An Impressive Hebraism in the BofM

[Olavarria]

http://www.mormonapologetics.org/topic/44266-seidals-law-and-alma-5/page__p__1208687410__hl__seidal's%20law__fromsearch__1entry1208687410

btw i did a post on Seidal's law and Alma 5. The ideas are not mine, but DB's.

[Pahoran]

?? ?? ??????? ?? ? ?? ?????? ??? ?? ?????? ?? ???????.

Scottie, in case you are wondering what that says: "I am writing to you in English, but the script is Cyrillic."

Yes, we have. I'm still unpersuaded by your arguments.

What's to argue about?

The sky is blue.

"Reformed" is a common adjective.

The grass is green.

"Reformed Egyptian" is not a proper noun.

Water is wet.

All of the above statements are facts not open to good-faith dispute.

Unless you remain still to be "persuaded" that you should drop the part of your polemical agenda that requires you to maintain the obviously counterfactual position that there exists a proper noun, "Reformed Egyptian," that has some connection to the Book of Mormon.

And in that case, the only possible argument anyone could make is an appeal to your personal integrity.

Right. Which have to do with Hebrew... how??

See Volgadon's quote, above.

Regards,

Pahoran

[David Bokovoy]

For those interested, Chris Smith, aka "CaliforniaKid" presents what appears to be a compelling argument in support of Matthew's influence upon this Hebraism:

The derivation of the Alma verse from Matthew is the more obvious when we look at the larger context of the Alma passage. Alma is citing the Matthean prooftexts for the life of Jesus.

Alma 7:9 But behold, the Spirit hath said this much unto me, saying: Cry unto this people, saying

[David Bokovoy]

This was my response:

This all sounds good, until one remembers that there are 14 Matthean prooftexts for the life of Jesus, not just one or two, and that these OT citations appear dispersed throughout the entire Gospel, not just in one or two chapters.

Hence, with only one direct allusion to a Matthean proof text, the argument that the author of Alma 7 either systematically or subconsciously assimilated these citations to formulate the BofM chapter is extremely weak, to say the least.

More importantly, Isaiah 40:3 is not simply a Matthean proof text, but in reality appears cited in the context of Jesus

[why me]

?? ?? ??????? ?? ? ?? ?????? ??? ?? ?????? ?? ???????.

I understood this and it was a pretty acurate. But I am not sure what the point was.

[why me]

This was my response:

This all sounds good, until one remembers that there are 14 Matthean prooftexts for the life of Jesus, not just one or two, and that these OT citations appear dispersed throughout the entire Gospel, not just in one or two chapters.

Hence, with only one direct allusion to a Matthean proof text, the argument that the author of Alma 7 either systematically or subconsciously assimilated these citations to formulate the BofM chapter is extremely weak, to say the least.

Best

David, the other board has you falling away and leaving the church. With this thread you are proving them wrong.

[David Bokovoy]

David, the other board has you falling away and leaving the church. With this thread you are proving them wrong.

I'm in good company. The same accusations have been raised recently against Will, Brant, Ben, etc.

It's like I told our friend Paul O. I've been around these boards long enough to understand the game. Oftentimes when an apologist successfully points out to dissidents the problematic nature of the fundamentalist approach the critic uses to justify his or her rejection of Mormonism, the dissident falls back to the critic's last line of defense, i.e. the apologist is on the "fringe;" the approach the apologist adopts to interpret Mormonism does not reflect LDS orthodoxy.

Evidence seldom, if ever, speaks for itself. Facts need to be interpreted. Many fundamentalist thinkers eventually find themselves outside of the Church when they discover that LDS history, scripture, and/or theology does not adhere to the individual's own strict views of perceived orthodoxy. For those who justifying forsaking their testimonies over inconsistencies between Mormonism and their personal assumptions, it's no doubt quite troubling to find believers who retain faith by means of a different religious paradigm than the one the dissident demanded of his or her former faith.

Praise to the man who communed with Jehovah; traitors and tyrants fight him vain.

[Olavarria]

http://www.mormonapologetics.org/topic/44266-seidals-law-and-alma-5/page__p__1208687410__hl__seidal's%20law__fromsearch__1entry1208687410

btw i did a post on Seidal's law and Alma 5. The ideas are not mine, but DB's.

Seidel's law is a phenomena first documented by Moshe Seidel. Siedel noticed that later authors in the Hebrew Bible, while quoting older biblical texts, would repeat the elements they quoted in reverse order. So if Moses is quoted as saying XYZ, a later writer would render the elements of his speech as ZYX. For example, take two verses in Leviticus and Ezekiel:

Lev. 26: 4

4)Then I will give you rain in due season, and the land shall yield her increase, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit.

Ezek.34:27

27)And the tree of the field shall yield her fruit, and the earth shall yield her increase, and they shall be safe in their land, and shall know that I am the Lord, when I have broken the bands of their yoke, and delivered them out of the hand of those that served themselves of them.

Notice how "the tree of the field shall yield her fruit, and the earth shall yield her increase" is the reverse of "land shall yield her increase, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit."

The same could be said for Gen.27:29 and Num.24:9.

Gen.27:29

29)Let people serve thee, and nations bow down to thee: be lord over thy brethren, and let thy motherâ??s sons bow down to thee: cursed be every one that curseth thee, and blessed be he that blesseth thee.

Num.24:9

9)He couched, he lay down as a lion, and as a great lion: who shall stir him up? Blessed is he that blesseth thee, and cursed is he that curseth thee.

In Numbers, the older phrase "cursed be every one that curseth thee, and blessed be he that blesseth thee: is quoted as "Blessed is he that blesseth thee, and cursed is he that curseth thee". In Alma 5, Alma gives a discourse about entering the presence of God during the judgement and quotes Psalm 24 in accordance with Siedel's law.

Alma 5:19

19)I say unto you, can ye look up to God at that day with a pure heart and clean hands? I say unto you, can you look up, having the image of God engraven upon your countenances?

Psalm 24:3-4

3)Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? or who shall stand in his holy place?

4)He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully.

The main idea of Psalm 24 is entering the presence of God; it is also the main theme of Alma's discourse. By drawing upon Psalm24, Alma gives us added insight into the meaning of that verse. In biblical Hebrew, the proposition "before" literally means "facing". According to Alma and the Psalmist,the people with clean hands and a pure heart,"This is the generation of them that seek him, that seek thy face, O Jacob".

Notes

I got this nice insight from "Testaments:Links between the Book of Mormon and the Hebrew Bible".

[David Bokovoy]

For those still interested in this discussion, Chris pointed out that I was mistaken in stating that Alma 7 includes the phrase

[David Bokovoy]

I got this nice insight from "Testaments:Links between the Book of Mormon and the Hebrew Bible".

You'll probably still be OK!

[LinuxGal]

(Which, just BTW, blows the whole "plagiarism" argument out of the water, since Joseph never claimed that any part of the Book of Mormon was original to him. Since he wasn't claiming any of it as his original work, then he couldn't possibly have been "plagiarising" even if he had been lying his head off.)

I'm not saying that Joseph Smith plagiarized anybody, I'm saying that Mormon plagiarized Paul. During his sermon in Moroni 7, he says:

And charity suffereth long, and is kind, and envieth not, and is not puffed up, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil, and rejoiceth not in iniquity but rejoiceth in the truth, beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.

Which means that he must have had access to 1st Corinthians 13:4-7, which says:

Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.

I'm thinking when Paul was in his shipwreck, he had a copy of his epistle to the church in Corinth in a bottle, and it floated all the way to America where Mormon found it. But he still didn't credit brother Paul, and those are some beautiful words that are oft heard at weddings.

[why me]

I'm in good company. The same accusations have been raised recently against Will, Brant, Ben, etc.

It's like I told our friend Paul O. I've been around these boards long enough to understand the game. Oftentimes when an apologist successfully points out to dissidents the problematic nature of the fundamentalist approach the critic uses to justify his or her rejection of Mormonism, the dissident falls back to the critic's last line of defense, i.e. the apologist is on the "fringe;" the approach the apologist adopts to interpret Mormonism does not reflect LDS orthodoxy.

Evidence seldom, if ever, speaks for itself. Facts need to be interpreted. Many fundamentalist thinkers eventually find themselves outside of the Church when they discover that LDS history, scripture, and/or theology does not adhere to the individual's own strict views of perceived orthodoxy. For those who justifying forsaking their testimonies over inconsistencies between Mormonism and their personal assumptions, it's no doubt quite troubling to find believers who retain faith by means of a different religious paradigm than the one the dissident demanded of his or her former faith.

Praise to the man who communed with Jehovah; traitors and tyrants fight him vain.

I can agree with your observation. I have also discovered that on exer boards they are very careful not to allow anyone the opportunity to disrupt or contradict their new world view. There is a feeling of being threatened by lds members who have been there and done that but still remained members based on reason and intellect.

I have known fundalmentalist thinkers and I have tried to educate my daughters away from fundalmentalism for the reasons that you stated. Unfortunately, their are parents who teach such fundalmentalism in the home to their children.

Glad that you are still on board.

[why me]

I'm not saying that Joseph Smith plagiarized anybody, I'm saying that Mormon plagiarized Paul. During his sermon in Moroni 7, he says:

And charity suffereth long, and is kind, and envieth not, and is not puffed up, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil, and rejoiceth not in iniquity but rejoiceth in the truth, beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.

Which means that he must have had access to 1st Corinthians 13:4-7, which says:

Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.

I'm thinking when Paul was in his shipwreck, he had a copy of his epistle to the church in Corinth in a bottle, and it floated all the way to America where Mormon found it. But he still didn't credit brother Paul, and those are some beautiful words that are oft heard at weddings.

And yet, how interesting it would be if Mormon contradicted Paul. Now that really would be a critic hoopla. I do believe that the early mormons saw similiarities in the two books. And I am sure that it was brought up. But for some reason, it was not a concern at all. In fact, I can find no former members who left the early church because of it. And so, the question is why, if true. What did they know that we don't.

[Thorkyll]

As part of a very frustrating conversation on another board, I shared the following comment in a recent post. In my mind this is an impressive Hebraism for two reasons. One, in terms of linguistics, it shows evidence that the text possesses a fundamental Hebraic background, and two, from a literary perspective, this Hebraism provides another example of "Seidel's Law". I thought this board might be interested in the information.

Maybe I'm just dumb, but what exactly is so impressive here?

[LinuxGal]

I do believe that the early mormons saw similiarities in the two books. And I am sure that it was brought up. But for some reason, it was not a concern at all. In fact, I can find no former members who left the early church because of it. And so, the question is why, if true. What did they know that we don't.

Why go back to the early church when we have millions of people in the church today who see similarities in the two books and it's not a concern at all? What do you know that I don't? That's why I'm here. My working hypothesis is that people want to belong to something, and Mormonism has many appealing things about it. I've seen BYU-I with the big white temple on the hill and the young missionaries there in Applebees pumping themselves up to go. It doesn't rise to the level of words but...it happened. I saw it. There's something about a total cultural immersion in LDS stuff and I can pick up the fringes of that but I'll probably never fully know because of the race thing and the marriage equality thing.

In 421 AD Moroni wrote a few more things before adding his plates to the ones his father sealed up in the hill Cumorah in western New York. He asked anyone who read those records in the latter days to ponder them in his heart and ask God in prayer, in the name of Christ, if the things were true. And if they asked with a sincere heart, the truth of them would be made manifest through the power of the Holy Spirit. He was asking that the seeker rely on an interior emotion to verify the truth value of the records. So no amount of textual evidence showing that the Book of Mormon was created ex nihilo in the early 19th Century will suffice. What is my interest in the whole thing? In a nutshell it shows the evolution of the early Christian Church in the Eastern Hemisphere.

[why me]

Why go back to the early church when we have millions of people in the church today who see similarities in the two books and it's not a concern at all? What do you know that I don't? That's why I'm here. My working hypothesis is that people want to belong to something, and Mormonism has many appealing things about it. I've seen BYU-I with the big white temple on the hill and the young missionaries there in Applebees pumping themselves up to go. It doesn't rise to the level of words but...it happened. I saw it. There's something about a total cultural immersion in LDS stuff and I can pick up the fringes of that but I'll probably never fully know because of the race thing and the marriage equality thing.

I think that you missed it. In the early days, Joseph Smith was alive and well. I am sure that people asked him about the similiarities and he had a good answer. The people at that time were well versed in the bible since they came from other religious backgrounds before they joined the lds church. It would not have gotten by them because they were not stupid or ignorant. And I will say it again: to my knowledge not one member that I know of at the time of JS left the lds chuch over similarities between the bible and the book of mormon. Other issues such as polygamy, the kirkland bank crisis etc were issues that affected people's membership. See my point? And so, what did they know that we don't know?

[LeSellers]

In 421 AD Moroni wrote a few more things before adding his plates to the ones his father sealed up in the hill Cumorah in western New York.

Not so fast.

Neither Mormon nor Moroni hid the record(s) in the Drumlin in western New York, at least very few people believe that. It is true that many people once thought so, but there is no direct evidence from Joseph Smith on the subject, and much to recommend alternatives.

Most LDSs who have given the matter much thought at all accept that the Hill Cumorah that was the "official repository/library" of the Nephite prophets was in southern Mexico or nearby.

Lehi

[LeSellers]

... he must have had access to 1st Corinthians 13:4-7, which says:

Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.

It must mean no such thing. Several alternatives exist. The most likely is that both prophets referred (indirectly)

to the same older text. After all, the subject of charity is integral to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and the fact that original "Judaism" was that very Gospel leads one to believe that earlier writers would have covered the subject and in some detail.

Lehi

[LinuxGal]

Neither Mormon nor Moroni hid the record(s) in the Drumlin in western New York, at least very few people believe that. It is true that many people once thought so, but there is no direct evidence from Joseph Smith on the subject, and much to recommend alternatives.

I didn't know that. I assumed that no one handled the plates between Moroni and Smith, because only Moroni knew where they were buried, and he gave this information to Smith. In the Elder's Journal in 1838 Smith said, "Moroni, the person who deposited the plates, from whence the book of Mormon was translated, in a hill in Manchester, Ontario County, New York, as a resurected being, appeared unto me, and told me where they were; and gave me directions how to obtain them."

[LinuxGal]

It must mean no such thing. Several alternatives exist. The most likely is that both prophets referred (indirectly)

to the same older text. After all, the subject of charity is integral to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and the fact that original "Judaism" was that very Gospel leads one to believe that earlier writers would have covered the subject and in some detail.

The word "charity" (agape, or sacrificial love) never appears in the Book of Mormon's gospel (3 Nephi) and the word "love" is commanded by Christ exactly once in that book, when he says to love one's enemies. But the word "baptized" appears 27 times in the same book, so that pretty much tells me what subject is integral to the LDS gospel of Jesus Christ. I would go to 3 Nephi to learn about Mormon baptism, assuredly, but never to learn about love, which appears in 36 different verses in the gospel of John alone.

[LeSellers]

I didn't know that. I assumed that no one handled the plates between Moroni and Smith, because only Moroni knew where they were buried, and he gave this information to Smith. In the Elder's Journal in 1838 Smith said, "Moroni, the person who deposited the plates, from whence the book of Mormon was translated, in a hill in Manchester, Ontario County, New York, as a resurected being, appeared unto me, and told me where they were; and gave me directions how to obtain them."

The "library" or official repository was not the "Hill Cumorah" named by Oliver Cowdery. The hill itself testifies of that, as it does not command the military field described in Mormon.

That Moroni took many years to get from the battle field also shows us that the two hills are different. He would have been easily able to carry the small stack of plates that Joseph found from Central America to upstate New York in the two decades he fled for his life from the blood-thirsty, marauding Lamanites.

We also have the witness of Brigham Young that Moroni wandered throughout the West of North America, because he, Moroni, dedicated several Temple sites (e.g., Manti in Utah) during that period.

Lehi

[LinuxGal]

The "library" or official repository was not the "Hill Cumorah" named by Oliver Cowdery. The hill itself testifies of that, as it does not command the military field described in Mormon.

I've been looking into the controversy with Google and I never knew any of this. And that is precisely why I joined this forum. Thanks!

[volgadon]

Maybe I'm just dumb, but what exactly is so impressive here?

Perhaps you are confusing impressive with dramatic.

[Thorkyll]

Perhaps you are confusing impressive with dramatic.

I've still yet to see why Joseph Smith couldn't have had access to books which contained Hebrew or Hebraisms.

[Bunk]

It must mean no such thing. Several alternatives exist. The most likely is that both prophets referred (indirectly)

to the same older text.

Apologists trot this out from time to time to address isolated instances of BoM and New Testament saying the same things, but there are far too many cases of borrowing to explain them all by invoking a previous text. It is inconceivable that this could explain all of it. Therefore, David Bokovoy and some other apologists who know as much agree that the King James New Testament influenced the composition of Book of Mormon text. David acknowledged it in this very thread when he conceded that his "interesting Hebraism" was a mistake (see here). Alma7 text comes from Matthew 3 after all.

Probably the best thing to do would be admit that LinuxGal is right about 1 Cor 13 being the source of the charity quote in the BoM. You could always say "so what, it doesn't bother me."