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  • From: David Kummerow <farmerjoeblo AT hotmail.com>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Hebrew "If-and" construction and the Book of
  • Date: Thu, 17 Aug 2006 09:04:38 +1000

Cross-linguistically, some language coordinators/conjunctions commonly group meanings which other languages choose to divide (see the reference below). It is not uncommon for a single coordinator to group the meanings "and", "sequential" (then), "resultative" (so that), etc. The Morman translation, then, has failed to recognise that what Hebrew does with the one coordinator/conjunction (waw) English regularly does with two ("and", "then").

Malchukov, Andrej. 2004. “Towards a Semantic Typology of Adversative and Contrast Marking.” Journal of Semantics 21: 177-198.

Regards,
David Kummerow.

I am looking to get some confirmation about an apologetic that is growing in popularity among Latter-day Saints. For those who are not familiar with the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith claims to have translated the text from gold plates that were written upon an Ancient Hebrew writer.

The original manuscripts of the Book of Mormon include weird phrases that involve an if-and construction instead of an if-then construction. According to Mormon scholar Royal Skousen:

"In a recent paper I describe two important examples of Hebraisms in the original text of the Book of Mormon that do not occur in the King James Bible. One example is the use of the if-and clausal construction instead of the expected if-(then) syntax of English, as in the following extended passage from Helaman 12 where it occurs seven times (thus showing that we are not dealing with an isolated transcriptional error):

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.

This construction is a literalistic translation of the Hebrew-language construction, but does not occur at all in the King James Bible."

For our Hebrew experts out there, is it true that the "if-and" construction is a common occurence in the Hebrew Bible, and is it also true that this lingustic phenomenon is unique only to Hebrew?






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