As one critic recently wrote: “The Book of Mormon is cursed with the clumsy, repetitious phrase “and it came to pass” that appears hundreds of times in the book, on almost every page.” Interestingly, not he, nor Mark Twain, nor even Joseph Smith would have known in the nineteenth century just how important the phrase was to the Book of Mormon authors and as an authentic example of the accuracy of the book.
“The English translation of the Hebrew word wayehi (often used to connect two ideas or events), “and it came to pass,” appears some 727 times in the King James Version of the Old Testament. The expression is rarely found in Hebrew poetic, literary, or prophetic writings. Most often, it appears in the Old Testament narratives, such as the books by Moses recounting the history of the children of Israel.
This word, actually “veyehi” which is the same as hâyâh, means loosely “and it was,” and is a very common word, but often indicates more than a simple introduction as the rabbis explicate it to refer (often) to a negative situation; others claim it means “and he lived,” such as in “And Jacob lived in the land of Egypt seventeen years” (Genesis 47:28). The problem is that there really is no way to singularly translate most Hebrew (especially interlinear translations) since there is no one-to-one correspondence between words in English and words in Hebrew.
As an example of difficulty, this word can be spelled with either a “chet” (pronounced “chate”) and a “hey” (pronounced “hay”). “Chet” is the 8th letter of the Hebrew alphabet, and is usually transliterated as "ch", "kh", or simply an "h" in English; on the other hand, “hey” is the fifth letter of the Hebrew alphabet, but both are extremely similar in appearance:
The Hebrew Old Testament has 1204 occurrences of the word hâyâh, Most of these have either been ignored or reduced to simply "and," with only 727 of these translated as “and it came to pass.” While in the Bible some variety was used by the numerous groups that translated the KJV in 1611, Joseph Smith, the single translator, kept more true to his source, using “and it came to pass” in every instance.
As in the Old Testament, the expression in the Book of Mormon (where it appears some 1,404 times) occurs in the narrative selections and is clearly missing in the more literary parts, such as the psalm of Nephi (see 2 Nephi 4:20-25); the direct speeches of King Benjamin, Abinadi, Alma, and Jesus Christ; and the several epistles.
In his editing for the 1837 edition of the Book of Mormon Joseph Smith removed 46 occurrences of "it came to pass," rendering them as "and," just as was done by the King James translators. Think how Mark Twain might have reacted had he read the 1830 edition, which had passages like:
• "and it came to pass that when my father had made an end of speaking unto them behold it came to pass that he spake unto the sons of Ishmael…" (2 Nephi 4:10):
• "now it came to pass that after Alma had received his message from the angel of the Lord he returned speedily to the land of Ammonihah and it came to pass that he entered the city by another way yea by the way which was on the south of the city Ammonihah and it came to pass that as he entered the city…” (Alma 8:18-19).
Had the Bible been translated as literally as the Book of Mormon, Mark Twain might have had the same comment to make of it. Take for example this passage of the Bible:
• “"And they journeyed from Bethel; and [it came to pass that] there was but a little way to come to Ephrath: and Rachel travailed, and she had hard labour. And it came to pass, when she was in hard labour, that the midwife said unto her, Fear not; thou shalt have this son also. And it came to pass, as her soul was in departing, (for she died) that she called his name Benoni: but his father called him Benjamin” (Genesis 35:16-18)
Now before anyone jumps on the bandwagon and scrolls down to leave a comment like: “But the Book of Mormon is not translated from Hebrew, but from Reformed Egyptian,” we need to be reminded that those writing the Book of Mormon on the plates were speakers of Hebrew and spoke that language every day for their 1000 year history (Mormon 9:32-33), and one tends to write, even in another language, those idioms and phrases that one commonly uses.
Another ingredient of Hebrew that shows the authenticity of the Book of Mormon, is that in Hebrew, words, phrases, and sentences are generally connected by a single character, usually translated "and." Thus, in a literal translation of Hebrew into English "and" appears in many places where English would have a punctuation mark. In this literal translation, many sentences would begin with "and," as in Alma 11 where 20 of the 23 verses begin with "And." Lists in this literal translation would have each item set off by "and," both briefly and extensively, as in “with our bows and our arrows and our stones and our slings” (1 Nephi 16:15), or “and of gold, and of silver, and of copper” (1 Nephi 18:25) or in "all manner of wood, and of iron, and of copper, and of brass, and of steel, and of gold, and of precious ores" (2 Nephi 5:15).
This Hebrew conjunction translated and really has many possible meanings in English. In the Old Testament it has been translated: "And also"
In addition, there are other different uses of the word “and” that are found in the Book of Mormon, such as in the Old Testament: "or," "then," "certainly," "perhaps," "in order to," "like," "therefore," "so," "thus," and "but." This last, “but,” leads to an interesting observation in the Book of Mormon. Consider this sentence from Moroni 9:4, "and when I speak the word of God with sharpness they tremble and anger against me; and when I use no sharpness they harden their hearts against it." Obviously, the sense of this "and. ." would, in English, be better expressed by the word "but. .." However, if Joseph was making a near literal translation of Hebrew, "and" is a correct rendering.
(See the next post, “It’s Very Good Hebrew – Part II,” for more on how the Book of Mormon fails in English but excels in Hebrew.
I just finished reading Del's book on scientific fallacies; I really enjoyed it especially the chapters on radiocarbon dating, the creation, and the flood. I highly recommend it.
ReplyDeleteI also recently read his book on "who really settled Mesoamerica". Outstanding chapters on the Jaredites-their origin, their journey, etc another must read.
Thank you.
ReplyDeleteThere’s a couple giant issues with this entire premise. There has never been a claim that the Book of Mormon was written in Hebrew. In fact, the major claim is that it was written in a language closer to Egyptian and no man at the time could translate it. Thousands if not millions of people at the time spoke Hebrew and would have easily translated a Hebrew manuscript. If it was in Hebrew, why would you need a translator or seer or seer stones to begin with? That was a well known language at the time, and still is.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I have to point out that the amount of “And it came to Pass” In the BoM vs the Old Testament per word makes the premise of this article also a hard sell. The BoM is FAR shorter than the KJV of the Bible. It occurs roughly 5x more often, but when adjusting for word count it occurs roughly 25x (and it came to pass vs any other phrase or word in the entire literary work) and is just another issue with the BoM to begin with. It’s a redundant phrase in BoM, whereas in the Old Testament it’s a causative preposition; an antecedent. It’s not used that way in the BoM almost at all.
We have never said the Book of Mormon was written in Hebrew. There can be no question that it was written in what Nephi said was “Reformed Egyptian.” As Nephi said, “Yea, I make a record in the language of my father, which consists of the learning of the Jews and the language of the Egyptians” (1 Nephi 1:2). In addition, Moroni makes it quite clear that it was written in Egyptian: “And now, behold, we have written this record according to our knowledge, in the characters which are called among us the reformed Egyptian, being handed down and altered by us, according to our manner of speech” (Mormon 9:32, emphasis added). And again, Moroni states: “And if our plates had been sufficiently large we should have written in Hebrew; but the Hebrew hath been altered by us also; and if we could have written in Hebrew, behold, ye would have had no imperfection in our record” (Mormon9:33, emphasis added). Thus, the Nephites spoke Hebrew in their daily lives, but wrote the sacred record on the plates in Reformed Egyptian.
ReplyDeleteSince the Nephites spoke Hebrew in their daily lives and evidently wrote in Hebrew on other writings, the would have thought in Hebrew. This means that their constant lives was thinking, speaking and writing in Hebrew. Only the sacred record on the plates varied from this—consequently, Hebrew would have influenced how they wrote on the plates, even though writing in Reformed Egyptian.
As for “it came to pass,” the phrase often indicates that what is happening is the result of a course of events, such as “Our only hope now is that these dire predictions will not come to pass, but can be avoided somehow” or “When it finally came to pass, it almost felt like a letdown” or “After a lengthy process the adoption finally came to pass” or “Due to the length of time involved, it finally came to pass that we reached the narrow corridor through the mountains.”
The phrase as used by the Nephite prophets is that a passage of time or process took place and the author did not want to describe what that was, but skipped over it to continue with his main line of thought. In English, we have several words or phrases that do the same thing: Later; occurred; arise; take place; transpired; befall/befell; it turned out; it so happened; will happen; and then it happened; will take place; did happen; did take place;
And “it came to Pass” occurs in the English translation of the Book of Mormon 1,381 times. It is found in all books except Moroni. The phrase or one of its derivatives occurs in the Bible 526 times in the Old Testament and 87 times in the New Testament. This supports the fact that this phrase “and it came to pass” is Hebrew in origin and correlates with Nephi's statement, “Yea, I make a record in the language of my father, which consists of the learning of the Jews and the language of the Egyptians.”
It is used 203 times in 48½ pages in 1 Nephi alone where it used for the most part for an elapse in time—which is consistent with the events at the time as they leave Jerusalem, travel to the seashore (a period of 8 years), build a ship and sail to the Land of Promise. In addition, it is used 201 times in 59½ pages in 2 Nephi, again, which covers the elapse of time as they travel to the Land of Nephi and settle in, covering the time of travel, building and settling in to their lives. Thus, in 1 Nephi, we find that the phrase “it came to pass” used 4.1 times per page, and in 2 Nephi, used 3.3 times per page. From that point onward, with the story line more settled, it drops to 2.5. times per page in Jacob, Mosiah, Alma and 2.8 times in Helaman, and 3.2 times per page in Mormon (60 times in 18.5 pages) who, for the most part, was describing an entire war covering his life from the age of 15 to his death in 385 AD, when he was about 75.
In addition, we need to keep in mind that the Book of Mormon was abridged by Mormon from Mosiah onward—he says he could only write a hundredth of what he was abridging—which means he needed to sequence time from one event to another far more often than would have occurred in the Bible.