From time to time we receive comments from readers of our blog, or those who visit us here, who have different views on the subject of an article, that we feel needs to be answered in its entirety. The following is one such view with two comments regarding the Book of Mormon article “It’s Very Good Hebrew – Part I,” that we feel need to be answered.
Comment #1: “There’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.” Rhys C.
Sources of Hebrew over the centuries
Response: While Hebrew today is a well-known language, the Hebrew of today is quite different than the Hebrew of Lehi’s day. First of all, The Hebrew alphabet is a development from the Aramaic alphabet taking place during the Persian, Hellenistic and Roman periods (500 BC – 50 AD). It replaced the so-called Paleo-Hebrew alphabet which was used in the earliest epigraphic records of the Hebrew language.
Paleo-Hebrew script (הכתב העברי הקדום), also Palæo-Hebrew, Proto-Hebrew or Old Hebrew, is the name used by modern scholars to describe the script found in Canaanite inscriptions from the region of Biblical Israel and Judah. It is considered to be the script used to record the original texts of the Hebrew Bible due to its similarity to the Samaritan script, as the Talmud stated that the Hebrew ancient script was still used by the Samaritans. The earliest known examples of Paleo-Hebrew writing date to the 10th century BC (Joel M. Hoffman, In the beginning: a short history of the Hebrew language, New York University Press; New York, 2004, p23).
Like the Phoenician alphabet, it is a slight regional variant and an immediate continuation of the Proto-Canaanite script, which was used throughout Canaan before and during Lehi’s time, ending at least 100 years after he left Jerusalem. "From the available evidence Hebrew appears to be the first regional variant to arise in the West Semitic alphabet in the 13th to the 5th century BC (Israel Finkelstein and Benjamin Sass, “The West Semitic alphabetic inscriptions, Late Bronze II to Iron IIA: Archeological context, distribution and chronology,” Hebrew Bible and Ancient Israel 2.2, Mohr Siebeck GmbH & Co. KG, Tübingen, Germany, 2013, pp149–220 [189])
By the 5th century BC, the alphabet had been mostly replaced by the Aramaic alphabet as officially used in the Persian empire. However, the Jewish square-script variant now known simply as the Hebrew alphabet evolved directly out of the Aramaic script by about the 3rd century BC to the 1st century AD.
The point is, the Jewish language known to Lehi was a very old language in Canaan before Lehi left Jerusalem. It did not evolve in today’s Jewish alphabet or language with Lehi’s people as it did in Canaan over time. In fact, as most Hebrew scholars will tell you today, the Hebrew language of 600 BC can barely be read today.
Thus, the language known to the Nephites was their variant of the Paleo-Hebrew language of 600 BC. That it also changed over time is made clear by Moroni: “And if our plates had been sufficiently large we should have written in Hebrew; but the Hebrew hath been altered by us also (Mormon 9:23, emphasis added).
We have never said the Book of Mormon was written in Hebrew. There can be no question that it was written in what the Nephites called “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” (Mormon 9:33, emphasis added). Thus, the Nephites spoke Hebrew in their daily lives, but wrote the sacred record on the plates in Reformed Egyptian.
The Nephites had written many books, all but the sacred record would have been in Hebrew
Consequently, since the Nephites spoke Hebrew in their daily lives and evidently wrote in Hebrew on other writings, they would have thought in Hebrew. This means that their lives was thinking, speaking and writing in Hebrew. Only the sacred record on the plates varied from this—thus, Hebrew would have influenced how they wrote on the plates, even though writing in Reformed Egyptian.
Comment: Also, 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.”
Response: 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” or “It came to pass that the people were seen across the valley.”
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.”
The usage of “it came to pass” in the Book of Mormon
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—events that lapses of time in between them. 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, teaching and settling in to their lives. Thus, in 1 Nephi, we find that the phrase “it came to pass” is used 4.1 times per page, and in 2 Nephi, used 3.3 times per page. From that point onward, with the Nephites more settled, it drops to 2.5. times per page in Jacob, Mosiah, Alma and 2.8 times in Helaman. It is also used 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.
The keystone of the South American thesis is the geological activity that resulted in the amazon basin rising up. This is not common knowledge and causes people to immediately dismiss the possibility and the rest of the extremely good evidence towards this being where the events of the book of mormon taking place.
ReplyDeleteAnother major factor spreads confusion:
- Nephites leave and travel northward by foot and by boat and are never mentioned again. Evidence of Lamanite and Nephite civilizations in Central and North America are not evidence against the South American thesis, but evidence in favor of it.
I remain convinced that the south american thesis is the most correct, but remain open to new and additional light and knowledge