tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7139169.post5617753747692994902..comments2023-11-02T07:25:45.884-05:00Comments on Mormanity - a blog for those interested in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: Daniel Peterson on the Restoration and the Book of MormonJeff Lindsayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08776493593387402607noreply@blogger.comBlogger15125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7139169.post-48251963786303596882013-04-05T20:02:16.820-05:002013-04-05T20:02:16.820-05:00Eveningsun, Daniel Peterson has long pointed out t...Eveningsun, Daniel Peterson has long pointed out those examples from the KJV. Yes, dreamed a dream is found in the Bible, as are some other Hebraisms also found in the Book of Mormon. While there are some Hebraisms in the Book of Mormon not found in the KJV, Peterson's case does not rest upon Semitic structures of the BOM being outside the KJV. Jeff Lindsayhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08776493593387402607noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7139169.post-17507340326812940112013-03-23T20:56:52.319-05:002013-03-23T20:56:52.319-05:00Jeff, I would assume both you and Peterson have re...Jeff, I would assume both you and Peterson have read the King James Bible (though I wouldn't expect you to be as familiar with it as I am). If you have, you should recall that <i>dreamed a dream</i> and <i>because that</i> are right there in the KJV, where Joseph Smith certainly would have read them in the 19th century (e.g., Gen. 37:5, 1 Kings 11:33).<br /><br />That being the case, do you still see them as evidence for the ancientness of the BOM? And do you still have so much confidence in Peterson's pronouncements?<br /><br />-- EveningsunAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7139169.post-71981712913630960992013-02-21T17:37:24.833-06:002013-02-21T17:37:24.833-06:00CF, I think that's a valid viewpoint. One can ...CF, I think that's a valid viewpoint. One can argue that other areas of evidence are more compelling, but the Hebraisms in general make quite a remarkable case--especially in light of Joseph's further editing that removed some, and the fact that neither Joseph nor any other potentially involved "conspirator" ever used Hebraisms as evidence for the authenticity of the text. Why go to all that trouble to add internal evidence of ancient Semitic origins when no one would even recognize it was there for decades after your death? If it was deliberately added in a forged book, then surely they would have sought to milk its value later on. Hire a Hebrew scholar to comment and then drum up the evidence. Or more specifically, wait decades until Bible scholarship catches up with the level of sophistication in the text forged by young Joseph, and then proclaim the finds. Waiting until the 1970s, 80s, and 90s for random scholars to start discovering Hebraisms seems like a missed opportunity for the long-dead forgers, eh?Jeff Lindsayhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08776493593387402607noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7139169.post-13713846127237899442013-02-18T18:04:23.860-06:002013-02-18T18:04:23.860-06:00Oh, here's the link for the Tvedtnes presentat...Oh, here's the link for the Tvedtnes presentation. Meant to include it in my earlier comment. It's at <a href="http://www.fairlds.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/tvedtnes-HebrewNames.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.fairlds.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/tvedtnes-HebrewNames.pdf</a>. This has some significant content worth pondering. Good stuff, though more examples could be multiplied. Jeff Lindsayhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08776493593387402607noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7139169.post-48752121193387084922013-02-18T17:54:34.043-06:002013-02-18T17:54:34.043-06:00Steve, thanks for the guidance. Appreciate it!
T...Steve, thanks for the guidance. Appreciate it! <br /><br />That's why Professor Yadin chose to transliterate the name as Alma, not as Gelmo or Zolma, etc. The issue of Alma as a Book of Mormon name really is both plausible and significant. For the critics, it has quickly gone from a silly blunder to something that now requires some genuine mental effort to ignore. <br /><br />The issue of Semitic names and other Semitic influences in the Book of Mormon is one that can raise eyebrows in many instances. See the article John Tvedtnes presented in Jerusalem. Jeff Lindsayhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08776493593387402607noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7139169.post-62612430050644275352013-02-18T12:17:36.972-06:002013-02-18T12:17:36.972-06:00The Hebraisms in the Book of Mormon are by far the...The Hebraisms in the Book of Mormon are by far the greatest supporting pieces of evidence I've seen to validate Joseph Smith's story. I mean take this into consideration: when the church goes out of their way to naively remove some of the Hebraisms in the early text, it goes a long way to show either how brilliant Joseph was, or that his story is just as he described. Did Joseph either A) normally communicate with <i>ifs</i> & <i>ands</i> in his daily speech when nobody else did, B) was so brilliant that he knew this was proper Hebrew, AND was able to hide that brilliance while working on a farm and wasting his time on treasure hunting, C) one of Joseph's friends, (Cowdery, Harris or Rigdon) knew this stuff, but yet never once came out with the truth EVEN after all three apostatized from the church, or D) the Book of Mormon is what Joseph Smith claimed it was?<br /><br />Which one of the above seems the most plausible? Pretty tough choice.<br /><br />In light of some of this research today, I wonder if the Church would have removed and/or changed such Hebraisms in the book had they known what we know now?<br /><br />"<i>No serious thinker is convinced by this kind of apologetics. And if Jeff is pressed hard enough on the quality of the logic and evidence, he will retreat and make the usual claims about how ultimately it's a matter for the Holy Spirit anyway.</i>"<br /><br />We'll be waiting for that "pressing" Eveningsun. In the meantime your, "I'm too good for this kind of apologetics", just doesn't cut it. Put up, or shut up.CFnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7139169.post-33477069798115288062013-02-16T23:34:51.526-06:002013-02-16T23:34:51.526-06:00Hi Martin,
While ayin is a guttural (of the throa...Hi Martin,<br /><br />While ayin is a guttural (of the throat) consonant, I have never seen ayin represented by the letter G. Other guttural consonants would be like 'ch' in German or Scottish and I have seen the letter G to represent such guttural consonants but the letter ayin does not sound like this. A better match for the letter ayin is the letter A if you are not using any sort of phonetic alphabet and if you want to try to distinguish ayin from aleph but do not want to use a phonetic alphabet, I have seen ' being used but never G. There is a letter in Arabic called ghain which has a similar sound to ayin. In fact, the name of the letters in English give hints as to how to pronounce it. No letter G in ayin and there is a 'gh' (poor representation) for the Arabic letter ghain.<br /><br />Steve<br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7139169.post-1022346630518872382013-02-16T18:54:39.581-06:002013-02-16T18:54:39.581-06:00Great stuff, Jeff. I love Dan Peterson's work ...Great stuff, Jeff. I love Dan Peterson's work -- and yours too!<br /><br />Keep it up!<br /><br />Jack<br /><br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7139169.post-61264014806590805792013-02-16T18:19:18.909-06:002013-02-16T18:19:18.909-06:00Steve,
Thanks for your informative comment. You t...Steve,<br /><br />Thanks for your informative comment. You taught me something. However, even though 'lm' represents four letters, I still have to call it a two-letter match to the word Alma, because, as you say, ayin has no English equivalent. You prompted me to look up how ayin is pronounced, and it is technically a guttural consonant, sometimes represented by a letter g or the letters ng in English. I don't doubt you when you say that letter A is a suitable equivalent, but so are other letters apparently. Martinnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7139169.post-4010501525703919732013-02-16T17:29:27.549-06:002013-02-16T17:29:27.549-06:00Hi Martin,
The single quotation marks are often u...Hi Martin,<br /><br />The single quotation marks are often used to represent the letter "ayin" - ע - as there is no equivalent in English. The letter ayin sound comes from the back of the throat and if you were to transliterate it, an 'A' is a suitable equivalent. Modern Standard Arabic pronounces this letter more so than modern Hebrew. So, in your post, when you write 'lm' or 'lmh'<br /> you are actually writing 4 or 5 letters, not 2 or 3.<br /><br />Steve<br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7139169.post-17711307840178211752013-02-16T13:29:54.391-06:002013-02-16T13:29:54.391-06:00According to Terrence Szinck in the link that you ...According to Terrence Szinck in the link that you provided, the name on the Bar Kokhba document is spelled 'lm' or 'lmh'. That's only a two-letter match by my count. I looked at the PDF also. I can see an aleph at the beginning of the first highlighted word but not at the end of it (actually I can't tell where the end is, looks like one long word to me), and not at all in the second highlighted word (which looks like part of an even longer word). Of course, I can't read ancient Hebrew, so I can only go by what Terrence Szinck said, which isn't what you said about there being four letters. <br /><br />The name 'al6-ma' (?) from the cuneiform tablets from Ebla aren't even Hebrew. In Hebrew, alma means maiden. That fact is well-attested, shows a match to all four letters, and comes from the time of the Book of Mormon, not 2200 BC (which would be prior to the time that the Lord confounded people's languages for building the Tower of Babel, BTW). Martinnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7139169.post-54731410376201678652013-02-16T12:38:17.117-06:002013-02-16T12:38:17.117-06:00It's easy to argue that all we have for the na...It's easy to argue that all we have for the name Alma is just two consonants that could just as easily be pronounced Lame-o, Elmo, Alum, Oleomo, Oily Moe, and so forth. This is not the case. The name in the ancient Jewish document is actually spelled with four letters, beginning with an aleph. The name appears in two forms that differ in the final letter (א [aleph] or ה [hey]), but "Alma" fits both. Transliterated into English, the first form with the terminal aleph (אלמא) is " 'lm' ". For scholars of Hebrew, there is good evidence that the name should be "Alma," which is exactly how the non-LDS scholar, Yigael Yadin, transliterated it. For details, see Paul Hoskisson, "What's in a Name?," Journal of Book of Mormon Studies, Vol. 7, No. 1, 1998, pp. 72-73 (link is to a PDF file; an HTML file is also available with just the text). That article shows a color photograph of the document that has the name Alma in it twice. John Tvedtnes also discussed the name Alma in a well-received presentation to other non-LDS scholars, "Hebrew Names in the Book of Mormon," where he noted that in addition being found as a male name in one of the Bar Kochba documents, it is also found as a medieval place name in Eretz Israel and as a personal male name from Ebla.<br /><br />To me, this counts for something. Not much, not enough to change one's mind, for it is a small detail, but one that, even when pressed to the source, ought to raise an eyebrow and help a sincere investigator to say, maybe I should press forward with this book and keep exploring. But to one who, like Eveningsun, is openly and explicitly committed to attacking the Church because of it's stance on marriage, this little bit of supporting evidence will count for precisely nothing and can easily be whittled down to just another logical fallacy, barn door or otherwise, tainted with false dichotomy, that no serious thinker could possibly fall for, which ultimately is nothing more than an assertion of spiritual knowledge which arose from a subjective emotional experience, possibly just indigestion. I disagree.Jeff Lindsayhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08776493593387402607noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7139169.post-58543884119145377712013-02-16T12:04:45.260-06:002013-02-16T12:04:45.260-06:00Martin and Eveningsun, I'll admit that every a...Martin and Eveningsun, I'll admit that every argument can be whittled at indefinitely when one is committed to wielding the critic's knife. But that sense of success in dismissing "interesting" evidence sometimes is an illusion. <br /><br />So let's step past the usual sweeping assertions and go with Martin in examining the issue of Alma in detail. Are we really just getting two letters "lm" to give an unimpressive random connection to a Book of Mormon name?<br /><br />Let's begin by realizing that Alma has been objected to by critics for decades as just another idiotic blunder of Joseph Smith's. Duh, everyone knows it's a female name, as in alma mater. How silly to plagiarize it and tell us that it's an ancient Semitic name. For tracing things to their source, that is pretty much where we would have to stop on this issue--until 1961, when a prominent scholar in Israel, Professor Yigael Yadin, discovered an ancient document that proved to be a land deed from the time of the Bar Kokhba rebellion in Palestine (ca. 131 A.D.). Prof. Yadin translated one of the names as "Alma the son of Judah."(See Bar Kokhba by Yigael Yadin, Random House, New York, 1971, p. 176). The document has been and may still be on display in a major Jerusalem's museum. <br /><br />Alma proves to not only be a genuine Semitic name, but is a name of a Hebraic man. Not a woman. While this document was well after Lehi's time, the name Alma has also been found in much more ancient documents from tablets from Ebla in modern Syria in 1975, dating to around 2200 B.C. (see Terrence L.Szink, "<a href="http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/publications/jbms/?vol=8&num=1&id=189&cat_id=454" rel="nofollow">New Light: Further Evidence of a Semitic Alma</a>," J. of Book of Mormon Studies, Vol. 8, No. 1, 1999). Finding the male name Alma in a record about descendants early Hebrews now must be viewed not as a reason for mocking the Book of Mormon, but as a reason to take it seriously.<br /><br />Jeff Lindsayhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08776493593387402607noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7139169.post-90790267875640345622013-02-16T10:46:38.715-06:002013-02-16T10:46:38.715-06:00As a lay person, I'm not capable of evaluating...As a lay person, I'm not capable of evaluating many of Peterson's apologetic arguments, so should I be impressed with them? Once in awhile, I trace an argument to its source, and I'm very unimpressed. <br /><br />For example, Peterson says, "Recent documentary finds demonstrate...that Alma also occurs as a Semitic masculine personal name in the ancient Near East—just as it does in the Book of Mormon." Just as it does in the Book of Mormon? I followed the link to reference 28 and googled the title to find an article from Journal of Book of Mormon Studies. According to it, the name 'lm' or maybe 'Alm' occurs in a letter from the time of Bar Kokhba. Additionally, the Semitic word 'lm means "youth" or "lad." How impressive is it to match 2 or 3 letters from the name Alma to any name or word from any ancient Semitic source? It doesn't seem very difficult to me. <br /><br />Should 'Alm' and 'Alma' be regarded as the same name? Suppose we set the bar a little bit higher and ask whether the name 'Alma' in its entirety matches any Hebrew word. Turns out it does. The word 'alma' means a damsel or maiden and occurs in several instances in the Old Testament, such as Isaiah 7:14. So which is a better match for the name 'Alma'? Alm or alma? This leaves me thinking that the name 'Alma' with all four of its letters is rather unlikely to be a masculine Hebrew name. It also leaves me thinking that Peterson and some other folks from the Maxwell Institute are engaging in some legerdemain. Martinnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7139169.post-31705767733191996102013-02-16T08:02:00.446-06:002013-02-16T08:02:00.446-06:00Jeff is engaging in some of the usual logical fall...Jeff is engaging in some of the usual logical fallacies here, including the barn door fallacy (that bit about Smith getting his revelation on Rosh Hashana) and false dichotomy (e.g., Smith must have been <i>either</i> a swindler <i>or</i> a prophet, chiasmus must occur <i>either</i> by chance <i>or</i> be a sign of ancient origins).<br /><br />No serious thinker is convinced by this kind of apologetics. And if Jeff is pressed hard enough on the quality of the logic and evidence, he will retreat and make the usual claims about how ultimately it's a matter for the Holy Spirit anyway.<br /><br />-- EveningsunAnonymousnoreply@blogger.com