Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Kevin Riley" <klriley AT alphalink.com.au>]

 But in the examples you gave the "if ... and" translation *is* good English
  

>if he sayeth unto the earth move and it is moved
 
> if he sayeth unto the earth thou shalt go back that it lengthen out the
day
for many hours and it is done .
 
> if he sayeth unto the waters of the great deep be thou dried up and it is
done.

How else would you phrase these sentences in English?  You certainly can't
use "if ... then".  The "then" needs to follow what you have written. 
Perhaps you need to give some examples where "if ... then" would be the
normal English translation.  

Kevin riley
 
-------Original Message-------
 
From: Kevin Graham
Date: 08/16/06 13:10:08

 
 
> 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.