Sheum: A New Lead.

[LeSellers]

To my way of thinking that is not sufficient grounds for engaging in wild speculation, or to prefer speculation over the plain meaning of the text.

"Wild speculation" is an overstatement of my position. It is not "wild" at all, but quite reasonable. "Speculation", yes, just as is yours. The "plain meaning of the text" is also an overstatement, since people wiser and better educated than either of us have taken alternative views on the matter.

How many times among my messages in this topic have I used the word "necessarily" (or a derivative)? I am not preferring anything over anything else. But I am not willing to proclaim that "the most natural and obvious reading of the text" is the only possible, valid reading of the text, and I am not willing to dictate what others must believe based on my interpretation, as some seem anxious to do.

Lehi

[zerinus]

Post ruined by bug! Reposting soon!

Edited November 16, 2011 by zerinus

[zerinus]

"Wild speculation" is an overstatement of my position. It is not "wild" at all, but quite reasonable. "Speculation", yes, just as is yours. The "plain meaning of the text" is also an overstatement, since people wiser and better educated than either of us have taken alternative views on the matter.

How many times among my messages in this topic have I used the word "necessarily" (or a derivative)? I am not preferring anything over anything else. But I am not willing to proclaim that "the most natural and obvious reading of the text" is the only possible, valid reading of the text, and I am not willing to dictate what others must believe based on my interpretation, as some seem anxious to do.

Lehi

I don’t think that my reading of the text is speculation. Let’s examine the passage more carefully; and let’s bear in mind that the question we are trying to determine is whether the Jadeites spoke the same language that the people had spoken before their language had been confounded or possibly some other language:

Ether 1:

34 And the brother of Jared being a large and mighty man, and a man highly favored of the Lord, Jared, his brother, said unto him: Cry unto the Lord, that he will not confound us that we may not understand our words.

35 And it came to pass that the brother of Jared did cry unto the Lord, and the Lord had compassion upon Jared; therefore he did not confound the language of Jared; and Jared and his brother were not confounded.

36 Then Jared said unto his brother: Cry again unto the Lord, and it may be that he will turn away his anger from them who are our friends, that he confound not their language.

37 And it came to pass that the brother of Jared did cry unto the Lord, and the Lord had compassion upon their friends and their families also, that they were not confounded.

This suggests several things: firstly, it suggests that the account we have of that event in the Bible is very incomplete. Those people whose language was confounded had been previously warned that they were doing something wrong, and what the consequences of their actions would be. Evidently they did not repent (except for Jared, his brother, and company); therefore they suffered the consequences; whereas Jared & Co. Did repent, and exercise faith, therefore the punishment did not come upon them (and as a bonus, they were led to a land that was “choice above all other lands”). It categorically states that their language was not confounded. I don’t know on what logical basis you conclude that not confounded = confounded.

Secondly, there is no logical grounds for assuming that those whose languages had been confounded had hanged around and fought each other; and even less likely, that their confounded languages had had a chance to influence, or be influenced by one another. Language influence takes place over a very long time (often centuries), and usually as a result of conquest. If these people were dispersed shortly after their languages had been cofounded, there is no logical grounds for assuming that their different languages had had a chance (at that time) to influence, or be influenced by one another. That is wild speculation.

Thirdly, there is other detail left for us in the account to enable us to come to a more definitive conclusion.

Ether 8:

9 Now the daughter of Jared was exceedingly fair. And it came to pass that she did talk with her father, and said unto him: Whereby hath my father so much sorrow? Hath he not read the record which our fathers brought across the great deep? Behold, is there not an account concerning them of old, that they by their secret plans did obtain kingdoms and great glory?

This tells us that the Jaredites had brought with them a sacred book (as the people of Lehi did), which consisted an account of events before the Flood. We know from the Book of Moses that the “secret combinations” was initiated for the first time by Cain, at the instigation of Satan. But we don’t have a detailed account. They had a more detailed account, which told them a lot more about it, from which the daughter of Jared was able to advise her father to hatch a plot to obtain the kingdom. And we know that record was originally written in the language of Adam (Moses 6:5-6). So even if you want to engage in speculation, the most likely and obvious scenario is that the Jadeites spoke the same language that they had been speaking before the “confounding” of the languages had taken place; and that language would have been the same language that Noah and his sons would have been speaking; which in turn would have been the language of Adam.

Here is one additional info: The vision of the Brother of Jared was written in the same language that had been "confounded". So his (and their) language couldn't have been confounded, otherwise he/they couldn't have written in the same language that had been confounded:

Ether 3:

24 For behold, the language which ye shall write I have confounded; wherefore I will cause in my own due time that these stones shall magnify to the eyes of men these things which ye shall write.

Edited November 16, 2011 by zerinus

[LeSellers]

...

Fine. You win.

It is obvious that you care a great deal more about this than I do.

Lehi

[zerinus]

Fine. You win.

It is obvious that you care a great deal more about this than I do.

Lehi

LOL! Now that is a silly comment. What is the point of engaging in discussion and debate, if you are not going to back up your views with arguments, reason, and references?

[LeSellers]

LOL! Now that is a silly comment. What is the point of engaging in discussion and debate, if you are not going to back up your views with arguments, reason, and references?

Since I did all three, and you rejected them, further discussion seems pointless. I have other things to do.

And, again, I care much less about this than you seem to.

Lehi

[zerinus]

Since I did all three, and you rejected them, further discussion seems pointless. I have other things to do.

And, again, I care much less about this than you seem to.

Lehi

My reading of that is that you have run out of arguments, and don't want to admit it, which means that you are not being a very good sport.

Edited November 16, 2011 by zerinus

[LeSellers]

My reading of that is that you have run out of arguments, and don't want to admit it, which means that you are not being a very good sport.

I never claimed to be a good sport.

The arguments I have advanced, buttressed by Hugh Nibley's similar (if I understand Brother Dowis correctly) position are insufficient for you. Soit! So, you win.

Lehi

[zerinus]

I never claimed to be a good sport.

The arguments I have advanced, buttressed by Hugh Nibley's similar (if I understand Brother Dowis correctly) position are insufficient for you. Soit! So, you win.

Lehi

Are you suggesting that I should accept an argument put forward by Hugh Nibley just because it comes from Hugh Nibley? Why do you think it is a good idea to surrender your brain to Hugh Nibley?

[LeSellers]

Are you suggesting that I should accept an argument put forward by Hugh Nibley just because it comes from Hugh Nibley? Why do you think it is a good idea to surrender your brain to Hugh Nibley?

I don't. But he did a lot of research, was extremely bright, and saw things others had not seen before.

As I said, I didn't get my observation from him, anyway, but great minds do think alike.

Lehi

[Calm]

My reading of that is that you have run out of arguments, and don't want to admit it, which means that you are not being a very good sport.

Calling someone "not a good sport" just because he isnt interested in continuing to debate with you comes across like calling someone a coward just because they don't want to engage in a fist fight for the 'fun of it' or double daring someone to do something worthless.

Sometimes people get bored with a conversation. That is the plain and simple meaning of Lehi's "you win" in my non speculative interpretation.

[zerinus]

I don't. But he did a lot of research, was extremely bright, and saw things others had not seen before.

As I said, I didn't get my observation from him, anyway, but great minds do think alike.

Lehi

You haven't even read Hugh Nibley on this subject, and neither have I; so we are both talking into thin air apparently.

[Calm]

great minds do think alike.

Lehi

And are wise enough to walk away from a conversation that has ceased to be productive.

[LeSellers]

You haven't even read Hugh Nibley on this subject, and neither have I; so we are both talking into thin air apparently.

I will rectify that tonight. But I trust Brother Dowis' assessment of Brother Nibley's position enough to work from there.

Lehi

[zerinus]

I will rectify that tonight. But I trust Brother Dowis' assessment of Brother Nibley's position enough to work from there.

Lehi

Good. Then you can report to us what he said.

[Bernard Gui]

First of all, were is all this mushroom talk coming from? When did I say anything about mushrooms?

I think he's confusing shooms with shrooms. Potentially a fatal error.

Bernard

Edited November 17, 2011 by Bernard Gui

[LeSellers]

Then you can report to us what [Nibley] said.

The book of Ether, depicting the uprooting and scattering from the tower of a numerous population, shows them going forth not individually, but in groups, and not merely family groups but groups of friends and associates: “thy friends and their families, and the friends of Jared and their families.” (1:41.) There was no point in having Jared’s language unconfounded if there was to be no one he could talk to, and his brothers cried unto the Lord that his friends might also retain the language. The same, however, would apply to any other language: If every individual were to speak a tongue all his own and so go off entirely by himself, the races would have been not merely scattered but quite annihilated.¹ We must not fall into the old vice of reading into the scripture things that are not there. There is nothing in our text about every man suddenly speaking a new language. We are told in the book of Ether that languages were confounded with and by the “confounding” of the people: “Cry unto the Lord,” says Jared (1:34), “that he will not confound us that we may not understand our words.” The statement is significant for more than one thing. How can it possibly be said the “we may not understand our words”? Words we cannot understand may be nonsense syllables or may be in some foreign language, but in either case they are not our words. The only way we can fail to understand our own words is to have words that are actually ours change their meaning among us. That is exactly what happens when people, and hence languages, are either “confounded,” that is, mixed up, or scattered. In Ether’s account, the confounding of people is not to separated from the confounding of their languages; they are, and have always been, one and the same process: the Lord, we are told (1:35-37), “did not confound the languages of Jared; and Jared and his brother were not confounded … and the Lord has compassion upon their friends and their families also, that they were not confounded.” That “confound” as used in the book of Ether is meant to have its true and proper meaning of “to pour together,” “to mix up together,” is clear from the prophecy in 13L8, that “the remnant of the house of Joseph shall be built upon this land … and they shall no more be confounded,” the word here meaning mixed up with other people, culturally, linguistically, or otherwise.

Yet another important Biblical expression receives welcome elucidation from our text: though Ether says nothing about “the whole earth” being “of one language and one speech” (Gen 11:1), he does give an interesting hint as to how those words may be taken. Just as “son” and “descendant: are the same word in Hebrew and so may be easily confused by translators (who in fact have no way of knowing, save from the context, in which sense the word is to be understood), so “earth” and “land” are the same word, the well know eretz. In view of the fact that the book of Ether, speaking only of the Jaredites, notes that there were none of the fair sons and daughter upon the face of the whole earth who repented of their sins” (1317), it would seem that the common “whole earth” (koi ha-aretz) of the Old Testament need not always be taken to mean the entire globe. Certainly it is quite as legitimate to think of the days of Peleg as the time when, as the old Jewish writers describe it, “the children of Noah began to divide the earth among themselves,” (Book of Jubil. VIIII, 9), as, without the least authority, to visualize the drifting of the continents or the rending apart of the terrestrial globe. A reader’s first reaction to an ancient and fragmentary text usually, becomes a lifelong credo, thought research and revelations have combined in latter days to discredit this obvious and easy solution of the mysteries. The book of Ether, like First Nephi, is, when we come to examine it, heavily weighted in the direction of sober and factual history and was never meant to be a springboard for the imagination; for example, our record does not attribute the scattering of the people, as one might innocently suppose it does, to the confusion of tongues. After the brother of Jared had been assured that he and his people and their language would not be confounded, the question of whether they would have been driven out of the land still remained to be answered” That was another issue, and it is obvious that the language they spoke has as little to with driving them out of the land as it did with determining their destination. It was something else that drove the reluctant Jaredites from their homes? What could have forced them to leave? History, to be sober and factual need not deal with the dull, normal, and every day. The confounding and scattering of the people of the tower was no slow sorting out of the historical process. It was sudden and terrible, and the book of Ether gives the clearest possible indication of what caused it.

But this introduces a theme on which it is impossible for me to speak with brevity. Let us consign it to a later communication.

…

Consistent with this picture is the fact that a number of Jaredite name are also Bible names. You ask in your last letter how that can be if the Jaredites language was the lost Adamic tongue? In the first place let us make clear that the language of Jared was not the Adamic language at all: Jared asked that his language not be confounded, so that his people might continue to understand each other, not because it was a unique or perfect language or the sacred language of Adam, a thing which would certainly have been mentioned if it were so. Indeed after the Jaredites had made their getawayand their language was safe, the Lord told the brother of Jared: “the language which you shall write I have confounded." (Ether 3:24.) When Moroni tells of the remarkable power of the writings of the brother of Jared, he attributes the mighty words not to the genius of the language but to a special gift from God to the writer. (12:24.) As to the antiquity of writing, incidentally, we have not discussed the matter because it is still so to speak completely up in the air. At Uruk, where "the parent forms" of writing appear, they do not do so by any gradual process of evolution, but "suddenly" and without warning there appear fifteen hundred signs and pictographs scratched on clay. They seem to have been written and used without any signs of hesitancy,:¹² showing that writing was already well-established somewhere in the world, and that somewhere would seem to be in the region in the north of Mesopotamia.¹³

¹ John de Pian de Carpinii, Ch I, in M. Komroff (Ed.) Contemporaries of Marco Polo (N.Y.: Liveright, 1927,) p. 4; G.N. Roerich, Trails to Inmost Asia (Yale Univ., 1931,) pp 49,110, 193-5, 404, etc.

¹² W. Andrae, "The story of Uruk," Antiquity X (1936,) 141-2. On the equally sudden emergence of Egyptian writing, S. Schott, Mythe und Mythenbildug im Alten Aegupten (Leipzig: Hinrich, 1945,) pp 2ff.

¹³I have treated this theme in Westn, Pol. Quart. II (1949), for the archaic Hur-, Hor-, elements in Egyptian names.

His emphasis

My emphasis

Lehi in the Desert and The World of the Jaredites, pp165~66, 259-60

I am sure Brother Nibley addressed this elsewhere, as well, but this is the only source I have.

Lehi

[zerinus]

I am sure Brother Nibley addressed this elsewhere, as well, but this is the only source I have.

Lehi

Thank you. It was not clear to me from the quote whether Nibley believed that Jared and his company continued to speak the same language that they had spoken before, or whether their language had changed. He does categorically assert his belief that the language that they spoke was not the Adamic language (without giving reasonable justification); which is a different issue from whether their language had changed, or confounded, at the Tower, or not. There are two questions here that need to be segregated:

(1) What language did Jared, and the rest of those people at the Tower, speak before their language had been confounded? Was it the Adamic language, or was it something else? Here we can only speculate, because the scripture doesn’t tell us. But assuming that they spoke the same language as Noah (which was the language as the antediluvians), and assuming that the antediluvians spoke the Adamic language; then the conclusion must be that the people at the Tower also spoke the Adamic language. That is still an assumption, but I think that it is the most reasonable assumption.

(2) Did the Jaredites continue to speak the same language that they had spoken before, after God had “confounded” the languages of the people? We can give a more definitive answer to that question, because the scripture actually tells us. It tells us that Jared & Co. did not have their language confounded. That means that they continued to speak the same language that they had spoken before (whether it was the Adamic language or something else).

So the question of what language the Jaredites spoke is not dependent on whether their language had been “confounded” or not; but on what language they all spoke before the language of the people had been confounded. Nibley asserts categorically his belief that it was not the Adamic language, but without attempting to justify it. From my point of view, however, that assertion cannot be made so categorically, on the basis of the explanations given above, and in my earlier posts.

Edited November 17, 2011 by zerinus

[LeSellers]

Thank you. It was not clear to me from the quote whether Nibley believed that Jared and his company continued to speak the same language that they had spoken before, or whether their language had changed. He does categorically assert his belief that the language that they spoke was not the Adamic language (without giving reasonable justification); which is a different issue from whether their language had changed, or confounded, at the Tower, or not.

I'm not trying to defend the Nibley stance. You asked, I provided. My observation is independent of his.

My point is that the Jaredites may very well have spoken something other than Adamic, if for no other reason that the book of Ether does not say they did, and that we have other indications that the Jaredites used language that still existed in some form much later. As I recall, Brother Nibley said that "deseret" (honey bee") is found in ancient Egypt. Aside from personal names, deseret, and possibly cumons and cureloms are the only Jaredite words we have transliterations of.

Lehi

[Wrerceciff]

What I have set out to do withPower Half Houris identify the basics of what it can accomplish for a wide cross-section of people at various levels of fitness. So what fitness equipment is best for you? Exploring the options and outweighing what is best for you and your body is a great start to a good fitness regime. Have you ever completed a journey and then when you've arrived don't remember anything about it? Or, even more amazingly at times, been completing a journey on that type of auto-pilot and then snapped into action when you face an unexpected hazard on the road? That's very similar to hypnosis: you're in some kind of trance that you can go into, and out of, at your will.

Then she went and lost over 30 pounds in one year. Now she looks incredible: fit, sporty and healthy. Some feminists have even attacked her. But what about her "natural curves"? Is she really betraying womankind?

My levels are fine.

So, in our endeavours to shed the pounds, we're told we must cut down on or eliminate the high calorie foods and stock up with vegetables instead. Vegetables are essential for inclusion in our daily eating plans. Not only do they include a large amount of vitamins and minerals, they can provide a real boost in helping to shift the excess pounds. Don't: Bring home a tub of her favorite ice cream. More precisely, the statistics show that individuals who have a BMI of over 40 have 43% lesser chance of bearing a child than women who have normal body mass. Moreover, women who have a BMI between 35 and 40 are also 26% less likely to get pregnant using natural methods.

Recent Forum DiscussionsregissmolkoWelcome to the GroupregissmolkoinIntroduce Yourselfon Mar 27Welcome! We would love get to know you, so please tell us a little bit about yourself. You can choose any format you'd like... green coffee extract The best weight loss diet, according to many nutritionists, should contain a lot of whole grains and fiber, which helps in better digestion of food and absorption of nutrients. It should not include foods that are deep-fried as these foods come with a lot of fat. If you are a meat person, you don't have to give it up, but be sure to smoke it instead of fry it.

[TomHagen]

Haha - I see this is a dead thread, only brought back to life by a bot. Shame because I find the sheum topic quite fascinating.

Here's a question: If "sheum" was the akkadian word for "wheat" or "grain"...why didn't Joseph write "wheat" or "grain"?

[cdowis]

Haha - I see this is a dead thread, only brought back to life by a bot. Shame because I find the sheum topic quite fascinating.

Here's a question: If "sheum" was the akkadian word for "wheat" or "grain"...why didn't Joseph write "wheat" or "grain"?

I have suggested that it may be aramanth, which is a grain and probably not known to JS.

Edited February 13, 2013 by cdowis

[Jude2]

In a FARMS article Matthew Roper explains that sheum "is a perfectly good Akkadian cereal name . . . dating to the third millennium B.C., which in ancient Assyria referred to wheat, but in other regions of the Near East could be applied to other grains" (FARMS Review of Books, Vol. 9, No. 1, 1997, p. 120). He notes that this word was not known to scholars until at least 1857, long after the book of Mormon had been published.

"Quinoa (the name is derived from the Spanish spelling of the Quechua name kinwa or occasionally "Qin-wah") originated in the Andean region ofEcuador, Bolivia, Colombia and Peru, where it was successfully domesticated 3,000 to 4,000 years ago for human consumption, though archeological evidence shows a non-domesticated association with pastoral herding some 5,200 to 7,000 years ago." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quinoa

[Alvino]

For the same reasons you claim it is the only transliterated Akkadian word, it represented a crop not in Joseph vocabulary.

And "sheum" was in Joseph's vocabulary?

Were names unique to the BoM in JS's vocabulary?

Edited February 13, 2013 by Alvino

[Alvino]

Also, the whole translation thing is rather strange, Olavarria:

Do you think Joseph Smith knew what he was translating as a translator normally knows what they are translating - the meaning of the words they read or hear? A normal method of translation would have been the following: Joseph saw or heard the words or phrases in the original language, understood them, and then found the better fit for the word or phrase to replace it with in his native tongue from out of the words and phrases he had. (Forgetting about unique names in the BoM which by their very nature were not in JS's vocabulary but yet he got those words)

It just looks like Joseph, if he translated the BoM by the power of God, must have skipped some of those steps. He didn't know what he was reading but just received the translated term. If that's correct, then I don't see why what he was going to receive (the translated words and phrases) would be limited by Joseph's vocabulary.

Or you could say JS did know, at least while inspired, what certain symbols meant in the original language written in the plates. If you chose to say that please realize this does not explain why JS wrote "sheum" there in the first place. If %$%#$% is what's written and it was pronounced "agua" (though you don't know this unless you heard the term) in another ancient language and it means "water" in our own (and you know that %$%#$% means "water"), that doesn't explain why you would write "agua" in a translation. Was JS hearing the words in his head also?

(Last part I wrote doesn't assume a face-in-the-hat procedure)

Edited February 13, 2013 by Alvino