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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] Hebrew "If-and" construction and the Book of Mormon

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  • From: "Kevin Graham" <kevlds AT hotmail.com>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Hebrew "If-and" construction and the Book of Mormon
  • Date: Wed, 16 Aug 2006 16:26:54 +0000


Hello Yonah, thanks for your comment.

== Kevin, I think you're confused.

One thing I should make clear is that this is NOT my argument. I am just testing it to see if it stands the test of scrutiny. This was forwarded by an LDS scholar and it hasn’t received much attention outside Mormon circles.

== The examples given would *not* be normal English.

They’re not? Royal Skousen’s expertise is English, not Hebrew, He is the scholar who clams to have “discovered” these Hebraisms in the original manuscripts of the Book of Mormon. It seems like good English to me to say “if” so and so happens “then” so and so will occur as a result. He argues that in Hebrew it is common to say “if” so and so happens, “and” such and such will be the result. He argues that at least 14 occurrences of this phenomenon appear in the original Book of Mormon manuscript (of which only 22% is extant)and that it only makes sense if the text represents a literal, word for word translation from Hebrew.

It is true that the Book of Mormon claims to have been written in an unknown language called “Reformed Egyptian,” but the writers were Hebrew speaking. The Book of Mormon begins its story as a small family of Jews (during 600 b.c) takes to the sea and travels to the Americas.
One Old Testaments scholar, Margaret Barker, recently emailed me and confirmed that:
“Yes, this is normal usage in the Hebrew Bible, but I cannot say that it is not used elsewhere - I do not have that expertise. If you want to check it out, consult the massive standard work on the subject: Gesenius' Hebrew Grammar. I have the second Englsih edition, 1910, but I should imagine that the referencing system did not alter. You need sections 112 ff and gg, [ also section 159 o] which describe the uses of the 'perfect consecutive' form of the verb. This just means that the perfect, when prefaced with 'and' becomes an imperfect. 'The perfect consecutive is frequently employed with a certain emphasis to introduce the apodosis after sentences or their equivalent, which contain a condition...' It goes on to give 'if' as one of the words that can trigger this usage. ... So literally, e.g., 'If you do something, and I will do it too...'”

The thing is there appears to be no other explanation where Smith could have derived this unusual “if-and” construction if he were just inventing the Book of Mormon from his imagination. We have other “scriptures” that he claims to have written via “revelation” but there is not one single example of the “if-and” construction that appears in the original BoM manuscript. This phenomenon was edited out when the BoM was published because it was bad English, but the original manuscript retains the “errors” which Skousen believes is strong evidence that its source is in preexilic Judaism.






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