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  • From: "Kevin Graham" <kevlds AT hotmail.com>
  • To: farmerjoeblo AT hotmail.com
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Hebrew "If-and" construction and the Book of
  • Date: Thu, 17 Aug 2006 02:15:40 +0000

I'm sorry David, could you be a litle more clearer? Was that a direct citation from the source you provided?


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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