Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Kevin Graham" <kevlds AT hotmail.com>]

>  If ... and seems to be a common English idiom, so I don't see that it can
> be exclusive to Hebrew.  To use "if ... then" in any of the passages below
> would lead to odd English.  Are you sure it never occurs in the KJV?

Well the argument goes like this. The normal usage of "if-then" (i.e. if she 
calls, then I will go) was found in the Book of Mormon manuscript to be 
"if-and" (i.e. if she calls and I will go). This makes for poor English, but 
if being translated from Hebrew, we are told that it makes perfect sense.

There is no other way to explain this phenomenon unless of course the person 
from which this BoM text was translated, was an ancient Hebrew speaking Jew.

We are told that there are no examples of this phenomenon in any English 
translation in any English text available to the translator in 1830. The KJV 
doesn't have any if-and constructions because it is poor English, and was 
changed to read if-then.