John Welch's Alma 36 is far more than 9 lines.

The entire Book of Mosiah is supposed to be chiastic as well.

The literary devices and structures in the bom were a significant factor in my convincing.

OK -- I assume you are working here from one of the modern LDS Hebrew translations of the BoM?

The LDS translations are in contemporary Hebrew, right?

At any rate, I would very much like to see a tabulation or compilation or illustration of WHERE

these Hebrew literary forms occur in the BoM text.

I have asked for this several times already in this thread, and nobody seems to have the spare

time to dig out their FARMS publications and transcribe the published listings.

I'm open to discussing this, if somebody will simply post here a listing of the BoM passages which

reputable LDS scholars say are conclusive evidence that the book was written in ancient Hebrew.

If the Mormons have such evidence, I would think that they would be trumpeting it from the roof-tops

and publishing the pictures of the concurring Hebrew language scholars (Prof. Rabin, etc.) on the covers

of the Deseret News and The Ensign.

?????

UD

[Chris Smith]

Unk, I don't think anybody has tried translating these passages back into Hebrew. Most Mormon scholars (with a notable exception in John Tvedtnes) seem to believe that the BoM is a "loose" translation, perhaps even including lengthy expansions by JS. That means that it is impossible to reconstruct the underlying Hebrew text.

Here's an index of proposed chiasms:

http://www.greaterthings.com/Parallels/BofM/index.html

http://www.greaterthings.com/Parallels/Bof...lates_Index.htm

-CK

[cksalmon]

Unk, I don't think anybody has tried translating these passages back into Hebrew. Most Mormon scholars (with a notable exception in John Tvedtnes) seem to believe that the BoM is a "loose" translation, perhaps even including lengthy expansions by JS. That means that it is impossible to reconstruct the underlying Hebrew text.

Here's an index of proposed chiasms:

http://www.greaterthings.com/Parallels/BofM/index.html

http://www.greaterthings.com/Parallels/Bof...lates_Index.htm

-CK

Hey CK and D'Unk--

It would seem, then, that what we have to work with are proposed intentional English-language chiasms only. (I trust CK's references to the statistical improbability of their having happened by chance.)

To propositionalize, then:

(1) Intentional English-language chiasms occur in BoM

(2) Intentional Hebrew-language chiasms occur in OT

Therefore,

(3) ???

The terms of debate in this instance, it seems, must shift from the mere recognition of a one-to-one correlation based on literary form to the plausibility that the author of BoM passages evincing chiasm was dependent upon an underlying Hebrew/reformed Egyptian text.

I've read some posts anent this very topic at some time during my tenure here on the board, but I'm not sure where.

I certainly wouldn't be comfortable at this point, based on (1) and (2) above, concluding that BoM chiasms are solid evidence of translational dependence on an ur-text written in reformed Egyptian.

I can't go above 5/10 until some evidentiary claims anent plausibility are presented and analyzed.

Best.

CKS

P.S. Where maklelan go?

[Chris Smith]

Hey CK and D'Unk--

It would seem, then, that what we have to work with are proposed intentional English-language chiasms only. (I trust CK's references to the statistical improbability of their having happened by chance.)

To propositionalize, then:

(1) Intentional English-language chiasms occur in BoM

(2) Intentional Hebrew-language chiasms occur in OT

Therefore,

(3) ???

The terms of debate in this instance, it seems, must shift from the mere recognition of a one-to-one correlation based on literary form to the plausibility that the author of BoM passages evincing chiasm was dependent upon an underlying Hebrew/reformed Egyptian text.

I've read some posts anent this very topic at some time during my tenure here on the board, but I'm not sure where.

I certainly wouldn't be comfortable at this point, based on (1) and (2) above, concluding that BoM chiasms are solid evidence of translational dependence on an ur-text written in reformed Egyptian.

I can't go above 5/10 until some evidentiary claims anent plausibility are presented and analyzed.

Best.

CKS

P.S. Where maklelan go?

CK Salmon,

You're right that we have to make something of a logical leap from English chiasmus to Hebrew chiasmus. However, unless really convincing examples of English chiasmus are identified, that leap is not a really difficult one to make, especially given that the BoM claims to be a Hebrew document.

Now, there is at least one source of chiasmus in English, and that's the KJV Bible. We know Joseph was familiar with it, and he may well have gotten chiasmus from there. But of course, that requires that he observed something that almost all the scholars of his day had overlooked. That's improbable, and I think we have to give some weight to probability. But it's not impossible.

Another thing I haven't sufficiently looked into is chiasmus in the D&C and BoA. Edwards and Edwards say that based on their statistical studies, these chiasms could be accidental. But their studies take into account only 4 of 15 of the standards by which John Welch proposes we evaluate the strength of a chiasm (they use the quantifiable ones; the rest are subjective). It would be helpful to apply the other 11 to the D&C and BoA chiasms in order to see whether they are stronger than E&E give them credit for. E&E also only take into account parallel words or phrases, and exclude synonymous pairings and paired ideas/concepts (the intent is to focus on objective rather than subjective pairings). If we include synonymous pairings and paired ideas and concepts, the D&C and BoA chiasms might emerge as considerably more complex than E&E would have us believe. If the D&C and BoA chiasms could be established as intentional, they obviously can't be Hebrew-based. If they're English-based, then BoM chiasms might also be English-based.

Unfortunately, I haven't had a lot of time to investigate the D&C and BoA chiasms on my own. But in the interests of giving this topic the scrutiny it deserves, I'll look into it.

-CK