Another Hebraism in the Book of Mormon

[Olavarria]

More than 40 years ago, Jack W. Welsh discovered chiasmus in the Book of Mormon. Since then the study of inverted parallelism and other rhetorical forms in the book has continued. More recently an example of the form has been identified in Mormon 5:16, whose main features can be explained as follows:

A For behold, the Spirit of the Lord

hath already ceased to strive with their fathers; and they are without

B Christ and

B God

in the world; and they are driven

A about as chaff before the wind.

According to Wlford G.E. Watson,

[ebeddoulos]

What little I know about Hebrew, I must always re-verify with Strong's, Vine's, Zodhiates, etc, so don't mistake my opinion for having any real value. With that caveat out of the road, it appears that you may be onto something, sir. And your example is not listed by Donald W. Parry in his "The Book of Mormon Text Formatted according to Parallelistic Patterns." Pat yourself on the back.

[Doug the Hutt]

Obligatory objection to citing chiasmus as proof of ancient Hebrew writing style:

I saw chiasmus in an Oracle 8i or 9i book a few years ago. Seriously -- it was right there chaismusating at me in the face with its inverted parallelism! I was really taken off guard because I'd been told all those years by my friends at Church that finding chiasmus in a text means the text is of ancient Hebrew origin. So for a short time I had to work it out that the ancient animal-sacrificing-and-genocide-of-neighbors-committing-Hebrews in fact did *not* invent the relational database and that some shady modern enterprise dug up ancient etched-silicon-whitepapers all for the purpose of getting gain. Imagine my shock when I found people smarter than me (that's not the surprise) discussing chiasmus in Hindu, Hebrew, Latin, Greek and a whole lotta other ancient and modern writing systems. Chiasmus is not uniquely Hebraic any more than the use of punctuation is uniquely Modern English, or poetry is uniquely Greek or rolling the tongue when speaking is uniquely Spanish. Sometimes ideas, technologies and methods of doing things are invented independently of others -- the concept of "zero" comes to mind where both the Maya and the (real) Indians independently invented zero in their mathematical systems.

I guess finding chiasmus in the Book of Mormon would mean a lot more to me if there multiple collaborative hits, not more chiasmus, but perhaps if all that other stuff the Book of Mormon alludes to then we might have something. If there were a large, clear body of evidence that showed that the Hebrew language along with the Egyptian writing symbols of around 600BCE appeared suddenly in the Americas, persisted withing a vast society of hundreds of thousands of people even up to where Moroni of 400AD could still read the original Hebrew Brass Plates from 1000 years before and all the writings since then, and spawned the ___ Native American language family which to this day has multiple connections showing descent from that single influential group headed by Father Lehi, then we might have something meaningful to show the world. It isn't even enough to find chiasmus in Mayan or Aztecan or any Native American society unless it's also accompanied by the language descent, or some other body of evidence like Hebrew DNA. Until that happens I necessarily must remain skeptical of any such strained associations.

On Book of Mormon authors mimicking the style of the Hebrew Bible:

It's not necessary to complicate the existence of the chiastic style with ancient Mormon authors who used some attestation of Hebrew, written in modified Egyptian characters, to write the book. The same mimicking can still be accomplished without appealing to modified Egyptian characters as the original script or ancient Israelites living in America as the authors -- a 19th century Bible-regurgitating American with a sky-is-the-limit attitude, charisma, guile and a golden audience consisting of idealistic-Christian-Zionist-post-revolution-American-peasants could accomplish the same mimicry without assigning patterns of behavior, or intent, or style, or sophistication to a people not independently identified by anything in the world other than one book, claimed to be translated by the Prophet into English in 1830 and the original conveniently shipped off to heaven where no independent observer can ever say there was an original book of plates here in the first place... All it takes is that someone tells a lie and someone believes a lie, even sincerely. Jesus said "the truth shall set you free". He also said to watch out for ravenous false prophets who would lead us away. That's all I want, just the truth wherein there is safety, and there must be many Mormons like me out there. If the Book of Mormon is true, if it really happened, then it will be self-evident. If it never happened then we'll keep finding a whole lot of nothing, and sadly we'll keep having sincere and brilliant people explaining away the lack of reality, we'll keep finding ourselves bound by deception. If we're not willing to call a spade a spade, or a lie a lie, or remain uncommitted to a proposal until the burden of proof is truly satisfied then we'll never be free.

I'll get off my Irish Spring wrapper now...

[Bernard Gui]

[ If the Book of Mormon is true, if it really happened, then it will be self-evident.

I find this statement a bit odd because if we substitute any matter of faith, let's say 'the resurrection of Jesus Christ' for

the 'Book of Mormon,' we must also expect to find it either self-evident or false. Is the fact of the resurrection

self-evident?

I believe the Hebraisms in the Book of Mormon are interesting because they reveal Lehite

literary structure and thought patterns. They should be studied for the purpose of understanding

Lehite thought, rather than finding parallels in ancient Hebrew writing. There can be no doubt

they occur frequently in the Book of Mormon. That fact alone is worth study in itself.

For example, the form called anadiplosis occurs in many passages that deal with

the plan of salvation and the atonement. Some even allude to temple knowledge.

One example:

Mormon 9:11-13

11 But behold, I will show unto you a God of miracles, even the

God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob;

and it is that same God who created the heavens and the earth, and

all things that in them are.

12 Behold he created Adam, and by Adam came the fall of man.

And because of the fall of man came Jesus Christ, even the Father

and the Son; and because of Jesus Christ came the redemption of

man.

13 And because of the redemption of man, which came by Jesus

Christ, they are brought back into the presence of the Lord; yea,

this is wherein all men are redeemed, because the death of Christ

bringeth to pass the resurrection, which bringeth to pass a

redemption from an endless sleep, from which sleep all men shall

be awakened by the power of God when the trump shall sound; and

they shall come forth, both small and great, and all shall stand

before his bar, being redeemed and loosed from this eternal band

of death, which death is a temporal death.

Since Nephi used used this form, one might assume it became

imbedded in the Nephite writing system, because later writers

also used it, Mormon and Moroni in particular. That it might have originated in

the Old World is less intriguing to me than the fact that the Nephites

used it as a very effective rhetorical device when they discussed

certain subjects. I'm not sure how to explain its appearance in

the Book of Mormon if Joseph Smith wrote the book from his own experience.

Perhaps you have some suggestions?

Bernard

[Olavarria]

On Book of Mormon authors mimicking the style of the Hebrew Bible:

It's not necessary to complicate the existence of the chiastic style with ancient Mormon authors who used some attestation of Hebrew, written in modified Egyptian characters, to write the book. The same mimicking can still be accomplished without appealing to modified Egyptian characters as the original script or ancient Israelites living in America as the authors -- a 19th century Bible-regurgitating American with a sky-is-the-limit attitude, charisma, guile and a golden audience consisting of idealistic-Christian-Zionist-post-revolution-American-peasants could accomplish the same mimicry without assigning patterns of behavior, or intent, or style, or sophistication to a people not independently identified by anything in the world other than one book, claimed to be translated by the Prophet into English in 1830 and the original conveniently shipped off to heaven where no independent observer can ever say there was an original book of plates here in the first place...

Ah... this is were it gets interesting and relevant to my OP. The idea that the BoM was written in some attestation of Hebrew, using a modified Egytian script comes from Moroni's description and the various Hebraisms found in the book. The curious thing about my observation is that it only works in Hebrew. Take for example the ABA-form of this Sumerian verse from "Enki and Eridu: Journey of the Water-God of Nippur":

A The lord of the abyss, the King Enki

Enki, the lord who decrees the fates,

B Built his house of silver and lapis lazuli;

Its silver and lapis lazuli, like sparkling light,

A The father fashioned fittingly in the abyss

In the Sumerian text, the inclusion is found in the words "the abyss". In Mormon 5:16, the phrase "Spirit of the Lord" and "chaff in the wind" is found. In Biblical Hebrew, both phrases make use of the noun ruach(?????)which is tranlated as "spirit" and "wind" in the KJV.

So, if this is a chiasm, it would only work in Hebrew.

[LDS Truthseeker]

Evidence of ancient Hebrew origin by Mother Goose

Hickory, dic kory, dock,

The mouse ran up the clock.

The clock struck one,

The mouse ran down,

Hickory, dic kory, dock.

[Olavarria]

Evidence of ancient Hebrew origin by Mother Goose

Hickory, dic kory, dock,

The mouse ran up the clock.

The clock struck one,

The mouse ran down,

Hickory, dic kory, dock.

Strawman

[LDS Truthseeker]

Strawman

yeah but kinda funny. But I learned something by doing this post, for some reason the site censored the word ****ory, so I had to put a space in the middle of it. Now isn't that a bit extreme?

[Joseph Antley]

My only problem with many poetic parallels found in the Book of Mormon is that they seem to presuppose a tight translation for the text, which seems problematic in other places. Was the translation of the Book of Mormon tight, loose, somewhere in between, or was it tight in some passages and loose in others?

[David Bokovoy]

My only problem with many poetic parallels found in the Book of Mormon is that they seem to presuppose a tight translation for the text, which seems problematic in other places. Was the translation of the Book of Mormon tight, loose, somewhere in between, or was it tight in some passages and loose in others?

I personally believe that the "translation" process was a revelatory act that involved a a type of fluidity, moving back and forth between a "tight" versus "loose" control, so I don't have an issue with poetic parallels.

In this instance, I like Pedro's idea of connecting wind with spirit, but I typically have a hard time accepting most chiastic proposals as intentional literary devices. In order for this interesting proposal to work, it seems to me that the description of the Spirit of the Lord and the wind would need to express synonymous conceptions. Not only does this not occur, but the alleged chiasmus features too much textual interference, i.e. phrases that have to be ignored in order for the structure to exist (in my opinion this is one of the major problems with most examples of Book of Mormon parallelism). In this poem, the first line states that the Spirit of the Lord is not with the fathers, yet the phrase Pedro attempts to associate with this expression states that the wind, i.e. "spirit" is moving the fathers.

Moreover, I'm a bit skeptical that the Nephites would have automatically associated the title Christ, i.e. "Anointed One" with the title "God." Whereas I reject the chiastic structure, I do believe Pedro has identified the possible use of a biblical-like leitwort which via the link between spirit and wind is a possible Hebraism.

[Bernard Gui]

My only problem with many poetic parallels found in the Book of Mormon is that they seem to presuppose a tight translation for the text, which seems problematic in other places. Was the translation of the Book of Mormon tight, loose, somewhere in between, or was it tight in some passages and loose in others?

Anadiplosis translates well because of the chain relationship between the repeated words.

Bernard

[Olavarria]

I personally believe that the "translation" process was a revelatory act that involved a a type of fluidity, moving back and forth between a "tight" versus "loose" control, so I don't have an issue with poetic parallels.

In this instance, I like Pedro's idea of connecting wind with spirit, but I typically have a hard time accepting most chiastic proposals as intentional literary devices. In order for this interesting proposal to work, it seems to me that the description of the Spirit of the Lord and the wind would need to express synonymous conceptions. Not only does this not occur, but the alleged chiasmus features too much textual interference, i.e. phrases that have to be ignored in order for the structure to exist (in my opinion this is one of the major problems with most examples of Book of Mormon parallelism). In this poem, the first line states that the Spirit of the Lord is not with the fathers, yet the phrase Pedro attempts to associate with this expression states that the wind, i.e. "spirit" is moving the fathers.

Moreover, I'm a bit skeptical that the Nephites would have automatically associated the title Christ, i.e. "Anointed One" with the title "God." Whereas I reject the chiastic structure, I do believe Pedro has identified the possible use of a biblical-like leitwort which via the link between spirit and wind is a possible Hebraism.

Upon further consideration, I have to agree:)

I'm not big on this one.

[nosmelone]

Great find!

On a side note I recently read the Zarahemla "seed of compassion" post by you and David B. and I had wondered if you guys have done any research into the names of Abinadi and Aminadi (of whom Amulek was a descendant of. Who also interpreted the writings which was upon the wall of the temple, which was written by the finger of God. (Alma 10:2). Obviously in english both of their names are similar in spelling and sound but I was wondering if there is any Hebrew correlation?

[nosmelone]

ignore that last question, if I am right Abinadi is broken up into abi= my father and nadi= with you, and ami=my people or nation, nadi=with you.