Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

Maybe it is better if you guys read what he said. It is posted online here: 
http://farms.byu.edu/display.php?table=jbms&id=167

Scroll down to the section “Non-English Hebraisms in the Original Text.”

Kevin Riley,

== Maybe it would pay to ask an English dialectologist whether this 
construction was found in spoken English around 1830.

Good idea. Thus far, however, there hasn’t been any evidence that this 
existed anywhere in the English language at any time. The KJV certainly 
doesn’t retain these Hebraisms, and Smith was frequently accused of copying 
from the KJV. So we know he couldn’t have derived this from the KJV, and he 
certainly didn’t know Hebrew.

== Apart from that, it may just be another 'biblicism' designed to give the 
BoM an ancient/holy feel.

Possibly, but Smith would first have to know that an 1f-and construction 
would create that “feel.”

== Proving that the hypothetical writer of an unexaminable text did or did 
not speak ancient Hebrew is a bit beyond the
capabilities of this list.

You’re right. I was just giving an overview here. What I would like from you 
guys is an outside perspective on the claims ofteh Hebrew. Is this the norm 
in Hebrew? Is it common in the Hebrew Bible?

== If the translators of the KJV knew enough to translate as "if .. then", 
then I would have thought that inspired translation would have been a little 
more accurate and a little less literal but I don't claim to be an expert on 
inspiration.

Good point. However the same person who wrote that article has also argued 
that a literal word for word translation is what the translation process 
(according to eye-witnesses) seems to indicate.



> From: "Kevin Riley" <klriley AT alphalink.com.au>
> To: "B Hebrew" <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
> Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Hebrew "If-and" construction and the Book of Mormon
> Date: Wed, 16 Aug 2006 15:37:06 +1000 (AUS Eastern Standard Time)
>
>  Maybe it would pay to ask an English dialectologist whether this
> construction was found in spoken English around 1830.  Non-standard English
> can be as strange as anything found in foreign languages, ancient or 
> modern.
>  Apart from that, it may just be another 'biblicism' designed to give the
> BoM an ancient/holy feel.  Proving that the hypothetical writer of an
> unexaminable text did or did not speak ancient Hebrew is a bit beyond the
> capabilities of this list.  If the translators of the KJV knew enough to
> translate as "if .. then", then I would have thought that inspired
> translation would have been a little more accurate and a little less 
> literal
>  but I don't claim to be an expert on inspiration.
>
> 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.
>
>
>
>
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