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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: srshead AT cms.org.au
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Hebrew "If-and" construction and the Book of Mormon
  • Date: Thu, 17 Aug 2006 02:08:41 +0000

Yes, the Hebraisms were in the ORIGINAL manuscripts of the BoM. The BoM was published from the PRINTER's manuscripts which included the changes to make the so-called Hebraism sound more like decent English. So you won't find any if-and examples in the BoM available to the masses.


From: "Stephen and Rebecca Shead" <srshead AT gmail.com>
Reply-To: srshead AT cms.org.au
To: kevlds AT hotmail.com
CC: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: Re: Hebrew "If-and" construction and the Book of Mormon
Date: Thu, 17 Aug 2006 10:09:06 +1000

Strange - not having my hard copy handy, I checked up the online
version of the Book of Mormon -
http://scriptures.lds.org/en/bm/contents - to see the references in
context, and there's neither a "then" nor an "and" there. For example,
Helaman 12:13 says "Yea, and if he say unto the earth -- Move -- it is
moved". Are there different versions??

Stephen Shead.


-------Original Message-------

From: Kevin Graham
Date: 08/16/06 12:51:01


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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