Chairman and President

Daniel C. Peterson

Vice Presidents

Jeffrey M. Bradshaw

Daniel Oswald

Executive Board

Kevin Christensen

Brant A. Gardner

William J. Hamblin

Bryce M. Haymond

Louis C. Midgley

George L. Mitton

Gregory L. Smith

Tanya Spackman

Ted Vaggalis

Board of Editors

Matthew L. Bowen

David M. Calabro

Alison V. P. Coutts

Craig L. Foster

Taylor Halverson

Ralph C. Hancock

Cassandra S. Hedelius

Benjamin L. McGuire

Tyler R. Moulton

Mike Parker

Andrew C. Smith

Martin S. Tanner

Bryan J. Thomas

Gordon C. Thomasson

John S. Thompson

Contributing Editors

Robert S. Boylan

John M. Butler

James E. Faulconer

Kristine Wardle Frederickson

Benjamin I. Huff

Jennifer C. Lane

David J. Larsen

Donald W. Parry

Ugo A. Perego

Stephen D. Ricks

G. Bruce Schaalje

A. Keith Thompson

John A. Tvedtnes

Sidney B. Unrau

Stephen T. Whitlock

Lynne Hilton Wilson

Mark Alan Wright

Donor Relations

Jann E. Campbell

Production Editor

Timothy Guymon

Media and Technology

Bryce M. Haymond

Editorial Consultants

Linda Hunter Adams

Jill Bartholomew

Tyson Briggs

Joshua Chandler

Kasen Christensen

Ryan Daley

Marcia Gibbs

Laura Hales

Raven Haymond

Eric Naylor

Don Norton

Neal Rappleye

Jared Riddick

Katie Robinson

William Shryver

Stephen Owen Smoot

Kaitlin Cooper Swift

Kyle Tuttle

Media Volunteers

Sean Canny

Scott Dunaway

Ellen Fehr

Brad Haymond

James Jensen

Ben Porter

S. Hales Swift

Sustaining the Brethren ..................................................................................vii
Duane Boyce

Who Was Sherem? ..............................................................................................1

A. Keith Thompson

Whoso Forbiddeth to Abstain from Meats....................................................17

Loren Spendlove

Where in Cincinnati Was the Third Edition of

the Book of Mormon Printed? ........................................................................35

Chris Miasnik

Celestial Visits in the Scriptures, and a

Plausible Mesoamerican Tradition ................................................................55

Diane E. Wirth

Father is a Man: The Remarkable Mention of the name

Abish in Alma 19:16 and Its Narrative Context ..........................................77

Matthew L. Bowen

A Redemptive Reading of Mark 5:25-34........................................................95

Julie M. Smith

Restoring the Original Text of the Book of Mormon..................................107

Royal Skousen

The Implications of Past-Tense Syntax in

the Book of Mormon.......................................................................................119

Stanford Carmack

Reflections of Urim: Hebrew Poetry Sheds

Light on the Directors-Interpreters Mystery...............................................187

Stan Spencer

John L. Sorenson’s Complete Legacy:

Reviewing Mormon’s Codex.........................................................................209

Brant A. Gardner and Mark Alan Wright

Lehi the Smelter: New Light on Lehi’s Profession......................................223

Neal Rappleye

Place of Crushing: The Literary Function of

Heshlon in Ether 13:25-31 ............................................................................227
Matthew L. Bowen and Pedro Olavarria

The Interpreter Foundation

Orem, Utah

INTERPRETER

A Journal of Mormon Scripture

§

Volume 14 • 2015

The Interpreter Foundation

The Interpreter Foundation

© 2015 The Interpreter Foundation. A 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial- NoDerivs 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, California, 94041, USA.

The goal of The Interpreter Foundation is to increase understanding of scripture through careful scholarly investigation and analysis of the insights provided by a wide range of ancillary disciplines, including language, history, archaeology, literature, culture, ethnohistory, art, geography, law, politics, philosophy, etc. Interpreter will also publish articles advocating the authenticity and historicity of LDS scripture and the Restoration, along with scholarly responses to critics of the LDS faith. We hope to illuminate, by study and faith, the eternal spiritual message of the scriptures—that Jesus is the Christ.

Although the Board fully supports the goals and teachings of the Church, the Interpreter Foundation is an independent entity and is neither owned, controlled by, nor affiliated with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or with Brigham Young University. All research and opinions provided are the sole responsibility of their respective authors, and should not be interpreted as the opinions of the Board, nor as official statements of LDS doctrine, belief or practice.

This journal is a weekly publication. Visit us at MormonInterpreter.com.

Table of Contents

Abstract: Believing Latter-day Saints hold different views about what it means to sustain the presiding Brethren of the Church. In this article, I outline some considerations that might be kept in mind as members of the Church evaluate their views on this vital topic and the Lord’s admonition to sustain the Brethren by their faith, prayers, and actions.

As part of their sacred covenants, Latter-day Saints embrace the principle of sustaining those called as prophets, seers, and revelators. They also accept the authority of the Brethren to lead the Church and to declare its position on various matters. Of course, the nature of mortal experience guarantees that the wisdom of their decisions will not always be obvious to everyone. How should members respond in situations where they do not understand or agree with the actions of the presiding councils of the Church?

President Henry B. Eyring taught the following:

By our sustaining vote, we make solemn promises. We promise to pray for the Lord’s servants and that He will lead and strengthen them (see D&C 93:51). We pledge that we will look for and expect to feel inspiration from God in their counsel and whenever they act in their calling (see D&C 1:38).

That promise will need to be renewed in our hearts frequently. Your Sunday School teacher will try to teach by the Spirit, but just as you might do, your teacher may make mistakes in front of the class. You, however, can decide to listen and watch for the moments when you can feel inspiration come. In time you will notice fewer mistakes and more frequent evidence that God is sustaining that teacher.

As we raise a hand to sustain a person, we commit to work for whatever purpose of the Lord that person is called to accomplish.1

If we accept President Eyring’s counsel to “look for and expect to feel inspiration from God in their counsel and whenever they act in their calling” with respect to a Sunday School teacher, we would naturally apply this counsel with no less seriousness in our attitudes toward the callings of those who preside in the highest councils of the Church. Though the statements of individual prophets and apostles are not inerrant, it is inconsistent with such counsel “to look for and expect” mistakes in the decisions made by the highest councils, even if we commend ourselves for great patience in our expectation that they or their successors will be forced to correct their supposed errors in time. It is, of course, even less consistent with the principle of sustaining the Brethren if we complain publicly about the decision or practice in question and actively lobby for change. That said, there are members of the Church who may not find President Eyring’s stance satisfying. In this article, I outline some considerations that might be kept in mind as members of the Church consider their views on this vital topic.

“If God Lived on Earth People Would Break His Windows”

There is a vast difference that exists between our perspectives and those of God (Isaiah 55:8–9; 1 Corinthians 1:25–29). God perceives not only every thought and intent of every person’s heart but also foresees the eternal consequences of every person’s choices — and not only the consequences of such choices for themselves but also for all others who are affected by them (2 Nephi 9:20).2 He is also a being of perfect holiness (Moses 6:57; 7:35). He has no moral flaws, no selfish motivations (3 Ne. 12:48; 1 John 1:5). He wants only what is right and pure (Alma 7:20), and His love for us is perfect and unending (1 John 4:8). Not incidentally, His divine purpose is to help each of us become as He is (Moses 1:39).

It is hard to imagine how mortals could be less like God in these respects (Moses 1:10). Our natural condition limits our perspectives, subjects us to a constant battle with our selfish impulses, taints our love, and bends our purposes toward destructive ends (Mosiah 3:19). We are perfect at nothing (Matthew 19:17).

Because of these vast differences, it seems reasonable to expect God to behave and think differently about various matters than we do, and His ways will routinely make little sense to us. As President Spencer W. Kimball reported:

I have learned that where there is a prayerful heart, a hungering after righteousness, a forsaking of sins, and obedience to the commandments of God, the Lord pours out more and more light until there is finally power to pierce the heavenly veil and to know more than man knows.3

“To know more than man knows.” Precisely. We know immeasurably less than we imagine, and for one who has pierced the veil nothing could be more evident.

Examples from Scripture

Many of the teachings of the Church regarding God are difficult for nonmembers to understand and appreciate. For example, some who believe in God but who do not accept Joseph Smith as a prophet find it laughable to think that God has a physical body, that He would appear in modern times, and that He would require His prophet to use stone interpreters to translate gold plates. Some who do not embrace Christianity find absurdity in the idea of a God with a literal “Son” and the belief that His greatest act of love would be to require the suffering and death of that Son to pay the debt of human sin. Some would find the affirmations of believers that Jesus healed the sick, raised the dead, fed five thousand, walked on water, and rose from the grave to be childish and naïve. Moreover, some might declare that Jesus was racist in His refusal to allow the Apostles to minister to the Gentiles or Samaritans (Matthew 10:4–5), insensitive in His remarks to the Canaanite woman (Matthew 15:22–28), and sexist in calling only men as Apostles (Matthew 10:2–4). Yet that is what He did.

What the Test of a Prophet Is Not

All this helps us see why we cannot suppose that the test of authenticity for a prophetic teaching is whether or not it “makes sense.” Scripture and the history of the Church are replete with lessons teaching that we should expect to hear things from prophets that seem utter foolishness (1 Corinthians 1:18–31).4 Such things naturally invite both ridicule and offense from those who reject the things of God (1 Corinthians 2:4–16). None of this should surprise us.

Nor should it be a surprise when prophetic announcements make the Saints’ lives harder. When Moses approached Pharaoh, the short-term result was a steep decline in the quality of life for the children of Israel; Pharaoh punished them by making their hard labors even more demanding (Exodus 5:1–23). Similarly, life became more difficult for Joseph Smith once he began to share his First Vision (Joseph Smith–History 1:22–24), and for all the Saints thereafter.

A Yiddish proverb comments on the stubborn recalcitrance of humankind: “If God lived on earth people would break His windows.” Because it is our general tendency to reject God’s counsels and doings, our decision to accept or reject them ought not to be determined by a majority vote. Prophetic pronouncements are no more likely to be crowd-pleasers in the twenty-first century than they were in the first.

The Things of God Are Known
Only Through the Spirit of God

Paul taught that “the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God” and therefore that such matters can only be “spiritually discerned” (1 Corinthians 2:11, 14). If Paul is right, we must expect that the convincing testimony that the Brethren are being led by God will come only by personal revelation. President Harold B. Lee said it this way:“The measure of your true conversion … is whether or not you are so living that you see the power of God resting upon the leaders of this Church and that testimony goes down into your heart like fire.”5 This suggests that if we don’t see the power of God resting upon the Brethren, no amount of argument can serve as a substitute. Of course, this does not mean that reason is irrelevant to such conversion, but only that it is insufficient of its own accord. It is futile to look there for convincing power.

The Lord Is the One Who Calls His Leaders

To be able to adequately sustain the Brethren, we must have a witness that the Lord called them. President George Q. Cannon said this of Lorenzo Snow:

As I have said, God has chosen him to stand where he does — not you or me; and He knows every secret thought of men’s hearts. His all-piercing eye has penetrated the innermost recesses of his heart, and He has seen all there is about him, inside and out. He knows him thoroughly, because He created him. He knew his past history … And knowing this He has chosen him.6

President Gordon B. Hinckley, in speaking of the calling of Elders Russell M. Nelson and Dallin H. Oaks to the Twelve, said: “I want to give you my testimony that they were chosen and called by the spirit of prophecy and revelation.” He added:

Some will ask, why has the Church taken such competent men out of public service in their professions when they are doing so much good where they now are? I do not know. The Church has not done it. Rather, the Lord has made clear that these are they who should serve as His witnesses.7

When Elder Robert D. Hales was named to the Twelve, President Hinckley said: “I give you my testimony, my brethren, that the impression to call Brother Hales to this high and sacred office came by the Holy Spirit, by the spirit of prophecy and revelation. Brother Hales did not suggest his own name. His name was suggested by the Spirit.”8

Having called those who serve Him, it is not surprising that the Lord would say of them that “he that receiveth whomsoever I send receiveth me; and he that receiveth me receiveth him that sent me” (John 13:20).

The Brethren Possess a Special Witness

In response to the criticisms Aaron and Miriam levied against Moses, the Lord rehearsed His intimate relationship with that great prophet and then asked: “Wherefore then were ye not afraid to speak against my servant Moses?” (Numbers 12:8). God backs up His prophets because they speak from a personal knowledge of Him. President Ezra Taft Benson once shared his testimony in these words:

And so on the third day following His burial, He came forth from the tomb alive and showed Himself to many. There were witnesses then who saw Him. There have been many in this dispensation who have seen Him. As one of those special witnesses … I testify to you that He lives. He lives with a resurrected body.9

One member of the Twelve remarked: “I know that God lives; I know that the Lord lives. And more than that, I know the Lord.”10 Another said: “I bear solemn witness that He lives. I know He lives because I know Him.”11 And still another said: “The spiritual gifts described in the Book of Mormon are present in the church today — promptings, impressions, revelations, dreams, visions, visitations, miracles. You can be sure that the Lord can, and at times does, manifest Himself with power and great glory.”12 President Harold B. Lee maintained that in God’s relationship to the leaders of the Church, “He is closer to us than you have any idea.” 13

Although similar declarations are not hard to find, in general the Brethren are careful in speaking of such matters in detail. Elder Boyd K. Packer, for example, said that “we do not talk of those sacred interviews that qualify the servants of the Lord to bear a special witness of Him, for we have been commanded not to do so. But we are free, indeed, we are obliged, to bear that special witness.”14 And Elder Marion G. Romney said:

I don’t know just how to answer people when they ask the question, “Have you seen the Lord?” I think that the witness that I have and the witness that each [of the apostles] has, and the details of how it came, are too sacred to tell. I have never told anybody some of the experiences I have had, not even my wife. I know that God lives. I not only know that He lives, but I know Him.15

In this connection it is interesting to note the experience of President George Albert Smith. The venerable patriarch Zebedee Coltrin told him at a young age that he would “become a mighty prophet in the midst of the sons of Zion,” that “the angels of the Lord” would administer to him, that he would be “wrapped in the visions of the heavens,” and that he would become “a mighty man of faith before the Lord, even like unto the brother of Jared” 16 — and yet one searches in vain for any mention of experiences even approaching this sort in the sermons of George Albert Smith himself. A similar example is Jacob, brother of Nephi. Although Nephi tells us that Jacob saw the Lord (2 Nephi 11:3), when Jacob later listed his spiritual credentials in explaining why he could not be shaken by Sherem, he avoided explicit mention of his experience (Jacob 7:5).

The Lord has instructed that sacred things are not to be spoken “before the world” (D&C 84:73). Likewise, the Book of Mormon declares: “It is given unto many to know the mysteries of God; nevertheless they are laid under a strict command that they shall not impart only according to the portion of his word which he doth grant unto the children of men, according to the heed and diligence which they give unto him” (Alma 12:9). Nevertheless, the presiding Brethren have made it clear that they possess a special witness of the Lord.17

The Brethren Receive Revelation from the Lord

The presiding Brethren receive revelation from the Lord continually. For instance, Elder Spencer W. Kimball, speaking of President David O. McKay, said:

He is a prophet. He does not just occupy a prophet’s chair; he does not just have a title of prophet, he is a real prophet and he is responsible for … more revelations in his fifteen years of leadership than are in all the Doctrine and Covenants. … I could take time to tell you of these revelations — temples that have been appointed, people who have been called, apostles who have been chosen, great new movements that have been established, great new eras, great new challenges. … They came by revelation. I want you to know he is a prophet. Don’t you question it. I do not know who will be his successor, but whoever it is will be a great prophet, and you need not ever worry.18

Speaking of the spirit of revelation in the Church, President James E. Faust said: “I can testify that the process of continuous revelation comes to the Church very frequently. It comes daily.”19 And Elder Dallin H. Oaks remarked: “Visions do happen. Voices are heard from beyond the veil. I know this.” He explained that recipients of such experiences “rarely speak of them publicly because we are instructed not to do so.” He further explained that most revelation is not so dramatic but comes through the still, small voice, and added: “I testify to the reality of that kind of revelation, which I have come to know as a familiar, even daily, experience to guide me in the work of the Lord.”20

President Gordon B. Hinckley reported:

There has been in the life of every [prophet and apostle I have known] an overpowering manifestation of the inspiration of God. Those who have been Presidents have been prophets in a very real way. I have intimately witnessed the spirit of revelation upon them. … Each Thursday, when we are at home, the First Presidency and the Twelve meet in the temple, in those sacred hallowed precincts, and we pray together and discuss certain matters together, and the spirit of revelation comes upon those present. I know. I have seen it.21

President Spencer W. Kimball remarked, regarding his own experience as the prophet:

I say, in the deepest humility, but also by the power and force of a burning testimony in my soul, that from the prophet of the Restoration to the prophet of our own year, the communication line is unbroken, the authority is continuous, and light, brilliant and penetrating, continues to shine. The sound of the voice of the Lord is a continuous melody and a thunderous appeal … the Lord definitely calls prophets today and reveals His secrets unto them as He did yesterday, He does today, and will do tomorrow: that is the way it is.22

Similarly, President Harold B. Lee said, speaking as President of the Church: “I bear you my solemn witness that it is true, that the Lord is in His heavens. … You ask when the Lord gave the last revelation to this church. The Lord is giving revelations day by day, and you will witness and look back on this period and see some of the mighty revelations the Lord has given in your day and time.”23

Boyd K. Packer summarizes: “Revelation continues with us today. The promptings of the Spirit, the dreams, and the visions and the visitations, and the ministering of angels all are with us now. And the still small voice of the Holy Ghost ‘is a lamp unto [our] feet, and a light unto [our] path’” (Psalms 119:105).24

The First Presidency Is the Highest Authority in the Church

The Standard Works constitute the doctrinal foundation of the Church.25 Others in general leadership, of course, make declarations routinely. That is the nature of their ministry, and such declarations come in various ways.

The statements and guidance carrying the highest authority are those issued by the First Presidency, including those in which they are joined by the Twelve. Joseph Smith said:

The Presidents or Presidency are over the Church; and revelations of the mind and will of God to the Church, are to come through the Presidency. This is the order of heaven, and the power and privilege of this Priesthood. 26

In the same spirit, President Joseph Fielding Smith taught:

An individual may fall by the wayside, or have views, or give counsel which falls short of what the Lord intends. But the voice of the First Presidency and the united voice of those others who hold with them the keys of the kingdom shall always guide the Saints and the world in those paths where the Lord wants them to be.27

It is customary to speak of “following the prophet,” but this is verbal shorthand. To be precise, the highest authority is the full First Presidency. In the Doctrine and Covenants we are told explicitly that “every decision made by [any of the presiding quorums, including the First Presidency] must be by the unanimous voice of the same; that is, every member … must be agreed to its decisions. … Unless this is the case, their decisions are not entitled to the same blessings which the decisions of a quorum of three presidents were anciently” (D&C 107:27, 29).

This passage was emphasized by Elder Boyd K. Packer, specifically in contrasting a statement made by the prophet, acting alone, with statements by the full First Presidency on the same subject.28 The same principle applies in President Dieter F. Uchtdorf’s observation that “there have been times when members or leaders in the Church have simply made mistakes. There may have been things said or done that were not in harmony with our values, principles, or doctrine.”29 On one occasion Elder Packer explained in some detail how the First Presidency and Twelve work together and said: “That is how we work — in council assembled. … I have a deep, even a sacred, regard for councils; inspiration is evident in them. If ever another course has been followed, trouble has followed as surely as night follows day.”30 He also said in General Conference that, despite individual weaknesses, they are counterbalanced by “councils and counselors and quorums.”31

Speaking of his own experience in the First Presidency, President Gordon B. Hinckley said: “Even the President of the Church, who is Prophet, Seer, and Revelator, and whose right and responsibility it is to make judgments and direct the course of the Church, invariably consults with his counselors to determine their feelings. If there is a lack of unity, there follows an absence of action.”32 And in emphasizing that it is not one particular “Brother” in Church leadership that we follow, but the Brethren, Elder Packer said: “There is only one ‘Brother’ to follow, and that is our Prophet President. But even he does not act alone, for he has counselors.”33

In short, while it is common to speak of “following the prophet,” it is actually the First Presidency that we follow.34 That quorum is the highest mortal authority in the Church. It is not the general membership that possesses authority to guide the Church. Nor does any particular individual — whatever his authority — act alone. Instead, it is the council of the First Presidency that governs the Church. The President of the Church is the highest authority in terms of possessing keys, but in terms of guiding the Church, the full First Presidency possesses the highest authority on earth. Significantly, the Lord said of them that “whosoever receiveth me, receiveth those, the First Presidency, whom I have sent” (D&C 112:20).

Teachings of Individuals Are Not Binding

President J. Reuben Clark explained the endowment that attends the teachings of those who hold the Apostleship:

Some of the General Authorities have had assigned to them a special calling; they possess a special gift; they are sustained as prophets, seers, and revelators, which gives them a special spiritual endowment in connection with their teaching of this people. They have the right, the power, and the authority to declare the mind and will of God to His people, subject to the overall power and authority of the President of the Church. Others of the General Authorities are not given this special spiritual endowment.

He specified that this limitation “applies to every other officer and member of the Church, for none of them is spiritually endowed as a prophet, seer, and revelator.”35

However, despite the significance of apostolic statements in general, individual statements by those who are sustained as prophets, seers, and revelators are not binding on the Church. For instance, the First Presidency formally issued statements condemning and correcting teachings by Elder Orson Pratt, and Elder Pratt expressly disavowed his authority to contradict or go beyond the teachings of those who held the keys.36 Similarly, Elder Boyd K. Packer once said that he knew by personal revelation that man did not evolve from animals,37 but qualified his remarks by placing the following caveat at the beginning of the printed version:

Only the Standard Works and statements written under assignment of the First Presidency and the Council of the Twelve Apostles are considered official declarations by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The talk which follows was given without such assignment and no such approval has been sought or given. The author alone is responsible for the views set forth therein. They do not necessarily represent the Church.38

His announcement that he knew this matter by revelation still did not make it official or binding on the Church.

And, of course, an announcement this declarative is rare in any event. It is not unusual for different leaders to see matters in different ways with different conclusions. We see this on topics ranging from evolution to Book of Mormon geography to the date of Christ’s birth.39 Nevertheless, from the fact that individual apostolic statements are not binding, it does not follow that no such statements are true. It is customary for the Lord to speak so that only those with ears to hear will actually receive the intended message, 40 and on this basis one can imagine that individual statements sometimes play the role of saying to the Saints something that is true but that would not be wise for the First Presidency itself to say. To each hearer is left the burden to listen and carefully consider the merits of such statements on their own.

The Lord Gives More Instructions Than Explanations

A curious fact about revelation is that the Lord rarely reveals the reasons behind it. For example, President Gordon B. Hinckley, recalling the period during which he was both a counselor in the First Presidency and its sole healthy member, spoke of wrestling with a matter that seemed very serious and that seemed to require action on his part. Yet as he went to his knees in prayer, wanting to follow the proper course, there came into his mind a feeling of peace and the words of the Lord, with the simple message: “Be still and know that I am God.” Apparently what seemed urgent to him did not seem so urgent to the Lord — and yet President Hinckley received no explanation to help him understand why. The Lord told him to relax, but gave no insight into why he should relax.

Out of this experience President Hinckley bore this witness: “God is weaving His tapestry according to His own grand design. All flesh is in His hands. It is not our prerogative to counsel Him. It is our responsibility and our opportunity to be at peace in our minds and in our hearts, and to know that He is God, that this is His work, and that He will not permit it to fail. We have no need to fear. We have no need to worry.”41

This sounds similar to the report regarding President David O. McKay who, according to one account, said that he had “inquired of the Lord repeatedly” regarding the restriction on blacks holding the priesthood. In his latest inquiry, he “was told, with no discussion, not to bring the subject up with the Lord again; that time will come, but it will not be in my time, and to leave the subject alone.”42 This is reminiscent of the Prophet Joseph’s experience of being told, after praying earnestly to know when the Second Coming would occur:

Joseph, my son, if thou livest until thou art eighty-five years old, thou shalt see the face of the Son of Man; therefore let this suffice, and trouble me no more on this matter. I was left thus, without being able to decide whether this coming referred to the beginning of the millennium or to some previous appearing, or whether I should die and thus see his face. (D&C 130:15–16)

President George Q. Cannon once said of the First Presidency:

We can see a certain distance in the light of the Spirit of God as it reveals to us His mind and His will, and we can take these steps with perfect security, knowing that they are the right steps to be taken. But as to what the result will be, that is for the God of Israel to control. That is the way in which the Church of God has always been led, and it will always be led in that way until He comes who is our King, our Lawgiver and our President, even Jesus Christ. 43

Speaking of their own lack of complete knowledge of the Lord’s designs in the instructions He gives, President Cannon said: “It is just as necessary that the Presidency and the Apostles should be tried as it is that you should be tried. It is as necessary that our faith should be called into exercise as that your faith should be called into exercise.”44

The Brethren can thus be in the position of knowing what is right and yet not being able to say fully why it is right. In the words of Elder Neal A. Maxwell: “I have found that the Lord gives more instructions than explanations.”45 In the same spirit Elder Dallin H. Oaks said:

If you read the scriptures with this question in mind, “Why did the Lord command this or why did He command that,” you find that in less than one in a hundred commands was any reason given. It’s not the pattern of the Lord to give reasons. We [mortals] can put reasons to revelation. We can put reasons to commandments. When we do, we’re on our own.46

At times the Lord helps His leaders and the Saints understand the reasons for one decision or another — as he did in the case of the Manifesto, for instance47 — but this appears to be far from universal. While Mormon, for example, was instructed to include the small plates of Nephi in his record, he was not told why he was commanded to do so, and the reason did not become clear until centuries later. This is reminiscent (among many scriptural incidents) of Abraham, who was told to sacrifice Isaac but not why he should do so, and of Lehi, who was told to leave Jerusalem but not where his journey would lead or when it would end. Precedents like these should lead us to expect that the reasons for the Lord’s decisions will not always be immediately evident, and may not be evident even in our lifetimes. The Lord’s pattern is to require his children to live and act in response to the Spirit without complete information because the very purpose of life is to grow in the Spirit.48

The Brethren Cannot Say Everything They Might Like to Say

Just as the Lord doesn’t normally reveal all that He could, neither does the First Presidency speak authoritatively about all that it might. As President George Q. Cannon explained:

There are many things that the leading men of this Church can see and understand that they cannot impart to the people nor ask the people to do. Why? Because they know that the people would not come up to the requirement and that therefore they would be disobedient. Better to give them line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little than to give them something that they could not receive and that they would rebel against. That is the manner in which the Lord deals with His children, and it is the manner in which wise men inspired of the Lord deal with their fellow men.

He added: “Speaking as a First Presidency, if we could have our way, there are many changes that we would make; but you know how difficult it is to have people see alike upon many points.”49

The Prophet Joseph Smith once reflected on the difficulties he had in preparing the Saints to receive his teachings:

There has been a great difficulty in getting anything into the heads of this generation. It has been like splitting hemlock knots with a corn-dodger [a piece of corn bread] for a wedge, and a pumpkin for a beetle [a wooden mallet]. Even the Saints are slow to understand.

I have tried for a number of years to get the minds of the Saints prepared to receive the things of God; but we frequently see some of them, after suffering all they have for the work of God, will fly to pieces like glass as soon as anything comes that is contrary to their traditions: they cannot stand the fire at all.50

For this reason, the Lord and His servants must exercise patience with the Church and with us as individuals, not being “able to bear” all things at present (1 Corinthians 3:2); having “need of milk, and not of strong meat” (Hebrews 5:12) that we “may grow thereby” (1 Peter 2:2).

We Have Prophetic Testimony That the Presiding Brethren Won’t Lead the Church Astray

After Wilford Woodruff published the results of his revelation on plural marriage in the Manifesto, many Saints were shaken. In response, President Woodruff testified: “The Lord will never permit me or any other man who stands as President of this Church to lead you astray. It is not in the programme. It is not in the mind of God. If I were to attempt that, the Lord would remove me out of my place.”51 Likewise, nearly a century later, President Gordon B. Hinckley affirmed: “It is the Lord who is directing this Church. You don’t need to worry very much about Gordon Hinckley. The Lord is directing this work, and He won’t let me or anyone else lead it astray.”52 Elsewhere he said:

I want to make you a promise. I know it’s true. The Lord will never let the General Authorities of this Church lead it astray. It won’t happen. … We have a presidency of three. We have a Council of Twelve Apostles. We meet together in the temple every Thursday. We pray together, we discuss together, we seek the inspiration of the Almighty, and it’s my testimony that it comes.53

Many others have spoken similarly. For example, President Dieter F. Uchtdorf declared: “God will not allow His Church to drift from its appointed course.”54 As mentioned previously, President Joseph Fielding Smith explained that while “an individual may fall by the wayside, or have views, or give counsel which falls short of what the Lord intends,” nevertheless “the voice of the First Presidency and the united voice of those others who hold with them the keys of the kingdom shall always guide the Saints and the world in those paths where the Lord wants them to be.”55 Elder Marion G. Romney stated that “today the Lord is revealing His will to all the inhabitants of the earth, and to members of the Church in particular, on the issues of this our day through the living prophets, with the First Presidency at the head.” The counsel they give, Elder Romney said, is the direction the Lord Himself would give “if He were here.”56 Elder Romney added that for those who “criticize what the Presidency say on these burning issues of our times, it would be well to remember that these prophets are but declaring to us the will of the Father.”57

President N. Eldon Tanner, a counselor in four First Presidencies, said: “Wherever I go, my message to the people is: Follow the prophet.” He added:

Today there are many issues under debate as controversies rage all around us. It should be evident to all that we need divine direction, as men and women who argue their causes seem to be unable to come to workable or peaceable solutions. It is sad indeed that the world does not know or accept the fact that in our midst is a prophet through whom God can direct the solution of world problems. True Latter-day Saints have no such dilemma. They know that the messages of the prophet have come from the Lord. …58

Elder Boyd K. Packer, echoing this thought, said simply: “When the First Presidency speaks, we can safely accept their word.”59

First Presidency Decisions Vary in Importance

Elder Dallin H. Oaks identified an important principle of personal revelation. He explained:

Revelations from God … are not constant. We believe in continuing revelation, not continuous revelation. We are often left to work out problems without the dictation or specific direction of the Spirit. That is part of the experience we must have in mortality. Fortunately, we are never out of our Savior’s sight, and if our judgment leads us into actions beyond the limits of what is permissible and if we are listening … the Lord will restrain us by the promptings of His Spirit.60

The same principle no doubt applies to the decisions made by Church leadership. The First Presidency is involved in countless matters and decisions, but they are not all of equal importance. To pick a simple example: decisions about the specific decor of a temple are generally of less importance than the decision about when and where to build the temple itself. And when and where to build a particular temple is of less importance than the project of temple-building in general. Thus, the Lord may require personal initiative and leave more room for delegation to Church staff on the first kinds of decisions, while exercising much greater influence on the second kind and strict influence on the third. The Lord seems to exercise control of a lesser or greater nature, depending on the importance of the issue.

Given the wide range and the multiple layers of their work, it is unavoidable that, at times, errors in judgment may be discovered — and corrected — retrospectively. Elder Boyd K. Packer explained that, while under the plan of councils “men of very ordinary capacity may be guided through counsel and inspiration to accomplish extraordinary things,” nevertheless, “even with the best of intentions, it does not always work the way it should. Human nature may express itself on occasion, but not to the permanent injury of the work.”61

When we understand this principle, it is obvious why President J. Reuben Clark’s remark that “we are not infallible in our judgment, and we err”62 does not contradict President Gordon B. Hinckley’s statement that “the Lord is directing this work, and He won’t let me or anyone else lead it astray.”63 The difference in such statements stems from a difference in the issues that are involved and their importance. Though devoted and spiritually refined, mortal men work as mortal men across the extensive range and multiple dimensions of their work, and various weaknesses and errors manifest themselves.64 But as a council the Brethren cannot go where the Spirit forbids; on matters of importance they will not do anything that would cause permanent injury to the work of the Lord.

Change is Not Equivalent to Correction

When significant changes are announced, it is often easy to jump to the conclusion that a correction is being made. But there is actually significant reason not to assume this. For example, all of the following represent significant modifications in practice: expelling Adam and Eve from the garden of Eden;65 moving from a system of presiding patriarchs to a system of apostolic councils in guiding the Lord’s work;66 taking the gospel first to the Jews and then to the Gentiles, and then taking it first to the Gentiles and then to the Jews;67 moving from a patriarchal society in Nephite civilization to a combination of patriarchal presidency and Church presidency;68 first identifying the Salt Lake Valley as the place for Saints to gather to Zion and later identifying their own geographies as the place for Saints to gather to Zion;69 and so forth.

Each of these constitutes a significant change in direction, but it is difficult to see how any of them could be dismissed as a simple change of mind, or as a correction of previous practice. From the fact that Adam and Eve were expelled from the garden, it hardly follows that it was wrong for them to have been there in the first place. Nor does the Lord’s establishment of apostolic councils to lead His work —beginning in the meridian of time and continuing to today — suggest that it was wrong to follow a patriarchal pattern in the early ages of the world. And the fact that Norwegians now gather to Norway does not imply that it was wrong for them to gather to the Salt Lake Valley in earlier generations.

God responds to the current circumstances of His children and operates in accordance with a divine sequence and timing in fulfilling His grand design. Thus, in Moses’ day the priesthood was restricted to the Levites (and the office of high priest in that priesthood to Aaron and His descendants), and in His own earthly ministry the Lord restricted His teaching to the Jews alone.70 We might glimpse only a fraction of all the ways in which sequence and timing play a role in God’s actions, and nothing at all of the “whys,” but because it is certain that they do so, it would seem important not to suppose that all change is attributable to mortal caprice — much less to mortal error or to either divine or mortal correction of past errors.71

The Saints Can Know They are Being Led Correctly

Naturally the Saints want to do more than accept, with a lazy and complacent spirit, whatever direction comes from those who hold the keys of the priesthood. The scriptures teach that the Lord, too, wants more than that. We have an obligation to study and pray, so that we may come to know that we are being led correctly.

This may require considerable effort on our part. Elder Marion G. Romney said that “those … who will through mighty prayer and earnest study inform themselves as to what these living prophets say, and act upon it, will be visited by the spirit of the Lord and know by the spirit of revelation that they speak the mind and will of the Father.”72 The Saints are expected to receive revelation on these matters. Having faith in the Lord’s overall program, we will not find ourselves praying to find out if the Brethren have taken the right course, but rather to know for ourselves that the Brethren have taken the right course — and to understand what we must do personally in order to sustain their actions.

A Modern Example of Thoughtful Discipleship

An inspiring example of this is found in the life of Elder Dallin H. Oaks.73 Decades ago, when the U.S. Supreme Court first ruled against prayer in the public schools, President David O. McKay publicly criticized the ruling; he considered it to be leading the country “down the road to atheism.”74 Dallin Oaks, on the other hand, who was a law professor at the time, saw good reason for the Court’s decision in the case before it and worried that criticism might be based on incomplete information about the full rationale and intent of the ruling. Brother Oaks began organizing his thoughts on paper — reviewing the Court’s reasoning and showing its application to secular influences in the public schools as well as to religious ones. Soon after completing his document, he met President Henry D. Moyle of the First Presidency at a Church function in Chicago. When President Moyle asked him about his work, Brother Oaks gave him a copy of this writing. President Moyle took an interest in it, and, upon returning to Salt Lake City, shared it with President McKay. Interestingly, after reading Brother Oaks’ thoughtful treatment, President McKay directed that it be published in the Improvement Era.

Thus, Brother Oaks did not give up his “right to think.” He felt dissonance between his own judgment and the public expressions of the prophet. He wondered about the issue and prayerfully brought to bear his own best thinking on the relevant questions. Significantly, however, he did not publish a critical article or give a disapproving speech. Instead, he expressed his feelings respectfully and privately (remember that it was President McKay who directed that it be published), with no motivation other than to help and in the spirit of true discipleship.

The outcome of this story is also instructive. Some thirty years later, and now one of the Twelve himself, Elder Oaks wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal on the subject of school prayer. He said: “When the Supreme Court decided the original school prayer case in 1962 … I thought the case was correctly decided. What I did not foresee, but what was sensed by people whose vision was far greater than mine, was that this decision would set in motion a chain of legal and public and educational actions that would bring us to the current circumstances in which we must reaffirm and even contend for religious liberty.”75 While the Court’s decision was probably the correct one on the matter before it at the time, the way the majority opinion was written set in motion the chain of events that President McKay had originally feared. In recognition of the prophetic nature of President McKay’s warning, Elder Oaks wrote: “My worldly wisdom in writing approvingly of the school prayer case on the facts of the decision was just a small footnote to history compared with the vision of a prophet who saw and described the pernicious effects of that decision in the years to come.” It was, he says, “a powerful learning experience on the folly of trying to understand prophetic vision in terms of worldly wisdom.”76

Conclusion

It was the Lord Himself who stated that “whosoever receiveth me, receiveth those, the First Presidency, whom I have sent” (D&C 112:20). Since receiving the Lord is here made equivalent to receiving His servants, this matter cannot be taken lightly. It is my hope that as each of us considers the perspectives raised in this article, we will be guided in our spiritual inquiry as we seek to uphold the Brethren with our faith, prayers, and actions.

Duane Boyce received his academic training in psychology, philosophy, and the clinical treatment of families. He received a PhD from Brigham Young University and conducted his postdoctoral study in developmental psychology at Harvard University. He was a member of the Moral Studies Group at Brigham Young University (BYU) and served on the faculty there before becoming vice president of a steel company headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri. He is a founding partner of the Arbinger Institute, a worldwide management consulting and educational firm, and is the coauthor of four books. He has published academic essays on scriptural topics in BYU Studies, The FARMS Review, Religious Educator, and the Journal of the Book of Mormon and Other Restoration Scripture. He is also the author of the forthcoming book, Even Unto Bloodshed: A Latter-day Saint Perspective on War (Kofford, 2015). Among other callings, he has served as a bishop and a stake president.

1 Henry B. Eyring, “Called by God and Sustained by the People,” Ensign, June 2012, 4.

2 Neal A. Maxwell, All These Things Shall Give Thee Experience (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1979), 6–27.

3 Spencer W. Kimball, “Give the Lord Your Loyalty,” Ensign, March 1980, 4.

4 What truths we do possess in the gospel hardly make us omniscient, nor do they endow us with the moral perfection needed to “see clearly” (Matthew 7:5) from an eternal perspective. King Benjamin’s declaration that “man doth not comprehend all the things which the Lord can comprehend” (Mosiah 4:9) was surely an understatement; those who suppose “they know of themselves” (2 Nephi 9:28) are deluded.

5 Harold B. Lee, “Be Loyal to the Royal Within You,” BYU Speeches, September 11, 1973, http://speeches.byu.edu/?act=viewitem&id=400 (accessed 7 January 2015).

6 Gospel Truth: Discourses and Writings of President George Q. Cannon, ed. Jerreld L. Newquist, 2 vols. (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1974), 1:296.

7 Gordon B. Hinckley, “Special Witnesses for Christ,” Ensign, May 1984, 49.

8 Gordon B. Hinckley, “God Is at the Helm,” Ensign, May 1994, 54.

9 Ezra Taft Benson, “Jesus Christ: Our Savior, Our God,” Ensign, April 1991, 4; citing a talk given in San Diego, California, on 21 December 1979.

10 Quoted by Boyd K. Packer in “The Spirit Beareth Record,” general conference, April 1971, https://www.lds.org/general-conference/1971/04/the-spirit-beareth-record?lang=eng (accessed 9 January 2015).

11 Richard G. Scott, “Sisters in Councils,” Worldwide Leadership Training Meeting, February 2011, http://lds.org/broadcasts/article/print/worldwide-leadership-training/2011/02/sisters-in-councils/?lang=eng (accessed 9 January 2015).

12 Boyd K. Packer, “The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ — Plain and Precious Things,” Ensign, May 2005, 8.

13 Harold B. Lee, “Admonitions for the Priesthood of God,” Ensign, January 1973, 108.

14 Boyd K. Packer, “A Tribute to the Rank and File of the Church,” Ensign, May 1980, 65.

15 F. Burton Howard, Marion G. Romney: His Life and Faith (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1988), 222.

16 Robert and Susan McIntosh, eds., The Teachings of George Albert Smith (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1996), xix.

17 This is not to say that such experience is universal among the apostles. However, Elder Bruce R. McConkie held the view that modern apostles “are expected, like their counterparts of old, to see and hear and touch and converse with the Heavenly Person, as did those of old.” He said that members of the Twelve have the obligation “to see the face of Him whose witnesses they are” and that “the Lord’s apostolic witnesses are entitled and expected to see his face, and that each one individually is obligated to ‘call upon him in faith in mighty prayer’ until he prevails.” See Bruce R. McConkie, The Promised Messiah (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1978), 592–94.

18 The Teachings of Spencer W. Kimball, ed. Edward L. Kimball (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1982), 447.

19 James E. Faust, “Come Out of the Darkness into the Light,” CES Fireside for Young Adults (8 September 2002), The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Media Library, https://www.lds.org/media-library/video/2002–09–05-come-out-of-the-darkness-into-the-light?lang=eng (accessed 9 January 2015).

20 Dallin H. Oaks, “Teaching and Learning by the Spirit,” Ensign, March 1997, 14.

21 Gordon B. Hinckley, The Teachings of Gordon B. Hinckley (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1997), 71, 555.

22 Spencer W. Kimball, “Revelation: The Word of the Lord to His Prophets,” April 1977, https://www.lds.org/general-conference/1977/04/revelation-the-word-of-the-lord-to-his-prophets?lang=eng (accessed 2 January 2015).

23 Lee, “Admonitions for the Priesthood of God,” 108.

24 Boyd K. Packer, “Revelation in a Changing World,” Ensign, November 1989, 16. In this connection Elder Russell M. Nelson shares this interesting experience: “On the morning of the [Washington D.C.] temple dedication, President [Hugh B. Brown] greeted me with the news that he had been visited during the night by President Harold B. Lee (who had died the year before). Elder Brown described it as a glorious visit that meant much to him, for President Lee had been aware of some of the difficulties encountered by President Brown in the decisions that led to the construction of the temple in Washington, D.C. Later that morning, as we took President Brown to breakfast, Sister Harold B. (Freda Joan) Lee approached us. As we exchanged greetings, President Brown said to her, ‘I had a glorious visit with Harold last night. He is just fine. It was so good to visit with him.’” Russell M. Nelson, The Gateway We Call Death (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1995), 100–101.

25 In addition, the teachings of Joseph Smith are of central importance. Elder Bruce R. McConkie explained: “The answers to nearly all important doctrinal questions are found in the standard works or in the sermons and writings of the Prophet Joseph Smith. If they are not found in these sources, they probably are not essential to salvation.” Mark L. McConkie, ed., Doctrines of the Restoration (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1989), 229. He also said: “The Lord said to Joseph Smith: ‘This generation shall have my word through you’ (D&C 5:10). What this means is that if we are going to receive the knowledge of God, the knowledge of truth, the knowledge of salvation, and know the things that we must do to work out our salvation with fear and trembling before the Lord, this must come in and through Joseph Smith and in no other way. He is the agent, the representative, the instrumentality that the Lord has appointed to give the truth about Himself and his laws to all men in all the world in this age.” Ibid., 19.

26 Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, comp. Joseph Fielding Smith (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1837), 111. In another place, the Propeht taught: “Look to the Presidency and receive instruction.” Ibid., 161. Cf. The Words of Joseph Smith, eds. Andrew F. Ehat and Lyndon W. Cook (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1980), 11 (Before 8 August 1839).

27 Joseph Fielding Smith, “Eternal Keys and the Right to Preside,” Ensign, July 1972, 88.

28 The subject was evolution and Elder Packer was speaking of a statement in a personal letter by President David O. McKay to a member of the Church. In Elder Packer’s view, President McKay’s statement was “in conflict with the two official declarations, each signed by all members of the First Presidency.” He then referred to the passage in D&C 107. See Boyd K. Packer, “The Law and the Light,” in Jacob through Words of Mormon: to Learn with Joy: papers from the Fourth Annual Book of Mormon Symposium, eds. Monte S. Nyman and Charles D. Tate (Provo, Utah: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1990), http://rsc.byu.edu/archived/book-mormon-jacob-through-words-mormon-learn-joy/law-and-light (accessed 3 January 2015), 22–23.

29 Dieter F. Uchtdorf, “Come, Join with Us,” The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2013/10/come-join-with-us?lang=eng. President Uchtdorf’s observation regarding “members or leaders” is broad enough that it could apply to practically anyone, from an elders quorum president or bishop to the president of the Church. Certainly it applies to the Mountain Meadows Massacre, which was perpetrated by members of the Church, including a stake president. See Ronald W. Walker, Richard E. Turley Jr, and Glen M. Leonard, Massacre at Mountain Meadows (New York: Oxford, 2008). It also applies to the explanations of Brigham Young and others about the former restrictions on the priesthood, since these explanations have now been explicitly disavowed by the Church. See “Race and the Priesthood,” https://www.lds.org/topics/race-and-the-priesthood?lang=eng (accessed 15 March 2015).

30 Boyd K. Packer, “I Say Unto You, Be One,” BYU Devotional (12 February 1991), reproduced in BYU Devotional and Fireside Speeches, 1990–1991 (Provo, Utah: University Publications, 1991), 83–84. A particularly tragic example of Elder Packer’s observation is the Mountain Meadows Massacre, mentioned above. The decision of a local council of Church and community leaders was to let the emigrants pass without interference or harm. It was individuals meeting after the council who embarked on a different path, leading to the ensuing massacre. See Ronald W. Walker, Richard E. Turley Jr, and Glen M. Leonard, Massacre at Mountain Meadows (New York: Oxford, 2008), 155–57; see also 178.

31 Packer, “Revelation in a Changing World,” 16. A friendly disagreement between Elder David B. Haight of the Twelve and President Gordon B. Hinckley provides a humorous insight into the character of the highest councils of the Church. In the course of their disagreement, Elder Haight, 96, turned to President Hinckley, 93, and remarked: “That’s OK, Gordon. I used to think like that when I was your age.” Lawrence Flake, reported in Tad Walch, “Tales of LDS Leaders’ Wit a Big Draw at Ed Week,” Deseret Morning News, 21 August 2003, http://www.mission.net/missouri/independence/Photo006Flake03.htm (accessed 28 February 2015). It is hard to imagine that a conversation of this sort would occur in a system that consisted of a single leader simply giving instructions to subordinates.

32 Gordon B. Hinckley, “In … Counsellors There is Safety,” Ensign, November 1990, 50. Here is his full statement: “No president in any organization in the Church is likely to go ahead without the assurance that his counselors feel good about the proposed program. A man or woman thinking alone, working alone, arriving at his or her own conclusions, can take action which might prove to be wrong. But when three kneel together in prayer, discuss every aspect of the problem which is before them, and under the impressions of the Spirit reach a united conclusion, then we may have the assurance that the decision is in harmony with the will of the Lord. I can assure all members of this church that in the First Presidency we follow such a procedure. Even the President of the Church, who is Prophet, Seer, and Revelator, and whose right and responsibility it is to make judgment and direct the course of the Church, invariably consults with his counselors to determine their feelings. If there is a lack of unity, there follows an absence of action. Two counselors, working with a president, preserve a wonderful system of checks and balances. They become a safeguard that is seldom, if ever, in error and affords great strength of leadership.”

33 Packer, “I Say Unto You, Be One,” 84.

34 Thus, while President Ezra Taft Benson spoke of fourteen fundamentals in following the prophet, he emphasized that it is the First Presidency — “the living prophet and the First Presidency” — that we follow. Ezra Taft Benson, “Fourteen Fundamentals in Following the Prophet,” address to Brigham Young University, 26 February 1980; reproduced in Liahona, June 1981, https://www.lds.org/liahona/1981/06/fourteen-fundamentals-in-following-the-prophet?lang=eng. Similarly, Joseph Fielding Smith begins his statement on following the Brethren by saying, “neither the President of the Church, nor the First Presidency, nor the united voice of the First Presidency and the Twelve will ever lead the Saints astray or send forth counsel to the world that is contrary to the mind and will of the Lord,” but in his next expression, he emphasizes not the President of the Church, but the full First Presidency: “An individual may fall by the wayside, or have views, or give counsel which falls short of what the Lord intends. But the voice of the First Presidency and the united voice of those others who hold with them the keys of the kingdom shall always guide the Saints and the world in those paths where the Lord wants them to be.” Joseph Fielding Smith, Ensign, July 1972, 88; emphasis added.

35 Cited by Boyd K. Packer, “The Twelve Apostles,” Ensign, November 1996, 6.

36 See, for example, James R. Clark, comp., Messages of the First Presidency, 6 vols. (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1965–1975), 2:229–35.

37 Packer, “The Law and the Light,” 25–26. He commented: “I said I would give six reasons for my conviction [i.e., that ‘the theory that God used an evolutionary process to prepare a physical body for the spirit of man … is false’], and I have listed only five. The sixth is personal revelation” (emphasis in original).

38 Packer, “The Law and the Light,” 1.

39 For a range of statements on evolution, a good starting place is FairMormon Answers Wiki, “Statements Made by Church Leaders Regarding Evolution,” http://en.fairmormon.org/Primary_sources/Evolution (accessed 6 January 2015); on Book of Mormon Geography; see Matthew Roper, “Limited Geography and the Book of Mormon: Historical Antecedents and Early Interpretations,” FARMS Review 16/2 (2004): 225–76; and “Joseph Smith, Revelation, and Book of Mormon Geography,” FARMS Review 22/2 (2010): 15–85; on the date of Christ’s birth, see Jeffrey R. Chadwick, “Dating the Birth of Jesus Christ,” BYU Studies 49/4 (2010): 5–38. On evolution in particular, it can be difficult to categorize different leaders’ views because the term itself is often used ambiguously. In avowing “evolution” one can mean any number of things — for example, that: (1) all forms of life developed by evolutionary mechanisms through blind chance, without divine guidance; (2) all forms of life developed by evolutionary mechanisms through blind chance, without divine guidance, except for humans whose evolution was guided; (3) all forms of life developed by evolutionary mechanisms, but this process was not blind, but divinely guided for them all; (4) all forms of life developed by evolutionary mechanisms through blind chance, except for humans, who were created apart, in a special creation; or (5) all forms of life developed by guided evolutionary mechanisms, except for humans, who were created apart, in a special creation. If speakers don’t say much about what they mean by “evolution,” it is impossible to be certain what they mean when they avow or disavow it. For this reason, readers need to be careful when comparing leaders’ views on the subject.

40 See, for example, Matthew 11:7–15; 13:3–9, 23–43; Mark 4:3–9, 13–23; 7:14–16; Luke 14:34–35.

41 Gordon B. Hinckley, “He Slumbers Not, Nor Sleeps,” Ensign, May 1983, 6.

42 In Gregory A. Prince and William Robert Wright, David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2005), 104.

43 Cannon, Gospel Truth, 1:346.

44 Ibid.

45 Bruce C. Hafen, A Disciple’s Life: The Biography of Neal A. Maxwell (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2002), 413.

46 Elder Oaks is speaking here specifically regarding the former restriction on blacks holding the priesthood, explaining why he was able to accept the restriction itself and yet not accept the various explanations that had been given for it. He goes on to say: “Some people put reasons to the one we’re talking about here [restrictions on the priesthood], and they turned out to be spectacularly wrong. There is a lesson in that. … I decided a long time ago that I had faith in the command and I had no faith in the reasons that had been suggested for it.” Dallin H. Oaks Life’s Lessons Learned: Personal Reflections (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book), 68–69. In short, the explanations offered for the restriction reflected people’s thinking (Brigham Young’s, primarily, it would seem) but were not themselves part of the official action.

47 See, e.g., “Excerpts from Three Addresses by President Wilford Woodruff Regarding the Manifesto,” following “Official Declaration–1” in the current edition of the Doctrine and Covenants.

48 Elder Charles W. Penrose explained that to see a glorified man, as our Heavenly Father is, is to see someone who is “quickened by [the] spirit in its fullness.” Charles W. Penrose, in Journal of Discourses, 26:21, http://en.fairmormon.org/Journal_of_Discourses/26/3#21 (accessed 28 February 2015). One way to think of the plan of salvation, then, is to see it as the path by which we develop this same fullness of the Spirit. We grow in Christ until we are eventually glorified in Him as He is glorified in the Father, and we receive of the Father’s fullness (D&C 93:13–20; 76:50–59, 92–95). Thus, we are told that “light is Spirit” (D&C 84:45) and that “he that receiveth light, and continueth in God, receiveth more light; and that light growth brighter and brighter until the perfect day” (D&C 50:24).

49 Cannon, Gospel Truth, 1:331.

50 History of the Church, 6:184–85; from a discourse given by Joseph Smith on Jan. 21, 1844, in Nauvoo, Illinois; reported by Wilford Woodruff.

51 Official Declaration–1. On another occasion he said: “I know what the will of God is concerning this people, and if they will take the counsel we give them, all will be well with them.” Discourses of Wilford Woodruff, in Teachings of the Latter-day Prophets, 16 vols. (Salt Lake city: Bookcraft, 1998), 4:55.

52 Gordon B. Hinckley, “Excerpts from Recent Addresses of President Gordon B. Hinckley,” Ensign, July 1996, 73.

53 Gordon B. Hinckley, Church News, 30 March 1996, 3.

54 Dieter F. Uchtdorf, “Come, Join with Us,” Ensign, November 2013, https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2013/10/come-join-with-us?lang=eng (accessed 11 January 2015).

55 Smith, “Eternal Keys and the Right to Preside,” 73.

56 Marion G. Romney, Conference Reports of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, April 1954, 90, https://archive.org/stream/conferencereport1945a#page/n89/mode/2up, 90 (accessed 12 January 2015).

57 Ibid., 91.

58 N. Eldon Tanner, “The Debate is Over,” Ensign, August 1979, http://www.lds.org/ensign/1979/08/the-debate-is-over?lang=eng&query=%22the+debate+is+over%22 (accessed 12 January 2015).

59 Boyd K. Packer, “The Law and the Light,” 22.

60 Oaks, “Teaching and Learning by the Spirit,” 14.

61 Boyd K. Packer, “I Say Unto You, Be One,” 84 (emphasis added).

62 Cited in D. Michael Quinn, The Mormon Hierarchy: Extensions of Power (Salt Lake City: Signature, 1997), 7, 368.

63 Hinckley, “Excerpts,” 73.

64 Thus, President Harold B. Lee could say: “Never in the world would anybody in his right mind ever desire to be the prophet of God. This is a responsibility that is fraught with some of the most serious and terrifying responsibilities that can be given to man. One in this position can be a target for evil. He is watched to see if he is going to make a mistake. A dear little seven-year-old girl said in a prayer, ‘Heavenly Father, bless the new President so that he will make only a few mistakes at first, and afterwards not any.’ And I felt like saying, ‘You dear little soul, that’s what I’ve been praying all the time.’ The Lord knows that in my heart I don’t want to make any mistakes, but I’m human. I’m not an object of worship. Our Lord and Master, Jesus Christ, is at the head of this church. He’s the one we should worship.” The Teachings of Harold B. Lee, ed. Clyde J. Williams (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1996), 528.

65 Genesis 3; Moses 4; 2 Nephi 2:19, 22; D&C 29:41.

66 Abraham 1:1–4; D&C 107:41–53; Luke 6:12–16; Ephesians 2:19–20.

67 Acts 10, 11; 1 Nephi 13:42; 3 Nephi 16:1–12; D&C 107:33.

68 2 Nephi 5:18; Jacob 1:9; Mosiah 6:3–6; 25:1–19; 26:8.

69 Harold B. Lee, “Strengthen the Stakes of Zion,” General Conference, April 6, 1973, https://www.lds.org/general-conference/1973/04/strengthen-the-stakes-of-zion?lang=eng (accessed 11 January 2015).

70 The notable exception being his experience with the Canaanite woman in Matthew 15:21–28.

71 While it is possible to see the 1978 revelation on the priesthood as a correction of a past mistake, explanations by those who wrestled with the matter have consistently framed it as a matter of divine timing (see, e.g., President McKay’s reported revelation discussed in note 42 above and related text) and the fulfillment of past promises (see, e.g., Official Declaration—2: “the long-promised day has come”). President Gordon B. Hinckley flatly stated: “I don’t think it was wrong …[V]arious things happened in different periods. There’s a reason for them” (Gordon B. Hinckley, “We Stand for Something: President Gordon B. Hinckley,” On the Record, Sunstone 21/4 (December 1998): 71; cited in http://en.fairmormon.org/Mormonism_and_racial_issues/Blacks_and_the_priesthood/Repudiated_ideas). Moreover, it has been reported that in the meeting that resulted in the revelation, President Kimball referred to the policy of restriction as something the Lord had “theretofore directed.” See Bruce R. McConkie’s report in Doctrines of the Restoration: Sermons and Writings of Bruce R. McConkie, ed. Mark L. McConkie (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1989), 160. While Church leaders have repudiated erroneous ideas relating to the reasons for the previous restriction (see, e.g., http://en.fairmormon.org/Mormonism_and_racial_issues/Blacks_and_the_priesthood/Repudiated_ideas), no public statements by those who were present at the time of the revelation described the matter in terms of correction. See Gordon B. Hinckley, “We Stand for Something,” cited above; Boyd K. Packer, “Lessons from Gospel Experiences,” new mission presidents’ seminar, 25 June 2008, disc 4, track 12, 0:00–0:54 (cited in Gregory L. Smith, “Shattered Glass: The Traditions of Mormon Same-Sex Marriage Advocates Encounter Boyd K. Packer,” http://publications.maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/fullscreen/?pub=1462&index=6 (accessed February 17, 2015); Mark L. McConkie, Doctrines of the Restoration: Sermons and Writings of Bruce R. McConkie (Salt Lake City, Utah: Bookcraft, 1989), 159–71; and David B. Haight, “This Work is True,” Ensign, May 1996, 22, https://www.lds.org/ensign/1996/05/this-work-is-true?lang=mon&clang=eng (accessed March 25, 2015).

72 Romney, Conference Reports, 90.

73 I take this account from my paper, “The Brethren and the Lord: A Letter to My Children,” This People, Fall 1995, 34–46. Elder Oaks has recently written of it in his Life’s Lessons Learned, 64-67.

74 Church News, 22 June 1963; cited in Jerreld L. Newquist, Prophets, Principles and National Survival (Salt Lake City: Publishers Press, 1964), 187–88.

75 Dallin H. Oaks, “When ‘Freedom’ Becomes Religious Censorship,” from Wall Street Journal, 23 May 1990, Congressional Record, 1989–1990, http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?r101:S23MY0–271 (accessed 12 January 2015).

76 Oaks, Life’s Lessons Learned, 67.

Sustaining the Brethren

Duane Boyce

Abstract: The Book of Mormon’s first anti-Christ, Sherem, “came among” the Nephites before their first generation was ended. Because he was an eloquent believer in the Law of Moses, there has been a variety of surmise as to his background. Was he a Lamanite, or a Jaredite or Mulekite trader? Was his presence among the separated Nephites evidence of early interaction between the Nephites and other civilisations in Nephite lands from the time of their first arrival? This short article reviews the various suggestions about Sherem’s identity and suggests he was most likely a descendant of the original Lehite party but that his identity was purposely suppressed so as not to give him more credibility than he deserved.

Sometime after Nephi’s death,1 Jacob’s doctrinal teaching and priestly authority were challenged by an eloquent believer in the Law of Moses named Sherem.2 Sherem maintained that Jacob had perverted the Law of Moses into the worship of a future Redeemer to be named Jesus Christ,3 a gospel4 that Sherem claimed was blasphemous.5 Jacob’s record of Sherem’s background has left many unanswered questions, since Jacob says simply, “there came a man among the people of Nephi, whose name was Sherem.”6

Sherem’s objection to Jacob’s interpretation of the Law of Moses raises the question of what interpretation of that law was orthodox in Jerusalem in the seventh century bc. That subject is beyond the immediate purpose of this article, but the writer7 and others8 have begun to explore elsewhere the influence of Judaism in the Book of Mormon, and there is no doubt that as a subject it has only begun to attract scholarly attention.

In this article, however, the primary focus focus is on the preliminary question of Sherem’s identity. Who was Sherem, and where did he come from? Was he a Nephite, a Lamanite, or someone else, perhaps a wandering Jaredite or a Mulekite? Each of these ideas for Sherem’s background has been proposed, as the reader will see in the discussion that follows. Sherem’s identity seems the more mysterious when his “arrival” is compared with Alma1’s account of Abinadi’s presence among the people of King Noah in the land of Lehi-Nephi. For when Alma19 originally introduced Abinadi in his record, he did not say that Abinadi “came … among them”10 but that Abinadi was “among them”11 and that he “went forth among them and began to prophesy.”12 Despite the slightly different descriptions of their origins, is it possible that, like Abinadi, Sherem was a Nephite; but the scripture editors had reasons to downplay those connections in Sherem’s case. Reasons why the Book of Mormon editors may have wanted to downplay any Nephite connections that Sherem had include that they did not wish to provide Sherem with credibility, since in their eyes, his message was apostate. In contrast, Abinadi was a preacher of whom those editors were proud.

Other reasons why Sherem was more likely a Nephite than a Mulekite or a Jaredite include the text of the Book of Mormon itself, which suggests that the first Nephite contact with or knowledge of those peoples came more than three hundred years later.13 In fact, there is no mention of any direct Jaredite contact with the Nephites or Lamanites at all in the existing Book of Mormon text — the Book of Mormon suggests that the Nephites became aware of the Jaredites only when King Mosiah1 translated their record14 after he joined the Nephite and Mulekite societies together sometime during the second century bc.15 There are also “markers” in Jacob’s account of his meeting with Sherem which suggest that Sherem more likely was a Nephite than anyone else. Those markers include Sherem’s eloquence in the Nephite language,16 his familiarity with the law of Moses,17 and the resonance of Sherem’s doctrines with the ideas of the deuteronomists who some scholars say may have been part of the reason for Lehi’s flight from Jerusalem.18 Those doctrines are said to have morphed into the literal rabbinism that Christ decried during his mortal ministry more than six hundred years later.

This article therefore discusses the various existing theories about Sherem’s identity, discounts them for the reasons summarized above, and concludes that Sherem was more likely a Nephite than a Lamanite, a Jaredite, a Mulekite or a member of any other group with whom these recorded peoples may have mixed when and after they arrived in the new world.19 As one of my anonymous reviewers has said, “It’s like Sherlock Holmes: eliminating all the possibilities (though without all the evidence) and accepting what remains, however improbable it may at first have seemed, as the real answer.”

After I have discussed the reasons why Sherem was likely a Nephite, I then consider how he might have learned his heretical anti-Christian ideas, since Nephi made it very clear that he had not taught his people the dark and abominable ways of the Jews.20 I then suggest that Sherem was likely a son or more remote descendant of Zoram, since though Zoram was a friend to Nephi,21 he was also a scribe22 and likely familiar with those dark Jewish ways which were abominable in the eyes of his friend.23 I also explain that later Zoramite practice and theology, which is treated as apostate and heretical in the Book of Mormon,24 has a distinctly Deuteronomist and even rabbinical flavor. After reviewing the likely reasons for that “familiar spirit,” I suggest that many of the anti-Christian threads in the Book of Mormon likely also have Zoramite origins. I also suggest that those anti-Christian connections may be the reason why Korihor died among the Zoramites,25 and why many Zoramites denied the Christ.26

Was Sherem a Jaredite or a Mulekite?

The idea that Sherem may have been a Jaredite was suggested by Hugh Nibley in his classic Lehi in the Desert & The World of the Jaredites. He wrote that “Jaredite proper names have a peculiar ring of their own. Their most characteristic feature is the ending in –m. This is called mimation and is actually found among the most ancient languages of the Near East.”27

Alan C. Miner also points out,28 with an additional citation to Catherine Thomas,29 that “Sherem is similar to the name ‘Shelem’ (Ether 3:1), the name given to the mountain upon which the brother of Jared came to know the true nature of Jesus Christ.”30 But Nibley’s “ancient languages of the Near East” comment does not exclude non-Jaredite Near Eastern connections for the name “Sherem,” and Catherine Thomas’ additional comments suggest the name more likely has Hebrew antecedents than anything unequivocally Jaredite.31 It also seems unlikely that a Jaredite would be well versed in the niceties of Mosaic law (since Moses was given that law after the Jaredites had left the Old World) or be superbly competent in the Nephite language, as Jacob said that Sherem was.32 Nor is Sherem’s competence in the Nephite language and religion answered by Professor Sorenson’s well-respected hypothesis that the Lehites and Mulekites did not arrive in uninhabited lands.33 That is because it is unlikely that even the intelligent members of any other preexisting cultural group present in the Promised Land when the Lehites arrived could have become as competent as Sherem was in the Nephite language and religion within one or two generations.

Kevin Christensen’s suggestion that Sherem may have been a Mulekite trader34 has more inferential material to support it. First, since Jacob was born shortly after his parents left Jerusalem around 600 bc, and since the Mulekite party likely left soon afterwards, this Jacob-Sherem meeting would have taken place within the first or second generation after both parties arrived in the New World. Since both parties would still have shared the same language and the Law of Moses, then Sherem might have been a Mulekite, save for the fact that the Book of Mormon does not document any contact between either the Nephites and Lamanites on the one hand, and the Mulekites on the other, until Mosiah1 joined the Nephites and the Mulekites around the beginning of the second century bc.35 Christensen says that “Sherem talks like a Deuteronomist” and Jacob “like a First Temple priest,”36 meaning that Jacob looks like an Israelite traditionalist who resisted the Deuteronomic reforms which Sherem was advocating. And it is this Deuteronomic message that Christensen can feel in Sherem, which leads him to his thesis of a Mulekite origin for Sherem, since he finds it unlikely that an orthodox Nephite would have promoted Deuteronomic heresy.

While Christensen’s solution to the identity of Sherem is better than Nibley’s, since it provides Sherem with excellent Nephite language skills and religious understanding, his explanation for this Nephite-Mulekite contact 300 years before the Book of Mormon says it happened is less satisfactory. To shore up his “Sherem was a Mulekite” hypothesis, Christensen cites Brant Gardner.37 Referring to the likely social history of the Nephites, Christensen says that Jacob may have been opposed to trade as the generator of the Nephite materialism, which he decries in his temple sermon.38 Christensen suggests that Sherem may have sought audience with Jacob to break down the trade barriers which Jacob’s interpretation of the Law of Moses was supporting. While Christensen’s reasoning is imaginative, Sherem’s alleged trade concern forms no part of Jacob’s report of their dialogue. That is surprising if trade barriers were the real focus of the Jacob-Sherem meeting, since preaching against materialism was indeed a prominent part of Jacob’s ministry, as evidenced in Jacob chapters 1 and 2. Jacob prefers to report for his righteous posterity that the purpose of his meeting with Sherem was limited to the correct interpretation of the Law of Moses. For Sherem, Jacob says that the Christ-centred gospel was blasphemy,39 but for Jacob it is the non-negotiable core of true religion. Jacob testifies that he has received his knowledge of this gospel by revelation40 — and Jacob had the last word, since he was the author of the record and reported that Sherem was smitten41 and died following his request for a sign42 and his confession.43

Was Sherem a Lamanite or a Nephite?

Alan Miner dismisses the suggestion that Sherem might have been a Lamanite, since Sherem responded affirmatively to Jacob’s question as to whether Sherem believed the scriptures.44 For Miner, this answer is “damning,” since the only scriptures known in the New World were the brass plates; Laman and Lemuel had never indicated any interest in them, and they were in Nephite custody at the time of the Jacob-Sherem meeting.45 This logic also weighs against Christensen’s argument that Sherem was a Mulekite trader, for three reasons. First, Amaleki’s record says that the Mulekites “had brought no records with them.”46 Second, Amaleki says the Mulekites had lost their knowledge of their Creator because they brought no written scriptures with them;47 and finally, the Mulekites were solely reliant on their oral genealogy48 for their knowledge of their origins when Mosiah joined the two peoples together 300 years later. While a Deuteronomist Mulekite trader49 contemporary with Jacob might have retained some memory of the literal pre-rabbinic tradition before his forbears departed from Jerusalem, it is unlikely that anyone could have been as articulate and well briefed as Sherem seems to have been50 without detailed familiarity with the records held only by Nephi and his spiritual heirs.

Is it then possible that Sherem could have been a member of the Nephite community that had separated from the Lamanites?51

There is controversy over the size of the Nephite party at the date of their separation from the Lamanites, and the date of the meeting between Jacob and Sherem.52 And the Book of Mormon text does not provide much material from which readers can draw a conclusion. It says that the Nephite party comprised Nephi and his family, “Zoram and his family, and Sam mine elder brother and his family, and Jacob and Joseph, my younger brethren, and also my sisters, and all those who would go with me.”53 These seven to ten or twelve families composed the original Nephite group.54 These were “those who believed in the warnings and revelations of God”55 and “hearkened unto … [Nephi’s] words.” Even though a third generation could have been well established before Sherem “came among” them, the core Nephite group appears to have originated from fewer than fifteen families.

The reasons why Sherem likely was a Nephite arise by elimination from the preceding discussion of whether Sherem could have been a Jaredite, a Mulekite, or a Lamanite.

First, he was more likely a Nephite than a Lamanite, Mulekite or Jaredite because as a Nephite he would have had access to the scriptures that set out the Law of Moses in which he was so well versed. Second, if he was a Nephite, it is less difficult to explain his eloquence and persuasiveness, because the Nephite language and cultural tradition were his native element. If he was a Nephite, he need only have been an intelligent member of the small Nephite community. And finally, there were two male members of the original separated Nephite party whose names ended, per Nibley, with the letter “m” — Sam and Zoram!56

Perhaps logically more important in this “process of elimination” is the absence of any need to explain Nephite connections with either the Jaredites or the Mulekites before the Book of Mormon text reports them. However, this logic does not signal any dispute with Professor Sorenson’s well-respected belief that there were other peoples in the land where the Nephites, the Lamanites and the Mulekites came to dwell.57 Nor does the suggestion that Sherem was a Nephite require us to jump through hoops to explain why Sherem was so eloquent and persuasive in a language and religion that were not his own.

What If Sherem Was a Nephite?

But if Sherem was a Nephite, does Jacob’s record of their encounter or any other part of the Book of Mormon text provide us with any indication of which family he came from? The answer to this question is a qualified yes.

The contextual keys that unlock an answer to this question include a close consideration of what Sherem taught.

Sherem’s doctrine is summarized in just two verses in Jacob 7.58 While it seems obvious Jacob had no wish to give Sherem’s heresies much “air-time,” he still recorded that Sherem objected to 1) Jacob’s teaching as “the gospel,” the “doctrine of Christ,”59 and 2) Jacob’s supposed perversion of “the law of Moses into the worship of a being which ye say shall come many hundred years hence.60

Sherem’s position boils down to his assertion that Jacob’s teaching was “blasphemy,”61 since no one could know of such things, or indeed of anything that lies in the future.62

Sherem’s “doctrine” bears a striking resemblance to the Jewish hopes that had turned prophecies of the coming Messiah into expectations of a second political David by the time that Christ was born among them in time’s meridian. And this resemblance resonates with Jacob’s earlier warning against Jewish stiffneckedness, which “despised words of plainness, … killed the prophets”63 and generally had become blind by “looking beyond the mark.”64 Sherem may simply have been the most eloquent advocate of these Jewish doctrines with which Jacob had been wrestling for some time.

Where did these doctrines come from if Nephi was as studious as he says he was not to teach his people “many things concerning the manner of the Jews … [since] their works were works of darkness and their doings were the doings of abominations”?65

Since it seems unlikely that Jacob and Joseph would have been less discrete with Jewish teaching than Nephi,66 someone else in the Nephite party must have known and taught it. Zoram presents as the most likely candidate.

What Do We Know About Zoram?

Zoram was the servant of Laban who made covenant with Nephi and went down with him and Nephi’s brethren into the wilderness. Brother Nibley’s insightful observations about Zoram’s faithfulness in keeping his oath to Nephi67 may, however, have blinded us to the dilemma which Zoram faced when Nephi gave him a choice whether to come with him and his brothers, or, we presume, to stay in Jerusalem — the proverbial choice between Charybdis and Scylla. The absence of any satisfactory alternative for Zoram when Nephi gave him “a choice” does not, however, mean that Zoram immediately changed his belief system so that it accorded with that of Lehi and his family.

Nephi says that Zoram was the servant of Laban “who had the keys of the treasury.”68 It is unlikely that Laban had entrusted those keys to just anyone, for the treasury, and the brass plates in particular, were the tokens of Laban’s wealth and station in Jerusalem. It is likely that Zoram was both a trusted servant and that he had some knowledge of the records of which he was custodian. Indeed, he may even have been a scribe to Laban.69 That he was politically knowledgeable is manifest from Nephi’s record of their conversation as they took the records to Nephi’s “elder brethren … without the walls.”70 For Nephi says that while Zoram thought that Nephi was his master Laban, “he spake unto me concerning the elders of the Jews, he knowing that … Laban, had been out by night among them.”71

How willing was Zoram’s departure from Jerusalem? Logically, he had no choice. Even if he was not a captive,72 from the moment he realized that Nephi was not Laban, he must have perceived that he was in a catch-22 situation. If he did manage to escape from Lehi’s four sons, the brass plates were gone and Laban was dead. Who would believe him if he reported the theft and its perpetrators? Was it not more likely that he would be taken as the murderer/thief himself?73 And if Lehi’s sons were gone without trace, and Zoram held pending trial, what chance would he have to prove his innocence? Though Hugh Nibley says that Nephi and his brethren were safe in relying on Zoram’s oath,74 it is doubtful that Zoram’s departure from Jerusalem was completely willing, for the record implies that he had no chance to bid his family farewell; he was relinquishing a sinecure75 for a dubious nomadic existence in the desert; and if he was ad idem with Laban in his regard for Lehi and his family, he was being forced to fall in with a group of religious zealots.76 However, once Zoram left Jerusalem with Nephi, there was no return, for he was a fugitive from that moment on.

If Laban was familiar with Lehi’s teachings, then Zoram was likely familiar with them as well. But that does not mean that Zoram agreed with all of them. As Nephi’s predecessor as custodian of the brass plates, Zoram was likely familiar with the Jewish interpretation that had become orthodox in Jerusalem at the time of his departure and may well have shared it with his family. Though he may have been personally loyal and faithful to Nephi77 until the first Nephi died, it is likely that he taught his family other methods of scriptural interpretation and the mainstream Jewish idea which disclaimed a spiritual Messiah, especially one named Jesus Christ. Though Zoram may have been converted by the Spirit during the many years he heard Nephi teach and prophesy, that does not mean he did not teach alternative scriptural interpretation privately at home. Such teaching would easily explain the rise of an intelligent son or grandson who was well schooled in alternative methods of scriptural interpretation.

Kevin Christensen’s case that Sherem was a Mulekite Deuteronomist78 relies on the Deuteronomists’ strict regard “for the written law”79 of Moses. But Christensen’s reasoning is just as valid if Sherem was a Nephite, or an early Zoramite, rather than a Mulekite. For even though we do not have enough detail in the Book of Mormon to confirm whether Sherem opposed the pre-deuteronomic ideas that Elohim and Yahweh were separate beings80 or that pre-Josiah High Priests had a Melchizedek as well as an Aaronic Priesthood role,81 it is clear that Sherem was completely wedded to the idea that the Law of Moses was an end in itself82 and did not include any concept of an atoning Messiah to come.83

Zoramite Religious Practice

Commenting on an earlier and unpublished version of this article, John Welch observed that “if Sherem … was a Zoramite, then the rift between the Zoramites and the Nephites that erupted into warfare in the days of Alma[2] had roots as far back as the contention between Sherem and Jacob.”84

Certainly the most memorable catalogue of Zoramite religious practices is that which Alma2 documented during his mission among them85 more than 400 years after Sherem’s ministry, and shortly after Alma2 had dealt with the later anti-Christ Korihor.86 Alma2 said these Zoramites did not “keep the commandments of God and his statutes, according to the law of Moses,”87 but it is likely that Alma2 meant they did not keep the Law of Moses as it was taught in the church established among the Nephites by his father, Alma1. And the distinctive Zoramite prayers upon the Rameumpton and Alma2’s criticism that they were prayers “to be heard of men”88 unmistakably recall Christ’s criticism of hypocritical Jewish religious practice by a people who purported to live the Law of Moses and yet prayed to be seen of men in synagogues and on street corners!89

There is also a connection between the Zoramites and the Book of Mormon’s most memorable anti-Christ, Korihor. Recall that Korihor met his final end in a road accident among the Zoramites.90 Though Mormon implies that the justice of God was manifest in Korihor’s unfortunate end,91 it is fairly observed that the deaf92 are more vulnerable to pedestrian accidents than the nonhearing impaired. The point of the observation in this article is that if Korihor was living among the Zoramites when he died, he may have been a son of theirs who had returned to his own when he fell on hard times.

Conclusion

Prophetic wrestling with anti-Christs and others in the Book of Mormon who would not accept that the Law of Moses was intended as a schoolmaster93 to prepare them for the Redeemer’s coming seems connected with the carried-over Jewish notion that the Law of Moses was properly understood and followed as a simple precedential tradition. But it is surprising to find prequels to rabbinic theology in the Book of Mormon context when Nephi had been careful to censor them out.94 Finding these prequels in the Book of Mormon provides additional intertextual evidence of the authenticity of the Book of Mormon. Joseph Smith could not have known of the work of the so-called Deuteronomic reformers in the 1820s when scholars only started to grapple with these matters towards the end of the twentieth century.95

Kevin Christensen has translated the Deuteronomic reform literature for LDS consumption and has explained that it accords with the Book of Mormon teaching that many “plain and precious things”96 were taken from the Hebrew Bible that has come down to us from the Jews. He has explained Margaret Barker’s particular insight that massive redactions in the name of a new orthodoxy immediately before and during the Jewish exile led to the rabbinic tradition that replaced the old theology and its core Messianic teachings.

Though it cannot be conclusively demonstrated from the current Book of Mormon record, there is circumstantial evidence that Sherem, that canon’s first anti-Christ, was a son or later descendant of Zoram, who came out from Jerusalem with Nephi and his brothers after the death of Laban and the recovery of the brass plates. If Zoram had indeed preserved some of his memory of Jewish religious practice and doctrine and handed it down to his posterity, it is not surprising that there is resonance between apostate religious practice among the Nephites and that which Christ met and criticized during his mortal ministry.

A. Keith Thompson LLB (Hons); M Jur; PhD is Associate Dean at the University of Notre Dame Australia School of Law, Sydney. He also practices commercial and property law in New South Wales and Victoria, Australia. He formerly served twenty years as International Legal Counsel for the Church in the Pacific and Africa Areas and has also served in the Church as Bishop, Stake President, and Mission President. He and his wife, Anita, have eight children and eight grandchildren so far.

1 Jacob 1:12.

2 Jacob 7. The 1981 edition of the Book of Mormon estimates this interchange took place between 544 and 421 BC. However, since there is no suggestion that Lehi or any of his sons lived extended lives, it is doubtful that these events took place later than the sixth century bc.

3 Jacob 7:7. While Jacob does not report the full name of Christ in these verses, he knew that name and preached it after an earlier revelation which he documented in 2 Nephi 10:3.

4 Jacob 7:6. W. Cleon Skousen suggests that the "gospel" concept is much older than the Latin and Anglo-Saxon etymology of the word itself. He has referred to use of the same term in Moses 6:58, Treasures from the Book of Mormon, vol. 1 (Salt Lake City, Utah: Ensign Publishing, 1971), 1452.

5 Jacob 7:7.

6 Jacob 7:1.

7 “Nephite insights into Israelite Worship Practices before the Babylonian Captivity,” Interpreter, A Journal of Mormon Scripture 3 (2013), 155.

8 See, for example, Glimpses of Lehi’s Jerusalem, John W. Welch, and David R. Seely, eds. (Provo, UT: Brigham Distributing, 2004), where various authors explore the cultural and religious environment that obliged Lehi’s departure. Similarly, John Welch, Legal Cases in the Book of Mormon, has explored what he called “the interconnections between legal and religious material in the ancient Near East, the Bible and the Book of Mormon including the norms and practices of Judaism" (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 2008), xxiv-xxv).

9 The writer has assumed that the original author of the record from which Mormon made his abridgement of Mosiah 12 is Alma1. That assumption follows Zeniff’s conclusion of the previous chapter with the words “therefore I say no more” (Mosiah 10:22), since Alma1 presents as the only person with sufficient knowledge to record the facts that appear between Mosiah 12 and 18, even though the record is presented in the third person. However, it is unlikely that Alma1 provided the primary material underlying Mormon’s abridgement in Mosiah 19‒22 since his people had separated from those of Limhi during this period.

10 Jacob 7:1.

11 Mosiah 11:20.

12 Ibid. Note, however, that in Mosiah 12:1, when Abinadi returned among the Nephites in disguise, Alma/Mormon uses exactly the same phrase (“came among them”) as Jacob/Mormon used in Jacob 7:1.

13 Omni 1:15‒19, which again the 1981 edition of the Book of Mormon suggests took place sometime between 279 and 130 bc.

14 Omni 1:20.

15 Omni 1:19‒21.

16 Jacob 7:4.

17 Jacob 7:7.

18 See for example the essays of Kevin Christensen and Margaret Barker in Welch and Seely, entitled, respectively, “The Temple, the Monarchy and Wisdom: Lehi’s World and the Scholarship of Margaret Barker” and “What did Josiah Reform?”

19 Note that the author accepts the Nibley/Sorenson view that none of the groups which emigrated to the New World as recounted in the Book of Mormon found an uninhabited continent.

20 2 Nephi 25:2.

21 2 Nephi 1: 30.

22 1 Nephi 4: 20, 22‒27.

23 2 Nephi 25:2.

24 Consider the view of Zoramite theology and practice recounted in Alma2’s mission to the Zoramintes in Alma 31‒35.

25 Alma 30:59.

26 Alma 31:16.

27 Hugh Nibley, Lehi in the Desert & The World of the Jaredites (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, Second Collector’s Edition Printing, 1988), 243. Nibley also says that every Nephite who bore a Jaredite name “has a Mulekite background and is a leader of subversive movements against the Nephite state and religion” (ibid. 244); and he doubts that Coriantumr was the only Jaredite who overlapped with Nephites and the Mulekites. He adds, “We have proof that the Jaredites made a permanent cultural impression on the Nephites through Mulek, for centuries after the destruction of the Jaredite nation we find a Nephite bearing the name of Coriantumr, and learn that this man was a descendant of Zarahemla, the illustrious leader of the Mulekites” (ibid). But none of this proves that Sherem was a Jaredite or even that a Jaredite background was likely.

28 Alan C. Miner, Step by Step Through the Book of Mormon, vol. 2 (Springville, UT: Cedar Fort, 1996), http://stepbystep.alancminer.com/jacob_7.

29 “The Brother of Jared at the Veil,” Temples of the Ancient World (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1994), 390–391.

30 Miner, http://stepbystep.alancminer.com/jacob_7.

31 Alan Miner acknowledges that Catherine Thomas finds “three main Hebrew consonants” in the name “Sherem,” connoting, among other meanings, “peace, tranquility, contentment, safety, completeness, being sound, finished, full or perfect” (ibid, fn 205). Indeed, Shelem (the name of the Jaredite mountain) is very close to the familiar Hebrew greeting "shalom,"’ since vowels did not matter as much (were interchangeable) in ancient Hebrew as they do in modern English (see, for example, http://www.hebrew4christians.com/Grammar/Unit_Two/Introduction/introduction.html). Miner also notes that Thomas suggests that words ending in "-m" in ancient Near Eastern languages connote submission to God, as more recently in the words islam and muslim and in the concept of atonement, where individuals, including the brother of Jared, seek closer fellowship with the Lord (Miner, http://stepbystep.alancminer.com/jacob_7, fn 205).

32 Jacob 7:4, 7.

33 See, for example, John L. Sorenson, An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1996), 146‒148: John L. Sorenson, “When Lehi’s Party Arrived, Did They Find Others in the Land?” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 1/1 (1992); and John L. Sorenson and Matthew Roper, “Before DNA,” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 12/1 (2003).

34 Kevin Christensen, "The Deuteronomist De-Christianizing of the Old Testament," FARMS Review, 16/2 (2004), 86‒88.

35 Omni 1: 19.

36 Christensen, "The Deuteronomist De-Christianizing of the Old Testament," 87.

37 Christensen, "The Deuteronomist De-Christianizing of the Old Testament," 88, citing Brant Gardner, “A Social History of the Early Nephites,” http://www.fairmormon.org/perspectives/fair-conferences/2001-fair-conference/2001-a-social-history-of-the-early-nephites.

38 Gardner, “A Social History of the Early Nephites,” where Gardner discusses Jacob’s teaching in Jacob 1 and 2.

39 Jacob 7:7.

40 Jacob 7:5.

41 Jacob 7:14, 15.

42 Jacob 7:20.

43 Jacob 7:16‒19.

44 Jacob 7:10.

45 Miner, http://stepbystep.alancminer.com/jacob_7. Note however that Mosiah 10:11‒17 records the traditional Lamanite cultural view of the Nephites. Zeniff suggests that the Lamanites were interested in all the sacred relics and viewed them as their property by virtue of Jewish rules of inheritance and primogeniture (v. 16). The reason the Nephites had difficulty with the Lamanites before the missionary outreach of the sons of Mosiah2 was that the Lamanites saw the Nephites as rebels and usurpers, a very credible interpretation of Nephite behavior if you were a Jewish cultural traditionalist.

46 Omni 1:17.

47 Omni 1:17.

48 Omni 1:18.

49 Christensen, "The Deuteronomist De-Christianizing of the Old Testament," 86–88. This is Christensen’s profile of Sherem.

50 Jacob 7: 7.

51 2 Nephi 5: 1–8. The current editors of the Book of Mormon estimate that this separation occurred sometime between 588 and 570 BC.

52 See for example http://nephicode.blogspot.com.au/2011_10_01_archive.html, where a blogger named Del criticizes both Professor Sorenson’s well-respected thesis that there were other people living in the "promised land" when the Nephites arrived; and his view that there would only have been a “few dozen adults” in the Nephite settlement at the time of the Jacob-Sherem confrontation. "Del" appears to refer to Professor Sorenson’s article “Before DNA,” though he does not cite the article. Del’s conclusion is that the population of the Nephite settlement by 520 BC could have been around 1336 from purely natural increase without polygamy (which Jacob had earlier condemned — Jacob 2:28‒32) by the time of the confrontation.

53 2 Nephi 5:6.

54 2 Nephi 5:6.

55 2 Nephi 5:6.

56 See Nibley’s comments about Near Eastern names ending with the letter "m" (Nibley, Lehi in the Desert & The World of the Jaredites, 243, and in the supporting text). Hugh Nibley has also suggested that the Nephite name "Sam" is of Egyptian provenance (Hugh Nibley, An Approach to the Book of Mormon (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1988), 286). John Tvedtnes prefers Nibley’s earlier view that the name "Sam" has Arabic origins. John A. Tvedtnes, The Most Correct Book (Bountiful, Utah: Horizon Publishers, 2004), 88, citing Nibley, An Approach to the Book of Mormon, 75‒76, and Nibley, Lehi in the Desert, 41‒42.

57 Sorenson, An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon, 146‒148.

58 Jacob 7:6, 7.

59 Jacob 7:6.

60 Jacob 7:7.

61 Jacob 7:7.

62 Jacob 7:7.

63 Jacob 4:14.

64 Jacob 4:14.

65 2 Nephi 25:2.

66 2 Nephi 5: 26; Jacob 1:18.

67 Nibley, An Approach to the Book of Mormon, 128‒130.

68 1 Nephi 4:20.

69 Brother Nibley suggests that Zoram “knew a good deal” about “the elders of the Jews (I Nephi 4:27)”; was Laban’s private secretary and “himself an important official.” Nibley further suggests that Nephi may have intended to denote that Zoram was Laban’s “official representative” when he used the title “servant,” rather than that he was serving in some menial role (An Approach to the Book of Mormon, 127‒128).

70 1 Nephi 4:27.

71 1 Nephi 4:22.

72 1 Nephi 4:31.

73 Note Amalackiah’s use of this fast judging historical oriental habit when he successfully shifted the blame for the murder of the Lamanite king in Alma 47:22‒30 (ca 72 BC); and in the hasty Nephite conclusion that the five messengers sent to test the veracity of Nephi’s prophecy of the murder of the Chief Judge Seezoram were themselves the murderers (Helaman 8: 27–9:38, ca. 20 BC).

74 Nibley, An Approach to the Book of Mormon, 128‒130.

75 Nibley, An Approach to the Book of Mormon, 127‒128.

76 In his article suggesting that Zoram may have been a Mulekite Deuteronomist, Kevin Christensen explains in detail, with citations from Margaret Barker, how orthodoxy in religion was transformed by an elite scribal group in that period immediately before Lehi left Jerusalem ("The Deuteronomist De-Christianizing of the Old Testament,” 56).

77 2 Nephi 1:30.

78 Christensen, "The Deuteronomist De-Christianizing of the Old Testament," 56.

79 Christensen, "The Deuteronomist De-Christianizing of the Old Testament," 65.

80 Christensen, "The Deuteronomist De-Christianizing of the Old Testament," 68‒72.

81 Christensen, "The Deuteronomist De-Christianizing of the Old Testament," 81‒83.

82 Christensen, "The Deuteronomist De-Christianizing of the Old Testament," 65‒68, 75.

83 Christensen, "The Deuteronomist De-Christianizing of the Old Testament," 6264, 67, 76‒80.

84 Welch, Legal Cases in the Book of Mormon, 108‒109, n. 6. Note further that Zoramite and Nehorite beliefs seem to have discrete origins. For while the Zoramites considered contra Alma2 that they observed the Law of Moses faithfully, the Nehors focused more on clerical remuneration, universal redemption without regard to the morality of personal conduct, and the denial of divine punishment, judgment or resurrection (ibid., 219).

85 Alma 31‒35.

86 Alma 20.

87 Alma 31:9.

88 Alma 31:3.

89 Matthew 6:5.

90 Alma 30:59.

91 Alma 30:60.

92 However, the scriptures record only that Korihor was dumb (Alma 30:49‒52). Perhaps he was also rendered deaf at the same time, though that would likely have been stated by the author of the account.

93 Galatians 3:24. The term schoolmaster is Paul’s, but it captures precisely the teaching of orthodox pre-Christian Nephites. Note that Christensen says that the Israelite view that “the Law was not an inferior replacement for the gospel they were unworthy to live” (quoting and disagreeing with Melodie Moench Charles and her article “The Mormon Christianizing of the Old Testament,” which appeared in Sunstone magazine in 1980 under that title and then again in The Word of God in 1990) did not become predominant until after the exile (Christensen, n. 33, p. 75).

94 2 Nephi 25:2.

95 Kevin Christensen cites the work of Margaret Barker, Robert Alter, Richard Elliot Friedman and William Doorly as representative of the scholarship which now universally accepts that the Deuteronomic editorial school actually existed ("The Deuteronomist De-Christianizing of the Old Testament," 60‒61). Barker’s first book touching the subject was published in 1987. Friedman published the same year, and the works of Doorly and Alter which Christensen cites followed respectively in 1994 and 1998 (ibid.)

96 1 Nephi 13: 29. See also Christensen, “The Temple, the Monarchy and Wisdom: Lehi’s World and the Scholarship of Margaret Barker” and “What did Josiah Reform?”

Who Was Sherem?

A. Keith Thompson

Abstract: The double negative phrase ”forbiddeth to abstain” as found in D&C 49:18 can be confusing and syntactically challenging for readers. While some have argued that the phrase should be read and understood literally, the Doctrine and Covenants of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints indicates that a literal reading is not correct. In this article I demonstrate that the phrase ”forbid to abstain” was an accepted English idiom prior to and for a few decades following the receipt of D&C 49, even though it has vanished from contemporary usage completely. The meaning of this idiomatic expression was ”command to abstain,” in opposition to its literal meaning. The probable origin of this expression is the Greek text of 1 Timothy 4:3, which in English partially reads ”commanding to abstain from meats.” However, in Greek the phrase ”commanding to abstain” would be rendered more correctly as ”forbidding to abstain.” I conclude that the proper reading of ”forbiddeth to abstain” in D&C 49:18 is the idiomatic rather than the literal one and that it should be understood as ”commandeth to abstain.”

The Doctrine and Covenants of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints contains a syntactically challenging and often confusing verse: “And whoso forbiddeth to abstain from meats, that man should not eat the same, is not ordained of God” (D&C 49:18). This revelation, given to Joseph Smith Jr. and others on May 7, 1831, was specifically directed at some of the incorrect beliefs and practices of the Shakers, including a belief in abstaining from animal flesh by some of their members.1

The principal reason why this verse is so difficult to understand is that it contains the double negative forbiddeth to abstain. The New Oxford American Dictionary states that:

According to standard English grammar, a double negative used to express a single negative, such as ‘I don’t know nothing’ (rather than ‘I don’t know anything’), is incorrect. The rules dictate that the two negative elements cancel each other out to give an affirmative statement, so that ‘I don’t know nothing’ would be interpreted as ‘I know something’ [emphasis in original].2

Applying this double negative rule to D&C 49:18, the two negative elements (forbiddeth and abstain) should “cancel each other out,” resulting in an affirmative statement. In other words, the double negative phrase forbiddeth to abstain could be reworded as the affirmative commandeth to use. This literal reading of the verse suggests that we should not require others to eat meats. By the same token, we should not prohibit others from adopting a food-restricted lifestyle, such as vegetarianism. In blogs and discussion forums on the Internet, there have been many members of the LDS Church who have discussed and argued for such a literal interpretation of this verse.3

Using Webster’s 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language to help us understand the meaning of words at the time that Section 49 was given, we learn that to forbid meant very much what it means today “To prohibit; to interdict; to command to forbear or not to do.”4 Webster defined abstain as, “In a general sense, to forbear, or refrain from, voluntarily; but used chiefly to denote a restraint upon the passions or appetites; to refrain from indulgence.”5 Finally, Webster defined meat as, “Food in general; anything eaten for nourishment, either by man or beast.”6 So, recast into more modern language, a literal reading of the verse could be: And whoever prohibits others to voluntarily refrain from foods, that they should not eat them, is not ordained of God. Understood literally, then, this verse appears to censure anyone preaching against abstinence from certain foods, a rebuke toward anyone who criticizes a vegetarian diet or other voluntary food-restricted lifestyle.

But, is the literal meaning the correct one? In the footnote to verse 18, the LDS Church has replaced the phrase “forbiddeth to abstain” with “biddeth to abstain.”7 According to Webster, to bid meant, “To ask; to request; to invite.”8 Introducing this definition into our modern language version, we could then read, And whoever asks others to voluntarily refrain from foods, that they should not eat them, is not ordained by God. Read this way, the verse takes on a nearly opposite meaning from the literal one and appears to disapprove of anyone who encourages others to limit their diet to only certain foods, including those who persuade others to follow a vegetarian diet or other food-restricted lifestyle.

This same verse in the Spanish language Doctrine and Covenants has been translated by the LDS Church as, “Y quién manda abstenerse de la carne, para que el hombre no la coma, no es ordenado por Dios.” Translated back into English, the verse could be faithfully rendered as “And who commands to abstain from meat, so that man does not eat it, is not ordained by God.” In addition, the LDS Church has translated the Portuguese and French versions of this verse in the same manner as the Spanish, demonstrating that this was an intentional wording by the Spanish language translators. All three of these foreign language translations agree very closely with the footnoted version found in the English language Doctrine and Covenants but stand in opposition to the literal reading of the verse in English.

Given these divergent interpretations of this verse from the Doctrine and Covenants, it is apparent that the key to unlocking the intended meaning of the words lies in correctly understanding the phrase “forbiddeth to abstain.”

Idioms

Not all phrases can or should be understood literally. For example, the affirmative words yeah and right, when used sarcastically — yeah, right! — project an opposite meaning to that of the individual words. Friendly, as defined by Oxford, primarily means “kind and pleasant.”9 In that sense, friendly fire is never friendly. Even if during wartime one mistakes one’s friends for enemies, shooting at them could never be construed as kind and pleasant. These two phrases are called idioms, “a group of words established by usage as having a meaning not deducible from those of the individual words.”10 Idioms are found in all languages and are not to be understood literally at the risk of serious miscommunication.

The purpose of this article is to show that the phrase “forbiddeth to abstain” was an accepted English idiom prior to and during the time that Section 49 was received, and its idiomatic meaning was “commandeth to abstain,” which is similar to “biddeth to abstain,” but even stronger.

Idiomatic Usage of “Forbid to Abstain”

Cited below are 12 examples in which the phrase forbid to abstain was used by its authors as an idiomatic expression with the intended meaning of command to abstain. The original citations range in date from the 16th century to the mid-19th century and have been arranged chronologically.11 While most of the referenced citations originated in England, one had its origin in the United States, and at least two of the English citations were subsequently reprinted in New York. I was unable to identify any usage of this idiomatic expression post-1866. All sources that I was able to locate, from the late nineteenth century to the present, used the phrase strictly in the literal sense.

Published in 1648 in London, a book entitled The Theatre of Gods [sic] Judgements [sic] explained that “it is to good reason, that Scripture forbids us to abstain from the lust of the flesh and the eyes, which is of the world and the corruption of mans [sic] own nature”12 [emphasis added]. It is obvious from the context of this passage that the intended meaning of “forbids us to abstain” cannot be the literal one, which would prohibit us from refraining from the lusts of the flesh. As Paul wrote to the Romans, “But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof” (Romans 13:14). Instead, the intended meaning of “forbids us to abstain” in this passage must be “commands us to abstain.” Otherwise, read literally, the passage would be affirming that the scriptures encourage us to follow the lusts of the flesh and our own corrupt nature.

In a work published in London in 1653 by Thomas Taylor, coauthor of the previous work, Dr. Taylor tells us of Paul’s “predictions of men in the last times, broaching doctrines of divels [sic], forbidding to marry, and forbidding to abstain from meats as unclean”13 [emphasis added]. Dr Taylor was apparently referencing, at least in part, 1 Timothy 4:3. This verse in the 1560 Geneva Bible reads:

“Forbidding to marie [sic], and commanding to absteine [sic] from meats which God hathe [sic] created to be receiued [sic] with giuing [sic] thankes [sic] of them which beleue [sic] and knowe [sic] the trueth [sic]” [emphasis added].

The King James Bible contains similar language:

“Forbidding to marry, and commanding to absteine [sic] from meates [sic], which God hath created to bee [sic] receiued [sic] with thankesgiuing [sic] of them which beleeue [sic], and know the trueth [sic]” [emphasis added].

Both of these editions of scripture contain the phrase “commanding to abstain,” but Dr. Taylor rendered the phrase as “forbidding to abstain.” It is apparent that Dr. Taylor considered “forbidding to abstain” and “commanding to abstain” to have equivalent meanings.

A little over a century later, The Gentleman’s Magazine, published in London in January 1777, wrote upon the subject of vengeance, especially as it related to Dinah the daughter of Jacob, who was defiled by Shechem. The author, Sylvanus Urban, wrote, “Yet where, except in the sword of a parent, or a brother, where is redress for this grievance?”14 Urban’s answer was:

“The arm of Vengeance! And yet, are we not forbidden to abstain [emphasis added] from blood, on any provocation? We are, and we should [emphasis in original] be: A moment’s reflection is founded in the law of eternal rectitude. It is man’s to err, and to mend; be it God’s to punish and to pardon.”15

As Urban explained, only God is entitled to vengeance. Man’s responsibility lies in mending one’s own errors and not in avenging the wrongs of others. As in the two previous examples cited, Urban used the phrase “forbidden to abstain” to mean “commanded to abstain.” This same article by Urban was reprinted in its entirety in a book entitled The Sublime and Beautiful of Scripture, in 1795, in New York.16

John Jay was one of the founding fathers of the United States and its first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Recorded on April 22, 1793, under the caption of “Draft of John Jay’s Charge to the Grand Jury of the Circuit Court for the District of Virginia,” are Justice Jay’s notes on a legal matter. Those notes read:

would not the Laws of Reason and Morality direct them to behave to each other with Respect, with

Justice, with Benevolence, with good Faith_ Would
direct
not those laws forbid them to abstain in from violence to abstain from interfering in their respective domestic Governmt [sic] and arrangements, to abstain from causing Quarrels and Dissentions [sic] in each others [sic] families, to abstain from seducing the Individual Members of those Families into”17 [emphasis added].

In the original draft, the word “forbid” was crossed out, and the word “direct” was written above the line, demonstrating that this change was made only after the subsequent words had been written. In contrast, the word “in” was crossed out in-line and replaced by the word “from,” showing that this change was made immediately. This tells us that Justice Jay most likely felt comfortable with the usage of “forbid them to abstain” and only on reflection decided that the phrase needed more clarity, so he replaced “forbid” with “direct.” Since the rest of the paragraph addressed abstinence from interference, quarrels and dissensions, it seems clear that Justice Jay’s original meaning of “forbid them to abstain from violence” could not possibly have been to encourage violence, which would be the literal interpretation, and would place it in opposition to the rest of the paragraph. Rather, it is apparent that the original meaning of “forbid them to abstain” must have been to “direct them to abstain,” as he subsequently reworded it.

In A History of Conferences and other Proceedings Connected with the Revision to the Book of Common Prayer, published in 1811 by the Oxford University Press, Edward Cardwell cited a letter by Edmund Guest, the bishop of Rochester in the 16th century. Guest, among other things, commented on the teachings of Paul. He wrote, “Paul forbids us to abstain not only from that which is evil, but also from all that which is not evil, but yet hath the appearance of evil”18 [emphasis added]. Guest most likely was referring to Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians, which in part reads, “Abstain from all appearance of evil” (1 Thes 5:22). Clearly, Guest’s usage of “forbids us to abstain” cannot be understood in the literal sense. His meaning is undoubtedly the idiomatic one – to command or direct us to abstain not only from evil, but also from the appearance of evil.19

Printed in 1822 in London, the writings of the late William Gilpin were recorded in Sermons Preached to a Country Congregation. In Sermon XX he stated that “it is not only forbidden to abstain [emphasis added] from all outward acts [emphasis in original] of revenge, but to abstain from all inclination [emphasis in original] to it.”20 Gilpin’s usage of “forbidden to abstain” is in agreement with prior citations and should be understood in the idiomatic sense as “commanded to abstain.”

In A Complete Course for Englishmen to Obtain the French Language at Home, printed in 1827 in London, the author provided translations of many French words into the English language. Se garder was translated by the author as “to keep, to forbid to abstain from, to take care not”21 [emphasis added]. In an English-French dictionary from the same time period (1833) and also published in London, the following was given for the definition and translation of to forbear:

To FORBEAR, anciently FORBARE. [To cease from anything, to intermit, to omit voluntarily, to abstain] Cesser de, interrompre; omettre, s’abstenir, se garder, s’empêcher, se retenir, s’arrêter, se contrindre. To FORBEAR oneself from [to withhold] s’abstenir, se garder de”22 [emphasis added, brackets in original].

In the first example cited above, one of the translations of se garder is to forbid to abstain from. In the second example, se garder is interpreted as to forbear, or to abstain. On the surface these two definitions seem to contradict one another. Se garder cannot mean to forbid to abstain and to abstain unless forbid to abstain was intended to be understood as the idiomatic expression. Additionally, since se garder was also translated as to take care not in the first citation, it fits that the author intended forbid to abstain as command to abstain.

In his Short Lectures on the Church Catechism, printed in 1845 in London, Augustus O. FitzGerald, rector of Fledborough, Nottinghamshire, published lectures on various topics. In Lecture XXIX he stated:

As we are forbidden to abstain from whatever is likely to lead to the shedding of blood, it is our duty to keep away from all places where our bad and angry passions may probably be excited; and in particular from those ill-ordered public houses, where the loose and profligate assemble with the purpose of tempting the less wary visitor to drink and gamble.23 [emphasis added]

Again, “forbidden to abstain” can only be properly understood as “commanded to abstain” in this context.

Printed in Edinburgh in 1851, a translation of John Calvin’s preaching about the evils and idolatry of the “domain of the Pope” was reproduced in a book entitled Calvin’s Tracts: Tracts containing Antidote to the Council of Trent. In reference to the Roman Catholic practice of abstaining from eating flesh on Fridays, Calvin wrote:

To interdict the Eating of Flesh under the name of Religion, and bind the consciences of believers by such an interdict, was plainly tyrannical, and as the Apostle expresses it, (1 Tim. iv. 1–3,) “devilish.” And seeing the Lord had left it optional to eat flesh daily, or abstain for a lifetime from eating it, nothing forbids you to abstain on particular days. For why may not that be occasionally lawful which is at all times free? Thus you may without sin obey an iniquitous command, provided your intention be to make a concession to the ignorance of the weak, and not also to enthrall your mind by those fetters of tradition.24 [emphasis added]

As the English translation of Calvin’s writing explained, the Scriptures do not forbid [command] us to abstain from eating flesh on particular days of the week. We can eat flesh any time that we want, or we can choose to abstain for a lifetime. But, if we choose to obey the “iniquitous command” of the Pope by abstaining from flesh on a particular day (Friday, for example), we can do so without committing sin so long as our intent is to not offend the weak. Caution, however, needs to be observed so that we are not enthralled in the “fetters of tradition.” As with the prior examples, the only proper way to understand this passage is in the idiomatic sense.

An article appearing in The United Presbyterian Magazine in 1856 laid out its arguments for abstinence from intoxicating liquors:

Since our use of intoxicating liquors, however lawful, leads by the force of example to abuse on the part of others, we are bound to abstain. That is the principle on which we take our stand, and we would earnestly exhort our Christian brethren to consider, whether it is possible to evade its force. The utmost you can plead is, that the Bible allows you to use intoxicating liquors; you cannot pretend that it commands you to use them; you cannot pretend even that it forbids you to abstain from their use.25 [emphasis added]

It is this author’s belief that the most that one can reason from the Bible is that it allows the use of intoxicating drinks. One cannot, in the author’s opinion, claim that the Bible “commands you to use them,” nor can one argue that the Bible “forbids [commands] you to abstain from their use.” Again, it is apparent that the author intended the phrase “forbids to abstain” to be used as the idiomatic expression meaning “commands to abstain.”

In another article from the same year, The Bristol Temperance Herald encouraged its readers to practice abstinence from intoxicating drink:

The utmost that you can plead as to intoxicating drink, is that the Bible admits [emphasis in original] the use of it; you cannot shew [sic] a single passage which, directly or by inference, commands its use, or forbids you to abstain [emphasis added]. There is much to urge to self denial [sic] for the sake of others—the very spirit of the gospel and of its founder is such.26

This article, like the previous, contrasted “commands its use” with “forbids you to abstain,” leading us to the same conclusion that the author’s intended meaning of “forbids you to abstain” is actually “commands you to abstain.”

Although additional examples could be given, one final example will suffice to demonstrate the broad and prevalent usage of the idiomatic expression forbid to abstain. In The Gentleman’s Magazine and Historical Review, printed in London in 1866, Sylvanus Urban reminisced on some of the changes that had come upon the church over the centuries:

Happily, no longer is there danger of the Dean of Lincoln, as in the fifteenth century, entering the chapter-house with armed retainers; nor is a vicar, if below the order of priest, liable, as formerly, to be chastised on his bare back; ecclesiastics of every grade may now with impunity wear chequered [sic] hose, may keep dogs within the precincts, may ask friends to dinner without notice to the cook of the common table, may even stay out of close after curfew bell, although not disposed to wear a sword. They need not now, let us hope, as they formerly were at Exeter, be forbidden to abstain from keeping public banquetings in the church, “especially in the choir;” nor is there much danger of their being guilty of indecent gestures during divine services, or before performing miracle plays.27 [emphasis added]

In the citation above, Urban listed a series of prohibitions to which clerics were subjected in earlier times, which appeared to have changed by the time of his writing. One of those changes was that they were no longer “forbidden to abstain from keeping public banquetings in the church, ‘especially in the choir’.” Urban’s source for at least some of this material appears to be a book printed a year earlier in London, entitled Cathedralia: A Constitutional History of Cathedrals of the Western Church. The author of this work, Mackenzie Walcott, wrote that members of the clergy in Exeter, “were forbidden to keep public banquetings and drinkings in the church, specially [sic] in the choir, and to talk during divine service.”28 Walcott’s “forbidden to keep public banquetings” and Urban’s “forbidden to abstain from keeping public banquetings” are opposite statements if interpreted literally. Urban’s usage, though, was undoubtedly the idiomatic rather than the literal one, which aligns the two statements with each other.

1 Timothy 4:3 and Greek – The Probable Origin of the Idiom

William Thomson, in his book published in 1816 and entitled The New Testament Translated from the Greek, provided us with a possible explanation for how the phrase “forbid to abstain” became an English idiom with a meaning opposite to the literal one. The King James Version of 1 Timothy 4:3 currently reads:

Forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth.

Thomson stated that this verse could be translated from the Greek into English as, “Who command not to marry, to abstain from meats, &c.”29 [emphasis in original]. Thomson continued:

The words κωλυόντων ἀπέχεσχαι, though, when literally rendered, are forbidding to abstain, yet according to Greek idiom, two negatives, which are implied in the above mentioned words more strongly deny; therefore they are to be rendered commanding to abstain, or forbidding to use; because in English two negatives amount to an affirmative.30 [emphasis in original]

According to Thomson, “forbidding to abstain,” the literal translation from the Greek, had the effect of more strongly denying the use of something. But since the rules of grammar are not the same in English, 1 Timothy 4:3 was written “commanding to abstain” by the English translators. This creates the strong possibility that “forbidding to abstain” became an English idiom for “commanding to abstain” due to the Greek version of 1 Timothy 4:3, and its English adaptation.

Ernest De Witt Burton, in his book entitled Syntax of the Moods and Tenses in New Testament Greek, published in Edinburgh in 1898, wrote, “When a negative is followed by one or more similar compound negatives or by the double negative οὐ μή the effect is a strengthened negation.”31 This supports Thomson’s claim that two or more negatives in the Greek “more strongly deny,” and do not, as in the English “amount to an affirmative.”

A.T. Robertson wrote the following in his book from 1919 entitled A Grammar of the Greek New Testament in the Light of Historical Research:

The compound negatives [in the Greek] merely strengthen the previous negative. This emphatic repetition of the compound negative was once good vernacular in both English and German, but it gave way in literary circles before the influence of the Latin. It was always good Greek.32

οὐ is a Greek word that, according to Strong’s Concordance (3756), is the absolute negative and can mean no, not, nay, neither, never or none.33 μή, according to Strong’s Concordance (3361), is “a primary particle of qualified negation (whereas 3756 expresses an absolute denial),” and can mean no, not, neither, never not or nothing.34 However, Strong’s Concordance also assigned a separate number to the combination of these two Greek words:

3364, oὐ μή (from 3756 / oὐ, ‘not a fact’ and 3361 / μή, ‘not a possibility’) – a double negative which emphatically conveys, ‘not a fact … not even a possibility!’ – literally, ‘no, no!’35

The author of Hebrews in the New Testament wrote, “Let your conversation be without covetousness; and be content with such things as ye have: for he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.” (Hebrews 13:5) In the Greek, the final part of that verse, “I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee,” is written “οὐ μή σε ἀνῶ οὐδ’ οὐ μή σε ἐγκαταλίπω.” A literal translation into English could be rendered:

oὐ μή σε ἀνῶ οὐδ’ οὐ μή σε ἐγκαταλίπω.

Never not you will I leave nor never not you will I forsake.

This verse is unusual in the New Testament in that it contains a double negative phrase (oὐ μή) and a triple negative phrase (οὐδ’ οὐ μή). But, the force of both of these phrases in the Greek is to amplify the negative meaning. So, in order to agree with the Greek, when translated into English both phrases are expressed with only one negative each: I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.

Protestants, Catholics, and Shakers

The Reformation brought many disagreements on points of doctrine and interpretation of scripture between Protestants and Catholics. One of those disagreements centered around Paul’s prophecy in 1 Timothy:

Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith … forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth. (1 Timothy 4:1, 3)

Just as differences exist today about how D&C 49:18 should be understood, similar disagreements have existed between Protestants and Catholics around the correct reading of these verses from 1 Timothy. Protestants, who have translated this verse in the idiomatic sense due to the differences in Greek and English grammar, have claimed that the Catholics were the target of Paul’s prophecy since Catholic clergy were forbidden to marry, and since all members of the Catholic Church were forbidden to eat meat, other than fish, on Friday. Catholics, on the other hand, by literally interpreting the verse from the Greek have accused the Protestants of apostasy because they refused to ever abstain from meats.

The Reverend Edward Burton, in his book from 1829 entitled An Inquiry into the Heresies of the Apostolic Age, in Eight Sermons Preached before the University of Oxford, provided his commentary on 1 Timothy 4:3. He said that “it will be observed that the words and commanding, in v.3. are not in the Greek”36 [emphasis in original]. He continued,

But it is easy to see, as many commentators have pointed out, that some word equivalent to commanding must be supplied. Fr. Costerus, a writer of the Romish church, takes a very different view of the passage; and by interpreting it literally, without supplying any other word, he thinks that the protestants, who [literally] forbid to abstain from meats, may have been intended by St. Paul.37 [emphasis in original]

Burton acknowledged that a literal translation of 1 Timothy 4:3 from Greek to English, as suggested by Costerus, would provide the opposite meaning of “command to abstain from meats.” But Burton argued that:

Such an argument as this is beneath criticism, and can only provoke a smile where we ought to be serious: but I mention it, to shew [sic] how cautious we ought to be in interpreting scripture; and how easy it is to become ridiculous, when we follow party feeling rather than charity and sound reason.38

In his book Stromata Procatholica; A Series of Papers Principally Procatholic, or Antidotal to Antichristianism, printed in London in 1864, E.W. Attwood argued, as did Costerus, for a literal interpretation from the Greek of the verse from 1 Timothy. In his argument, he accused the Protestants of fulfilling Paul’s prophecies of apostasy, just as the Protestants had accused the Catholics. Attwood wrote:

Has it ever occurred to you [Protestants] that the word commanding [emphasis in original], in the second clause of the sentence in your translation [kjv], is an interpolation on the original; so that the force of forbidding [emphasis in original] in the first, a word that is not an interpolation, may apply not only to the expression “to marry,” but to the following one, “to abstain from meats?” It is already shown that you [Protestants] often virtually abstain to marry by your luxurious and popular idea of economy, that is, of sufficiency for a household: as to meats you actually and notoriously forbid to abstain from them [emphasis added], pronouncing it an absurdity to decline the supplies of the Creator from whatever motive, whether restraint of the flesh or obedience to the Church, and those fools or mad who do so from either motive.39

Attwood did not set forth any evidence to back a literal interpretation from the Greek for the clause “forbidding to abstain,” although he does appear to support its literal use. His primary argument seems to be that the Protestant Bible introduced the word “commanding” as an “interpolation,” a “spurious word or passage inserted in the genuine writings of an author.”40 Protestants, on the other hand, while agreeing that the word command is not in the Greek, believe that its inclusion is necessary to correctly understand the original intent of the Greek.

The Douay-Rheims [Catholic] Bible from 1850 contains the following for 1 Timothy 3:4, “Forbidding to marry, to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving by the faithful, and by them that have known the truth.” Not only are the words “and commanding” not found in this verse, but the word “forbidding” in front of “to abstain from meats” is also not present, consistent with the original Greek wording. Although “forbidden” is omitted in the Greek, Attwood and others would agree that the clause should still be understood as “forbidding to abstain from meats.” However, as previously noted by Thomson and others, two negatives in Greek more strongly deny a statement, while in English two negatives make an affirmative. As such, the clause “forbidding to abstain” should either be written “commanding to abstain” or “forbidding to use” when translated into English.

A Shaker tract printed in 1810 in Albany, New York, entitled Testimony of Christ’s Second Appearing, and republished in 1856 “by the United Society, called Shakers,”41 asserted that both the Protestants and the Catholics were wrong in their interpretation of this verse from 1 Timothy. The tract acknowledged that “the word commanding in 1 Timothy iv. 3 – is put into the text by the translators”42 [emphasis in original], but it also claimed that “that text of scripture would read with propriety and in harmony with others without the bold ellipsis.”43 In other words, the clause to abstain from meats should be left without the addition of and commanding or any other words, including forbidding. In addition, the Shaker tract made the assertion that,

According to their highest and most approved critics, the word koluo [κωλύω], which the translators have rendered in this place, “forbidding,” originally and radically signified to confine, constrain, bind, or shut up, and that “commanding” is not in the original. Therefore, the text in the original reads literally binding, confining, or constraining to marry, to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving, &c.44 [emphasis in original]

However, Strong’s Concordance gives the following definition for koluo (κωλύω): “2967 – From the base of κολαζω - kolazo 2849; to estop, i.e. prevent (by word or act):– forbid, hinder, keep from, let, not suffer, withstand.”45 As shown, Strong’s definition of κωλύω is in opposition with that provided in the Shaker tract. A possible reason why the Shaker tract gave a differing definition for the word koluo (κωλύω) is that Shakers did not marry, and they “established celibacy as the cardinal principle of the community.”46 So, Shakers preached that apostates were those constraining to marry rather than those forbidding to marry, and supported this preaching with their unique interpretation of Paul’s writing to Timothy.

In yet another deviation from the accepted understanding of this verse, the Shaker tract further claimed that the word “meats,” as used in this verse, had nothing to do with physical food at all.

The meat which Christ Jesus spake of eating, was that of abstaining from his own will, and doing the will of God! “I came not to do mine own will,” are his words – “I have meat to eat that ye know not of – my meat is to do the will of him that sent me.” And the same that was his meat, became also the meat of his followers. Their meat was to take up the cross, and abstain from fleshly lusts, and do the will of Jesus Christ, as he did the will of his Father. This was the true meat, which God had appointed to be received with thanksgiving by them that believed and knew the truth.47 [emphasis in original]

The tract concluded that, as to “abstaining from meats,” neither the Protestants nor the Catholics understood the verse correctly, and that “the Papists and the Protestants may continue to divide between themselves, as they have already practically done, by charging it [apostasy] upon each other.”48

Conclusion

I demonstrated in this article that forbid to abstain was an accepted and broadly used English idiom, especially as it pertained to matters of religious import, and that the meaning of this idiom was in direct opposition to its literal meaning. This idiom first appeared in English literature, no later than the early sixteenth century, and continued in use until at least 1866. As such, the idiom was still in use at the time that section 49 of the Doctrine and Covenants was received by Joseph Smith, Jr. in 1831.

As demonstrated by multiple writers, a literal translation from the Greek of forbidding to abstain from meats does not properly express the intent of Paul’s writing to Timothy. In English, his intent would best be written as commanding to abstain from meats. Additionally, it is very probable that this idiom developed as a direct result of the Greek rendering of 1 Timothy 4:3. Because two negatives in Greek more strongly deny, forbidding to abstain in Greek should be rendered commanding to abstain in English.

Accordingly, D&C 49:18 would be best understood if the word forbiddeth were replaced by commandeth, which would give us: “And whoso commandeth to abstain from meats, that man should not eat the same, is not ordained of God,” which is precisely how the LDS Church has translated this verse in its current Spanish, Portuguese, and French editions of the Doctrine and Covenants. This idiomatic interpretation is given even further strength when read together with verse 19 of the same section. “And whoso [commandeth] to abstain from meats, that man should not eat the same, is not ordained of God. For, behold, the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air, and that which cometh of the earth, is ordained for the use of man for food and for raiment, and that he might have in abundance” (D&C 49:18–19).

Loren Spendlove (MBA, California State University, Fullerton and PhD, University of Wyoming) has worked in many fields over the last thirty years, including academics and corporate financial management. Currently, he and his wife design and manufacture consumer goods. A student of languages, his research interests center on linguistics and etymology.

1 D&C 49, Section heading.

2 New Oxford American Dictionary, 3rd ed., 520, s.v. “double negative.”

3 Four blog sites which help show the confusion, and sometimes contention, regarding this verse: http://www.vegsource.com/articles/catano.htm; http://originalfastfoods.com/forum/topics/forbidding-to-abstain-from; http://www.ldsveg.org/DavidKellyTheLionAndTheLamb.htm; https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid= 20080215123831AAd0UrI.

4 Noah Webster, American Dictionary of the English Language, Noah Webster 1828, Original Facsimile Edition (San Francisco: Foundation for American Christian Education, 2010), s.v. “forbid.” Webster did not paginate this text, but the volume and signature numbers are printed at the bottom of every fourth leaf.

5 Webster, s.v. “abstain.”

6 Webster, s.v. “meat.”

7 Footnote to D&C 49:18.

8 Webster, s.v. “bid.”

9 Oxford, 694, s.v. “friendly.”

10 Oxford, 864, s.v. “idiom.”

11 The earliest citation is from a letter by Edmund Guest, the bishop of Rochester during the sixteenth century, and published in a work by Edward Cardwell, A History of Conferences and other Proceedings Connected with the Revision to the Book of Common Prayer (Oxford: University Press, 1811). See note 18.

12 Thomas Beard and Thomas Taylor, The Theatre of Gods Judgements: Wherein is represented the admirable Justice of God against all notorious sinners, great and small, specially against the most eminent Persons in the World, whose exorbitant power had broke through the barres of Divine and Humane Law (London: S.I. & M.H., 1648), 282.

13 Thomas Taylor, The Works of that Faithful Servant of Jesus Christ, not hitherto published (London: T.R. & E.M., 1653), 45.

14 Sylvanus Urban, The Gentleman’s Magazine (London: D. Henry, 1777), 111.

15 Urban, The Gentleman’s Magazine, 111.

16 Courtney Melmoth, The Sublime and Beautiful of Scripture, Being Essays on Select Passages of Sacred Composition (New York: Tiebout & O’Brien, 1795), 83.

17 Maeva Marcus, The Documentary History of the Supreme Court of the United States, 1789–1800, 2 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 361.

18 Edward Cardwell, A History of Conferences and other Proceedings Connected with the Revision of the Book of Common Prayer; From the Year 1558 to the Year 1690 (Oxford: University Press, 1811), 49.

19 This same passage by Guest was reprinted in New York in 1902, in a book written by Henry Gee and entitled The Elizabethan Prayer Book & Ornaments (New York: Macmillan & Co., 1902), 216–217.

20 William Gilpin, Sermons Preached to a Country Congregation; To which are added a few Hints for Sermons; Intended chiefly for the use of the younger clergy, iii (London: Trustees of William Gilpin, 1822), 224.

21 J. N. Vlieland, A Complete Course for Englishmen to Obtain the French Language at Home (London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown and Green, 1827), 88.

22 Joseph Wilson, A French and English Dictionary; Containing full explanations, definitions, synonyms, idioms, proverbs, terms of art and science, and rules of pronunciation in each language (London, Joseph Ogle Robinson, 1833), 216.

23 Augustus O. Fitz Gerald, Short Lectures on the Church Catechism (London: F. & J. Rivington, 1845), 181.

24 John Calvin, Calvin’s Tracts: Containing Antidote to the Council of Trent (Edinburgh, Calvin Translation Society, 1851), 378.

25 The United Presbyterian Magazine, 10 (Edinburgh: William Oliphant & Sons, 1856), 499.

26 The Bristol Temperance Herald, 12, XX (Bristol: Committee of the Bristol Total Abstinence Society, 1856), 179.

27 Sylvanus Urban, The Gentleman’s Magazine and Historical Review, II (London: Bradbury, Evans & Co., 1866), 245-246.

28 Mackenzie E. C. Walcott, Cathedralia: A Constitutional History of Cathedrals of the Western Church (London: Joseph Masters, 1865), 163.

29 William Thomson, The New Testament Translated from the Greek; And the Four Gospels Arranged in Harmony, III (Kilmarnock, Scotland: H. Crawford, 1816), 256.

30 Thomson, The New Testament Translated from the Greek, 256–257.

31 Ernest De Witt Burton, Syntax of the Moods and Tenses in New Testament Greek, (Edinburgh, T&T Clark, 1898), 186.

32 A.T. Robertson, A Grammar of the Greek New Testament in the Light of Historical Research, third edition (New York, Hodder & Stoughton, 1919), 1165.

33 http://www.eliyah.com/cgi-bin/strongs.cgi?file=greeklexicon&isindex=3756.

34 http://www.eliyah.com/cgi-bin/strongs.cgi?file=greeklexicon&isindex=3361.

35 http://biblehub.com/greek/3364.htm.

36 Edward Burton, An Inquiry into the Heresies of the Apostolic Age, in Eight Sermons Preached before the University of Oxford (Oxford: Samuel Collingwood, 1829), 436.

37 Burton, An Inquiry into the Heresies of the Apostolic Age, 436–437.

38 Burton, An Inquiry into the Heresies of the Apostolic Age, 437.

39 E.W. Attwood, Stromata Procatholica; A Series of Papers Principally Procatholic, or Antidotal to Antichristianism, (London: Waterlow & Sons, 1864), 135.

40 Webster, s.v. “interpolation.”

41 Benjamin Seth Youngs, Testimony of Christ’s Second Appearing, Exemplified by the Principles and Practice of the True Church of Christ, fourth edition (Albany: The United Society, 1856), Title page.

42 Benjamin Seth Youngs, Testimony of Christ’s Second Appearing, Containing a Statement of all things pertaining to the Faith and Practice of the Church of God in this Latter-Day, second edition (Albany: E. & E. Hosford, 1810), 324.

43 Youngs, Testimony of Christ’s Second Appearing, second edition, 324.

44 Youngs, Testimony of Christ’s Second Appearing, fourth edition, 285.

45 http://www.eliyah.com/cgi-bin/strongs.cgi?file=greeklexicon&isindex=2967.

46 Encyclopaedia Britannica. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/537839/Shaker.

47 Youngs, Testimony of Christ’s Second Appearing, second edition, 325.

48 Youngs, Testimony of Christ’s Second Appearing, fourth edition, 285.

Whoso Forbiddeth
to Abstain from Meats

Loren Spendlove

Abstract: The third edition of the Book of Mormon was stereotyped and printed in Cincinnati in 1840. The story of the Church’s printer, Ebenezer Robinson, accomplishing this mission has been available since 1883. What has remained a mystery is exactly where in Cincinnati this event took place; there is no plaque marking the spot, no walking tour pamphlet, no previous images, and its history contains conflicting documentation. This article will attempt to untangle the mystery by using old descriptions, maps of the area, and images. I also honor the printer, Edwin Shepard, whose metal and ink made this edition a reality.

In early 1839, the Mormons, under official government threat of extermination, were expelled from the State of Missouri, leaving homes and property behind, which were confiscated without remuneration “to defray the expenses of the war.”1 The Saints had very little money when they started to build a new life on a swampy eastern bank of the Mississippi River. They settled in Commerce, Illinois, which seems an ironic misnomer for the town, considering little business was conducted in the area.2 Joseph Smith, intent on transforming this small parcel of swampy land into a safe place for the Saints to live and prosper, renamed the city Nauvoo, which he interpreted as “a beautiful location, a place of rest.”3

The demand for Church publications including copies of the Book of Mormon increased as Saints continued to settle in Nauvoo, but the inventory of copies had been totally depleted.4 In the early 1830s when the Saints were headquartered in Kirtland, Ohio, the Prophet Joseph Smith’s youngest brother, Don Carlos, and recent convert, Ebenezer Robinson, both printers, were employed in the Church’s printing operations. They worked just behind the northwest corner of the Kirtland Temple in the Church’s printing office located on the second floor of a separate multipurpose wood-frame building. Here between three and five thousand5 copies of the second edition of the Book of Mormon were printed in the winter of 1836–1837.6 A year later on January 16, 1838, a suspected arson fire destroyed the printing office as well as some of the inventory of the newly-printed second edition.7

When the Saints removed to Far West, Missouri, in early 1838, a new printing press was procured. During the violent clashes between the Saints and the Missourians in 1838, precautions were taken to hide and safeguard the printing press. Along with the press, the type was boxed and buried in the ground, and a haystack was placed over the cache. The press and type were later retrieved and brought to Nauvoo, but some of the type had corroded and had to be replaced.8

Church leaders in Nauvoo were unable to raise any money from its destitute members, who were struggling just to meet life’s basic necessities.9 Ebenezer Robinson felt a personal responsibility to get the Book of Mormon again into circulation. He recorded that as he was walking to the printing office in Nauvoo in May 1840, he received “a manifestation from the Lord, such an one as I never received before or since. It seemed that a ball of fire came down from above and striking the top of my head passed down into my heart, and told me, in plain and distinct language, what course I should pursue and I could get the Book of Mormon stereotyped and printed.”10

“[I was] to go to Cincinnati, and as the plates were being stereotyped hire a press and get the books struck off form by form, so that when the last set of plates was done, the books should be ready for delivery. … I was to send circulars to the different branches, that for every hundred dollars they would send us, we would send them one hundred and ten copies of the Book of Mormon, and in that same ratio throughout, God promised [me] that by the time we got the books out we would have enough to pay for them; at least we would be able to meet the expense that way. The matter was so plain to me that I knew all about it. From that minute I knew just what to do.”11Don Carlos and Ebenezer were able to negotiate a deal for $145 from one brother, but even though they advertised in the Times and Seasons to get seed money for the project, they failed in raising any additional funds. Despite not being fully funded for the endeavor, Robinson told Don Carlos, “Yes, I will go to Cincinnati, but I will not come home until the Book of Mormon is stereotyped.”

Stereotyping is the fabrication of permanent metal plates from molds of typeset pages, so the plates may be used again for printing at a later time without having to typeset anew each page. Accomplishing this mission to Cincinnati Robinson said “was as fire shut up in my bones, both day and night”; he could not rest until he saw the work through to completion.12

The Prophet agreed to the project and then sat down with Robinson to “carefully revise” a copy of the second edition of the Book of Mormon (1837), which Robinson would take to Cincinnati. During the process of revision, the Prophet referred to the original manuscript. It appears it was the last time the Prophet corrected the Book of Mormon prior to a printing, making the resultant 1840 third edition an important source for the Church’s 1981 printed edition, which Latter-day Saints use today.13

Stereotyping and Printing the New Edition

Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1840 was the fastest growing big city in America.14 Though on the frontier, the fair “Queen City of the West” got its moniker for its nineteenth-century “order, enterprise, public spirit, and liberality.”15 At 46,000 inhabitants, the city ranked sixth in U.S. population, exceeded only by the immigration port cities of New York, Baltimore, New Orleans, Philadelphia, and Boston, respectively.16 By 1850, Cincinnati was recognized as the nation’s second largest industrial hub, and six years later ranked fourth in printing and publishing output.17

On June 18, Robinson boarded the packet steamboat18 Brazil and headed down the Mississippi River to St. Louis then up the Ohio River to Cincinnati. Robinson lost a portion of the money to con men at the riverfront in St. Louis, but he actually considered it a blessing; he felt he learned a lesson to focus more intently on his sacred mission and not be distracted from it again.19

When he reached Cincinnati, Robinson sought out a print shop but felt uncomfortable in the first establishment he visited. After getting a bid for the work, he asked if there were another stereotype foundry in town. He was told he could go to a print foundry, Glezen & Shepard, in Bank Alley off Third Street. Robinson said, “I felt in an instant that that was the place for me to apply to,” whereupon he left and was able to locate the other foundry.20

“As I entered the office, I saw three gentlemen standing by the desk, in conversation,” recounted Robinson in 1889. “I asked if Messrs. Gleason and Shepherd were in. A gentleman stepped forward and said, ‘My name is [Glezen].’ I said, ‘I have come to get the Book of Mormon stereotyped.’” Eben Knight Glezen was in the process of leaving the partnership, which caused Edwin Shepard to step forward as the new lead proprietor declaring, “When that book is stereotyped I am the man to stereotype it.”21 The third man Robinson observed could very likely have been Shepard’s new partner, George Sullivan Stearns.22

Shepard calculated the cost of stereotyping at $550, and Robinson responded with an offer to pay $100 up front, $250 during the three months it would take Shepard to do the job, and the remaining $200 after the job was complete. In addition, Robinson offered to provide sweat equity, mainly proofing the plates at 25 cents an hour. Both parties agreed to the arrangement. A contract was signed, and three type compositors began work on the third edition within twenty-four hours.23

Robinson also decided that as each set of sixteen proofed plates were finished, he would have two thousand “signature”24 sheets of those sixteen pages printed and have the sheets folded and bound while waiting for the next set of sixteen plates to be stereotyped, enabling him to have two thousand finished copies of the Book of Mormon by the time he would return to Nauvoo.25

After purchasing paper,26 ink, and binding supplies, he was under contract for a total amount of $1,050. Robinson, having only six and three-quarter cents — “an old-fashioned Spanish sixpence” — left in his pocket, found room and board on credit from one of the firm’s workers. Robinson anxiously waited several weeks before any funds from Nauvoo began to arrive.27 “I confess that for a time,” Robinson said, “viewed from a worldly standpoint, it looked quite gloomy, but I never for a moment lost faith in the final success, or literal fulfillment of the previous promise of the Lord made to me in Nauvoo.”28

Indeed, Robinson was successful. The job was finished in October 1840, and Robinson was able to pay for all the contracted work and supplies before the bills came due. One thousand copies were mailed to those who had pre-ordered, and the remaining one thousand were shipped from Cincinnati to Nauvoo. Upon his own return to Nauvoo that month, Robinson gave possession of the stereotype plates to Joseph Smith.29

By early 1841, all two thousand “Cincinnati” copies of the third edition of the Book of Mormon had been sold. Robinson and Don Carlos had received permission from the Prophet in December 1840 to print additional copies from the stereotype plates, this time in Nauvoo. Several hundred books were printed before the April 1841 conference to meet projected demand by the conference goers, with later printings completed to meet demand until reaching or possibly exceeding the authorized limit.30

Where in Cincinnati was Shepard & Stearns Located?

Today, without some considerable research, a person would have a hard time trying to locate exactly where in Cincinnati the third edition of the Book of Mormon was contracted, stereotyped, and printed. The buildings in which these events took place no longer stand, and neither do the buildings that had surrounded them. Complicating matters are changes in the location of points of reference such as the post office, the Masonic temple, the print shop itself, and changes in street names. These challenges are compounded by lags in the updates to Cincinnati city directories and maps. Unlike the E. B. Grandin print shop, Grandin’s own gravesite in Palmyra, New York, or the plaque that notes the location of where the second edition of the Book of Mormon was published at the Church’s print shop on the Kirtland Temple grounds, there are no Church historical site markers honoring this important Church event. Locating the site of the third edition printing took some sleuthing.

The Glezen & Shepard printing office in Cincinnati first opened in 1837 at 29 Pearl Street next to another printing establishment owned by Nathan G. Burgess at 27 Pearl Street (see footnote 20). An advertisement in Shaffer’s 1839–40 city directory, indicated that the Glezen & Shepard printing business had moved one block north to West Third St.31

In the same city directory, the Glezen & Shepard office was described as being in the rear of Delafield & Burnet’s banking and exchange office,32 whose location is listed in that 1840 City Directory as being “Next door West of the La Fayette Bank.”33

An 1849 lithograph by Ernst Schnicke depicts this location. The Lafayette-Franklin Bank is the colonnaded and classical Greek-gabled building in the center of Figure 6 on the north side of West Third Street. The bank building was erected in 1836 and existed until 1931. The castellated, fortress-like building beyond the bank is Cincinnati’s second Masonic temple, which was completed in December 1845. The smaller building, situated between the Lafayette-Franklin Bank and the Masonic temple, matches the location description of Delafield & Burnet/Glezen & Shepard in 1840.

The building in question was the first Masonic temple structure in Cincinnati. It was erected due in large part to the efforts of Mason and Assistant Postmaster Elam Potter Langdon.34 The two-story brick building fronted Third Street for fifty-six feet. The Masons used the second floor as its first lodge from December 27, 1824, to December 1845,35 and the Cincinnati Post Office occupied the first floor from 1824–1836. This is why Masonic Alley was also known as Post Office Alley. The building existed at least until 1849 and possibly as late as 1858 when a third Masonic temple replaced both the first and second temple buildings, consuming all of the two-hundred-foot frontage on Third Street between Walnut and Bank Alley.

In short, since this site was one door west of the Lafayette Bank in 1839–40 and Delafield & Burnet banking occupied the former post office space on the first floor,36 the location of Glezen & Shepard can now be pinpointed: it was the annex37 in Masonic/Post Office/Bank Alley38 behind Delafield & Burnet’s. Here the contract for stereotyping and printing the third edition of the Book of Mormon was signed, and the project was started.39 Though the printing office was in Bank Alley, it used West Third Street as its official address, as seen in the Figure 5 directory ad.

Glezen was on his way out of the partnership the day Robinson arrived,40 and only by means of the 1842 city directory do we know that Shepard moved the business into another building on the south side of West Third Street “opposite the Post Office.” It is not known if Shepard & Stearns moved during the printing of the third edition or if the move from Bank Alley happened after the book printing was completed in October 1840. The Title Page of the third edition (Figure 4) indicates, either: (1) Shepard continued to use the usual West Third Street address for the Bank Alley office, or (2) Shepard & Stearns had already moved by the time the title page was printed.41 Notwithstanding the actual print shop location between June 1840 and November 1841, mail could find its way to Shepard & Stearns simply by using West Third Street as an address.42

Figure 8 shows the south elevation rendering of the new third Masonic temple (1859–1928), with the Lafayette-Franklin Bank building to the right. By 1859, the previous Masonic buildings had been razed because this new temple required all two hundred feet of frontage on West Third Street. The third temple fronted Walnut on the west for one hundred feet.43 Its clock tower and cupolas were never constructed due to lack of resources caused by the onset of the Civil War.44

Today the parking structure in Figure 9 occupies the spot where the Lafayette and Franklin Bank building stood between 1836 and 1931. The Scripps skyscraper to the left of the parking lot sits on the property where the first three Cincinnati Masonic temples stood on West Third Street. The narrow gap between the parking lot and the skyscraper is Berning Place, the former Bank Alley, where the entrance to Glezen & Shepard/Shepard & Stearns was located in 1840.

Though the work of the third edition started in Bank Alley, Shepard & Stearns could have completed the stereotyping and printing of all or part of the two thousand “Cincinnati” copies of the third edition of the Book of Mormon in the shop on Bank Alley (map point 1) or at the new location (map point 2) shown in Figure 10. However, Ebenezer Robinson mentions nothing in his 1883 or 1889 memoirs about a printing office move while he was on his Cincinnati “printing mission.”

The City of Cincinnati purchased the land on Pearl Street and demolished all its buildings, so that the sunken Ft. Washington Way (I-71) could be extended through the downtown area. All buildings on the south side of Third Street and on the north side of Second Street were also razed. As a result, no nineteenth-century buildings stand there now (Figure 11; arrow approximates closely the location of Shepard & Stearns printing office between 1840/41–1843 and of Shepard & Co. in 1843–44). The Freedom Center, also called the Underground Railroad museum, is located in the middle of the photograph.

By 1845, Shepard & Co. moved to the south side of E. Second Street (or E. Columbia St.) at number 11 between Main and Sycamore.45 Then from 1847–1850, the print shop is listed at 41 E. Second Street between Sycamore and Broadway, still on the south side of Second Street.

Edwin Shepard died at the age of 38 on July 23, 1850, and was buried the following day in Spring Grove Cemetery, six miles north of Cincinnati. His death occurred as part of the 1849–1851 cholera epidemic, which claimed the lives of six to eight thousand residents of Cincinnati,46 just as Latter-day Saints had experienced elsewhere during that period. Since Shepard was not married and had no children, John Brooks Russell (managing editor47 of the Cincinnati Gazette, his landlord, business associate, and half-brother48 of Shepard’s former partner George Stearns) took possession of Shepard’s body and had it buried in Russell’s own family plot. There is no headstone on Edwin Shepard’s grave (Figure 12 at arrow).

If you search for Edwin Shepard’s last print shop location at 41 E. Second Street, you will end up at the home ballpark of Major League Baseball’s Cincinnati Reds.

The Cincinnati Printing Mission

Locating the site of the third printing of the Book of Mormon is more than a trivial exercise revealing historical minutia. Its discovery adds a visual element to the testimony of Ebenezer Robinson in regard to the guiding hand the Lord provided for the printing of the Book of Mormon at a time when resources were scarce in the Church.

In June 1841, Robinson and Don Carlos Smith went to Cincinnati to buy printing supplies for the Church’s printing office in Nauvoo. They paid a visit to Edwin Shepard,49 and after settling their account, Robinson related that Shepard then arose and said: “‘Mr. Robinson, do you want to know what made me do as I did when you came here last summer, it was no business way, it was not what I saw in you, but what I felt here,’ putting his hand upon his heart.”50 Robinson continued:

“This voluntary statement of Mr. Shepherd’s afforded me great pleasure, as it was a practical illustration of the case with which the Lord can move upon the hearts of the children of men to assist in the accomplishment of his work and purposes. … From the foregoing experience, together with many other evidences that I have received of the truth of the divine origin of the Book of Mormon, I bear record that it is true, and that the promises and prophecies contained therein are being and will be fulfilled to the letter.”51

Figure Credits

Figure 1: Ebenezer Robinson, ca. 1880s, unattributed photograph, courtesy of Community of Christ Archives, Independence, Missouri.

Figure 2: Cincinnati in 1840, lithograph by Klauprech & Menzel, 1839–40 Shaffer’s Cincinnati Directory, 1839, PDF Part 2, http://virtuallibrary.cincinnatilibrary.org/lib/3/49/1839-40-shaffers-cincinnati-directory.pdf.

Figure 3: George Sullivan Stearns, [ca. 1870], unattributed, courtesy of the Wyoming [Ohio] Historical Society.

Figure 4: Title page, Book of Mormon, Third Edition Nauvoo, Ill.: Robinson and Smith, 1840, http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/60/Book_of_Mormon_(1840).djvu/page6-1024px-Book_of_Mormon_(1840).djvu.jpg.

Figure 5: Glezen & Shepard business advertisement, 1839–40 Shaffer’s Cincinnati directory, Cincinnati: Shaffer, 1839), PDF Part 1, 18, http://virtuallibrary.cincinnatilibrary.org/lib/3/49/1839-40-shaffers-cincinnati-directory.pdf.

Figure 6: Third Street between Main and Vine, ca. 1850, color lithograph by Ernst Schnicke, published by Otto Onken, republished in Queen City Heritage, The Journal of The Cincinnati Historical Society 49/3 (Fall 1991): 24, courtesy of the Cincinnati History Library and Archives at the Cincinnati Museum Center.

Figure 7: Edward C. Skelton, P.M. and N. Rufus Moomaw, Jr. P.M., compilers, “History, First Temple (1824–1858),” in 175th Anniversary, Nova Caesarea Harmony Lodge No. 2 F&AM, Cincinnati: Cincinnati Masonic Lodge, 1966, courtesy of the Cincinnati Masonic Center Library.

Figure 8: [Third] Masonic Temple, 1859, chromolithographed and published by Middleton and Strobridge, Cincinnati, OH, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-DIG-pga-03138, http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/pga.03138/.

Figure 9: Third Street at Berning Place, Cincinnati, Ohio, March 2014, Chris Miasnik.

Figure 10: George Washington Colton, 1855 Colton Map of Cincinnati, Ohio, cartography by Joseph Hutchins Colton (1800–1893), in Colton’s Atlas of the World Illustrating Physical and Political Geography, Vol. 1, New York: 1855, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1855_Colton_Plan_or_Map_of_Pittsburgh,_Pennsylvania_and_Cincinnati,_Ohio_-_Geographicus_-_PittsburghCincinnati-colton-1855.jpg.

Figure 11: Looking South across Third Street between Walnut and Vine, Cincinnati, Ohio, March 2014, Chris Miasnik.

Figure 12: Section 45, Lot 12, Spring Grove Cemetery, (where Edwin Shepard is buried), Jo Roth, findagrave.com volunteer, 6/25/2014 http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=pv&GRid=79039232&PIpi=104152417.

Figure 13: Cincinnati Reds Great American Ballpark, Cincinnati, OH, Resource International Project Gallery, no attribution attainable, considered as Public Domain as found on Google Images, http://www.resourceinternational.com/ProjectGallery/cincinnatiredsgreatamericanballpark.aspx.

Disclaimer: I have made a good faith effort to locate and gain permission to use the images found herein. In the cases where I could not find a source, I have used the Creative Commons rules and the Copyright Term Table protocol for my article and considered the image to be in the Public Domain if the capture of the image was determined to be most likely pre-1923. If anyone finds that I have misused their image according to these terms, please hold me harmless and advise me. I will make corrections and give proper attribution.

Chris Miasnik (chrismiasnik@juno.com) is a retired military intelligence warrant officer. He earned a bachelor’s degree in public policy and a master’s degree in public administration, both from BYU. He and his wife, Angie, live in Bluffdale, Utah, and have a very large blended family. Chris speaks French from his time as an LDS missionary in the Belgium Brussels Mission (1975–77) and is an administrator for several Church-related, French-language Facebook webpages. When not distracted by freelance writing projects and honey-do lists, he is attacking/procrastinating his huge backlog of genealogical research. View a longer version of this article with interesting collateral material at www.listedechris.com.

1 Richard L. Bushman, Rough Stone Rolling (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), 367.

2 Bushman, Rough Stone Rolling, 384.

3 Glen M. Leonard, “Nauvoo,” in Encyclopedia of Mormonism (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University, 2007), accessed December 3, 2014, http://eom.byu.edu/index.php/Nauvoo.

4 “The persecutions in Missouri, and expelling the Church from the state, instead of having a tendency to destroy Mormonism, had the very opposite effect. An increased interest was manifest in the work, and calls were made for the Book of Mormon, but there were none on hand to supply demand.” Ebenezer Robinson, “Autobiographical Remarks by Ebenezer Robinson (1816–1891),” Book of Abraham Project, accessed December 26, 2014, http://www.boap.org/LDS/Early-Saints/ERobinson.html.

5 Royal Skousen, “Book of Mormon Editions (1830–1981),” in Encyclopedia of Mormonism (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University, 2007), accessed December 4, 2014, http://eom.byu.edu/index.php/Book_of_Mormon_Editions.

6 Robinson, “Autobiographical Remarks.”

7 Kyle R. Walker, “‘As Fire Shut Up in My Bones’”: Ebenezer Robinson, Don Carlos Smith, and the 1840 Edition of the Book of Mormon," Journal of Mormon History 36/1 (Winter 2010): 1–40.

8 Walker, “1840 Edition of the Book of Mormon,” 6–9.

9 “In the spring of 1840 consultation was held upon the subject of getting another edition of the Book of Mormon printed, to supply the demand, when, in view of our extreme poverty, consequent upon our so recently having been driven from our homes, the idea was abandoned, for want of the necessary funds to accomplish such a work.” Robinson, “Autobiographical Remarks.”

10 Robinson, “Autobiographical Remarks.”

11 Ebenezer Robinson, “A Historical Reminiscence,” Saints Herald, March 1883.

12 Robinson, “Autobiographical Remarks.”

13 Emily W. Jensen, "Publishing 1840 Book of Mormon No Easy Task," Deseret News, May 22, 2009. Reporting on a presentation given by Kyle R. Walker at the Mormon Historical Association given on May 22, 2009, Jensen wrote that Walker noted, “It was the final edition of the Book of Mormon Joseph Smith would personally revise.”

14 Laura L. Chace, “Otto Onken: His Cincinnati Scenes,” Queen City Heritage, The Journal of the Cincinnati Historical Society (Fall 1991): 21 — 29.

15 Cincinnati Museum Center, Cincinnati Frequently Asked Questions, accessed August 15, 2014, http://library.cincymuseum.org/cincifaq.htm.

16 St. Louis did not become part of the top ten most populated cities until 1850 with Chicago joining the ranks in 1860; neither surpassed Cincinnati until 1870. Cincinnati’s last appearance in the top ten was in 1900 as number ten; Chicago was number two and St. Louis was number four that year. “Largest Cities in the United States by Population by Decade,” Wikipedia, accessed December 26, 2014, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Largest_cities_in_the_United_States_by_population_by_decade

17 Chace, “Otto Onken,” 21.

18 “Packets” were steamboats that had the primary duty to transport packages and mail, but they also took on passengers to convey from town to town along Jacksonian America’s inland waterways.

19 “At St. Louis, while the steamer was waiting for passengers and freight, I foolishly stepped into a mock auction store, when the auctioneer had up a fancy box filled with valuable articles … among which was a gold watch, or what the auctioneer claimed to be one. A young man present said he wanted an interest in the contents of the box, and if I would bid it off he would take half of it. I bid it up to $23, when of course I secured the prize, but just then I did not find my partner ready to take half. This took $23 from my already limited purse. I left that auction room, if not a better, I trust, a wiser man. Since writing the above sentence, the thought has occurred, to me that perhaps it was a good thing that it occurred, as it had a tendency to try my faith just that much more, and the sequel proved to me that the Lord is abundantly able and willing to provide means for the accomplishment of his purposes, when we follow his directions.” Robinson, “Autobiographical Remarks.”

20 Robinson, “Autobiographical Remarks.” It is likely that the first print shop Robinson visited in early July 1840 was that of N. G. (Nathan G.) Burgess & Co. at 27 Pearl St. In 1837–38, Glezen & Shepard’s printing operation was at 29 Pearl St., right next door to Burgess. Walter Sutton, Western Book Trade, Cincinnati as a 19th-Century Publishing and Book Trade Center, 1796–1880 Directory of Cincinnati Publishers, Booksellers, and Members of Allied Trades (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1961).

21 Speaking of the book trade in its city, the Cincinnati Almanac for 1839 stated: “There are thirty printing offices; one type foundry; two stereotype foundries, (being the only establishments of the kind in the West).” (Ebenezer Knight Glezen, Picture of Cincinnati: The Cincinnati Almanac for 1839, Cincinnati: Glezen & Shepard, 1839, 70, emphasis added). For Ebenezer Robinson, coming to Cincinnati to get the Book of Mormon stereotyped could have been the easier part of his inspiration in Nauvoo. For Edwin Shepard to step forward and say he was the man for the job was likely an attempt to win business away from his only other stereotyping competition in the city and in the region.

22 22 Robinson, “Autobiographical Remarks”; Robinson, “A Historical Reminiscence, 147.

23 Robinson, “Autobiographical Remarks.”

24 "Understanding and Working with Print Signatures," DesignersInsights, accessed October 29, 2014, http://www.designersinsights.com/designer-resources/understanding-and-working-with-print.

25 25 Robinson, “Autobiographical Remarks.”

26 Edwin Shepard took Robinson to Stationers’ Warehouse at 134 Main St. where they arranged to meet with Chauncey Shepard the next day about acquiring the printing paper that would be used for the third edition. It is not known if Edwin and Chauncey were related, but they were the only two in the 1840 city directory who spelled their last names the same way, both were from Connecticut, and both were members of the same allied trade (Robinson, “A Historical Reminiscence,” 147; David Henry Shaffer, Shaffer's Cincinnati Directory for 1839–40, Cincinnati: Shaffer, 1839–40, 353).

27 Robinson, “Autobiographical Remarks.”

28 Robinson, “Autobiographical Remarks.”

29 Walker, “1840 Edition of the Book of Mormon,” 32.

30 Walker, “1840 Edition of the Book of Mormon,” 32–38.

31 Shaffer, Shaffer’s Cincinnati Directory, 18.

32 Shaffer, Shaffer’s Cincinnati Directory, 193.

33 Shaffer, Shaffer’s Cincinnati Directory, 59.

34 “Mr. Langdon was a member of the N. C. [Novae Caesarea] Harmony Lodge, No. 2, F. & A. M., and on its records occurs the following: ‘To the energy, sound judgment, constant attention and untiring exertions of our well remembered and zealous brother, Elam P. Langdon, was N. C. Harmony Lodge mainly indebted to the erection of the first Masonic hall [dedicated on Dec. 27, 1824] in this city, and to him are we indebted for years of a zealous and watchful care of the property interest and welfare of the lodge that has placed it in the front rank of prosperity.’” (Charles Frederic Goss, Cincinnati, The Queen City 1788–1912, Vol. 4, Chicago: The S.J. Clarke Publishing Company, 1912, 426).

35 Cincinnati Masonic Center, 175th Anniversary.

36 Glezen, Picture of Cincinnati, 56.

37 Charles Theodore Greve, Centennial History of Cincinnati and Representative Citizens, 2 vols. (Chicago: Biographical Publishing Company, 1904), vol. 1. In 1818, Assistant Postmaster Elam Potter Langdon started a tradition of establishing reading rooms at the post office where anyone could come and read the latest journals and newspapers, American and foreign, which arrived with the mail deliveries. As was the case with the most recently vacated post office location at 157 Main (corner of Main and Columbia/Second St.) where there was a reading room, this annex on Masonic/Post Office Alley was turned into the new Cincinnati Reading Room when the post office moved into office space on the ground floor of the newly-completed first Masonic building in December 1824. (Benjamin Drake, Cincinnati in 1826, Cincinnati: Morgan, Lodge, and Fisher, 1827, 44). Longtime postmaster Methodist Rev. William “Father” Burke (postmaster since 1814) and Langdon were leaders in Cincinnati Masonic circles, the fire department, Humane Society affairs (resuscitating “drowned” persons), and education. The fact that the Masonic hall, the post office, and the reading room were co-located made it easy for Langdon to provide facility support to all three.

38 The alley running from Third Street to Fourth Street between Main and Sycamore was designated Bank Alley in 1829 by the city of Cincinnati. Sometime between 1840 and 1842, the name of that alley was officially changed to Mayor’s Alley because of a new Mayor’s Office there, and by 1855 it was renamed one more time to Hammond Alley. Masonic Alley, known also as Post Office Alley up to 1836, was at least informally known as the “new” Bank Alley by 1840. By 1846, Masonic Alley formally had its name changed to Bank Alley. When Ebenezer Robinson came to Cincinnati in 1840, he most likely arrived on a cusp of Masonic Alley’s informal name change to Bank Alley probably due to it being next to the imposing Lafayette-Franklin Bank building. There is nothing that correlates to a print shop run by Glezen & Shepard being on the originally named Bank Alley between Main and Sycamore on East Third Street.

39 Robinson, “Autobiographical Remarks.”

40 Robinson, “A Historical Reminiscence,” 146–47.

41 Charles Cist, Cincinnati Directory for 1842, Cincinnati: E. Morgan & Co., 1842, 277, 464.

42 It is also possible in relating his Cincinnati mission experience some forty-three and forty-nine years earlier in his 1883 and 1889 memoirs, Robinson used the name “Bank Alley” as a reference to the alley, as it was later known, to give his readers a then-current point of reference for the 1840 location of the Glezen & Shepard printing office.

43 C. E. Bailliere, The New World in 1859: Being the United States and Canada, Illustrated and Described, New York: Bailliere Brothers, 1859, 78–79.

44 Donald I. Crews, Cincinnati's Freemasons, Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2014, 45.

45 Walter Sutton, Western Book Trade, 337; R. P. Brooks, Cincinnati Business Directory for the Year 1846. Cincinnati: R. P. Brooks, 1846, 76).

46 Walter M. Daly, “The Black Cholera Comes to the Central Valley of America in the 19th Century–1832, 1849, and Later.” PMC — US National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, accessed December 6, 2014, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2394684/; Ohio History Central, “Cholera Epidemics,” Ohio History Connection, accessed December 6, 2014, http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/w/Cholera_Epidemics?rec=487.

47 Greve, Centennial History of Cincinnati, 797.

48 Abram English Brown, Genealogy of Bedford Old Families. Bedford, MA: By author, 1894, 33-36.

49 Robinson, “Autobiographical Remarks.” The printing of the third edition of the Book of Mormon (1840) was begun in a print shop in an alley off the north side of Third Street. Whether the work was completed there or at an eventual new location a block away on the south side of Third Street is not known; Robinson does not allude to any move by Shepard & Stearns between June 1840 and June 1841 in either of his memoirs of 1883 or 1889. I have found no other records specifically indicating a move during this time period, but such a move by Shepard & Stearns to the new location “opposite the Post Office” could certainly have taken place sometime before November 1841. Whether the move took place while the third edition was being produced between June and October 1840 or by the time Robinson and Don Carlos returned to Cincinnati in June 1841 has not been determined. All we know is where the process began: in Bank Alley off of Third Street.

50 Robinson, “Autobiographical Remarks.”

51 Robinson, “Autobiographical Remarks.” Robinson also reported in his 1883 memoir that when he and Shepard had finished proofing all the sheets for the third edition, “Robinson asked Shepard what he thought of the book. Shepard responded, ‘Well, I will tell you. It is either a true book, or it is the greatest imposition that was ever palmed upon mortals.’ Robinson replied, ‘Mr. Shepard, it is a true book.’” Robinson, “A Historical Reminiscence,” 147.

Where in Cincinnati Was the Third Edition of the Book of Mormon Printed?

Chris Miasnik

Figure 1: Ebenezer Robinson, ca. 1880s. Courtesy of Community of Christ Archives.

Figure 2: Cincinnati in 1840, lithograph by Klauprech & Menzel. Courtesy of Cincinnati Library.

Figure 3: George Sullivan Stearns, ca. 1870. Courtesy of the Wyoming [Ohio] Historical Society.

Figure 4: Title Page, Book of Mormon, Third Edition, 1840.

Figure 5: Business Advertisement, Shaffer’s 1839–40 City Directory. Note the address on West Third Street, “one door from the Lafayette Bank.” Courtesy Cincinnati Library.

Figure 6: Third Street between Main and Vine, ca. 1850. Courtesy of the Cincinnati History Library and Archives at the Cincinnati Museum Center.

Figure 7: First Temple (1824–1858). Courtesy of the Cincinnati Masonic Center Library.

Figure 8: [Third] Masonic Temple, 1859, chromolithograph. The First Temple was previously located just to the left of the colonnaded Lafayette-Franklin Bank building at right. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Figure 9: Third Street at Berning Place, Cincinnati, Ohio, March 2014.

Figure 10: 1855 Colton Map of Cincinnati, Ohio

A: Lafayette-Franklin Bank building (1836–1931)

1: First Masonic building (used as such, 1824–1845), Post Office (1824–1836), Delafield & Burnet (1839–1840/41), and Glezen & Shepard/Shepard & Stearns (1839–1840/41)

B: Second Masonic building (1845–1858) and Post Office (June 24, 1845, to May 2, 1849)

C (Dashed white rectangle): Third Masonic Temple (1859–1928).

D1 and D2: Post Office (1836–Nov. 1841; and Nov. 1841–June 24, 1845)

2: Shepard & Stearns and Shepard & Co. (1844–45)

3: Shepard & Co. (1846–1848) along with offices of Stearns & Co. as a printing ink supplier

4: Shepard’s stereotyping and printing office (1849) at 41 E. Second, then at 41 & 43 E. Second in 1850

Figure 11: Looking south across Third Street between Walnut and Vine, Cincinnati, Ohio, March 2014.

Figure 12: Section 45, Lot 12, Spring Grove Cemetery, June 25, 2014. Courtesy of Jo Roth.

Figure 13: Great American Ball Park, Cincinnati, Ohio. Courtesy of Google Images.

Abstract: Scriptural accounts of celestial beings visiting the earth are abundant in both the Bible and the Book of Mormon. Whether a descending deity or angelic beings from celestial realms, they were often accompanied by clouds. In this paper a short analysis of the various types of clouds, including imitation clouds (incense), will be discussed. The relation between the phenomenon of supernatural beings, sometimes in clouds, may have had a great influence on descendants of Book of Mormon cultures. For these people, stories that were told from one generation to the next would have been considered ancient mythological lore. It may be plausible that future generations attempted to duplicate the same type scenario of celestial beings speaking and visiting their people. These events were sometimes recorded in stone.

Little is said about the extraordinary way the resurrected Christ took his leave after special visits, both in Jerusalem and on the Western Hemisphere (Acts 1:3, 9–11; 3 Nephi 18:38–39). In Jerusalem, Christ sojourned for forty days after his resurrection for the purpose of teaching his apostles. On one occasion, as he took his departure from them, a cloud received him as he was taken up. Two men in white apparel stood by the apostles and said, ”Why stand ye gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven.” The two men, arrayed in white, were angels of the Lord. One may assume they, too, ascended to the heavenly realms after their visitation.

Psalm 18:9–11 mentions darkness, clouds, a cherub (a celestial being), and the Lord’s pavilion. These things are apparently related. I will be examining phrases and words such as “clouds of light” or “glory,” “clouds of darkness,” “incense” or “smoke,” “the sun,” and their association with visions and celestial visitations in both biblical scripture, the Book of Mormon, and in Mesoamerican tradition, where Latter-day Saint archaeologists have demonstrated the core narrative of the Book of Mormon took place.1

Writings in biblical scripture pertaining to heavenly visitations accompanied by clouds have a similar correspondence to Mesoamerican depictions of supernatural beings appearing in the heavens, both with and without clouds. Clouds, in particular in Mesoamerican thought, are a metaphor for the heavens,2 and are often associated with visitations of divine beings.

Aphrahat, a fourth-century Syriac-Christian Father, had the opinion that clouds (standing, riding, or sitting on clouds) are a common attribute of biblical divine appearances.3 The dreams or visions where they are seen are called theophanies (Greek for “God appearances”). Margaret Barker, a scholar of Judaism and Early Christianity explains, “The cloud was the usual sign of theophany.”4 For example, in Ezekiel’s vision he saw a cloud of light. He writes in chapter 10, verse 4, “Then the glory of the Lord went up from the cherub, and stood over the threshold of the house; and the house was filled with the cloud, and the court was full of the brightness of the Lord’s glory.”5 Taken together, this passage and the following verses describe a “cloud of light.”

Another very important scripture that pertains to clouds and heavenly visitations is Daniel 7:13: “I saw in the night visions, and, behold, one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of days, and they brought him near before him.” There are numerous passages in the Old Testament with similar theophanies, which strengthens the necessity for God to communicate with man, oftentimes with the accompaniment of clouds.

In the New Testament, Jesus foretells of the devastation and signs preceding his second coming, saying, “And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory” (Matthew 24:30). And again in Matthew 26:64: “Jesus saith unto him [a Jewish high priest], Thou hast said: nevertheless I say unto you, Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.”

John the Revelator also prophesies the words of Christ in Revelation 1:7 when he wrote, “Behold, he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him.” Further on in Revelation 14:14 John recounts a vision: “And I looked, and behold a white cloud, and upon the cloud one sat like unto the Son of Man, having on his head a golden crown, and in his hand a sharp sickle.” A cloud is also mentioned in verses 15–16.

Jesus took Peter, James, and John to the Mount of Transfiguration, where Moses and Elias appeared to them (Mark 9:2–4). Peter proposed they build three tabernacles, one for the Lord, one for Moses, and the other for Elias (Mark 9:5). Immediately after Peter’s suggestion, the following ensued: “And there was a cloud that over-shadowed them: and a voice came out of the cloud, saying, This is my beloved Son: hear him” (Mark 9:7). The aforementioned biblical scriptures speak of clouds of light that are full of power and brightness of the Lord’s glory.

Now we turn out attention to “clouds of darkness.” For example, when Moses was leading the Israelites out of Egypt, Exodus 14:20 reads, “And it came between the camp of the Egyptians and the camp of Israel; and it was a cloud and darkness, but it gave light by night: so that the one came not near the other all the night.”

Reading further in Exodus 19:9: “And the Lord said unto Moses, Lo, I come unto thee in a thick cloud, that the people may hear when I speak with thee, and believe thee for ever. And Moses told the words of the people unto the Lord.” And then in Exodus 24:15–16: “Moses went up into the mount, and a cloud covered the mount. And the glory of the Lord abode upon mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it six days: and the seventh day he called unto Moses out of the midst of the cloud.” Following this, Moses’ theophanous experience is recorded in Exodus 34:5: “The Lord descended in the cloud, and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the Lord.”

Moses in Deuteronomy 5:22 mentions a cloud of thick darkness: “These words the Lord spake unto all your assembly in the mount out of the midst of the fire, of the cloud, and the thick darkness, with a great voice: and he added no more. And he wrote them in two tables of stone, and delivered them unto me.”6 For Moses it was a revelation and instruction. For the wicked the “cloud, and the thick darkness” was a terrible warning, as the Israelites were worshipping a molten calf when Moses descended the mountain carrying the tablets (Exodus 32:4). In contrast to clouds of light, clouds of darkness have a foreboding quality — a warning from the Lord that the viewer needs to take heed and listen.

Clouds are an interesting phenomenon in the scriptures. If they are natural, it is due to atmospheric conditions. If they are intentional for a specific purpose, the Lord creates them; and if the Israelites wanted to make a cloud, they used incense or burnt offerings. For example, Leviticus 16:13 reads, “And he [Aaron] shall put the incense upon the fire before the Lord, that the cloud of the incense may cover the mercy seat that is upon the testimony, that he die not.” Similarly, Ezekiel 8:11 reads, “And there stood before them 70 men of the ancients of the house of Israel, and in the midst of them stood Jaazaniah the son of Shaphan, with every man his censer in his hand; and a thick cloud of incense went up.”

The Lord commanded Moses and Israel to use incense (Exodus 40:27; 1 Chronicles 23:13; 1 Samuel 2:28). However, other people besides the Israelites also used incense, and they were condemned by the Lord for burning incense to idols (Jeremiah 1:16; 48:35). Even the Israelites on various occasions offered incense, made sacrifices, and offered prayers to the idolatrous Baal (2 Kings 23:5; Jeremiah 11:12–13, 17). The burning of incense was a primary ritual function among the Israelites, apparently not always employed as it was intended by the Lord. It was to be used as a cloud covering at the altar of God, and the prayers of the high priest, similar to the incense smoke, would ascend to the heavens.

Latter-day Saints believe some of the New World’s ancestors came from the Near East as recorded in the Book of Mormon. Mesoamerican cultures also used incense in their ceremonies. Incense burners were ubiquitous in Mesoamerica, varying in size, shape, and type of medium. John Sorenson observed, “Close correspondences exist between them and certain Near Eastern incense fixtures.”7

Burning incense is just one of the practices and its accompanying symbolism that existed in Mesoamerica that would have been used by the descendants of Lehi that obeyed the Law of Moses.8 We now turn our attention to clouds and divine visitations in the Book of Mormon and examine the same in Mesoamerica.

Around 30 bc, Nephi and Lehi, sons of Helaman, were traveling to the land of Nephi when they were captured by an army of Lamanites who cast them in prison (Helaman 5:21). The Lamanites were about to slay their prisoners when Nephi and Lehi were encircled by a non-consuming pillar of fire while the earth shook exceedingly. This dramatic incident caused their onlookers great fear — they dared not approach these servants of God (Helaman 5:23–27).

Subsequently, a “cloud of darkness” overshadowed Lehi and Nephi like a looming, ominous shelter (Helaman 5:28). A voice came from above through the cloud. It was the Lord speaking to the people crying repentance, but a voice that was still, yet “did pierce even to the soul” (Helaman 5:29–30). The “cloud of darkness” did not disperse until after the message was delivered three times to the Lamanites and the Nephite dissenters among them. They repented of their sins after acknowledging the message they heard in former years (Helaman 5:41–43). A wonderful thing happened — the heavens were opened; in other words, the “cloud of darkness” was lifted to some three hundred people who saw angels descending (Helaman 5:48–49).

The “cloud of darkness” is of great significance here — it acted as a shield to the supernatural of God’s actions, but also had the onlookers attention. The Lord’s voice was heard, the “Holy Spirit of God did come down from Heaven, and did enter into their hearts” (Helaman 5:45) after they repented, and God’s emissaries, the angels, came to administer to the people.

The thick clouds that loomed over the prison holding Nephi and Lehi, and over Lamoni before his conversion, represent transgressions or sins. Isaiah 44:22 reads, “I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions, and, as a cloud, thy sins: return unto me; for I have redeemed thee.” Once these people repented, the thick cloud of darkness became a cloud of light.

We have reviewed some examples in the Bible and the Book of Mormon of “clouds of light” and “clouds of darkness,” both revealing a message from God or his angels.

Chart 1

Scripture

Angel(s) Appear To

Approximate Date First Mentioned

2 Nephi 4:24

Nephi

588 bc

2 Nephi 6:9

Jacob, Nephi’s brother

559-45 bc

2 Nephi 10:3

Nephi

559-45 bc

Jacob 7:5

Jacob

544 bc

Mosiah 3:2

King Benjamin

124 bc

Mosiah 27:11, 14, 17-18, 32

Alma the Younger and the four sons of Mosiah

100-92 bc

Alma 8:14, 18

Alma

82 bc

Alma 8:20

Amulek

82 bc

Alma 9:25

Many people in land

82 bc

Alma 19:34

Lamoni’s household

90 bc

Alma 24:14

Anti-Nephi-Lehies

90-77 bc

Helaman 5:39

Nephi and Lehi

30 bc

Helaman 5:48-49

About 300 people

30 bc

Helaman 13:7, 14:26-28

Samuel the Lamanite

6 bc

3 Nephi 7:15, 18

Nephi

ad 31-32

3 Nephi 17:24-25

Encircled little children

ad 34

3 Nephi 19:14-15

The Twelve Disciples

ad 34

Chart 1 is a list of scriptures recording visitations from an angel or angels in the Book of Mormon after Lehi’s party landed on the American continent. There are many more verses that recount these particular occasions after they first occurred. Perhaps the most significant visitation by angels was in ad 34, when Christ came to Bountiful in his resurrected state. The heavens opened, and angels descended and encircled the little children. “About two thousand and five hundred souls” were witness to this momentous occasion (3 Nephi 17:23–24).

The translated portion of the Book of Mormon is considerably small compared to the vast Nephite library. Therefore, we may have only a limited number of recorded visits by angels. Beginning with 2 Nephi, the approximate dates of these occurrences range from 588 bc to ad 34. Since we are not privy to the entire texts of the Book of Mormon, it is not known how many celestial visitations occurred, but the accounts we do have relate that literally thousands of people (over 2,800) witnessed these manifestations. After ad 400 Moroni wrote regarding the question “have miracles ceased?” He exclaims, “Nay, neither have angels ceased to minister unto the children of men” (Moroni 7:29).

Angels, of course, are not the only supernatural visitors to mortals in the Book of Mormon. The brother of Jared, before he arrived on this continent, saw the Lord before his group’s sea voyage. This is an important story that was no doubt passed down through many generations by Lehi’s descendants. The record in Ether reads, “The Lord came down and talked with the brother of Jared; and he was in a cloud, and the brother of Jared saw him not. And it came to pass that the Lord commanded them that they should go forth into the wilderness, yea, into that quarter where there never had man been. And it came to pass that the Lord did go before them, and did talk with them as he stood in a cloud, and gave directions whither they should travel” (Ether 2:4–5, emphasis added). Notice the emphasis I put on “them.” The Lord communicated not only with the brother of Jared, but Jared’s party of selected families. Four years later, the Lord spoke again to the brother of Jared from a cloud (Ether 2:14).

Chart 2 lists other visitations in the Book of Mormon after the arrival of Lehi’s party. Although not a visitation of deity, the voice of God is mentioned twice in the Book of Mormon. The first was to three hundred people in the land of Nephi in 30 bc, and the second announcing his son, Jesus Christ, in ad 34 in the city of Bountiful.

Toward the end of the Book of Mormon there is also Christ’s visit to Mormon when he was fifteen years old (Mormon 1:15). Then we have the Three Nephites that Christ set apart as his special messengers (3 Nephi 28). Mormon and Moroni were visited and taught by the Three Nephite disciples who had been translated, and these special three translated emissaries may be considered supernatural beings. They were ministering angels for some 300 years until they were withdrawn because of the wickedness of the people around ad 322 (see Mormon 1:13).9

Chart 2

Scripture

Voice of God to:

Approximate Date First Mentioned

Helaman 5:46–47
3 Nephi 11:7

Nephi, Lehi, and about 300 souls
Announcing Christ to the people in Bountiful

30 BC

ad 34

Scripture

Christ’s Visit or Voice To:

Approximate Date First Mentioned

2 Nephi 2:3–4

2 Nephi 4:261

Alma 9:21

Helaman 5:29–
33

Helaman 10:4–
11

3 Nephi 9-28

Mormon 1:15

Ether 12:39

Jacob

Nephi

Alma

Nephi, Lehi, and 300 souls

Nephi

The righteous in Bountiful

Mormon

Moroni

588–570 bc

588–570 bc

82 bc

30 bc

23–20 bc

ad 34

ad 322

Before ad 421

Scripture

Visitation by 3 Nephites

Approximate Date First Mentioned

3 Nephi 28:9

4 Nephi 35–37
Mormon 8:11

Souls of men in the world

To righteous Nephites

Mormon and Moroni

ad 34

ad 201–211

ad 401

From these examples in Charts 1 and 2, we see there were many occasions that angels and other celestial/supernatural beings appeared to men, women, and children in Mesoamerica. Such recollections of these stories may have been passed down to their descendants.

I have been using the word “supernatural” because of their nature; this would include angels, deity, and translated beings. According to Webster’s Dictionary, “supernatural” pertains to being above or beyond what is natural or explainable by natural law, or pertaining to, or attributed to God or deities.10

Therefore, we know the people in the Book of Mormon had visits from supernatural beings from their arrival on this continent, most likely until the last of their righteous prophets, Moroni. That is a time

Figure 1: Stela 3 at LaVenta, Tabasco, Mexico (drawing by D. Wirth)

span of nearly a thousand years, and even more if we include the Book of Ether and the account of the brother of Jared. In the Book of Mormon, these visitations were usually accompanied by clouds. This phenomenon is depicted numerous times in Mesoamerican art, with or without clouds, and may be significant as an established practice in their religious beliefs.

We now turn our attention to Mesoamerica where the Lamanite culture continued after defeating the Nephite nation, mixing their traditions with any other groups inhabiting the land.11 We can also assume there were Nephites among these people who denied Christ as they were spared by the Lamanites (Moroni 1:2).

Theology held a prominent position in Mesoamerica — there was a great interplay between the supernatural and the natural world in their religious beliefs. It can also be said this is true of the righteous people in the Book of Mormon. Did the descendants of Jared, Lehi, Zoram, and Mulek’s party carry on the tradition of visitations from supernatural beings from the heavens, whether it was real or superficial? If we look to Mesoamerica, the answer may plausibly be “yes.” However, although they may have instituted some of their visionary rituals as a result of Book of Mormon stories passed down orally, a measure of caution must be considered with this proposed thought.

Stela 3 at La Venta, Tabasco, Mexico, is the earliest depiction of supernatural beings peering down from the heavens in Mesoamerica. The significance of this stela can only be conjectured by scholars, as it is a pictorial narrative of a meeting between two individuals with no text. It was carved by the Olmec, most likely between 500–400 bc, a period that may correspond to the end of the Jaredite culture. Some LDS scholars have postulated the man with large aquiline nose and beard is a Mulekite, and the other man facing him, a Jaredite.12 Whether this is the case, we simply do not know. What I find interesting, are the floating personages above in the sky. Do they represent deceased Olmec/Jaredite ancestors? Regardless, they are considered supernatural beings by archaeologists.

Figure 2: Part of Doorway of Temple 22 at Copan, Honduras (drawing by D. Wirth)

The Olmec preceded the Maya, and were highly esteemed by the elite Maya royalty. Even though there are similarities between the Olmec and Maya cultures, there was an emergence of a new form of society with the Maya in architecture and rituals.13

Portrayed on Stela 3, made by the Olmec, the supernatural personages are not seen in a cloud. However, later on among the Maya there are numerous depictions that do show supernatural beings in clouds. Clouds are typically shown in a laying-down S form, which Mayanist Linda Schele called “lazy-S scrolls.”14 The doorway of Temple 22 at Copan, Honduras, is an example, where cloud scrolls embrace ancestral deities.15

The S-shaped scroll was used as a glyph for the word muyal, meaning “cloud” in Classic Mayan texts, and is a metaphor for the heavens.16

The Cotzumalhuapa region in southern Guatemala along the Pacific coast dates from the late Preclassic period [400 bc to ad 250], with the earliest hieroglyphic Maya Long Count date of ad 36–37 on Stela 1 at El Baúl.

This area of Guatemala has numerous monuments that depict descending supernatural beings. This monument has the typical

S-curved clouds as seen on many other stelae. Peering down from above is a deified ancestor.

Figure 3: Stela 1 at El Baúl, Cotzumalhuapa region, Guatemala (drawing by D. Wirth)

The heavens, figuratively shown as clouds, are still a concept prevailing among some modern Maya Yucatec shamans (priests), who live in the Yucatan Peninsula. The smoke of incense making clouds is considered the soul stuff of the living universe,17 and furthermore, smoke and clouds are synonymous in Maya thought when observing a Maya ritual.18 For Mesoamerican cultures incense was used for purification, but even more aptly, to offer prayers that would rise up in aromatic clouds to the heavens where their gods live.19 This brings to mind Revelation 8:4 in the New Testament: “And the smoke of the incense, which came with the prayers of the saints, ascended up before God out of the angel’s hand.”

Linton Satterthwaite, a Maya archaeologist, observed that incense smoke to the Maya served to hide sacred objects from the eyes of the people.20 The smoke, in a roundabout way, served as a covering. But more important, clouds or incense smoke were the medium where visions occurred among Mesoamerican cultures.21

In The Conquest of Mexico, William H. Prescott incorporates a picture in his book to represent Montezuma’s conjuring a vision of Quetzalcoatl through clouds of incense smoke.22 Ehecatl-Quetzalcoatl has a beak-like mask, which is one of Quetzalcoatl’s forms, not because the god looked like that, but this deity wears the accoutrements of his functions. In this case, Quetzalcoatl is a god of air, wind, and the breath of life.23

Figure 4: Montezuma using incense clouds to conjure the deity Ehecatl-Quetzalcoatl (drawing by D. Wirth)

Mesoamerican people performed rituals that in our eyes mimicked the aforementioned visions of Lehi’s descendants. These practices were thought to bring sacred supernatural beings into their presence. From the earliest times in many parts of the Maya region, the serpent was a symbol of the vision rite24 and was sometimes associated with clouds. In illustrations of Vision Serpents, the serpent has an opened mouth bringing forth a supernatural deity, which is often a deceased ancestor, into the land of the living.

Figure 5: Lintel 15 at Yaxchilan, Chiapas, Mexico (drawing by D. Wirth)

At Yaxchilan, Lintel 15 shows a royal lady holding a bowl of papers containing her sacrificial blood. The same type of bowl is below the Vision Serpent, with smoky cloud scrolls emanating upwards like small beads of blood. From this emerges the Vision Serpent. The woman is in a trance after fasting and self-sacrifice of blood — she visualizes what Mesoamerican scholars theorize is an ancestor visiting from the heavens. Royal ancestors were considered deified in the Maya culture.

Today, however, there is no vestige of the Vision Serpent among the Maya.25 Whether or not the Vision Serpent was associated with the Feathered Serpent, Quetzalcoatl, is debatable. Miller and Taube postulate a smoky cloud cross-hatching pattern flanks many Vision Serpents’ bodies, and it is known that the serpent is sometimes seen in art as the Sky Serpent.26 The word for serpent and sky in Mayan sound very similar with a slight phonetic variation: sky caan, and serpent can. In other words, the Vision Serpent was a direct link to heavenly clouds and visions, rather than feathers of the plumed serpent, representing Quetzalcoatl.27

As mentioned above, there are many examples from early Mesoamerican sites of supernatural beings depicted issuing from incense, within clouds, or just appearing above in the air. They are discussed here for their interest in this study, but whether or not they are relevant in actuality in relation to the Book of Mormon cannot be positively determined. However, one more piece of this scenario needs to be considered. It is the “sun” in scripture and in Mesoamerican tradition.

The following quote may refer to a celestial being descending in ancient times in Mesoamerica. Allen Christenson brought to my attention a portion of Dennis Tedlock’s translation of the Popol Vuh:

And then the face of the earth was dried out by the sun. The sun was like a person when he revealed himself. His face was hot, so he dried out the face of the earth. Before the sun came up it was soggy, and the face of the earth was muddy before the sun came up. And when the sun had risen just a short distance he was like a person and his heat was unbearable. Since he revealed himself only when he was born, it is only his reflection that now remains. As they put it in the ancient text, “The visible sun is not the real one.”28

We have looked at several accounts where celestial beings were seen in vision or in reality in the Book of Mormon. In another example in 1 Nephi 1:9, the heavens were opened to the prophet Lehi before he left the Near East: “And it came to pass that he saw One descending out of the midst of heaven, and he beheld that his luster was above that of the sun at noon-day.” In the above quotation from the Popol Vuh, we have a reference of a being as bright as the sun. This statement was written shortly after the Spanish Conquest; nevertheless, it reflects a story from pre-Columbian times.

Today among the Catholic Maya the sun is a symbol of Christ. Chamula, Chiapas, Mexico, has festivals throughout the year, but the greatest of these has men running through a Path of Fire. This Path of Fire is explained in the book Maya Cosmos. It “represents the road of the Sun, a symbol of Christ, across the sky. Running through the thick smoke clouds, the men carry banners of the Sun-Christ back and forth across the flames and coals, east to west and back again, a total of three times.”29 In like manner, at Santiago Atitlán, Guatemala, Allen Christenson reports that many refer to Christ as “Our Father Sun” or “Lord Sun,”30 and during church processional ceremonies the people bore the image of Christ surrounded by a sunburst.

Again, it is no surprise that the Maya related Christ with the sun. Their rulers on many ancient monuments have the names of their kings with an additional name of K’inich Ahaw, meaning “Sun-faced Lord” or “Great Sun Lord.”31 What would be greater, more powerful, or life giving than the sun, who these kings chose to emulate?

The sun in relation to God is not a foreign concept in biblical scripture. For example, Malachi 4:2 reads, “But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings.” In this verse in Malachi, the “Sun of righteousness” has a dual meaning acknowledged by most Christians, understanding this verse as referring to Jesus Christ, the son of righteousness meaning the son of God.

Mesoamerican cultures had an influence in the American Southwest, as has been determined by the use of jade and turquoise in both locales.32 To the Hopis — a Southwestern Native American tribe — the sun is only the face through which their Creator, Taiowa or Tawa, stands behind and oversees his creation. This thinking is akin to what the Essenes in the Jewish community of Qumran believed with regard to the sun. Erwin Goodenough notes, “The Essenes addressed prayers to the sun. The figure, then, must be understood as being if not a representation of God for Jews at least a manifestation of Deity, a sign of Deity, and because of the potency to which the amulets attest, a symbol of Deity.”33

In the Old Testament, Psalm 84:11 clearly states, “The Lord God is a sun.” No Jew or Christian takes this literally, but as a symbol of God’s creative power that makes everything in this world work — there would be no life without the sun. In the New Testament, Jesus Christ is sometimes typified by the brightness of the sun. On top of a high mountain, Jesus “was transfigured before them [Peter, James and John]: and his face did shine as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light” (Matthew 17:2). On the road to Damascus the risen Christ appeared to Paul. He writes in Acts 26:13 “in the way a light from heaven, above the brightness of the sun, shining round me and them which journeyed with me.” In Revelation 1:16, John also saw the risen Lord. He wrote, “And he had in his right hand seven stars: and out of his mouth went a sharp twoedged sword: and his countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength.”34 These visions incorporating the sun’s brightness are of course symbolic, reinforcing the concept that the sun may be associated, and logically, with our Lord.

Figure 6: The resurrection of Hun Nal Ye, the Maize God, from a turtle carapace, painted on a Maya vessel (drawing by D. Wirth)

Returning to Mesoamerica, there are a few legends we need to consider in relation to the sun and deity. Allen Christenson’s work on the modern-day traditions of the Maya concerning Christ representing

Figure 7: Monument from El Castello, Cotzumalhuapa region, Guatemala (drawing by D. Wirth)

the sun is revealing. He writes, “Among the Maya, the resurrection of Christ following his crucifixion is often equated with the rising of the sun, similar to the apotheosis of Jun Junapu [the Maize God] as the sun.”35 The Maize God has numerous depictions of his resurrection from a turtle, the earth being represented by a turtle among the Maya).36

The maize seed was considered dead — when it sprang to life it was viewed as having been reborn or resurrected, thus, the prominence of the Maize God among the Maya.

The Maya monuments in Guatemala considered below are from the Late Classic period [ad 600–900], and display complex scenes often involving a person interacting with a supernatural being. Monument 1 from El Castello in the Cotzumalhuapa region depicts a man with a speech scroll coming from the individual talking with the sun deity.

The man is climbing what appears to be a rope, but in actuality this motif is the edge of an open-mouthed reptilian monster, whose teeth act as stairs. The deity sitting above in the opened mouth is most definitely the sun, as is determined by the sunburst around him. These monuments are considered to be done in a narrative style, like Stela 5, referred to as the “Tree of Life” stone by some Latter-day Saints, at Izapa, Chiapas, Mexico,37 which contains no hieroglyphic text giving a clue to the monument’s intended message. They simply tell a story in picture form.

Figure 8: Descending god from Mural 2, Structure 16 at Tulum, Yucatan, Mexico (drawn by Felipe Dávalos)

Monument 3 from Bilbao, again from the Cotzumalhuapa region, depicts the descending sun deity above a man, who looks up at this bright supernatural personage. Another, Monument 6, also from Bilbao, has an identical theme. There are many other monuments of descending gods without the sun deity — they are all considered depictions of supernatural entities, and show the relevance of their association of divine beings communicating with men.

Tulum, a site in the Yucatan, dates to about the end of the 15th century, shortly before the Spanish Conquest. The idea of descending gods appear at Tulum roughly five hundred to eight hundred years later than those on the Cotzumalhuapa monuments. At Tulum there is a building called The Temple of the Descending God, and there are several depictions of this deity in stucco. There is also a painting in Mural 2 from Structure 16, called the Temple of the Frescoes, with the descending god.

Some LDS tour guides say this is evidence of Christ’s visit to Mesoamerica, which may be a bit presumptuous, since we simply do not have concrete evidence for this assumption as stated earlier. However, we have to wonder if these depictions of descending gods may derive from a long-held tradition of supernatural beings visiting earth.

Several ceramic containers from the Yucatan dating from ad 1200–1400 depict descending or diving gods, as they are sometimes called by archaeologists.

Figure 9: Ceramic diving god container wearing a bird headdress, housed at the U.S. Library of Congress

Most have a bird headdress, representative of their high god. The answer as to who this god may represent is varied: The Maize God, Itzamna, or Quetzalcoatl. We do not really know. Such depictions of a deity descending are associated with sacrifice; however, many of them have been interpreted as a symbol of the sun, fertility, and maize.38

Bancroft in his Native Races written in the nineteenth century noted, “After the mysterious departure of Cukulcan, the Maya Quetzalcoatl, from Yucatan, the people, convinced that he had gone to the abode of the gods, deified him, and built temples and instituted feasts in his honor.”39 Bancroft is writing about the people in Mani, Yucatan. They still remembered their culture hero, Kukulcan or Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl, whose life his followers patterned after their god Quetzalcoatl for many generations to come.

The people of Mani had a feast commemorating this culture hero. Continuing with Bancroft, he writes, “They said, and confidently believed, that Cukulcan descended from heaven on the last day of the feast and received personally the gifts which were presented to him. This festival was called chic kaban.”40 The ceremony in honor of Kukulcan was observed all over Yucatan until ad 1341 and especially at Mani.41 The culture hero Kukulcan, a.k.a. Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl, lived approximately in the 10th or 11th century. No one really knows the exact dates, but much has been written of this leader that was passed down orally from one generation to the next.42

In summary, we have seen there are many theophanies in scripture describing celestial visitations accompanied with clouds, or even a voice penetrating through clouds to selected people on the earth. Some of these people were righteous, others not. Creating clouds of light or clouds of darkness were determined by the Lord with regard to the nature of the onlookers.

Discussing the differences associated with these clouds in the scriptures is an added insight that I found while researching this topic. Differentiating between clouds of light and clouds of darkness is a phenomenon that cannot be determined at present existing in thought among Mesoamerican cultures. However, the presence of clouds in general among the Maya refers to the celestial realms where the gods live. With or without clouds, scenarios were depicted in art of celestial visitations among the Olmec circa 500–400 bc, to the 15th century by the Maya. Even today, the Maya believe in descending ancestors and deities. Due to their ancient mythological traditions, they chose to associate Christ with the sun,43 and as we have seen, examples were described showing visitations of a sun deity.

Did some Mesoamerican cultures have a tradition of viewing supernatural beings since they were aware of their mythological beliefs deriving from stories we see recorded in the Book of Mormon? We do not know, but, saying this with caution, it may be plausible as has been demonstrated here.

Figure Credit Details

Figure 4. Drawing by D. Wirth after drawing by Keith Henderson from The Conquest of Mexico, by W. H. Prescott, NY: Henry Holt & Co., 1922, I: 185.

Figure 5. Drawing by D. Wirth after drawing by Ian Graham, Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions, vol. 3, part I, Yaxchilan. With Eric von Euw. Cambridge, Mass.: Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, 1977, p. 39.

Figure 8. Drawn by Felipe Dávalos in Arthur G. Miller, On the Edge of the Sea: Mural Painting at Tancab-Tulum, Quintana Roo, Mexico, Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1982, pl. 37). This illustration was scanned from Gabrielle Vail and Christine Hernández, Re-Creating Primordial Time: Foundation Rituals and Mythology in the Postclassic Maya Codices, Boulder, CO: University Press of Colorado, 2013, 130 Fig. 4.16.

Figure 9. U.S. Library of Congress, J. Kislak Collection. Photograph by Justin Kerr, No. 6243.

Diane E. Wirth is an independent researcher specializing in Mesoamerican art history and iconography, the latter interpreting symbols in art and antiquities. Her primary works include: Decoding Ancient America: A Guide to the Archaeology of the Book of Mormon (2007); Parallels: Mesoamerican and Ancient Middle Eastern Traditions (2003); and A Challenge to the Critics: Scholarly Evidences of the Book of Mormon (1986). A graduate of Brigham Young University, she has given presentations at symposiums and conferences which include: The Atlantic Conference, St. Mary’s University, Halifax, Nova Scotia (2008); Book of Mormon Archaeological Form, Utah (2003, 2004, 2005, 2008, 2012); The Aesthetics of Enchantment sponsored by The American Society of Phenomenology, Aesthetics & Fine Arts, Harvard Divinity School (1998); The Ancient American Western Conference, Utah (1997); New England Antiquities Research Association, Massachusetts and New Hampshire (1992, 1993); Society of Early Historic Archaeology, Brigham Young University (1977, 1979, 1987, 1990).

1 The term “Mesoamerica” comprises the areas of southern Mexico and Central America. See Mark A. Wright, “Heartland as Hinterland: The Mesoamerican Core and North American Periphery of Book of Mormon Geography,” paper presented at FAIR Conference, Provo, UT, 2013, http://www.fairmormon.org/perspectives/fair-conferences/2013-fair-conference/2013-heartland-as-hinterland-the-mesoamerican-core-and-north-american-periphery-of-book-of-mormon-geography; John L. Sorenson, Mormon’s Codex: An Ancient American Book (Salt Lake City: Deseret, and Neal A. Maxwell Institute, Brigham Young University, 2013); John L. Sorenson, Images of Ancient America: Visualizing Book of Mormon Life (Provo, UT: Research Press: Foundation for Research and Mormon Studies, Brigham Young University, 1998); John E. Clark, “Archaeology, Relics, and Book of Mormon Belief,” in Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 14/2 (2005): 38–49, 71–74.

2 David Freidel, Linda Schele, and Joy Parker, Maya Cosmos: Three Thousand Years on the Shaman’s Path (New York: William Morrow and Co., Inc., 1993), 152.

3 Aphrahat, Demonstration 5:21, in Daniel Boyarin, The Jewish Gospels: The Story of the Jewish Christ (New York: The New Press, 2011), 39.

4 Margaret Barker, The Mother of the Lord, Vol. 1: The Lady in the Temple (New York and London: Bloomsbury T & T Clark, 2012), 1:202.

5 “Cloud” in the scriptures will be in bold font for emphasis.

6 The “tables of stone” are the Ten Commandments, or the Law of Moses.

7 Sorenson, Mormon’s Codex, 549.

8 For example. John L. Sorenson, “Cultic Similarities between the Ancient Near East and Mesoamerica,” presented at the conference “ABC + 10,” held by the New England Antiquities Research Association, Waltham, Massachusetts, Nov. 1–3, 2002; Diane E. Wirth, Parallels: Mesoamerican and Ancient Middle Eastern Traditions (St. George, UT: Stonecliff Publishing, 2003).

9 Translated beings such as Enoch and his people and the Three Nephite disciples are “ministering angels.” Regarding translated beings, Joseph Smith taught, “Their habitation is that of the terrestrial order, and a place prepared for such characters.” See Joseph Smith, Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, compiled by Joseph Fielding Smith (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1938, 1972), 170.

10 Random House Webster’s College Dictionary (New York: Random House, 1991), 1341.

11 Sorenson, Mormon’s Codex, 35–36.

12 Sorenson, Mormon’s Codex, 532–533.

13 “Research at Ceibal Challenges Two Prevailing Theories on How Maya Civilization Began,” in IMS Explorer 43/9, Institute of Maya Studies, an affiliate of the Miami Science Museum (September 2014): 2.

14 Freidel, Schele, and Parker, Maya Cosmos, 151.

15 William L. Fash, Scribes, Warriors and Kings: The City of Copán and the Ancient Maya (New York: Thames & Hudson, 1991), 122–123.

16 Freidel, Schele, and Parker, Maya Cosmos, 152.

17 Freidel, Schele, and Parker, Maya Cosmos, 152.

18 Freidel, Schele, and Parker, Maya Cosmos, 206.

19 Hubert Howe Bancroft, The Native Races, Vol. II (San Francisco: A. L. Bancroft & Co., 1883), 668.

20 Linton Satterthwaite, “Incense Burning at Piedras Negras,” in University of Pennsylvania, Museum Bulletin 11(4): 16–22, 1946.

21 Freidel, Schele, and Parker, Maya Cosmos, 190.

22 William H. Prescott, The Conquest of Mexico (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1922), I: 185, cited in Fanning the Sacred Flame: Mesoamerican Studies in honor of H. B. Nicholson, Matthew A. Boxt and Brian Dervin Dillon, eds. (Boulder, CO: University Press of Colorado, 2012), 2.

23 Diane E. Wirth, “Quetzalcoatl, the Maya Maize God, and Jesus Christ,” in Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 11/1 (2002): 4–15.

24 Freidel, Schele, and Parker, Maya Cosmos, 289.

25 Freidel, Schele, and Parker, Maya Cosmos, 208.

26 Mary Miller and Karl Taube, The Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1993), 150.

27 Quetzalcoatl has an English translation of “feathered serpent.”

28 Dennis Tedlock, translator, Popol Vuh: The Definitive Edition of the Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life and the Glories of Gods and Kings (New York: Touchstone, 1985, 1996), 161.

29 Freidel, Schele, and Parker, Maya Cosmos, 291–292.

30 Allen J. Christenson, “Maya Harvest Festivals and the Book of Mormon,” in FARMS Review 3/1 (1991): 11–12.

31 Simon Martin and Nicolai Grube, Chronicle of the Maya Kings and Queens: Deciphering the Dynasties of the Ancient Maya (New York: Thames & Hudson, 2000), 159.

32 The Hopi had a Parrot Clan. Parrots are technically called Macaws and were indigenous to the region of Central America. Jade, native to Mesoamerica, and turquoise to the American Southwest, were frequently traded.

33 Erwin R. Goodenough, Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman Period (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988 Abridgment), 121.

34 See also Revelation 10:1.

35 Christenson, “Maya Harvest Festivals and the Book of Mormon,” 11.

36 Wirth, “Quetzalcoatl, the Maya Maize God, and Jesus Christ,” 7.

37 See V. Garth Norman, “Stela 5,” in Book of Mormon Reference Companion, gen ed. Dennis L. Largey (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2003), 740–744.

38 MAYA, eds. Peter Schmidt, Mercedes de la Garza and Enrique Nalda (New York: Rizzoli, 1998), 619.

39 Bancroft, The Native Races, Vol. II: 699.

40 Bancroft, The Native Races, Vol. II:700.

41 Robert J. Sharer, The Ancient Maya, fifth edition (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1946–1994), 552.

42 See for example, H. B. Nicholson, Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl: The Once and Future Lord of the Toltecs (Boulder, CO: University Press of Colorado, 2001).

43 Louise M. Burkhart, Holy Wednesday: A Nahua Drama from Early Colonial Mexico (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996), 7.

Celestial Visits in the Scriptures, and
a Plausible Mesoamerican Tradition

Diane E. Wirth

Abstract: The mention of “Abish” and a “remarkable vision of her father” (Alma 19:16) is itself remarkable, since women and servants are rarely named in the Book of Mormon text. As a Hebrew/Lehite name, “Abish” suggests the meaning “Father is a man,” the midrashic components ʾab- (“father”) and ʾîš (“man”) being phonologically evident. Thus, the immediate juxtaposition of the name “Abish” with the terms “her father” and “women” raises the possibility of wordplay on her name in the underlying text. Since ʾab-names were frequently theophoric — i.e., they had reference to a divine Father (or could be so understood) — the mention of “Abish” (“Father is a man”) takes on additional theological significance in the context of Lamoni’s vision of the Redeemer being “born of a woman and … redeem[ing] all mankind” (Alma 19:13). The wordplay on “Abish” thus contributes thematically to the narrative’s presentation of Ammon’s typological ministrations among the Lamanites as a “man” endowed with great power, which helped the Lamanites understand the concept of “the Great Spirit” (Yahweh) becoming “man.” Moreover, this wordplay accords with the consistent Book of Mormon doctrine that the “very Eternal Father” would (and did) condescend to become “man” and Suffering Servant.

The mention of a “Lamanitish wom[a]n” named “Abish” in Alma 19:16 places her in the company of only a few women whose personal names are given in the Book of Mormon text.1 If the entirety of the text is any indication, Mormon and his source(s) for the material comprising Alma 17–27 belonged to a culture that exhibited at least some reluctance to mention women by name. As Brant Gardner observes, “The preservation of her name is even more remarkable … not only [because she was] a woman, but she was a servant. Both factors would virtually guarantee her anonymity. Even the queen [i.e., Lamoni’s wife] is not named.”2

Moreover, Jacob mentions “the difficulty of engraving … words upon plates” (Jacob 4:1) that he, Nephi, and their successors experienced in writing on metal plates. This would have been particularly true of proper names, which were apparently spelled out in some fashion upon the plates.3 Thus, the fact that record-keepers took pains to write and preserve the name “Abish” in the text suggests that the mention of her name is an important narrative detail. (Admittedly, the reader will be the final judge as to whether the ideas advanced here about the name “Abish” and its literary importance are plausible and ultimately helpful).

Abish is mentioned at a pivotal moment in the Lamanite conversion narratives: the theophanic visions of King Lamoni, Lamoni’s wife, and members of their royal court and its aftermath (Alma 17–27). On account of the “remarkable vision of her father,” Abish is prepared to play her key role in the mass Lamanite conversions, “making … known” what she had previously been unable to make known (19:17) and gathering the Lamanites to the royal palace to witness the effects of these visions (Alma 19:16–19). Her actions (e.g., raising the queen from the ground) not only reflect her correct understanding of the nature and meaning of these events but also ensure that these events are not misinterpreted by the other Lamanites, thus helping to preserve the lives of Lamoni, Lamoni’s wife, et al., who saw visions of the Redeemer and angels (Alma 19:24–36), as well as facilitating the conversion of many Lamanites.

In this short study, I propose that the narrator’s use of the name “Abish” (“Father is a man,” see below) involves wordplay that accentuates the importance of this woman (ʾiššâ) and knowledge that came from “her father” (whether in his lifetime or afterward). Additionally, the mention of “Abish” and the attendant wordplay on her name have significance in the context of the broader Lamanite conversion narratives — i.e., the Lamanites being “converted unto the Lord” by coming to the knowledge that “the very Eternal Father [ʾāb],”4 would be “born of a woman [ʾiššâ]” (Alma 19:13) and would “come forth” (19:13), i.e., or “go forth” as a “man [ʼîš)].”5

I will additionally suggest that the narrative, using the Leitwort (“lead-word”) “man,” creates terminological links between the “Great Spirit” and the Redeemer, who becomes human (“born of a woman”); Abish (converted “on account of a remarkable vision of her father”); and Ammon (Abish’s “fellow-servant” in Lamoni’s court), who prepared the Lamanites to come to a knowledge of the divine Father of heaven and earth through their own visions of Jesus. Just as Abish as a “woman-servant” fulfilled her divinely appointed role, Ammon, as a “man” endowed with divine power, “served” as a living type of the incarnate Christ, the “Divine Warrior” who condescended to become the “Suffering Servant.”

Hebrew ʾab-names and the Name “Abish”

Many Israelite names have the word ʾab- (“Father”) as a theophoric6 element. Israelites not only understood but apparently relished the double entendre-potential in these names — that the “father” element could be understood as not only referring to a deity but also the birth father of the name-bearer. The literary treatment of the name “Abimelech” in Judges 6–9 illustrates this phenomenon. The first part of the pericope (Judges 6–8) chronicles Gideon’s “salvation” of Israel including his defeat of the Midianites and their kings (8:21). In response to this great victory, Israel requests that Gideon and his “sons” rule dynastically over them, i.e., as kings: “Then the men of Israel said unto Gideon, Rule thou over us, both thou, and thy son, and thy son’s son also: for thou hast delivered us from the hand of Midian. And Gideon said unto them, I will not rule over you, neither shall my son rule over you: the Lord shall rule over you” (Judges 8:22–23).

However, Gideon immediately proceeds to act like a king,7 multiplying gold (Judg 8:24–26) and wives (8:30) in violation of Deuteronomy 17:17. From the captured Midianite gold, he fashions an idolatrous “ephod” and exerts royal authority over the cult at Ophrah. Moreover, Gideon sires a “son” whom he names “My Father is King,” i.e., Abimelech (ʼăbî, “my father” + melek, “king”). One can interpret this name to mean the “My Father [Yahweh] is king” (see especially Judges 8:23: “the Lord [Yahweh] shall rule over you”) or “My Father [Gideon/ Jerubbaal] is King.” The second part of the pericope (Judges 9) infers that Abimelech interprets his own names as the latter and uses this interpretation as a basis for his attempts to make himself king over Israel (see especially Judges 9:2–3, 8–22).

Later Israelite monarchic history contains other examples. Saul’s uncle Ner (“light”) has a son named Abner.8 The name “Abner” can mean “Father is a light” (i.e., “[the divine] Father is a light” or “[earthly] Father is a light”), but it is also a pun: “Father is Ner.” The name of David’s infamous son Absalom means “Father is peace” (ʼab + šālôm), referring on one hand to deity (“Father”) as the source of “peace” for David, his son, and his family. On the other hand, as Moshe Garsiel observes, “the entire story witnesses to the absence of peace between father [David] and son [Absalom].”9 This is the point of the ironic wordplay in David’s repeated question as he learns of Absalom’s death: “Is the young man Absalom [lĕʾabšālôm] safe [(ha)šālôm]?” (Literally, “Does the young man Absalom have peace?” 2 Samuel 18:29, 32). In this narrative cycle, the death of Absalom is only a part of the irony of David’s self-pronounced punishment “restoring” (yĕšāllēm) fourfold (2 Samuel 12:6).10 The Lord himself, the divine “Father,” also “repays” David in fulfillment of Deuteronomy 7:10 (“[He] repayeth [mĕšallēm] them that hate him to their face, to destroy them: he will not be slack to him that hateth him, he will repay [yĕšallem] him to his face.”): “the sword shall never depart from thine house; because thou hast despised me” (2 Samuel 12:10). By the time Solomon has secured the throne, four of David’s sons will be dead.

Women in ancient Israel also bore ʾab-names, including two of David’s wives: Abigail and Abishag. Abigail probably means something like “My Father is joy”11 or “My Father was delighted.”12 Abishag, a woman famous for her beauty (1 Kings 1:3), was given to David in his old age to resuscitate his vitality and virility (1:4, 15). Etymologically, the first element in her name is clear; the second element, however, is of uncertain meaning.13 This did not stop the Deuteronomistic historian/narrator from playing on her name. Moshe Garsiel suggests that, from a purely literary (not etymological) perspective, “her name [‘Abishag’] contains two optional midrashic components, ʾby [“my father”] and šg[l] [“concubine”].”14 Although in the pericope of 1 Kings 1–2 “neither the term šgl nor any of its synonyms is mentioned, [still] Abishag’s duty of lying in David’s bed to keep him warm indicates that she may be considered as his concubine. Adonijah’s petition to marry her is therefore construed as a renewed attempt upon the throne, and he pays with his life for it.”15 In other words, a Hebrew-speaking audience would have heard the implied pun on “Abishag” in the plot of the narrative: Adonijah’s death on account of his ill-fated play for the throne through his father’s concubine.

The name “Abish” as a Hebrew name16 suggests the meaning “Father is a man” or “My father is a man” (ʼab[î] “[my] father” + ʼîš “a man”),17 or at least an ancient Israelite would have heard these midrashic components18 in this name. “Abish” would have suggested a similar meaning to the Nephite ear,19 and perhaps it would have held this meaning for Lamanites who had learned the language of Nephi via the priests of Noah (Mosiah 24:4). Although only attested once as a Lehite personal name,20 the name “Abish” contributes to the “literary texture”21 of the story precisely because the elements “father” and “man” can be heard in the name. Precise scientific etymology was not, in any case, a primary concern of ancient authors in their literary inclusion and exploitation of names.22

We note the mention of Abish’s name and her introduction into the Lamanite conversion narrative:

And it came to pass that they did call on the name of the Lord, in their might, even until they had all fallen to the earth, save it were one of the Lamanitish women [cf. Heb. *nāšîm], whose name was Abish [*ʼab(îʼ)îš], she having been converted unto the Lord for many years, on account a remarkable vision of her father [cf. ʼ ăbîhâ] — (Alma 19:16)

The wordplay on the ʼab- (“father”) element is readily recognizable. As Michael O’Connor notes, onomastic wordplay can be “incomplete, as puns, casual rhymes, and verbal echoes often are, in all literary texts of all types and times.”23 However, the ʼîš (“man”)-element, too, is present, albeit “tacitly”24 in the term “women” (cf. Heb. nāšîm). The singular form of Hebrew nāšîm is ʼiššâ, the masculine counterparts of which are ʼîš and the poetic form ʼĕnôš (both of which share the Hebrew plural ʼănāšîm). In other words, the proposed elements of “Abish” are juxtaposed with the name “Abish” in the text.

The mention of “Abish” and the repetition of terms that match the evident verbal components of her name emphasizes her important role in the unfolding Lamanite conversions, a role that, in its own way, is like that of Ammon, who, like Abish herself (Alma 19:28, “woman-servant”), is described as a “servant” (Alma 17:25, 29; 18:17; 19:33). Their role as “servants” enables them to be instruments in the Lord’s hand in helping the work of salvation go forward among the Lamanites (cf. Alma 17:11). Moreover, the proposed wordplay links Abish to “her father,” in a manner not dissimilar to the wordplay that links “Nephi” (Egyptian nfr [later pronounced nfi] = “good,” “goodly,” “fair”) to his “goodly parents” and the “goodness of God” (1 Nephi 1:1)25 and “Enos” (Hebrew, “man”) to his father who was a “just man” (Enos 1:1).26

The narrator’s use of wordplay on Abish here emphasizes that the converting knowledge of the Lord (the divine ʾāb) that Abish received from “her father” was like the knowledge of the God of Israel’s fathers that Nephi and Enos received from their own “fathers.” It further emphasizes that this knowledge of the Lord stands in stark contrast to the incomplete “tradition of Lamoni, which he had received from his father” (Alma 18:5). Lamoni and the other Lamanites should have received the knowledge of God possessed by “their father, Lehi” (Alma 18:36)27 but had not on account of “the tradition of their fathers.”28

The appropriateness of Abish’s name in the context of “her father” becomes even more apparent as the midrashic components of her name as divine referents are considered. The connection between “man,” “woman,” and the vision of the incarnation of the divine Redeemer (the divine ʾāb, “Father”) as a “man” is at the heart of the conversion of the Lamanites and the literary way in which Mormon narrates their conversion.

“A Remarkable Vision of Her Father”:
Whose Vision and of Whom?

Alma 19:16 informs us that “Abish,” on account of “a remarkable vision of her father” had been “converted unto the Lord for many years.” The phrase “remarkable vision of her father” is ambiguous, as others have noted,29 perhaps deliberately so. The phrase “vision of her father” allows not only multiple possibilities for the content of the vision but also two possibilities for the one who had the vision. Although others may be educed, we have at least three interpretive possibilities for “understanding the phrase ‘remarkable vision of her father.’”

The text refers to a vision seen by Abish’s father. This interpretation takes the genitival construction “vision of her father” as a subjective genitive — i.e., that the subject (Abish’s father) is the seer of the vision, whatever its content.

The text refers to Abish’s own vision, the content of which was a special or “remarkable” appearance of her own father to her. This interpretation takes the genitival construction “vision of her father” as an objective genitive — i.e., that Abish’s father himself is the object or content of the vision.30 Abish’s own status as a servant in the royal court (a royal dependent) may suggest that her father had died sometime previously and perhaps that he had appeared to her.

The text refers to Abish’s own vision, the content of which may have included a theophany (Greek theos “god” + phaneia “manifestation” = a manifestation or appearance of God) beyond the personal appearance of her earthly father. In other words, did the Savior himself (the divine “Father” mentioned throughout the Book of Mormon) also appear to her? This interpretation, while not explicitly supported by the language of Alma 19:16, is perhaps partially inferred by the content of Lamoni’s previously-mentioned vision (“I have seen my Redeemer; and he shall come forth, and be born of a woman, and he shall redeem all mankind,” Alma 19:13). Is the “remarkable vision of her father” (19:16) still “remarkable” by the (very high) standard of Lamoni’s vision and the other Lamanite visionary experiences (Alma 17:29–30, 34; 22:18)? This interpretation would not wholly preclude possibility #2.

Additional possibilities are perhaps suggested by the printer’s manuscript of the Book of Mormon. As Royal Skousen31 and Brant Gardner32 have noted, Oliver Cowdery initially copied the word as “fathers” in the printer’s manuscript but then quickly changed the word to “father.” However, Skousen states that “the original manuscript undoubtedly had the more difficult nonpossessive form father in ‘a remarkable vision of her father’” and that “in the manuscripts Oliver Cowdery often added a possessive s to nouns, especially names, in constructions involving the preposition of, thus creating instances of the double genitive.”33 “Fathers” would then represent “father’s,” suggesting that Cowdery’s initial impression of the construction fit interpretation #1, which corresponds to how many Latter-day Saints read this verse. Nevertheless, interpretation #2 cannot be ruled out.

In every interpretive scenario, the result was that “Abish” was “converted unto the Lord” on account of the “vision,” either hers or her father’s and the vision was probably theophanic if it was “remarkable,” as Mormon states (Alma 19:16). Moreover, the fact that Abish correctly comprehended the theophanic character of the visions that Lamoni and his wife saw suggest that the vision that converted her was similar in character. Here I would add that the double emphasis on ʾab in the name Abish and in the word “father” is perhaps intended to emphasize this very idea. If we allow for deliberate ambiguity in the phrase “vision of her father” — understood as both a subjective and objective genitive — we begin to sense the literary importance (and beauty) of mentioning a name that denotes or connotes “Father is a Man.”

The Divine “Father” as a “Man”

As noted above, the presence of the name “Abish” along with its potential theophoric meaning “Father is a man,” as suggested by the theophanic content of her or her father’s “vision,” has wider implications for the Lamanite conversion narratives. Clearly, this notion would have been problematic for some in ancient Israel and Judah. However, the notion that the Lord (Yahweh) is a “man” is not alien to the Hebrew Bible, despite a few texts that seem to suggest otherwise.34 In addition to the Lord’s prophetic promise that Israel will one day call him “Ishi” (Heb. ʾîšî, “my man,” “my husband”; Hosea 2:16 [MT 2:18]), Moses’s “Song of the Sea” declares “The Lord is a man [ʼîš] of war” (Exodus 15:3). Similarly, Isaiah 42:13 states: “The Lord shall go forth [yēṣēʼ] as a mighty man [gibbôr], he shall stir up jealousy like a man [ʼîš] of war: he shall cry, yea, roar; he shall prevail against his enemies.”

Throughout the Book of Mormon, the image of the Divine Warrior35/Redeemer (a favorite title of Isaiah)36 “going forth” (Isaiah 42:13) is juxtaposed with the image of the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 52:13–53:12. Nephi writes: “the God of our fathers,37 who were led out of Egypt, out of bondage, and also were preserved in the wilderness by him, yea, the God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, yieldeth himself, according to the words of the angel, as a man [cf. ʼîš], into the hands of wicked men” (1 Nephi 19:10).

Such texts seem to know Isaiah’s description of Suffering Servant — i.e., the “man [ʼîš] of sorrows [pains] … acquainted with grief [sickness],” “smitten of God and afflicted [mĕʿunneh],” Isaiah 53:3–4; “He was oppressed, and he was afflicted [naʿăneh]” (53:7).38 Moreover, Isaiah 63 describes the Lord acting as Divine Warrior/Redeemer on behalf of Israel (Isaiah 63:1–6) while emphasizing that he is also Israel’s “father”: “Doubtless thou art our father [ʼābînû], though Abraham [ʼabrāhām]39 be ignorant of us, and Israel acknowledge us not: thou, O Lord, art our father [ʼābînû], our redeemer [gōʼălēnû]; thy name is from everlasting [mēʿôlām]” (63:16). Thus the Divine Warrior/Redeemer is, as Nephi saw, both “the Eternal Father” (1 Nephi 11:21 [Original Text])40 — the “Everlasting Father” (ʼăbîʿad) of Isaiah 9:6 [MT 9:5] — and a “man,” who bore the sin and iniquity not only of Israel, but all humanity. Because of this dual nature, he is “mighty to save” (Isaiah 63:1; 2 Nephi 31:19; Alma 7:14; 34:18).41

Book of Mormon texts repeatedly describe Savior’s mortal life (as “man”), and his atonement in terms of Isaiah 42:13 (the Lord “going forth” as a “man”), 53:7, 63:1–16. In addition to 1 Nephi 19:10, we have Alma 7:11: “And he shall go forth, suffering pains and afflictions and temptations of every kind; and this that the word might be fulfilled which saith he will take upon him the pains and the sicknesses of his people.” As Thomas Wayment has noted, Alma’s use of the phrase “pains and sicknesses of his people” is a quotation of Isaiah 53:4.42 However, Alma also alludes to the expression “he shall go forth” (Isaiah 42:13). Alma like Nephi and Jacob (2 Nephi 6–10)43 before him, envisions the Redeemer “go[ing] forth” both as Divine Warrior and the Servant who redeems humankind through his own suffering. These are but a few of the examples that could be cited.

“Surely This Is More Than a Man”: The Narratological Juxtaposition of Ammon’s and Abish’s Roles

In the Lamanite conversion narrative, Mormon employs several Leitworte (“lead-words”), a term that Martin Buber coined, using it to describe biblical authors’ use of key terms which help a reader discern the main message (or messages) that authors intend to convey.44 Some of these are “man”/“woman,” “great,” “spirit,” and “believe”/“faith.”45 The mention of the name Abish (“Father is a man”) can be seen as a development of these motifs.

Part of Ammon’s task in teaching Lamoni and the Lamanites is to advance their traditional understanding beyond his father’s (and their fathers’) “belief” that “there was a Great Spirit” but yet “suppos[ing] whatsoever they did was right” (Alma 18:5), to a belief in a divine Redeemer — the very “Eternal Father”46 — that would redeem man by becoming “man” — i.e., “born of a woman” (Alma 19:13). Ammon’s averred strategy is to “show forth my power unto these my fellow-servants, or the power which is in me … that I may win the hearts of these my fellow-servants, that I may lead them to believe in my words” (Alma 17:29).

The strategy works so well, especially in his defense of the flocks of the king, as Lamoni exhibits himself to be a warrior with “great power,” that Lamoni’s servants begin to debate whether Ammon is the “Great Spirit” or a “man”: “Surely, this is more than a man [ʼîš]. Behold is this not the Great Spirit …?” (Alma 18:2); “Whether he be the Great Spirit or a man, we know not; but this much we do know, that he cannot be slain by the enemies of the king … because of his expertness and great strength … And now, O king, we do not believe that a man has such great power, for we know he cannot be slain” (18:3). The servants quickly draw King Lamoni into the debate, “Now I know that it is the Great Spirit; and he has come down at this time to preserve your lives, that I might not slay you as I did your brethren. Now this is the Great Spirit of whom our fathers have spoken.” (18:4). Fearing for the first time that he has done wrong in executing his servants for previous failures, Lamoni inquires: “Where is this man that has such great power?” (18:8). Mormon wishes the audience to see that Lamoni’s notion of a “Great Spirit” who “come[s] down” in human form to “preserve” lives is not impossibly removed from the “condescension of God,” i.e., the incarnation of the Redeemer seen by Nephi (and probably Lehi earlier; see 1 Nephi 11:16, 26).

Interestingly, Lamoni becomes convinced that Ammon is the “Great Spirit” incarnate “because of the faithfulness of Ammon” (18:10), i.e., the faithfulness of his service: “Surely there has not been any servant among all my servants that has been so faithful47 as this man; for even he doth remember all my commandments to execute them. Now I surely know that this is the Great Spirit” (Alma 18:10–11). Lamoni’s fear of Ammon becomes palpable (18:11), and his “countenance … was changed toward Ammon” (18:12). The servants of Lamoni, however, ask Ammon to stay calling him by the name “Rabbanah” which is glossed as “great or powerful king,” a title evidently built from the Semitic root *rbb/rby, which denotes “greatness” or “muchness” (rabb is still the word for [divine] “Lord” in modern Arabic).48 The servant reiterates, “Rabbanah, the king desireth thee to stay” (18:13).

The optimum moment for teaching Lamoni about the incarnate Redeemer approaches. After Lamoni will not answer Ammon “for the space of an hour” (Alma 18:14), “Ammon, being filled with the Spirit of God [i.e., again relying on the power of the “Great Spirit”] … perceive[s] the thoughts of the king” (18:16).49 Ammon knows that the king thinks that he is divine. He emphatically declares: “I am a man, and am thy servant” (18:17; cf. Isaiah 53:3, 11). Nevertheless, Lamoni, recognizing that Ammon was able to discern his thoughts, asks him: “Who art thou? Art though the Great Spirit who knows all things?” (18:18). Ammon denies again, but Lamoni is not dissuaded: “whatsoever thou desirest I will give thee; and if it were needed, I would guard thee with my armies; but I know that thou art more powerful than they” (18:21). Ammon is a living type of the incarnate Redeemer: a “man” upon whom the divine power of the Lord’s spirit rests and a warrior of royal lineage (cf. Isaiah 11:1–5) who humbles himself to be a “servant” (Alma 17:25; 18:17; cf. Isaiah 53; Mosiah 13:34–16:15). Ammon is a type of the “Redeemer” who “went forth ministering unto the people [with] power” (1 Nephi 11:28). Ammon’s service to Lamoni as a type of Christ fully prepares Lamoni to be converted to Christ through his partaking of, as it were, the tree of life.

For Lamoni to be properly converted to Christ, rather than to Ammon the missionary, Ammon must fully correct Lamoni’s partly correct views regarding himself and the Great Spirit. Lamoni is unfamiliar with the terms “God” and “the heavens,” perhaps suggesting Lamanite religion is chthonic (“I do not know the heavens.”)50 Lamoni does, however, believe in a “Great Spirit,” which Ammon then defines for him as “God”: “Believest thou that there is a Great Spirit? And he said, Yea. And Ammon said: This is God” (18:26–28).

After Ammon explains “the heavens,” Lamoni states his “belief”51 in Ammon’s words and asks, “Art thou sent from God?” (Alma 18:33). Ammon reiterates, “I am a man; and man in the beginning was created after the image of God, and I am called by his Holy Spirit to teach these things unto this people, that they may be brought to a knowledge of that which is just and true” (18:34). The divine power that attends Ammon in his service helps him to show Lamoni deeper truths about God from which the Lamanites had been “cut off” for generations: that the Great Spirit — God — is not only real, but that he is in a very real sense “with” human beings (cf. “Immanuel” in Isaiah 7–8). This prepares Lamoni to be taught just how “with us” God is, i.e., in human flesh as Ammon teaches him Alma 18:36–39.

The divine “humanness” and “faith” motifs continue to build in Alma 19 until their climax in Alma 19:13–16. The Hebrew term ʼîš denotes both “man” and “husband.” Likewise, the word ʼiššâ denotes “woman” and “wife.” These terms are repeated in Alma 19:4–5 (“husband,” bis), 19:10, 12–13, 16 (“woman”/“women,” 4 times). The climax begins in Alma 19:12–13: “he stretched forth his hand unto the woman, and said: Blessed be the name of God, and blessed art thou. For as sure as thou livest, behold, I have seen my Redeemer; and he shall come forth, and be born of a woman, and he shall redeem all mankind who believe on his name.”

It is in the context of this critical statement that the narrator’s statement in Alma 19:16 is to be understood: “And it came to pass that they did call on the name of the Lord, in their might, even until they had all fallen to the earth, save it were one of the Lamanitish women, whose name was Abish, she having been converted unto the Lord for many years, on account of a remarkable vision of her father.” Abish (“Father is a man”) the “woman-servant” (19:28) plays the feminine counterpart to Ammon the “man” and “servant” and completes this miracle of faith (cf. Ether 12:15).

Conclusion

Like the “vision of her father” that converted Abish (Alma 19:16), whose name suggests the meaning “Father is a man,” the theophanies that converted Lamoni from the “tradition” of “his father” (Alma 18:5) and later his wife and father from the “traditions of their fathers”52 were all indeed “remarkable” visions. Whatever the exact content of these visions, they conveyed the doctrinal truth that was revealed many years earlier in the remarkable “vision” of their father Lehi and Nephi: that Jesus Christ, the Divine Warrior and “Eternal Father” (1 Nephi 11:21, Original Text), condescended to become “man” — i.e., to “come forth, and be born of a woman” and as Suffering Servant “redeem all mankind who believe on his name” (Alma 19:13).

The mention of the name Abish and the wordplay on her name in Alma 19:16 reinforces the foregoing narrative’s strong association of the effect of ancestral tradition (sometimes negative), and the importance of the doctrinal truth that the Jesus Christ, the Eternal Father of heaven and earth would not simply remain a spirit forever (contra Zoramite belief, Alma 31:15), but would become “man,” so that we might become “divine” not only like our Savior (the Eternal Father of heaven and earth), but also like our Heavenly Father who once was “man,” as was revealed to and by the prophet Joseph Smith.53 All of this should make us grateful for righteous fathers and mothers54 who pass on correct traditions to us, and more anxious to discard ancestral traditions that could inhibit or stop our eternal progress (see especially D&C 93:19, 39).

The author would like to thank Suzy Bowen, Jeff Bradshaw, Reva Bowen, and Ko’olina Mills.

Matthew L. Bowen was raised in Orem, Utah and graduated from Brigham Young University. He holds a PhD in Biblical Studies from the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC and is currently an Assistant Professor in Religious Education at Brigham Young University-Hawaii. He and his wife (the former Suzanne Blattberg) are the parents of three children: Zachariah, Nathan, and Adele.

1 Sariah (wife of Lehi; 1 Nephi 2:5; 5:1, 6; 8:14), Eve (the “mother of all living” [Genesis 3:20]; see 1 Nephi 5:11; 2 Nephi 2:18–19), Sarah (wife of Abraham; 2 Nephi 8:2), Mary (mother of Jesus; Mosiah 3:8; Alma 7:10), Abish the Lamanitess (Alma 19:16), and the “harlot” Isabel (Alma 39:3).

2 Brant A. Gardner, Second Witness: Analytical and Textual Commentary on the Book of Mormon, Volume 4: Alma (Salt Lake City, UT: Greg Kofford Books, 2007), 303.

3 Joseph’s careful spelling out of the names during the dictation of the text suggests that they were spelled out in the text. On Joseph’s dictation of the names and other matters, see Royal Skousen, “How Joseph Smith Translated the Book of Mormon: Evidence from the Original Manuscript,” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 7/1 (1998): 22–31.

4 Mosiah 15:4, Mosiah 16:15, Alma 11:38–39. See especially the original text of 1 Nephi 11:21 (see further below).

5 Isaiah 42:13; Hosea 2:16 [MT 2:18]; Mosiah 7:27; 13:34 read in light of Isaiah 53:1–3 (52:13–53:12, see further below).

6 I.e., containing a divine name or title. Theophoric names contain divine name or title elements.

7 Katie Heffelfinger (“‘My Father is King’: Chiefly Politics and the Rise and Fall of Abimelech,” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 33/3 [2009]: 277–292) argues that Gideon, in fact, accepts kingship even in the act of turning it down. Nephi seems to have done something similar in 2 Nephi 5:18: “And it came to pass that they would that I should be their king. But I, Nephi, was desirous that they should have no king; nevertheless, I did for them according to that which was in my power.”

8 See 1 Samuel 14:50–51; 26:5, 14; 2 Sam 2:8, 12; 3:23, 25, 28, 37; 1 Kgs 2:5, 32; 1 Chronicles 26:28.

9 Moshe Garsiel, Biblical Names: A Literary Study of Midrashic Derivations and Puns, trans. Phyllis Hackett (Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 1991), 191.

10 On the principle of fourfold restoration, see Exodus 22:1; Luke 19:8; D&C 98:26, 44, 47; 124:71. The Lucianic recension of the Septuagint has “sevenfold.”

11 See Francis Brown, S.R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, The Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson Publishers, 1996), 4, hereafter BDB.

12 Hans Bauer, “Die hebraischen Eigennamen als sprachliche Erkenntnisquelle,” Zeitschrift für die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 48 (1930): 75f; Ludwig Koehler and Walter Baumgartner, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 1:4.

13 BDB (p. 4) suggests “my father is a wanderer” based on the verbal root *šgg.

14 Garsiel, Biblical Names, 117.

15 Ibid.

16 Absolute proof of the scientific etymology of “Abish” is beyond reach, but this is also true of many biblical names, the scientific etymologies of which remain open to conjecture.

17 Paul Y. Hoskisson (personal communication, 2002). The etymology “Father is a man” or “Father of a man” is cited as the preferred etymology for “Abish” in the online Book of Mormon Onomasticon: https://onoma.lib.byu.edu/onoma/index.php/ABISH. Should one object to the idea that “Abish” is a Hebrew name, the Lamanites (like the Nephites) continued to use numerous Israelite (Hebrew and Egyptian) names in their culture (e.g., Lemuel [Alma 23:12], Ishmael, Aaron, etc.)

18 Midrashic components = the basic phonetic elements used to interpret or build meaning.

19 Compare Omni 1:17, which seems to suggest that the Nephite language remained comparatively uncorrupted (vis-à-vis the language of the Mulekites) during the time of Mosiah1, although even here we have to realistically allow for substantial changes in both the spoken and written Nephite languages. Although religious and liturgical language tends to be conservative (cf. Qur’anic Arabic [Classical Arabic]), the fact remains that languages exhibit substantial change, particularly after 500 years (compare early modern English to 21st century American English. And yet, they remain — at their roots — the same language. The events of Alma would have transpired about three generations later. Moroni records that the Nephites were still using a form of Hebrew during his time (see Mormon 9:33).

20 The fact that the name “Abish” is mentioned only once is not evidence that the narrator does not consider it important. For example, the name “Eve” is mentioned only twice (Genesis 3:20; 4:1) in the biblical account of the Creation, the Fall, and its aftermath (Genesis 1–11). Nobody would argue that Eve is an unimportant figure in this narrative or that her name is unimportant.

21 As Michael P. O’Connor (“The Human Characters’ Names in the Ugaritic Poems: Onomastic Eccentricity in Bronze-Age West Semitic and the Name Daniel in Particular,” in Biblical Hebrew in Its Northwest Semitic Setting: Typological and Historical Perspectives, ed. Steven E. Fassberg and Avi Hurvitz [Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2006], 270) notes, “The word play on the name ‘Moses’ has generally been evaluated as part of the literary texture of the Exodus story in which it is introduced, perhaps because of the distance between the Biblical Hebrew and the apparent real source [of the name ‘Moses’], Egyptian.” In other words, the originally Egyptian name Moses — mōšeh — functioning as a “pseudo-active” participle of Hebrew *mšy suggests the idea of “puller,” even though story suggests the meaning “pulled” (see Exodus 2:10). The form and sound of Moses as presented in the texts conveys the overarching idea of the Exodus story: that Moses — once pulled and saved from the water — is the Lord’s instrument in “pulling” and saving Israel out of Egypt through the Red Sea. I am suggesting that the name “Abish” serves an analogous, multivalent function in the Lamanite conversion narratives.

22 J. Gerald Janzen (“What’s in a Name? ‘Yahweh’ in Exodus 3 and the Wider Biblical Context,” Interpretation 33 [1979]: 229) observes: “So far as a proper understanding of the biblical narrative is concerned, it is as irrelevant as it is correct to observe that ‘Babel’ in Genesis 11 does not come from a root meaning ‘to confound’; or to observe that the name ‘Moses’s in Exodus 2 is not formed from a root meaning to draw out.”

23 O’Connor, “Human Characters’ Names,” 271.

24 Garsiel (Biblical Names, 98–126) devotes an entire chapter to the study of “tacit” wordplays involving biblical names that are accomplished with substitute words (synonyms, antonyms, metonyms, etc.) that bear little or no resemblance in sound to the name itself. The similarity in sound between ʼîš and nāšîm is, however, not entirely absent.

25 Matthew L. Bowen, “Internal Textual Evidence for the Egyptian Origin of Nephi's Name,” Insights 22/11 (2002): 2. On “Nephi” as the Egyptian word nfr and its late pronunciation, see John Gee, “A Note on the Name Nephi,” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 1/1 (1992): 189–91; John Gee, “Four Suggestions on the Origin of the Name Nephi,” in Pressing Forward with the Book of Mormon, ed. John W. Welch and Melvin J. Thorne (Provo, Utah: FARMS, 1999), 1–5.

26 Matthew L. Bowen, “Wordplay on the Name Enos,” Insights 26/3 (2006): 2; Matthew L. Bowen, “‘And There Wrestled a Man with Him’ (Genesis 32:24): Enos’s Adaptations of the Onomastic Wordplay of Genesis,” Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture 10 (2014): 151–160.

27 Alma 18:30–36 records how Ammon restored Lamoni and his household to this knowledge.

28 See, e.g., Mosiah 10:12; Alma 37:9; 60:32; Helaman 5:51; 15:4; cf. especially D&C 93:39.

29 See Daniel A. Ludlow, A Companion to Your Study of the Book of Mormon (Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book 1976), 207; see also Gardner, Second Witness, 4:302.

30 Cf. the vision of “just men made perfect” (Hebrews 12:23; D&C 76:69; 129:3).

31 Royal Skousen, Analysis of Textual Variants of the Book of Mormon, Part Three: Mosiah 17 — Alma 20 (Provo, UT: FARMS, 2006), 2010.

32 Gardner, Second Witness, 4:303.

33 Skousen, Analysis of Textual Variants of the Book of Mormon, 3:2010.

34 Texts like Numbers 23:19 and 1 Samuel 15:29 seem to de-anthropomorphize God and may reflect later (Deuteronomic or post-Deuteronomic) tradition. The divine warrior/redeemer texts do the opposite. The Hebrew gō’ēl (“kinsman redeemer”) was “kin” with the redeemed.

35 See Daniel Belnap, “‘I Will Contend with Them that Contend with Thee’: The Divine Warrior in Jacob’s Speech of 2 Nephi 6–10,” Journal of the Book of Mormon and Restoration Scripture 17/1–2 (2008) 20–39.

36 The title “Redeemer” (gōʼēl), which itself implies a kinship relationship between the redeemer and the redeemed, is a favorite title of Isaiah for the Divine Warrior (Isaiah 41:14; 43:14; 44:6, 24; 47:4; 48:17; 49:7, 26; 54:5, 8; 59:20; 60:16; 63:16). See also especially 1 Nephi 19:18, 23.

37 “God of our fathers” [ʼĕlōhê ʼăbōtēnû]: a title attested in the Hebrew Bible at Deuteronomy 26:7, 1 Chronicles 12:17; 2 Chronicles 20:6; Ezra 7:27; in the New Testament at Acts 3:13; 5:30; 22:14.

38 Cf. the contextually difficult Isaiah 63:9. The kjv renders the Hebrew: “in all their affliction he was afflicted,” a reading which follows the Qere tradition of the Masoretes (literally, in all their affliction, affliction was his). Cf. D&C 133:53: “In all their afflictions he was afflicted. And the angel of his presence saved them; and in his love, and in his pity, he redeemed them, and bore them, and carried them all the days of old.”

39 A wordplay on the ʾāb-/“Father” element in “Abraham.” Similar wordplay is evident in 1 Nephi 22:9: “And it shall also be of worth unto the Gentiles; and not only unto the Gentiles but unto all the house of Israel, unto the making known of the covenants of the Father of heaven unto Abraham, saying: In thy seed shall all the kindreds of the earth be blessed.”

40 Royal Skousen, ed., The Book of Mormon: The Earliest Text (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), 748.

41 A key indication of the influence of Isaiah 63 on the interpretation of Isaiah in the Book of Mormon is the use of the phrase “mighty to save” in 2 Nephi 31:9; Alma 7:14 and Alma 34:18.

42 Thomas Wayment, “The Hebrew Text of Alma 7:11,” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 14/1 (2005): 98–103, 130.

43 Belnap, “‘I Will Contend with Them that Contend with Thee,’” 20–39.

44 Martin Buber (“Leitwort Style in Pentateuch Narrative,” in Scripture and Translation [ed. Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig; trans. Lawrence Rosenwald and Everett Fox; ISBL; Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994] 114) coined the term Leitwort (“lead-word,” or “guiding word”) and defines it thus: “By Leitwort I understand a word or word root that is meaningfully repeated within a text or a sequence of texts or complex of texts; those who attend to these repetitions will find a meaning of the text revealed or clarified, or at any rate made more emphatic. As noted, what is repeated need not be a single word but can be a word root; indeed the diversity of forms strengthens the overall dynamic effect.” See further Martin Buber, ך״נתב ןונגס־יסופדב םינויע ׃ארקמ לש וכרד (Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1964), 284.

45 See Matthew L. Bowen, Not Partaking of the Fruit: Its Generational Consequences and Its Remedy,” in The Things Which My Father Saw: Approaches to Lehi’s Dream and Nephi’s Vision: The 40th Annual Brigham Young University Sidney B. Sperry Symposium, ed. Daniel L. Belnap, Gaye Strathearn, and Stanley A. Johnson (Salt Lake City/Provo, UT: RSC and Deseret Book, 2011), 248–53.

46 Following Royal Skousen, Analysis of Textual Variants of the Book of Mormon, Part One: Title Page, Witness Statements, 1 Nephi 1–2 Nephi 10 (Provo, UT: FARMS, 2004), 230–33. In 1 Nephi 11:18–32, the phrase “the Son of” is a clarifying gloss. See also Mosiah 15:4; 16:15; Alma 11:38–39. I have chosen to follow the original text because the addition of “the Son of” as an attempt to maintain doctrinal clarity (over against classical trinitarianism and the Catholic emphasis on Mary as “mother of God” in a classical Trinitarian sense) further obscures a distinct Book of Mormon Christology that can been from Nephi to Moroni that “Jesus is the Christ, the Eternal God” (see Book of Mormon Title-page). See also Mosiah 15:4; 16:15, Alma 11:38–39, etc.

47 On the wordplay on Ammon’s name evident in this passage, see Matthew L. Bowen, “The Faithfulness of Ammon,” Religious Educator 15/2 (2014), 64–89.

48 See entry in Hans Wehr, A Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic, ed. J. Milton Cowan, 4th ed. (Urbana, IL: Spoken Language Services, 1994), 370–371. Compare rubūbiya = “divinity, deity, godship”; rabbāni = “divine; pertaining to God; … divine things.”

49 On “knowing” or “perceiving” someone’s “thoughts” as a function of the Spirit, see also 1 Chronicles 28:9; Job 42:2; Psalm 139:23; Daniel 2:30; Luke 5:22; 9:47; 11:17; Jacob 2:5; Mosiah 24:12; Alma 10:17; 43:48; Helaman 9:41; 3 Nephi 28:6; D&C 6:16; cf. Job 21:27.

50 John Gee, personal communication. Chthonic denotes “subterranean.” That Lamoni’s religion involved some kind of cave sanctuaries is perhaps suggested by Ammon’s statement in Alma 26:3 that the Lamanites were brought out of the “darkest abyss” into the “marvelous light of God.” Ammon’s words recall Alma the Younger’s description of his own conversion from Lamanite-like unbelief (Mosiah 27:29; cf. especially 27:8).

51 See Bowen, “Not Partaking of the Fruit,” 248–253.

52 Mosiah 10:12; Alma 37:9; 60:32; Helaman 5:51; 15:4.

53 See the “King Follett Discourse,” in Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, comp. Joseph Fielding Smith (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1976), 342–362.

54 Alma 56:47–48; 57:21.

Father Is a Man: The Remarkable Mention of the Name Abish in Alma 19:16 and Its Narrative Context

Matthew L. Bowen

In what is surely one of the saddest tales in the Bible, Jephthah vows that if granted success in battle, he will sacrifice the first person to cross the threshold of his home upon his return. Tragically, it is his only child, a daughter, who hurries out to meet him (Judges 11:29-34). New Testament scholar Mary Ann Beavis shows that this harrowing text has many similarities to the story of Jairus and his daughter in the Gospel of Mark (5:21-24 and 35-43).1 Mark’s story, however, has a joyous outcome: Jairus intercedes for his daughter, and Jesus raises her from the dead. Beavis calls this a motif inversion,2 meaning the text in Mark establishes similarities to Jephthah’s story to encourage the audience to compare the events, only to reverse course and have the story end on a very different note. In other words, Mark suggests correspondences but then shows how, when the story plays out in Jesus’ life, it has a dramatically dissimilar ending. Beavis also discusses another widely recognized example of motif inversion in Mark: in the story of the calming of the sea (Mark 4:35-41), there are many echoes of the story of Jonah (1-4). Jesus, like Jonah, is asleep in a boat and is awakened by questions when a terrifying storm threatens. But Jesus, of course, is no Jonah. The motif is inverted as Jesus, who initially parallels Jonah, takes on the role of God, and, being the only one who can, calms the storm.

Expanding on Beavis’s analysis, I propose that Mark’s practice of motif inversion evinces a clear theological purpose: to show that Jesus is the one who literally “redeems” history, as biblical events are partially re-enacted in his ministry but end differently because of his presence and power. Thus the earlier narrative is redeemed in a most literal sense. This sets the pattern for Jesus’ redeeming actions and his unique role as Redeemer. Mark shows how Jesus’ life redeems the mistakes and errors of history: Jonah is now Jesus; Jephthah is now Jairus (“The Resurrection,” 61).

In this essay, I will discuss another example of an inverted motif — or, as I prefer to call it, a redemptive reading -in this section of the Gospel of Mark.3 I will show how the story of the woman with the hemorrhage of blood (Mark 5:25-34) redeems the story of the fall of Eve (Genesis 3) by paralleling and then inverting that text.4

There are two potential objections to reading Mark 5:25-34 as the symbolic redemption of the Fall; I will address both before proceeding. First, it is correct that the Fall is not a major concern of the Hebrew Bible, with no obvious references to it outside of the first few chapters of Genesis. But this does not imply that Mark had no interest in it. Rather, during the first century, there was renewed attention to this text: “Jewish literature from 200 bce to 200 ce reflects an interest in Eve and Adam far beyond that found in the Hebrew Scriptures. … [These works] retell, expand, and comment on Genesis 1-5.” 5 So reading Mark 5:25-34 as a commentary on Jesus’ relationship to the Fall reflects then-current concerns, since it was written at a time of much interest in Genesis 3.6 So despite the lack of references to the Fall in the Hebrew Bible, the story was examined closely in the centuries around Jesus’ lifetime and may well have been an interest of Mark. The second objection is this: since modern LDS interpretations of the Fall are generally positive and optimistic (especially concerning Eve’s role7), there is no need for a “redemptive” reading in the first place. However, this positive view of Eve was certainly not common in the first century and so there is a need for a redemptive reading of the story in its own context. And the redemptive reading should still be of interest to LDS readers, since it shows Jesus in the role of Redeemer and has much to say about the meaning of the Fall, its consequences, and Jesus’ relationship to it.

The Story of the Hemorrhaging Woman Re-Enacts and Redeems the Fall

With those objections addressed, I now turn to the stories themselves. Mark’s account of the woman with the hemorrhage has extensive verbal parallels to the story of the Fall: the texts share nearly a dozen terms,8 and the same concepts, if not the same words, are found in many other instances.9 But more significant than the shared vocabulary are the thematic associations. Because menstruation was regarded as one of the results of Eve’s sin10 and was linked with sin in general (Lamentations 1:17 and Ezekiel 36:17-18),11 the hemorrhaging woman is associated with Eve. More broadly, the woman’s condition of ceaseless menstrual hemorrhaging is a magnification of the normal female condition. These associations make the hemorrhaging woman the ideal narrative re-creation of Eve in her fallen state.

The plot of Mark’s story tracks the plot of the Fall closely. In both, the thought process behind the woman’s decision-making is narrated (Genesis 3:6 and Mark 5:28); the audience knows what each woman is thinking as she takes the initiative to act in a difficult situation. This is unusual for any biblical text and even more so for a female character. Further, both stories feature a transgressive touch: Eve is commanded not to touch the fruit (Genesis 3:3),12 and the hemorrhaging woman must not touch Jesus.13 And just as Eve’s touch leads ultimately to death, the hemorrhaging woman’s touch causes a delay during which time Jairus’s daughter dies (Mark 5:35). In Mark, many people are touching Jesus, but the touch of the bleeding woman is distinct (Mark 5:30-31). It parallels Eve’s touch, which led to unique consequences and similarly ushered in death. Because the hemorrhaging woman is most likely standing,14 it is possible that she touches Jesus’ side or ribs. While speculative, this would be another point of contact with the Genesis text and suggests that, since Eve came from Adam’s rib, the woman in Mark’s story is re-establishing contact with the source of her creation, this time in the form of the mortal Jesus.

In the Genesis text, Adam is passive. In the hemorrhaging woman’s story, Jesus is similarly passive. So Mark’s audience assumes that Jesus will be filling the role of Adam15 since Jesus’ otherwise puzzling passivity suggests the association. After the transgressive touch, the women hide from the divine presence in both texts (Genesis 3:8 and Mark 5:30 [implied]). Then the women are questioned about their behavior: in the garden, God asks whether Eve has eaten (Genesis 3:13), and in Mark, Jesus asks who has touched him (5:30). The focus of both passages is on the consequences of the women’s actions. Because a woman’s initiative was the catalyst for the Fall, it is crucial that Mark’s story of redemption from the Fall also occurs by the initiative of a woman. Indeed, one of the things redeemed in this story is woman’s initiative.

In addition to these extensive similarities, there are profound differences between the stories. These divergences allow Mark’s story to “redeem” the Fall. So while both stories feature a transgressive touch which changes the nature of the woman’s bodily experience and results in new knowledge for her, the change in Mark’s text reverses the change in the garden: Eve’s touch results in her entry into the fallen world and the end of the perfected state of her body, while the hemorrhaging woman’s touch results in her body returning to a (more) perfected state.

Another inversion occurs in the response to questioning: after the Fall, when Adam is queried, he focuses on Eve, and when Eve is questioned, she focuses on the serpent (Genesis 3:9-13). There is a pattern of avoiding responsibility by ascribing responsibility to someone else. In contrast, the hemorrhaging woman told the whole truth when she was questioned (Mark 5:32). Her response shows that this time, “Eve” (in the role of the hemorrhaging woman) took complete ownership of her own actions, and this, in terms of the narrative, leads to Jesus’ claiming her as his daughter (Mark 5:34). The refusal to accept responsibility is one of the hallmarks of the Fall. The hemorrhaging woman inverts this plot point by wholeheartedly accepting responsibility for her actions. Being Jesus’ daughter means that the woman has a closer relationship to him than she previously did; this also inverts the Fall where Eve becomes estranged from the presence of God as a result of her action. Through Mark’s story — through the woman’s accepting responsibility — the breach in the relationship between the woman and the divine is healed.

Results of the Redemptive Reading: New Roles

The final outcome of each text also features an inversion. In Mark, the wording suggests that the woman came back when questioned, implying that she had already moved on (Mark 5:33). She had left Jesus’ presence, which is analogous to leaving the garden and the presence of God. But Jesus invited the now-healed woman back into his presence. This is in contrast to Eve, who is cast out from the presence of the Lord for her action (Genesis 3:23). This inversion points to Jesus’ ability to welcome the woman symbolically back into the presence of God. Similarly, the story of the Fall ends with serious consequences and curses; Mark’s story ends with a blessing: “go in peace” (5:34). The hemorrhaging woman’s “curse” was menstruation as a symbol of identification with Eve and with sin, but it is now gone. The peace with which Jesus commands her to go forth can be understood as the opposite of the enmity toward and from Satan that resulted from the Fall (Genesis 3:15). Jesus literally redeems the story of the Fall through his interaction with the healed woman.

A key inversion occurs in Jesus’ role: when he becomes the interlocutor and the one who pronounces a blessing (instead of the expected curse), he is no longer filling the role of Adam but rather the role of God, since in the garden it is God who asks the questions and pronounces the curses. As in the story of the stilling of the storm — where Jesus shifted from filling Jonah’s role to filling God’s role — Mark first encouraged the audience to think of Jesus in the role of Adam but then pivoted so that Jesus is in the role of God. Mark expects the audience to learn from the shift: Jesus is not merely the new Adam; he also fills the role of God. Mark is making a profound statement about Jesus’ identity. Further, this shift makes sense of a disjuncture between the stories: the Fall ends with Eve’s desire for her husband (Genesis 3:16), but the story of the hemorrhaging woman begins with her desire for Jesus (in the role of Adam). Mark’s story ends with the woman’s assuming the role not of wife but of daughter, as Jesus addresses her as his daughter (Mark 5:34); Jesus’ role in the story has shifted from Adam to God.16

The woman’s status as Jesus’ daughter is key to Mark’s story. Just as the Fall reconfigures Eve’s relationship with God, the story of the hemorrhaging woman realigns the woman’s relationship to Jesus. Much as Adam named his wife Eve, this story has Jesus name the woman his daughter; the name gives her a new identity (especially since she is not otherwise named in the story). The designation of daughter echoes earlier stories in Mark when Jesus called the palsied man his son (Mark 2:5) and when Jesus claimed not his biological kin but rather those who listened to him as his family (Mark 3:31-35). The type of woman who is a part of Jesus’ new family is one who, like the hemorrhaging woman, is willing to violate social conventions and to respond to Jesus’ invitation to speak up and testify even in the center of attention. At his baptism, Jesus was declared the son of God (Mark 1:11); this woman is now, in effect, God’s grand-daughter. And just as Jesus’ faithful decision to be baptized led to the declaration of sonship, her faith led to this declaration.

The hierarchical relationship between men and women is another motif that is inverted in these texts. One of the consequences of the Fall is Adam’s power over Eve (Genesis 3:16). In Mark, that dynamic is reversed as power flows out of the passive and unaware “Adam” into “Eve” as a result of her decision to access that power. The power Jesus holds is accessible to the woman even without his specific foreknowledge. This is another way in which the story of the Fall is redeemed in Mark’s text; inequality between the genders (which, in Genesis 3, is one of the characteristics of the fallen world) is overcome. Similarly, the pain that Eve experiences as a result of the Fall (Genesis 3:16) is inverted as the hemorrhaging woman’s suffering ends as a result of her encounter with Jesus. There is also another inversion regarding the women’s relationships to the Adam/Jesus figure: Eve’s touch leads to the contagion of sin and death eventually being transmitted to Adam. In Mark’s story, the woman’s touch also should convey impurity to Jesus, but precisely the opposite happens. This time, the woman’s touch brings life and healing to herself instead of sin and death to others. This inversion highlights Jesus’ unique nature by illustrating that his relationship to the Law of Moses is different from that of any other person. He does not fall as Adam did; instead, he lifts the hemorrhaging woman from her fallen state as she accesses his power.

The Hemorrhaging Woman’s Body Parallels and Prefigures Jesus’ Body

And yet her suffering plays a very important role in the story: it permits the hemorrhaging woman to be a type and shadow of Jesus, particularly the suffering that will be part of the Atonement. Mark has taken special pains to encourage the audience to see the woman’s suffering as a prototype of Jesus’ own suffering through verbal similarities: the same Greek adverb (translated as “many”) is used to describe both of their sufferings (Mark 5:26 and 8:31); the same Greek verb for “suffer” is used for both of them (and for no one else) (Mark 5:26, 8:31, 9:12); the same Greek root word describes their suffering (Mark 5:29 [kjv: “plague”] and Mark 10:34 [kjv: “scourge”]); and the word “body” is used for both of them (Mark 5:29 and Mark 14:22). Additionally, there are significant thematic similarities. Due to purity laws and social taboo, the hemorrhaging women was considered shameful and embarrassing; similarly, Jesus’ torture and crucifixion as a criminal would have been considered an embarrassment. Blood pours out from both the woman and Jesus (Mark 14:24); associating Jesus’ blood with menstrual blood would have emphasized the theme of embarrassment. Also, both the woman and Jesus instantly know in their bodies that something has happened with the same Greek verb used for their “knowing” (Mark 5:29 and Mark 50). This emphasis on knowing is particularly significant given the key role that knowledge plays in the Fall where the concern is expressed that the humans will become like the gods who know good from evil and where Eve eats from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

These robust similarities imply that Mark wants the audience to think of the woman — and particularly the woman’s suffering body — as foreshadowing Jesus and his suffering body. She is a type of Christ, and her suffering is a type of his suffering. The fact that she is female and that her suffering is a uniquely female form of suffering amplifies the unexpectedness of the comparison. The female body is redeemed as it is allowed to stand proxy for Jesus’ body, which stands proxy for all bodies.

Additional insight into the concept of virtue (or power) going out of Jesus comes from the Prophet Joseph Smith: “the virtue here referred to is the spirit of life; and a man who exercises great faith in administering to the sick … is liable to become weakened.”17 Joseph Smith taught this concept when he became “pale and [lost] strength” after performing a healing, suggesting that physical exhaustion can be the result of exercising spiritual power. So perhaps Jesus’ awareness that power had gone out of him was tied to an awareness of his own physical depletion. Further, it is reasonable to think that the hemorrhaging woman would have had anemia-like symptoms and would therefore have been pale and weak. Mark does not mention any of this, but we might speculate that the woman became physically more vigorous at precisely the same moment when Jesus’ strength faded. This would be another instance where the woman’s body and Jesus’ body are paralleled; it perhaps also serves as a foreshadowing of the Atonement when Jesus’ body would experience the pains and sins of all other human bodies.

The parallel between their bodies is an important underpinning to the redemptive reading of the Fall: because of the association of menstruation with sin (and thus a fallen state), the hemorrhaging woman is redeemed by Jesus’ actions. When Jesus says that her faith has saved her (Mark 5:34),18 this symbolizes being saved from the effects of the Fall. One of the consequences of the Fall is that Adam’s body will eventually return to dust (Genesis 3:19). Jesus is the first person for whom this does not apply so Adam’s curse ends with him. This is true for Jesus in other ways as the feeding miracles show (Mark 6:30-44 and 8:1-10), he can acquire bread in a manner other than by the sweat of his brow. Similarly, Eve’s curse will symbolically end with the woman. The fact that the curses end for both of them makes sense of the parallels between the woman’s body and Jesus’ body.

Because the woman’s body foreshadows Jesus’ suffering, the story powerfully affirms the idea that all human bodies are made in God’s image. A compelling inversion occurs here as the end of the woman’s uncontrollable flow of blood happens in the same moment when Jesus experiences an uncontrollable flow of power — the very power which heals her. There is a sense she exerts some control over Jesus by drawing on the power he holds (compare Ether 3:20 and D&C 82:10) at the same time that Jesus exerts control over her by healing her. This shared power — particularly when read as the corrective to Adam’s rule over Eve after the Fall — is another of Mark’s inversions. And since under the Law of Moses, any sort of bodily discharge rendered the person unclean, for Jesus’ discharge of power to be evidence of strength points to his unique relationship to the Law of Moses. Inasmuch as this story suggests a similarity between blood and power, it establishes the groundwork for the shedding of Jesus’ own blood to be viewed as the source of his power.

The parallels between the woman’s suffering and Jesus’ suffering require the audience to think anew about the symbolism of blood. In the Hebrew Bible, the blood contained the life force (Leviticus 17:10-14), leading to the ritual prohibitions related to blood. The story of the hemorrhaging woman invites the audience to re-examine the symbolism of blood since her hemorrhaging impedes her life and her life-giving ability. At the same time, this rethinking of the meaning of blood sets the stage for the shedding of Jesus’ blood when his shed blood leads to the possibility of eternal life. The story of the hemorrhaging woman is thus an important prelude to understanding the symbolism of Jesus’ blood.

Relationship to the Story of the Raising of Jairus’s Daughter

It also works hand-in-hand with the story that literally surrounds it in Mark’s Gospel. The narrative of the raising of Jairus’s daughter begins in Mark 5:21-24 but is interrupted by the story of the hemorrhaging woman before concluding in Mark 5:35-43. Scholars have long recognized that Mark frequently “sandwiches” stories in order to encourage the audience to compare them. Because the hemorrhaging woman’s story is enclosed by the story of the raising of Jairus’s daughter, both of the main effects of the Fall — sin and death, or spiritual death and physical death — are done away with in this section of the text. And just as the hemorrhaging woman prefigures Jesus’ suffering, the girl brought back to life prefigures his resurrection. (Much common vocabulary shared by both accounts emphasizes this point19) . It is significant that the body of a young girl, which is the proxy for the body of Jesus, that is ultimately the proxy for everyone else’s bodies. With both the hemorrhaging woman and the raised girl, Mark asks the reader to re-imagine the function and worth of female bodies. Through the “sandwiching” and the redemptive reading, Mark makes clear that Jesus brings relief from spiritual and physical death to all people.

The compelling combination of similarities and inversions between the hemorrhaging woman and Eve strongly implies that Mark intended for this text, as with the stilling of the storm and the raising of Jairus’ daughter, to function as a redemptive reading. This is a clever literary device that rewards the audience’s close attention with greater insight into each story. But more importantly, it allows form to follow function: the form of the story is to redeem the mistakes in the biblical story (made by Eve, Jephthah, and Jonah), and the function is to introduce the idea of Jesus as the redeemer. Mark teaches that through Jesus the effects of the Fall can be overcome. By showcasing a woman — and a woman with a uniquely female problem — the story emphasizes that Jesus’ ability to overcome the effects of the Fall extends to all people. By permitting this hemorrhaging woman to take on Eve’s role, Mark’s text shows that the effects of the Fall are now symbolically overcome through Jesus.

Conclusions

As one scholar described it, “ancient man reacted to the phenomena of menstruation with a horror that seems to us grotesque and hysterical.”20 So a story that centered on a woman’s unceasing menstruation would have been embarrassing for everyone involved. One imagines Mark’s audience squirming as they listen to the account of Jesus requiring the now-healed woman to describe to the entire crowd how she “felt in her body that she was healed” (Mark 5:29). The fact that Mark included this story in his record challenged the then-current (and, to some degree, still-extant) discomfort with the normal functions of the female body. This story requires male audience members to be like Jesus in showing concern for (and no discomfort with) these uniquely female concerns. The effect (if not the purpose) of the purity regulations related to menstruation in the Law of Moses was to severely restrict female activity and public presence; the hemorrhaging woman should not be in a crowd and should not be touching Jesus. Yet Jesus not only permits her touch but requires her to take a more public position than she herself was willing to by speaking to the entire crowd about her personal situation. This story — as a vehicle to teach about Jesus’ power, the Fall, and his Atonement that makes it possible for humans to overcome the Fall — profoundly challenges Mark’s audience.

Julie M. Smith graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a BA in English and from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California, with an MA in Biblical Studies. She is on the executive board of the Mormon Theology Seminar. Julie is married to Derrick Smith; they live near Austin, Texas, where she homeschools their three children. She also blogs for Times & Seasons (www.timesandseasons.org), where she is the book review editor. She is the author of Search, Ponder, and Pray: A Guide to the Gospels (http://gregkofford.com/products/jsmith-gospels).

1 Similar to Jairus, Jephthah (a judge) is also a prominent religious leader. Both Jephthah and Jairus are distraught over the deaths of their daughters; both fathers are met with noise and chaos when they return home. But Jairus intercedes to reverse the death of his daughter while Jephthah's foolishness seals his daughter's fate. (Jairus, perhaps not coincidentally, shares the name of the judge who served immediately before Jephthah; this may explain the inclusion of his name in the account at a time when naming individuals involved with healing miracles was uncommon.)

2 Mary Ann Beavis, “The Resurrection of Jephthah’s Daughter: Judges 11:34-40 and Mark 5:21-24, 35-42,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 72, no. 1 (January 2010): 46-62.

3 Thus every miracle in Mark 4:35-5:43 is a redemptive reading of a story from the Hebrew Bible: Mark 4:35-41 redeems Jonah; Mark 5:1-20 resonates with Exodus 14-15 as the destruction of the swine — likely the food supply for the Roman army — reenacts the drowning of Pharaoh’s army; and Mark 5:21-43 echoes Genesis 2-3. Admittedly, the allusion to Exodus 14-15 in Mark 5:1-20 is more subtle, perhaps because of its Gentile setting.

4 There is a danger of “parallelomania” that needs to be kept in check when relationships between texts are suggested. Throughout, this paper seeks to show that the weight of evidence supports the suggested parallels; extensive shared vocabulary as well as shared themes will be examined. Parallels will be shown (1) to operate the same way in multiple stories since, in each case, the texts first parallel and then invert each other, and (2) to have consistent theological meaning as Jesus is shown to invert and then redeem history.

5 5 Kristen E. Kvam, Linda S. Schearing, and Valarie H. Ziegler, Eve and Adam: Jewish, Christian and Muslim Readings on Genesis and Gender (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1999), 41.

6 While it is impossible to know whether any of these texts related to the Fall were known to Jesus, to Mark, and/or to his audience, it is true that some themes from these writings are mirrored in Mark's account. For example, the Apocalypse of Moses relates the story of the Fall from the perspective of Eve and includes the Lord’s telling Eve that the time will come when she will say, “Lord, Lord, save me.” There is some thematic overlap with Mark's story in which the woman seeks healing from the Lord. See Kvam, Eve and Adam, 62.

7 See, e.g., Dallin H. Oaks, “The Great Plan of Happiness,” Ensign, November 1993, noting especially the sources that he cites in the fifteenth paragraph.

8 Shared vocabulary between Mark 5 and the Greek translation (the Septuagint, or LXX) of Genesis 3 includes the words “woman” (Genesis 3:1 and Mark 5:25), “all” (Genesis 3:1 [kjv: “any”] and Mark 5:26), “heard” (Genesis 3:8 and Mark 5:27), “knowing” (Genesis 3:5 and Mark 5:29 [kjv: “felt”]), “touch” (Genesis 3:3 and Mark 5:28, 30, and 31), “see” (Genesis 3:6 and Mark 5:32), “done” (Genesis 3:13 and Mark 5:32), “fear” (Genesis 3:10 and Mark 5:33), “happen” (Genesis 3:22 [kjv: “become”] and Mark 5:33), and “told” (Genesis 3:13 and Mark 5:33).

9 Both passages refer to clothing (see Genesis 3:21 and Mark 5:28), hiding (see Genesis 3:10 and Mark 5:31 [implied]), walking (see Genesis 3:8 and Mark 5:24), becoming aware (see Genesis 3:7 and Mark 5:29), seeing/looking (see Genesis 3:6 and Mark 5:32), and children/daughters (see Genesis 3:15-16 and Mark 5:34).

10 See Joel Marcus, Mark 1-8 (New York: Doubleday, 2002), 358.

11 The purity laws in Leviticus 15 and 18 teach that a menstruating woman is impure and that impurity extends to anything that she touches; while there is a distinction between sin and impurity, the lines often blurred.

12 Note that the original commandment in Genesis 2:16 did not prohibit touching the fruit, but Eve’s restatement of the commandment did.

13 Her bleeding rendered her and anyone she touched unclean; see Leviticus 15:19.

14 Many readers, including most artists, imagine the woman kneeling; this is unlikely since she could have been trampled by the crowd and would have been unable to get close enough to touch. She was probably walking and therefore would have touched him on the shoulder, arm, or back. Readers may be interpreting Mark under the influence of Luke 8:44 where the woman touches the edge of Jesus’ hem, but this is not how Mark tells the story. See Richard W. Swanson, “Moving Bodies and Translating Scripture: Interpretation and Incarnation,” Word & World 31, no. 3 (June 1, 2011): 273.

15 The idea of Jesus as the “new Adam” is also found in 1 Corinthians 15:45.

16 Although, interestingly, there is also a sense that Eve is Adam’s “daughter” inasmuch as she was birthed from his side; see Genesis 2:21.

17 Joseph Smith, Jr., History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, ed. B. H. Roberts, 2d ed. 7 vols. (Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1946-50), 5:303.

18 The verb used here can refer to physical healing as well as to spiritual salvation.

19 Many similarities tie the story of the raising of Jairus’s daughter to the story of Jesus’ resurrection: (1) they are the only two instances in Mark’s Gospel when someone is raised from the dead; (2) the same word translated as “rise” (Greek: egeiro) in 5:41 is used in Mark 16:6 to describe Jesus’ rising; (3) in both stories, Jesus is mocked (Mark 5:40 and 14:65); (4) the word for “astonishment” (Greek: ekstasis) is used in Mark only for the reaction to the girl’s raising and the reaction to Jesus’ raising (Mark 5:42 and 16:8); and (5) in Aramaic, “talitha” can refer to a lamb, which further encourages the association between the girl and Jesus. (Although Mark does not use the symbolism of the lamb to directly refer to Jesus [compare John 1:29], it is probably implicit in the links between the Passover and the Last Supper.)

20 Β. J. Bamberger, “Defilement by Discharge from the Sex Organs,” in The Torah: A Modern Commentary (New York: Union of American Hebrew Congregations, 1981), 849.

A Redemptive Reading of Mark 5:25-34

Julie M. Smith

Abstract: The Book of Mormon Critical Text Project, under the editorship of Royal Skousen, began in 1988 and is now nearing completion. In 2001, facsimile transcripts of the two Book of Mormon manuscripts (volumes 1 and 2 of the critical text) were published by the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS). From 2004 to 2009 the six books of volume 4 of the critical text, Analysis of Textual Variants of the Book of Mormon, were published, also by FARMS. Parts 1 and 2 of volume 3 of the critical text, The History of the Text of the Book of Mormon, will be published in early 2015. These two parts will describe all the grammatical editing that the Book of Mormon text has undergone, from 1829 up to the present. When all six parts of volume 3 of the critical text have been published, volume 5 of the critical text, A Complete Electronic Collation of the Book of Mormon, will be released. Within the next couple years, the Joseph Smith Papers will publish photographs of the two Book of Mormon manuscripts, along with transcriptions based on volumes 1 and 2 of the critical text. Nearly all of the work of the project has involved the knowledge and periodic involvement of the Scriptures Committee of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The project itself, however, remains independent of the Church, and none of its findings have involved any ecclesiastical approval or endorsement.

In this paper I provide a history of the Book of Mormon Critical Text Project, beginning 27 years ago and nearing completion. My goal here is to identify the major results and achievements of this project.

In the mid-1980s, the first critical text of the Book of Mormon appeared. Under the editorship of Robert (Bob) Smith, the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS) produced the first critical text. But this critical text was preliminary in most respects.

In March 1988, at the Deseret Language and Linguistic Society (DLLS) annual meeting at Brigham Young University (BYU), I organized a symposium on the FARMS critical text. Participants were John (Jack) Welch, Lyle Fletcher, and myself. In my presentation, I proposed to do a second critical text, one that would rely on clear photographs of the manuscripts and a computerized collation of the manuscripts and editions.

The first goal of this new project was to get access to the basic textual sources. In May 1988, two months after the DLLS meeting, I met with Jack Welch, John Sorenson, and Noel Reynolds — the executive committee of FARMS at the time — and they agreed to support me in doing a second critical text. Jack agreed to see about arranging with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the LDS Church) to get the best possible photographs for studying the original manuscript. A few days later, I received on loan from the LDS Church Historical Department a set of black-and-white ultraviolet photographs of the original manuscript. Most of these photographs had been taken around 1950. Getting permanent access to these photographs ended up as the crucial step in establishing the independence of this project. During the summer I began using the photos to make a transcript of the original manuscript. At the same time, I arranged for paid research assistants to make a second, independent transcript of the manuscript.

During that same summer, I also began selecting the editions of the Book of Mormon for which electronic versions would be produced. Larry Draper, then the librarian at the LDS Church Historical Department, played an instrumental role in gaining access to most of the editions. Under the direction of Mel Smith at the Humanities Research Center at BYU, about 15 editions were scanned. One was electronically keyed in. The rest were early 1900 editions that were visually examined for differences. In all, 21 editions have been put into electronic format. Fifteen are LDS editions, from the first edition in 1830 to the current LDS edition, dating from 1981. (The newly released 2013 edition is a minor variant of the 1981 edition and will not be collated.) Five editions are RLDS editions (from the first RLDS edition in 1874 to a modern-English edition published in 1966). And finally, there is the privately published James Wright edition, printed in 1858 in New York City. All these electronic versions have been proofed at least twice.

Later, in the fall of 1988, Jack Welch arranged for the RLDS Church Archives to loan the project a large photographic reproduction of the printer’s manuscript. (The RLDS Church — the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints — has now been renamed the Community of Christ.) An independent transcript of this manuscript was also made by paid research assistants.

The transcripts of both the original and printer’s manuscripts were keyed in directly, working strictly from the photographs themselves. I specifically decided that the transcripts would never be produced by correcting an already keyed-in electronic version of some other early text, such as the 1830 edition or the printer’s manuscript (electronic versions for both of these already existed but were unreliable). Later, the two transcripts of each manuscript were checked against each other and differences reconciled. Since then, the transcripts have been checked several times by myself and other paid research assistants.

The next step was getting access to the actual manuscripts, including newly-discovered fragments of the original manuscript. In the fall of 1990, after completing the initial transcript for the printer’s manuscript, I realized that I needed to examine the actual document and compare my transcript against the printer’s manuscript itself. Ron Romig, archivist for the RLDS Church, prepared the way by arranging for the manuscript to be brought from the Kansas City bank vault that it was being stored in. Our visit to Independence, Missouri, was scheduled for April 1991. Ron and my wife Sirkku did the physical examination of the manuscript, while I checked the transcript. Seeing the actual manuscript made a huge difference. Photographs do not always tell the truth, especially black-and-white ones. Originally, we had planned a week-long visit, but I soon realized that the work would take longer, so we ended up spending two weeks in Independence. Even that was barely adequate.

Later that summer, I made several visits to the Wilford Wood Museum in Bountiful, Utah. Bob Smith, in the first critical edition, had noted that the museum had some “unknown very small fragments” of the original manuscript. After viewing the fragments, a lump of unreadable pieces of paper wrapped in cellophane, I enlisted the help of Robert Espinosa (then head of conservation at BYU’s Harold B. Lee Library) and David Hawkinson (then the photographer for the Museum of Art at BYU), and we arranged with the Wilford Wood family to conserve and photograph the fragments at the Harold B. Lee Library.

On September 30, 1991, we began a three-week period of intense work on the fragments. Robert Espinosa, with the help of his two assistant conservators, Catherine Bell and Pamela Barrios, separated the fragments. After being humidified, unfolded, and flattened, the fragments were photographed by David Hawkinson. Black-and-white ultraviolet photography proved the most successful in bringing out the faded ink on the fragments. Robert also identified the paper type for each fragment, except for the very smallest ones. Finally, the fragments were encapsulated in Mylar and returned to the Wilford Wood family. These fragments are from six different places in the original manuscript. They come from 29 leaves (or 58 pages) of the manuscript and account for two percent of the text.

Later that year Brent Ashworth brought in his fragment from Alma 60 to be conserved and photographed at the Harold B. Lee Library. At that time we also examined three different forgeries of fragments of the original manuscript that Brent had acquired from Mark Hofmann.

By 1992 I realized that what I needed was a set of color photographs of the printer’s manuscript, so I arranged for a second visit to Independence in October 1992. My brother Nevin Skousen (a professional photographer, now deceased) photographed the entire manuscript at the RLDS Library. Later that month, with the assistance of Ron Romig, two sets of prints were made in Orem, Utah, one of which was loaned to the critical text project.

Two years later, I arranged for a one-week visit to Independence so that Robert Espinosa could make a detailed comparison of the paper types of both manuscripts. The LDS Church and the Wilford Wood family provided samples of small fragments from the original manuscript so that an on-site comparison could be made.

And one year later, in 1995, the Ada Cheney fragments of the original manuscript were conserved and photographed at the Harold B. Lee Library. These fragments come from two leaves in Alma 58–60. Several years later, one additional fragment in this group was photographed.

Also during this whole period, from 1993 to 1997, I was comparing the initial transcript of the original manuscript against the actual intact sheets of the original manuscript, as well as many fragments, at the LDS Church Historical Department in Salt Lake City. There were also numerous attempts to rephotograph some parts of the manuscript, but this proved largely unsuccessful. Later, with the help of Gene Ware of the School of Technology at BYU, selected parts of the original manuscript were examined using multispectral imaging. In 1998, Gene was also able to do multispectral imaging for selected parts of the printer’s manuscript. This additional examination of the printer’s manuscript occurred at the Church Historical Department, where the manuscript was being conserved for the Community of Christ.

Throughout this period, I spent considerable time hunting for additional fragments of the original manuscript, especially the Joseph Summerhays fragment, a half leaf from 1 Nephi 14–15. I also made a visit to Florida to check out the provenance of the Ruth Smith fragment (from 2 Nephi 4–5), now held by the LDS Church. And more time was spent identifying Mark Hofmann’s numerous forgeries of fragments purporting to be from the original manuscript. One striking contrast was observed when the University of Chicago acquisition (discovered — and apparently produced — in the early 1980s) was examined and compared with the Wilford Wood fragments. Surprisingly, the two leaves supposedly from Alma 3–5 showed several dozen unique properties, ones that I had not seen anywhere else in either of the two Book of Mormon manuscripts, whereas the legitimate Wilford Wood fragments from 58 pages of the original manuscript showed only one property that I hadn’t seen before.

Over a four-year period, from 1995 to 1999, I prepared a computerized collation for the entire text of the Book of Mormon. This lined-up comparison lists every variant for the two manuscripts and twenty editions of the Book of Mormon, from the 1830 edition to the current LDS and Community of Christ editions of the book. Not only are textual changes noted, but also every change in punctuation, spelling, capitalization, and versification. During this same period of time, I prepared a preliminary analysis of the changes in the text. This document — 3,650 pages long — discusses the evidence for about 1,500 proposed changes in the current text. This document was produced at the instigation of the LDS Church’s Scriptures Committee.

In 1994, the LDS Church requested that I, as editor of the critical text project, take a leave from my teaching responsibilities at BYU and work full time on this project. Such a leave would allow me to get the project done sooner and would also allow me to share my findings with the Church Scriptures Committee.

In 1995, I signed an agreement with the LDS Church and BYU that, as editor of the project, I would convey information to the Church Scriptures Committee about possible changes to the text. The agreement specifically provided that the Church and BYU would guarantee the independence of the project — that as editor, I would (1) hold the copyright to the critical text and (2) exercise complete control over the content of the critical text. Over the next four years, as my first analysis of the textual variants was written, I conveyed this information to the Church Scriptures Committee.

Late in 1998, I made a publishing agreement with FARMS, prior to it becoming a part of BYU. In this legal document, I agreed to share the copyright with FARMS. Correspondingly, FARMS agreed to allow the editor full control over the content of the critical text volumes as well as its typesetting. The last provision was to guarantee that the design and typesetting would be done by an expert, Jonathan Saltzman.

From August 2000 through the spring of 2001, there were additional negotiations between the LDS Church, BYU, FARMS, and myself in order to resolve complications that had arisen because FARMS had become a part of BYU. In April of 2001, an amendment to the previous agreements was made, in which I acknowledged that FARMS had become a part of BYU, but that the copyright would continue to be explicitly shared between me and FARMS. Further, it was agreed that, as editor, I would continue to exercise full editorial control, including control over the typesetting.

Finally, in May 2001, the transcripts of the two manuscripts were officially published in two volumes, one for each manuscript:

Volume 1. The Original Manuscript of the Book of Mormon:

Typographical Facsimile of the Extant Text

Volume 2. The Printer’s Manuscript of the Book of Mormon:

Typographical Facsimile of the Entire Text in Two Parts

A typographical facsimile presents an exact reproduction of the text in typescript. The text is transcribed line for line and without any corrections or expansions. Original spellings and miswritings are retained. All scribal changes in the manuscripts — whether crossouts, erasures, overwriting, or insertions — are reproduced. A continuously running text for the extant portions of the original manuscript is provided, with conjectured text placed sublinearly.

These two volumes present the earliest textual sources for the Book of Mormon. All known fragments of the original manuscript have been identified, interpreted, and pieced together (to the extent possible). With the publication of these two volumes, all the legitimate manuscript sources for the Book of Mormon text were now accessible. Using the first three editions of the Book of Mormon, along with these transcripts, scholars now had all the available information needed for studying the text of the Book of Mormon, although not yet in a convenient format.

The critical text is intended for scholars of all faiths and persuasions: LDS, Community of Christ, and all others interested in the text. Both LDS and RLDS versifications have been provided in the identification of manuscript pages and photographs. The critical text project is a scholarly one and has not involved any ecclesiastical approval or endorsement. The transcripts and the textual interpretations represent the editor’s own scholarly work, but have involved peer review from other scholars.

The design and typesetting is the work of typographer Jonathan Saltzman and presents the text in an appealing form — one appropriate to the importance of the Book of Mormon.

The next stage in the critical text project was publishing volume 4 of the critical text, Analysis of Textual Variants of the Book of Mormon. There are six parts (or books) in volume 4; each book is about 675 pages long and was published one at a time, one year apart, from 2004 to 2009. In these books, I analyze 5,280 cases of variation (or potential variation) in the text. Volume 4 starts out with the title page of the Book of Mormon and the two witness statements, then turns to 1 Nephi and continues through the Book of Mormon to the end of Moroni. But volume 4 excludes most cases of grammatical variation since there are simply too many of them for individual treatment. Instead, they will be fully listed in volume 3 of the critical text, The History of the Text of the Book of Mormon. This third volume will discuss the transmission of the text, from the manuscripts through the major editions. I have completed about 1,300 typeset pages on the grammatical changes in the text, and am currently working on the manuscript spellings and the meanings of the original words in the text, many of which date from the 1500s and 1600s (and are not found in the King James Bible). Parts 1 and 2 of volume 3, dealing with the grammatical changes, are slated to be published early in 2015.

After volume 3 has been completely published, I will issue volume 5, A Complete Electronic Collation of the Book of Mormon. The electronic collation will be a lined-up comparison of the important textual sources and will specify every textual variant in the history of the Book of Mormon text. As noted earlier, the collation will include the readings of the two manuscripts and twenty editions of the Book of Mormon.

Besides its independence, another important aspect of the critical text project is that it has been public. In 2001, I invited general readers of the Book of Mormon to send me any suggestions they might have for emendation of the text. Their resulting suggestions have played a significant role in helping me to determine the original text of the Book of Mormon. In all, 42 individuals have sent me 178 suggestions or questions about various readings. I ended up accepting 37 of their suggested emendations — about 21 percent of them. And eight of these readers went through the entire text, in a labor of love for this text, looking for alternative readings. And whenever I got a suggestion or a question about a passage, I made my own analysis and then sent back my answer, in order to provide feedback and to encourage my reader, even if the evidence was against making a particular change, to continue sending in changes. And when I wrote up these analyses in volume 4 of the critical text, I always made sure that I gave explicit credit — by name — to these individuals. It should also be noted that none of these eight readers were professors of religion, but instead they were all intelligent “lay readers” that paid attention to the text.

In 2008, I realized that when the sixth or last part of volume 4 appeared (one year later), anyone could take the results of the critical text project and publish their own “original text” of the Book of Mormon. In order to preempt such an attempt, I took steps to publish the “original text” with a major academic press. The result is the Yale edition, The Book of Mormon: The Earliest Text, which appeared in 2009, the same time that the last part of volume 4 was being published. I decided to refer to this version as “the earliest text” since one can’t be sure that it actually is “the original text”, although that is the goal of this publication, to reproduce the original English-language text of the Book of Mormon to the extent that it can be determined by scholarly means. If one removes the dust jacket from the Yale edition, one notes that its hard cover is identical to the six books of volume 4. The Yale edition reproduces the text as determined in Analysis of Textual Variants.

There are two major innovations in the Yale edition. The first is its textual accuracy. In this edition, there are 606 readings that have never appeared in any standard printed edition. Most of these new readings, 493 of them, come from manuscript sources. There are also 113 new conjectural emendations in the Yale edition. Some might be surprised by this number. Yet overall the Yale edition has only 354 conjectured readings while the current LDS text has 654. Even then, 187 of the conjectural emendations are in both editions, so there is considerable agreement as well.

But the real textual question is: How many of these new readings make a difference in meaning? How many of these differences would show up, say, in translations of the Book of Mormon into other languages? The answer is 241. In addition, there are changes for 15 Book of Mormon names. For a sample of 30 significant changes in the text, I would recommend an article I published in the December 2012 issue of BYU Studies, entitled “Some Textual Changes for a Scholarly Study of the Book of Mormon” (number 4 of volume 51, pages 99–117).

Another important aspect of the public nature of the critical text project is that I have insisted on making all the results publicly available, not only to the LDS Church but also to other churches (such as the Community of Christ) and, most importantly, to any interested reader. And in 2013, I was able to arrange with Yale University Press to put out an electronic PDF version of The Earliest Text. The electronic text is prepared for the Kindle, available through Amazon; and it works on larger electronic devices, including laptops and desktop computers.

With the electronic publication in early 2013 of a new LDS Book of Mormon (and a printed version in August of that year), the question has arisen: Where can you read the corrected text of the Book of Mormon? Not in that edition! The issue has come to the fore because the LDS Church decided for its 2013 edition not to adopt any significant changes from the critical text project. For the moment, it was as if there had never been a critical text project of the Book of Mormon!

To be sure, you will be able to find these corrections in various archives — “securely stored” — including the special collections of the BYU Library. Or you can find them in the six books of volume 4 of the critical text, along with the evidence that the original text read that way. Or online you can find a variety of lists that people are now constructing, although some of these lists rely on manuscript readings without any textual analysis. And you can write these individual changes into your own personal scriptures, with the hope that someday the correct readings will be published in an official version. Or you can read them right now in the The Book of Mormon: The Earliest Text (published by Yale University Press). And you can read the words out loud, much like Joseph Smith did to his scribes over 180 years ago. This has been the major goal of the critical text project, to restore the original text to the extent possible and to make it publicly available.

The other major innovation in the Yale edition is that the text is presented in a new format, one that allows for “easier reading and better comprehension”, namely, sense-lines in which the lines of text are broken up according to phrases and clauses. Although it may look like poetry, it is not. Instead, its purpose is to replicate in a general way how Joseph Smith would have originally dictated the text to his scribes in phrases and clauses. More specifically, the ends of lines are used to help the reader negotiate a text that is oftentimes very difficult to comprehend, especially when its words are hyphenated and its phrases broken up into two narrow columns.

In the fall of 2014, I made a significant step in providing public access to the results of the critical text project. I arranged with the Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture to provide online a precise read-only PDF reproduction of volume 4 of the critical text, Analysis of Textual Variants of the Book of Mormon (ATV), published in 2004–2009 by FARMS. The 2009 Yale edition, The Book of Mormon: The Earliest Text, follows the decisions made in ATV. However, the Yale text itself stands alone, without any notes, editorial summaries, commentary, or cross-referencing. In an appendix to The Earliest Text, I provide a list of 719 important textual changes in the history of the Book of Mormon, including a number of conjectural emendations. But there is no discussion there, just a long list of textual variants, including these three well-known examples that have engendered a lot of discussion:

1 Nephi 11:18

▶ the virgin which thou seest is the mother of God (O, P*, 1830)

the virgin which thou seest is the mother of the Son of God (Pjs, 1837)

2 Nephi 30:6

▶ save they shall be a white and a delightsome people (P, 1830, 1908r)

save they shall be a pure and a delightsome people (1840, 1981)

Jacob 6:13

until I shall meet you before the pleasing bar of God (P, 1830)

▶ until I shall meet you before the pleading bar of God (conjecture)

Here O stands for the original manuscript, and P for the printer’s manuscript. The pointing symbol ▶ indicates which reading was selected for the Yale edition, but there is no discussion in The Earliest Text of why that reading was chosen. For that discussion, for the arguments why I chose these particular readings, one must look at ATV.

And that had been the difficulty. The six published books of ATV are, it is true, available directly from Amazon, BYU Bookstore, Deseret Book, and other booksellers in the Utah area. They are found in some university libraries, mostly in Utah. They are large books, and when bought as a whole set, cost about $300 (although at $50 a book, each one of the books is remarkably inexpensive for a hardbound academic book). All in all, the physical books are indispensable for serious scholars of the text who will want all this information accessible in printed, bound form.

In addition, recent discussion regarding Stanford Carmack’s 2014 groundbreaking article in Interpreter, “A Look at Some ‘Nonstandard’ Book of Mormon Grammar” (volume 11, pages 209–262) made it very clear of the need to make all the information in ATV immediately available, thus allowing all interested readers to readily find out what the arguments are for various changes in the text.

So as the copyright holder for the Book of Mormon Critical Text, I therefore decided in the fall of 2014 to provide volume 4 online with the Interpreter Foundation, in accord with my 1998 legal agreement with FARMS. This read-only version of volume 4 is provided free of charge so all readers can easily find out what I have written on all the important textual changes in the Book of Mormon. It is available to all: from the casual reader to the scholar, from the skeptic to the believer; for members of the LDS Church, the Community of Christ, and all other restoration churches; for Christians and non-Christians alike; for believers and non-believers.

And the final stage in the critical text project will be the publication of photographs of the original and printer’s manuscripts as part of the Joseph Smith Papers. In 2012 I signed an agreement with that project to publish a revised version of my transcripts of the manuscripts along with photographs of the Book of Mormon manuscripts. Robin Jensen is working with me as a co-editor to produce these volumes. So in the end, all researchers will have access to the photographs as well as to the transcripts of the manuscripts. You will be able to check my work! It is all part of making public the results of the Book of Mormon critical text project. The Book of Mormon is for all the world — and so is its text.

Royal Skousen is professor of linguistics and English language at Brigham Young University. He has been the editor of the Book of Mormon Critical Text Project since 1988. Volumes 1, 2, and 4 of the critical text are published by the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies. In 2009, Yale University Press published the culmination of Skousen’s critical text work, The Book of Mormon: The Earliest Text. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 13th Annual Mormon Studies Conference, “The Expanded Canon: Perspective on Mormonism and Sacred Texts”, 4 April 2013, Utah Valley University, Orem, Utah. Skousen is also known for his work on exemplar-based theories of language and quantum computing of analogical modeling.

Restoring the Original Text

of the Book of Mormon

Royal Skousen

Abstract: In the middle of the 16th century there was a short-lived surge in the use of the auxiliary did to express the affirmative past tense in English, as in Moroni «did arrive» with his army to the land of Bountiful (Alma 52:18). The 1829 Book of Mormon contains nearly 2,000 instances of this particular syntax, using it 27% of the time in past-tense contexts. The 1611 King James Bible — which borrowed heavily from Tyndale’s biblical translations of the 1520s and ’30s — employs this syntax less than 2% of the time. While the Book of Mormon’s rate is significantly higher than the Bible’s, it is close to what is found in other English-language texts written mainly in the mid- to late 1500s. And the usage died out in the 1700s. So the Book of Mormon is unique for its time — this is especially apparent when features of adjacency, inversion, and intervening adverbial use are considered. Textual evidence and syntactic analysis argue strongly against both 19th-century composition and an imitative effort based on King James English. Book of Mormon past-tense syntax could have been achieved only by following the use of largely inaccessible 16th-century writings. But mimicry of lost syntax is difficult if not impossible, and so later writers who consciously sought to imitate biblical style failed to match its did-usage at a deep, systematic level. This includes Ethan Smith who in 1823 wrote View of the Hebrews, a text very different from both the Bible and the Book of Mormon in this respect. The same may be said about Hunt’s The Late War and Snowden’s The American Revolution.

Preliminary Remarks

Generally speaking, we have been wrong to view Book of Mormon
language as simply biblical in character. Many aspects of it are deeply nonbiblical. This study attempts to make that clear, by means of an examination of syntactic structure — the arrangement and relationship of words in a sentence or clause. This is something that is directly relevant to the matter of Book of Mormon (BofM) authorship and origins. Why is that? Because syntax resists manipulation — conscious language use being primarily concerned with the content of expression, not the form. Since native-speaker linguistic knowledge is mostly tacit, the form of expression is largely the result of subconscious production. As a result, syntax is extremely difficult to fake and can provide strong evidence of authorial origins.

This paper discusses an example that is on point: writers who consciously sought to employ an archaistic, biblical style. An analysis of their past-tense usage, using parameters that were independently determined to be relevant, shows that they failed to match certain archaic features and obsolete patterns of use. These authors did reproduce some old syntax — at times mixing the archaic with the modern. But they frequently did not, because either the earlier language was at odds with their own subconscious grammatical preferences, or they did not have deep knowledge of the target syntax.

When their past-tense usage is considered as a whole, as a system, they did not match King James English, even though they were using it to a degree as a guiding template and were familiar with biblical language. And it is a virtual certainty that had Joseph Smith authored the BofM he would have done no better than they did. If that had been the case, then the form of the text would be substantially different — it would not be a book with a remarkable number of Early Modern English (EModE) attributes.

It may surprise some to learn that much can be gleaned from an examination of past-tense syntax in the BofM. But this is true, especially when we compare the text closely to patterns of use found in EModE. Among other things, this article points out the close syntactic match between the distinctive use of did in the BofM and that of a short, identifiable period of time in EModE. This means that the large doses of did found in the text apparently did not arise ex nihilo, that there was an historical, though obscure, basis for their systematic patterns of use. All the evidence presents a picture of the BofM as an EModE text that is difficult to refute.

The data indicate that the BofM is similar to texts from the middle of the 16th century (16c) that used did with infinitives 20% of the time or more to express the past tense. Moreover, important syntactic markers of adjacency, inversion, and adverbial use in the BofM correlate strongly with these texts and the period as a whole, against what is found with pseudo-biblical writings whose mimicry in this regard failed. The Swedish linguist Ellegård (d. 2008) found the King James Bible (KJB) to be a text of the 1520s in terms of its periphrastic1 do syntax, ascribing that aspect of the text to Tyndale’s influence.2 In this respect the BofM appears to contain language that was prevalent one to six decades later.

Introduction

Two-word past-tense syntax in the BofM like “Moroni «did arrive» with his army” may be precisely termed «affirmative declarative periphrastic did». For convenience, I will call it adp did. Similarly, I will refer to present-tense usage as adp do. Present-day English uses an auxiliary do verb — do, does, or did — in questions, exclamations, commands, negation, and for emphasis and contrast. But in affirmative declarative syntax, the verb is not obviously used emphatically or contrastively, it is not negated or used as an imperative, and it is not used in an exclamation or a question. Here are examples of these other uses of periphrastic did:

Moroni did not arrive with his army. negative declarative

Do arrive early with your army! positive imperative3

Do not arrive late with your army! negative imperative

Did Moroni arrive with his army? positive interrogative

Did not Moroni arrive with his army? negative interrogative

How quickly did Moroni arrive with his army! exclamatory

Moroni did arrive with his army. emphatic

Moroni did not arrive with his army,
but Teancum did arrive with his army. contrastive

The above examples are not the focus of this study.

Next we see examples of different types of adp did with the bare infinitive go. These are the focus of this study:4

Adjacency (the auxiliary did is adjacent to the infinitive —
characteristic of the 16c high-rate period)

Mosiah 25:18
Alma did go forth into the water and did baptize them

Mormon 4:23
I did go to the hill Shim and did take up all the records

Inversion (did + subject + infinitive — verb–second syntax with a preceding adverbial or object)

Mosiah 9:17
in the strength of the Lord did we go forth to battle against the Lamanites

Alma 16:15
thus did Alma and Amulek go forth, and also many more which had been chosen

Intervening Adverbial Use (an adverb or an adverbial phrase is used between did and the infinitive)

1 Nephi 7:3
I Nephi did again with my brethren go forth into the wilderness

Ellipsis (did carries through to a second infinitive, akin to
I didn’t see or hear anything, I will go and do, etc.)

1 Nephi 16:14
we didi take our bows and our arrows and [i] go forth into the wilderness

Table 1 contains the adp did profiles of the 1829 BofM and the 1611 KJB. Ellegård determined that this profile was worth examining and cataloguing. Besides ellipsis, I have not created the categories in this particular comparison.5 Ellegård’s approach clearly and specifically demonstrates how different the KJB and the BofM are in terms of adp did usage. The closest match is in the rate of elliptical use (my category). Furthermore, comparing the adp did percentages of 75 individual verbs used in each text gives only a weak correlation (30% — see appendix).6 This broad test result points to independence as well.

Table 1. Profile of ADP did Rates.

KJB BofM

ADP did 1.7% 27.2%

Breakdown of syntax

Adjacency 61.0% 91.3%

Non-adjacency

Inversion 31.0% 5.0%

Intervening adverbial 8.0% 3.7%

Ellipsis 5.7% 3.7%

From the adp did percentages found in Table 1, we obtain Table 2 and a chi-square test. The p-value is vanishingly small and therefore there is hardly any possibility that these two adp did rates are accidentally different.

Table 2. Comparison of Past-Tense Syntax.

KJB BofM

adp did counts 515 1,846

Simple past tense 29,780 4,951

adp did rate 1.7% 27.2%

Chi-square test: χ² ≈ 6 × 103; p ≈ 0.

Still, there is overlap in usage between the texts, and similar examples exist — some of these are presented in this article. But it would be wrong to seize on the occasional intersection and assert that BofM usage is based on the KJB. The above rates and patterns of use strongly indicate independence, and these systematic differences point to distinct stages of EModE. Yet it is interesting that these periods are close in time, only decades apart.

Ellegård’s Work

Ellegård investigated adp do/did in his wide-ranging study of this phenomenon in Middle English and EModE. As mentioned, he singled out syntactic adjacency, inversion, and intervening adverbial use for particular study. When did and its associated infinitive are not adjacent, there is either subject–did inversion or there is an intervening adverbial element. Occasionally there is both:

Mosiah 11:14
and so did also his priests spend their time with harlots

For his study, Ellegård counted main verbs except for forms of the verb be. In other words, he did not count was, are, etc. as instances of simple present-tense and past-tense usage. That is because there are no examples in the EModE textual record of adp did be.7 Here are some BofM examples with be that clearly show a lack of periphrastic use:

Main Verb

Mosiah 23:5
they were industrious and did labor exceedingly

Alma 55:14
they did drink and were merry, and by and by they were all drunken

Auxiliary

Alma 62:1
his heart did take courage and was filled with exceeding great joy

3 Nephi 1:22
the more part of the people did believe and were converted unto the Lord

Ellegård did not count auxiliary verbs either (forms of have and be), or modal verbs (like may and should), because they also never use the do-auxiliary. Table 3 has his counts with all other verbs. The do column in the table contains Ellegård’s counts of do and did used with infinitives. In the books that he selected, he counted every single instance he encountered that was not clearly emphatic. The n column in Table 3 contains his total estimate of present-tense and past-tense main verbs, with and without do and did.8

Table 3. Ellegård’s Counts of ADP do/did.9

affirmative statements

period do n % do

1390 1400 6 45000 0.01

1400 1425 11 4600 0.2

1425 1475 121 45500 0.3

1475 1500 1059 59600 1.8

1500 1525 396 28600 1.4

1525 1535 494 18800 2.6

1535 1550 1564 19200 8.2

1550 1575 1360 14600 9.3

1575 1600 1142 18000 6.3

1600 1625 240 7900 3.0

1625 1650 212 7200 2.9

1650 1700 140 7900 1.8

1710–13 [Swift]10 5 2800 0.2

Figure 1 is a chart based on the % do column of Table 3. The 16c temporary spike in usage is clear. I am indebted to Ellegård for his painstaking research in this regard. His work led me to conduct this study and discover the close match between the BofM and certain 16c texts. He carefully examined nearly 400 texts spanning more than three centuries.

Furthermore, Ellegård made nearly 7,000 counts of adp do/did and was careful and systematic in his sampling and counting. He documented and exemplified the ultimate demise of adp do/did syntax with 65 letters that Jonathan Swift wrote between the years 1710 and 1713. This paper goes further in time, showing its absence with the help of Google’s Ngram Viewer,11 and in the writings of Ethan Smith (View of the Hebrews), James Fenimore Cooper,12 and others.

Figure 1. The rise and fall of adp do/did, after Ellegård.

Concentrated ADP did Usage

It is well known to serious readers of the BofM that it has concentrated did usage in many different passages, as well as sustained, frequent use throughout. Here are four passages exemplifying this:

1 Nephi 16:39–17:1
There are 9 instances of adp did in this passage; only did not perish is expected in modern English; one instance has an intervening adverbial, one has ellipsis; plus came and bare,13 and largely invariant it came to pass and invariant was.

And it came to pass that the Lord was with us, yea, even the voice of the Lord came and did speak many words unto them and did chasten them exceedingly. And after that they were chastened by the voice of the Lord, they did turn away their anger and did repent of their sins, insomuch that the Lord did bless us again with food that we did not perish. And it came to pass that we did again take our journey in the wilderness. And we did travel nearly eastward from that time forth. And we did travel and wade through much affliction in the wilderness, and our women bare children in the wilderness.

3 Nephi 10:9–10
There are 6 instances of adp did (4 did cease), all adjacent, plus dispersed and stood.

And it was in the morning, and the darkness dispersed from off the face of the land and the earth did cease to tremble and the rocks did cease to rend and the dreadful groanings did cease and all the tumultuous noises did pass away. And the earth did cleave together again, that it stood. And the mourning and the weeping and the wailing of the people which were spared alive did cease.

3 Nephi 11:3
There are 4 instances of adp did, plus 1 negative declarative.

it did pierce them that did hear to the center, insomuch that there were no part of their frame that it did not cause to quake. Yea, it did pierce them to the very soul and did cause their hearts to burn.

Mormon 4:13–14
There are 6 instances of adp did (1 adverbial with also).14

the Lamanites did take possession of the city Desolation— and this because their number did exceed the number of the Nephites. And they did also march forward against the city Teancum and did drive the inhabitants forth out of her and did take many prisoners of women and of children and did offer them up as sacrifices unto their idol gods.

Were there any texts in the history of English that had such heavy, sustained adp did usage? Or is the BofM a thing apart in this regard? Yes, there are texts with such did usage. No, the BofM is not an isolated specimen in relation to this syntax.

Here are two illustrative excerpts from a 16c religious text whose overall adp did rate is 51%:15

1576 John Daniel tr. An excelent comfort to all Christians
[Span. orig. by J. Pérez] (London: Wm. Norton), pages 11–12
There are 9 instances of adp did (3 elliptical).

If we dyd vnderstand how the sinne which we dyd commit against God in the beginning dyd leaue vs, after it had once gotten power and emperye ouer vs, we should vnderstand aswel how great the loue and goodnesse of him was, that dyd redeeme and [dyd] take vs out of the same, and [dyd] deliuer vs from the condempnacion, so iustly due vnto vs for it. The diuell by sinne dyd breake in and [dyd] destroy all goodnesse that God had indued vs with, by the which we were cléerely knowen to be his owne workmanship, he did blot out the Image of god which was grauen in our soules so that the likenes of him by whom we were created, was taken quite from vs.

1576 John Daniel, page 141
There are 7 instances of adp do/did (1 elliptical), plus entered and main verb do (instead of do do — see Helaman 13:24).

Euen so euer sithens the first hower that the worde of God, and the true light thereof, entred into Iermany, England, France, and this our realm of Spaine, and dyd begin to shine as the Sunne, there were persecutours which did abhorre it, and so doo continewe vntill this daye, most mortally and cruelly: and dyd, and dooe, kill all Christians, which are quickned thereby with most extremitie. They dyd alwayes will and [ dyd alwayes ] wish that which now they doo most wickedly.

The above text is one that Ellegård did not look at in his study. I examined the entire book. Its high rate of adp did usage is reminiscent of what we find in many different narrative passages in the BofM. Both texts show sustained use of adp did. Such use flourished in the 16c.

Here are some earlier examples:

1534 Wm. Marshall tr. A playne and godly exposytion or declaration of the commune crede
[Latin orig. by Erasmus] (London: R. Redman), page 108
There are 12 instances of adp did (3 elliptical), plus spake and main verb did (instead of did do).

The disciples of Iohan dyd fast: but they dyd backbyte the disciples of Christ & spake euyll of them: for that they dyd more seldome fast. The Manicheis dyd abstayn & forbeare from all maner beastes or sensible creatures: but they dyd disprayse & condempne the creature of god: & secretely & in cornes dyd fyl themselues with delycyouse meattes bothe more daynty and also more costly. The Pharyseis dyd praye: but they dyd it in the hedes of many wayes where they myghte be moste sene in theyr chaumbres eyther they dyd occupie themselues about trifles orels dyd counte and tell monaye.

recast

John’s disciples did fast, but they did backbite Christ’s disciples and spoke evilly of them, since they did fast less often. The Manichees did abstain and refrain from all manner of animals or creatures capable of feeling, and they did speak against and condemn eating meat, but secretly and in corners did fill themselves with delicious food, both tastier and more expensive. The Pharisees did pray, but they did it at many thoroughfares where they could be most seen in their chambers, or they did occupy themselves with matters of little importance, or did count and calculate money.

1534 Wm. Marshall, page 50 (4 instances of adp did)

The Iewes were puffed vp with pryde: thrughe a vayne persuasion of ryghtuosnes. Synne did raygne at large vnponyshed in ye world whils the moste parte of men dyd folowe the fyrste parentes of mankynde: but here the mercy of god dyd shewe forthe it selfe, whiche passeth & surmounteth all his workes. He dyd vouchesafe to waxe more nere and more familierly knowne vnto vs by the same sonne.

recast

The Jews were puffed up with pride through an empty self-assurance of righteousness. Sin did prevail unpunished in the world till most men did follow mankind’s first parents. But here God’s mercy did display itself, which surpasses and exceeds all his works. He did condescend to grow closer and become better known to us by the same Son.

1555 Edmund Bonner (Bishop of London) A profitable and necessarye doctrine with certayne homelyes adioyned therunto
(London: J. Cawoode)
There are 5 instances of adp did.

the souldiers of the garyson dyd take Chryst, and dyd nayle hym throughe the handes and fete vnto the Crosse: And also dyd hange with hym vpon [two] other crosses, two theues, on a certayne hyll called Caluerye . . . And that Chryst dyd dye . . . it is euident . . . , for S Mathew in the xxvii of his Gospell, speaking of this matter sayth . . . : Jesus cryenge agayne with a greate voyce dyd geue vp the Ghost.

This last example of concentrated adp did is from a text whose overall rate may exceed 50%; this estimate is based on more than 100 counts.

We also see a concentration of adp did in the following 17c speech-based text:

1641 Keayne MS (24 January)16
There are 8 instances of adp did (2 elliptical), plus thought.

It is trew yow did in privat declare yowr grevance to me abowt the greate Iniurie that was done to yow, and yow did tell me yow wear very Jeliows of such a combination. Therfor I did exhort and [did] advice yow to be very carefull how yow did use any such speeches or how yow did entertayne such Jelowsies of Brethren except yow be able suffitiently to prove it, and I thought yow would be advised by me, but yow wear not, but in an unsatisfied way did goe from one to another and [did] inqwier of this and that men.

Robert Keayne’s 1641 record of First Church of Boston meetings actually represents early 17c London English. This Boston merchant was born in Windsor, England in 1595 and emigrated from London when he was 40 years old. Keayne recorded the speech of recent English immigrants as well, but a portion of the usage in his writings — exhibiting relatively high adp do/did rates — may be attributed to an idiosyncratic style.17 I have estimated his adp did rate to be one-third that of the BofM.

There was some carry-through in New England beyond the initial decades. Here are two examples of heavy usage during the second half of the 17c:

1670s Suffolk County (Massachusetts) Court Records18
There are 5 instances of adp did (1 elliptical).

I did heare mr Waldron Say, that he did showe mr Bennet the Cattle, & [did] bid him to take them, and did bid his man to helpe mr Bennet out of the Orchard with them . . . as mr Waldron did tell mee.

1692 Salem Witchcraft Trials19
There are 3 instances of adp did, plus testifieth, saith, said, and struck.

The deposision of Johannah Childin testifieth and saieth that upon the :2d of June: 1692 that the aparition of goody nuss and goodman Harrwood did apeare to her and the said Harrwood did look goodey nuss in the face and said to her: that she did murder him by pushing him off the Cart and strock the breath out of his body.

I agree with Rissanen that the heightened usage in these last two excerpts may have been influenced by the context of court proceedings and the “conventions of legal language.”20 Still, these examples provide evidence of some adp did usage persisting in 17c New England. However, the adp did rate of this time can be no more than one-third of Keayne’s rate, 50 years earlier. (We revisit this matter in a later section.)

Sustained high-rate use of adp did has been found so far only in 16c and 17c texts. A good measure of this use seems to be past-tense expression consisting of at least 20% adjacency usage. The BofM has these high levels of use.

Historical Development of the Do-Auxiliary

Periphrastic do emerged in late Middle English, and developed during the EModE period. One part of this, adp do/did, arose in the 14c and 15c, peaked in the 16c, continued at diminishing rates during the 17c, and then faded into obscurity — in both England and America, and in both writing and speech.21

Three or four early examples for each syntactic structure are given below (most of these are taken from the Oxford English Dictionary [OED]), many from the influential printer/publisher/translator Caxton.22 Following those quotations is a BofM example of each construction.

Negative Questions

Ellegård’s figures suggest that periphrastic do/did arose in either affirmative statements or negative questions. While the periphrasis might have begun with affirmative declaratives, according to his data it first grew strong in negative questions. Ellegård found that do/did were used in negative interrogatives at a fairly steady 10% average rate early on and throughout the 15c:

c 1489 Caxton Sonnes of Aymon xxiv. 511
Alas, doo they not remembre me, I byleve better ye[a] than nay.

1509 Hawes Past. Pleas. xliii. (Percy Soc.) 210
Dyd not kyng Davyd a lyons jawe tere?

1526 Tindale Matt. xxi. 25
He wyll saye vnto vs: why dyd ye not then beleve hym?

1548 Udall etc. Erasm. Paraphr. Luke xxiv. 44
Did he not once for altogether . . . take awaie all autoritie from the priestes?

Moroni 10:27
Did I not declare my words unto you, which was written by this man . . . ?

Affirmative Declaratives

At the same time, or perhaps earlier, do and did began to be used in affirmative statements at a very low rate:

1483 Caxton Cato E iij
They dyd put all theyr estudye for to knowe the faytes or dedes of thauncientes.

1483 Caxton G. de la Tour i ij
Another ensample I shalle telle yow of Mary Magdalene whyche dyd wasshe and spurge awey her synnes and mysdedes by the water of her eyen.

c 1489 Caxton Blanchardyn xlvii. 180
She ded call after hym ryght pyteousli.

1537 Elyot Castel of Helth H j
Dry figges and old, . . . as some do suppose, do ingender lyce, and also anoyeth the lyuer and the splene.

Mosiah 25:18
Yea, and as many as he did baptize did belong to the church of God23

3 Nephi 19:14
And the multitude did witness it and do bear record.
And angels did come down out of heaven and did minister unto them.

Because affirmative statements are much more common than the other syntactic types, the do-auxiliary is found more often in this construction in the textual record, in spite of its much lower rate of use. It is worth noting that the 1537 quotation and Mosiah 25:18 both immediately repeat a do-auxiliary, one after another. We will see throughout this paper a large number of striking EModE correspondences like this one.

Positive Questions and Negative Declaratives

According to Ellegård, periphrastic do took hold with positive questions and negative declaratives after the first quarter of the 15c. From then on the use in positive questions rose more quickly:

Positive Questions

1532 More Confut. Tindale Wks. 427/1
But I aske of Tyndall no such farre fet whyes, but a why of hys owne dede . . . I aske hym thys why: Why dydde he translate the same by thys englyshe woorde elder?

1548 Hall Chron., Hen. V (an. 8) 72 b
Why did thei take it?

1549–62 Sternhold & H. Ps. ii. 1
Why did the Jewish people muse, Seeing all is but vaine?

Alma 30:51
In whom did ye desire that Alma should shew forth his sign?

Negative Declaratives

c 1489 Caxton Sonnes of Aymon vi. 139
I departed fro my londe poure & exyled but I dyd not care for it.

1489 Caxton Faytes of A. i. i. 2
Wymen comynly do not entremete but to spynne on the distaf.

1509 Fisher Fun. Serm. C’tess Richmond Wks. (1876) 297
Albeit she dyd not receyue in to her house our sauyour in his owne persone . . . she neuertheles receyued theim that dothe represent his persone.

Ether 10:13
And it came to pass that Kim did not reign in righteousness

By the year 1500, periphrastic do rates with negative questions, positive questions, and negative declaratives may have stood at 35%, 15%, and 6%, respectively.24

As far as affirmative declarative syntax is concerned, during the first three quarters of the 15c the do-auxiliary was only used about 0.25% of the time. But by the year 1500 the auxiliary may have been employed about 1.5% of the time (on average). At this point adp do/did had entered its development phase.

After the first quarter of the 16c, adp do/did rates increased dramatically — but only temporarily. Relevant to BofM verbal usage, adp do/did rates spiked towards the middle of the 16c, shortly after Tyndale had left England. This surge was brief, and a swift dropoff in use followed. The usage rates of the other types of periphrastic syntax were always higher, and they persisted and became established.25

Table 4. The Development of Periphrastic do/did.26

Periphrastic type 1500 1550–75 1600 1700

Negative questions 35% 85% 80% 96%

Positive questions 15% 56% 65% 87%

Negative declaratives 6% 38% 30% 67%

Affirmative declaratives 1.5% 9.3% 5% 1%

Table 4 and Figure 2 show the overall increase in use in the 16c (for all types of periphrastic do), as well as the divergence that ultimately played out. After the year 1400, affirmative declarative rates are dwarfed by the others. The affirmative declarative use was well on its way toward dying out by the year 1700. We saw three examples of 17c American usage, but there is no evidence of persistent American use in the 18c and beyond.27

Figure 2. The Development of Periphrastic do/did.

The following biblical passage exemplifies the variation in usage that existed in English long ago. This verse has three different instances of did and several simple past-tense verb forms:

Isaiah 66:4
I also will choose their delusions, and will bring their fears upon them; because when I called, none did answer; when I spake, they did not hear: but they did evil before mine eyes, and chose that in which I delighted not.

This verse has simple past-tense called, spake, chose, and delighted. We also see periphrastic did answer and did not hear, the latter contrasting with the older form of negation, delighted not. So there is syntactic variation between two negative declaratives in this verse, and between did answer and one-word past-tense verb forms. In addition, there is a main-verb use of did before evil.28

Did as a Past-Tense Marker

The following passage has past-tense didst forsake and did go:29

Alma 39:3
for thou didst forsake the ministry and did go over into the land of Siron

The BofM could have used forsookest and wentest but it did not.30 However, whether the text employs did or didst with bare infinitives or one-word past-tense verb forms, it is likely that no extra emphasis is intended. This is unlike present-day English, where did conveys emphasis, contrast, and other nuance when used in this way.31

Ellegård stressed that the use was by and large nonemphatic in the EModE period,32 following a 16c grammarian who asserted that “that «it is all one» to use the do-form or the simple present or past tense form. There was no difference in meaning between the two forms.”33 Ellegård’s wide-ranging study of adp do/did syntax in EModE, and the work of others before him, led him to definitively conclude that “[t]he do-form was functionally synonymous with the finite main verb form”34 during this period, and especially in the 16c when usage rates were high, as they are in the BofM. Elsewhere it has been shown that the BofM can reasonably be viewed, based on many syntactic examples, as an EModE text.35 So, nonemphatic adp did follows from that observation directly.

In sustained high-rate adp did texts, the auxiliary appears to function as it does in questions and negative statements — that is, without any emotive or emphatic force. But in lower-rate texts with sporadic heavy use, emotive force is a possibility. It should be noted that when the syntax is used nonemphatically, the main verb carries lexical stress: “Moroni dĭd arríve with his army.” In the emphatic use, did carries the stress.

Ellegård does mention being able to identify approximately 1.5% of adp do/did in the second quarter of the 16c as certainly emphatic,36 and that some other instances were likely emphatic, though they resist definite identification contextually. In the last half of the 16c, however, he was able to identify less than 1% of adp do/did syntax as emphatic. The BofM is a high-rate text with a high degree of adjacency, and consequently it is likely that total cases of emphatic use, both identifiable and opaque, would be less than 2% of the total, or fewer than 40 instances. The bottom line is, according to Ellegård and others, that most EModE instances of adp did were nonemphatic, especially in texts with high rates of use.

Multiple did ellipsis is another strong indicator since it is a virtual certainty that third (and fourth) infinitives carry lexical stress (see examples below).

ADP do/did in the BofM

I have estimated BofM adp did rates at 27.16% (based on 6,797 past-tense counts).37 According to my current counts and methodology, there are 1,846 instances of adp did in the book, with 69 of these involving ellipsis. The much longer KJB has only about 500 instances of adp did syntax, and 115 of those involve did(st) eat. The highest count with a single verb in the BofM is did(st) go (57 counts). So adp did syntax is much more evenly distributed in the BofM.

I have made only a rough estimation of present-tense adp do syntax in the BofM, finding that the rate of use is significantly lower in the text than it is with past-tense did: the adp do rate may be no greater than 10%.38 In addition, there are only about 210 instances of adp do, so it is also much less frequent than adp did. If these estimates are close, then overall adp do/did rates in the BofM would still exceed 20%.

We have seen that Ellegård estimated peak use of adp do/did syntax in the third quarter of the 16c at close to an average of 10% (see Table 1 above).39 When we bear this in mind, as well as the high-rate texts that we have seen from the Early English Books Online database (EEBO), the heavy presence of adp did in the text is not wholly unexpected. That is because a significant amount of biblical and nonbiblical BofM language is consonant with the syntax and meaning of this period.40

Consecutive ADP did

We have seen adp did syntax used consecutively, in concentrated doses, and also used elliptically. The following passages show adp did(st) used consecutively in the KJB and the BofM without a repeat of the subject:

Isaiah 57:9
thou wentest to the king with ointment, and didst increase thy perfumes, and didst send thy messengers far off, and didst debase thyself even unto hell41

Amos 1:11
because he did pursue his brother with the sword, and did cast off all pity, and his anger did tear perpetually, and he kept his wrath for ever

Mosiah 6:6
king Mosiah did walk in the ways of the Lord and did observe his judgments and his statutes and did keep his commandments

Alma 35:9
And they did nourish them and did clothe them and did give unto them lands for their inheritance

The above passages show similar usage. The biblical examples, however, are few and far between. That is not the case in the BofM.

Similar consecutive did use is seen in the following 16c OED quotations:

1515 in St. Papers Hen. VIII, II. 11
He dyd conquyre all the lande, . . . and dyd inhabyte the same with Englyshe folke.

1523 Ld. Berners Froiss. I. ccclxxiv. 621
The speare heed dyd entre into his throte, and dyd cutte asonder the orgonall vayne.

1558 Phaër Æneid v. O j
The Troians them did chere, and did receyue with wondrous ioye.

1581 Lambarde Eiren. i. ix. (1602) 39
The names of such, as (being indited) did flie, and did refuse to be Iustised.

1596 Spenser Faerie Qveene iv. ii. 17
They . . . shields did share, and mailes did rash, and helmes did hew.

The Faerie Queene is perhaps the best known text with heavy, sustained did use: more than 3,000 instances. It is a lengthy poem and so Ellegård did not study it because of the potential influence of rhyme and meter.

Elliptical ADP did

Elliptical adp did is economical in terms of marking: the past tense is indicated only once, and two or more infinitival stems are used instead of two marked past-tense verb stems.42 The following passages have conjoined verb phrases that employ did a single time with two following infinitives; did is understood as following through to the second infinitive:

Psalms 14:2
The Lord looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any that didi understand, and [i] seek God.

Mormon 2:4
we didi take possession of the city and [i] make preparations to defend ourselves against the Lamanites

There appear to be 28 of these in the KJB, and it has about 790,000 words. So it occurs there once every 28,000 words. There appear to be 69 of these in the BofM, and it has about 270,000 words. So it occurs there once every 4,000 words.

Besides the KJB favorite of conjoined did eat & drink — occurring 20 times43 — elliptical adp did syntax like the example in Psalms 14:2 is uncommon in the biblical text, and it never involves a third infinitive. I have counted eight other instances of elliptical adp did(st), including these three with didst, two in one verse:

2 Samuel 12:21
thou didsti fast and [i] weep for the child, while it was alive; but when the child was dead, thou didsti rise and [i] eat bread

Ezekiel 29:7
When they took hold of thee by thy hand, thou didsti break, and [i] rend all their shoulder: and when they leaned upon thee, thou brakest, and madest all their loins to be at a stand

In Ezekiel 29:7 we see free variation between synonymous didst break and brakest.

The biblical text usually employs the simple past tense after only one instance of adp did:

Matthew 28:4
And for fear of him the keepers did shake, and became as dead men.

John 20:4
So they ran both together: and the other disciple did outrun Peter, and came first to the sepulchre.

This happens even in John 20:4 with two motion verbs, despite a natural semantic closeness. But as we have just seen, occasionally the periphrasis carries through with a second verb:

Luke 6:4
How he went into the house of God, and didi take and [i] eat the shewbread, and gave also to them that were with him

After the infinitive eat, however, neither elliptical give nor did give is used; instead simple-past gave is used. Notice how in these next examples the punctuation suggests to us that the second main verb (underlined) is a finite past-tense verb form, but because of Psalms 14:2 (see above) we cannot be sure:

Genesis 30:40
Jacob did separate the lambs, and set the faces of the flocks toward the ringstraked

Joshua 13:12
these did Moses smite, and cast them out

The most frequent elliptical phrase in the BofM is did see & hear (three times), and prosper occurs six times with several different verbs. EEBO44 indicates that did eat & drink was the most commonly used elliptical did-phrase in EModE, followed distantly by did quake & tremble. As we read the BofM, did quake & tremble is the first one we encounter (1 Nephi 1:6).

Here are five examples of multiple did ellipsis found in the BofM:

1 Nephi 9:1 (fronted object with inversion, plus dwelt)
all these things didi my father [i] see and [i] hear and [i] speak as he dwelt in a tent

Helaman 6:39 (4 infinitives)
insomuch that they didi trample under their feet and [i] smite and [i] rend and [i] turn their backs upon the poor and the meek

3 Nephi 17:25
the multitude didi see and [i] hear and [i] bear record

3 Nephi 26:13
after that, he did shew himself unto them oft
and didi break bread oft and [i] bless it and [i] give it unto them

Ether 10:22
they were exceeding industrious, and they didi buy and [i] sell and [i] traffic one with another that they might get gain

These argue for did functioning as a past-tense marker in the text. While multiple did ellipsis does not occur in the KJB, we encounter it in the textual record:

1576 J. Daniel tr. An excelent comfort to all Christians 96
How be it for all that, afterwardes they didi all fall, [i] feare, [i] faint, and did haue a doubt in him

1614 J. Taylor (Water P.) Nipping Abuses D 1
The seuenth was Sloth, . . . Who being cald, didi gape, and [i] yawne, and [i] stretch.

1621 1st Bk. Discipl. Ch. Scot. Pref. (1641) A 3
Some of the Disciples . . . at first didi mince, and [i] sparingly speake, but afterward [i] practise and [i] loudly preach.

1630 J. Taylor (Water P.) Penniless Pilgr. Wks. i. 123/2
And No-body didi drinke, and [i] winke, and [i] scinke.45

In this regard the BofM has greater affinity with some EModE usage than the KJB does.

Using Ellipsis to Estimate EModE ADP did Rates

This subset of adp did syntax is a manageable way to get a sense for adp did rates in different centuries. A search in the OED for the elliptical construction yields the counts shown in the second column of Table 5. Because the dictionary contains fewer 16c quotations than 17c quotations (approximated by “and the” counts — the third column of the table), yet there are more examples of elliptical adp did in the 16c, it is possible to conclude that adp did was a strong 16c phenomenon.

Table 5. OED Counts of Elliptical ADP did by Century.46

century did … inf & inf “and the” weighted

15th 3 1,454 2.1

16th 143 3,207 44.6

17th 120 5,961 20.1

18th 9 4,558 2.0

The weighted values in the last column of Table 5 suggest that adp did was a construction that arose in the 15c, became popular in the 16c, saw its use lessen in the 17c, and tapered off during the 18c so that it then became as uncommon as it was in the 15c.

According to Ellegård, the average use of adp did in the 16c was 5.5%. From that value and Table 5 weighted values of 44.6, 20.1, and 2.0, we obtain average rates of 2.5% in the 17c and 0.25% in the 18c. Ellegård’s estimated averages are 2.6% and 0.18%. Those values are close and confirm that adp did had all but vanished sometime in the 1700s. All this coincides with what Ellegård noted generally about

the development of the periphrastic do: it first occurred in prose ca. 1400, gained ground slowly in the 15th and rapidly in the 16th century. In the 17th century the tide fell fast in affirmative declarative sentences, whereas the use of do became regular in negative and interrogative ones. The modern state of things was practically achieved around 1700.47

Backed by the work of prior researchers, Ellegård here asserts that by the 18c there were only vestiges of adp did left in English.

A Review of Ellegård’s Counts of ADP do/did

Ellegård broke his counts into various time periods, usually 25-year blocks. Table 6 shows my simple percentage calculations and comments. Included is my estimate of biblical adp did rates — a higher rate than Ellegård found for both tenses combined: 1.7% versus 1.3% (my sampled past-tense estimate versus Ellegård’s overall sampled estimate).

Ellegård broke down the range of time between 1525 and 1550 into two blocks, perhaps because that was when there was an explosion of adp do/did use. Tyndale was living on the continent during this time and would have been partially shielded from this sudden shift in use, despite living among many English speakers. They would not have been directly and immediately exposed to the linguistic currents of the day.

Table 6. Comments on Ellegård’s Estimates.48*

We can see from Table 6 that the use of adp do/did soared in the space of 25 years from about 2% to almost 10% in the textual record. Peak use may have occurred past the year 1550, but some were already using it heavily in the 1530s. The match between the BofM’s past-tense syntax and that found in English texts is in the middle of the 16c.

Yet some firmly believe that Joseph Smith’s dialect was full of archaic, even obsolete features like adp did. Hence we may ask whether the demise of adp did in English was complete. We now address that issue while also cross-verifying the accuracy of Ellegård’s work.

Large Database Verification

We begin by taking a look at the extensive data sets of EEBO and Google books. Figure 3 shows the rate profile of adp did adjacency made on the basis of more than 80,000 counts, taken from EEBO (the 1690s value has been set to 1). This profile of adjacency usage — the purest syntactic type of adp did — is both similar to and different from the one Ellegård calculated for overall adp do/did. We expect it to be different since this is a larger sample (with many misses and false counts as well), and a subset of the syntax that Ellegård considered. From this we can see the absence of use in the 1470s; early, strong development with William Caxton (see note 48* above); a jagged rise and peak use in the 1550s; a secondary peak in the 1590s; and a scallop-shaped dropoff to lower levels by the 1690s.

Figure 3. Adjacency adp did Rates in EModE

But what happened in the 18c and beyond? Figure 4, an Ngram Viewer chart, shows falling adjacency rates from already-low 1700 levels to 1800. Levels in the 1820s were less than half of 1700 levels and about the same as present-day levels of use. (Data from the early 18c in Google books is uneven and less reliable). The small early 19c rise in the chart might be attributable to the spread of emphatic do.49 But the rate of use during that time was barely higher than it was in the late 20c when we have first-hand knowledge that there was effectively no adp did usage. Taken together, Figures 3 and 4 indicate that rates in the 1550s were 8 times what they were in the late 1820s. Ellegård’s value of 9.3% for the 1550s

Figure 4. Falling ADP did Adjacency Rates in Modern English.50

leads us to conclude that rates were near 1% in the late 1820s. His value of 1.77% for the 50 years between 1650 and 1700 leads us to conclude that rates were around 0.5% by the 1820s. Either view means that adp did use was minimal, and of course nothing like it is in the BofM.

Figure 5. Did minister versus Ministered in Modern English.51

Figure 5 shows the rate of use of did minister versus past-tense ministered. While Google books data are not always trustworthy (because of OCR errors and dating issues; in the early 18c in particular), they are sufficiently reliable for this analysis. They clearly show a sharp decline in use of the periphrasis did minister, which was very heavily used coming out of the EModE era. The 18c witnessed a sharp drop to below 10% on this graph; by 1830 it had neared 5%. This is further evidence of the demise of the syntax since this robust adp did verb goes to zero.

Figure 6. Did minister versus Ministered in EModE.

EEBO, a more reliable database, gives us a profile — Figure 6 — of extremely high adp did rates for this verb in the EModE period (rising then dropping to 40% in the 1690s). Taken together, Figures 5 and 6 suggest an adp did minister rate of 2.5% by 1830.

Additional Evidence of Vanishing ADP did

Next we look at two single-author corpora. These provide further evidence that adp did died off in English, and some evidence that it was weaker in America than in Great Britain. We will briefly consider ellipsis and adjacency, characteristic of the high-rate period of adp did, as well as their use of did go versus went.

Ellipsis

By the 1820s, Sir Walter Scott rarely used the elliptical periphrasis. I have found five examples in a five-million word corpus of his Waverley novels:

did wash and eat bread

did bubble and sparkle (contextually emphatic)

did heave and heave again

did hone and [moan] (hone = ‘delay, hesitate’ — Old Scots)

did promise and vow (in quotes, indicating a fixed phrase)

I count these as 10 instances of adp did; there are 132 such counts in the BofM, which has only 5% as many words. Those figures point to Scott’s adp did usage rate being only 0.1%.52 That figure is too low, but it suggests the lack of use in his writing.

The roughly contemporaneous American author Cooper has perhaps only one (inverted) example in a 4.5-million word corpus of his writings:

1849 The Sea Lions
In this spirit did Daggett and his crew now feel and act53

That suggests an even lower rate for Cooper than for Scott, and may mean that American rates were lower.

Adjacency

Scott used the phrase did but followed by an infinitive 70 times, and did indeed 20 times. (According to Ngram Viewer, did but was more prevalent than did indeed until the year 1900.) That shows idiomatic and emphatic use of the construction. He employed adp did adjacency multiple times with a number of verbs, including these six: come (7), think (5), take (5), hear (5), love (4), make (4). I have estimated/calculated his adp did adjacency rate with these verbs to be approximately 0.4%.

Cooper has multiple adp did adjacency with the following verbs: intend (8), succeed (7), exist (5), and begin (4). I have estimated his adjacency rate with these verbs to be approximately 0.1%. Again his (American) rate is lower than Scott’s (British) rate.

Did go versus Went

These two authors never used did go for went except in set phrases, inverted subject–did constructions, and emphatic use. Scott used went more than 900 times, the fixed phrase I did but go five times, and this counterfactual construction: I would choose, did I ever go a sea-voyage. So his adp did go rate was 0.65%. And his adjacency rate is zero. That tells us that robust adp did usage was not a part of his language.

In the case of Cooper, if we generously count five instances of did go, we still only obtain a 0.33% rate of adp did go.54 That is half of Scott’s British rate.55

Could This Syntax Have Been Present in
Nineteenth-Century Upstate New York?

In this section we first discuss Rissanen’s analysis of 1640s and 1690s adp do/did usage in Massachusetts. His counting methodology was different so I performed some sampled counting in order to achieve valid rate comparisons.

In addition to excluding is / was from counts, Rissanen did not count instances of have /had or do / did as cases of simple present-tense and past-tense usage. And he excluded inversion as well, so his approach was substantially different from Ellegård’s.56 Rissanen estimated that Keayne used adp do /did in the 1640s at a 17.5% rate in his notes on sermons and church proceedings. And he calculated Keayne’s adverbial usage at 25%.57

I counted adp syntax in two different sections of Keayne’s writings. One of the sections that I chose contained a passage that Rissanen indicated had concentrated usage of adp do/did.58 After carrying out 465 counts, I found that present-tense and past-tense rates were very close in these sections. Table 7 shows the past-tense profile that I estimated for Keayne. It suggests that Rissanen’s approach yielded higher adp do/did rates than my counting methodology, adapted from Ellegård. My estimate of Keayne’s rate is still fairly high, but it is markedly lower than Rissanen’s figure, and well below both peak usage and what we encounter in the BofM. In addition, Keayne’s adverbial rate is different and typical of the mid-17c.59 I found no sustained usage of adp do/did in these two sections.

Table 7. Keayne’s 1640 ADP did Rate Profile.60

adp did % Adjacency Inversion Adverbial Ellipsis %

8.9 72.2 5.6 22.2 0

In his paper on the language of Salem witchcraft trials, Rissanen unfortunately did not provide exact rates of use.61 What we can gather from his article, however, is that at this time, the Massachusetts North Shore rate may have been 60% higher than contemporary British rates. That would mean that some New Englanders may have had adp did rates as high as 3% in the 1690s.62

As a result, this is evidence that 50 years after Keayne, adp did rates were lower in New England, as they were in England, in spoken language as well as in written. And this is especially probable since the observed Salem adp do/did rates were positively influenced by legal and emotive factors. While adp do/did may have persisted in this region more strongly than in neighboring areas, and perhaps more strongly than it did in much of England, it was still on the way out. In comparison with Keayne, by the 1690s there had been further loss of this marked linguistic feature. So there was no linguistic maintenance; that in turn points to revival as a virtual impossibility.

One particular North American dialect that is known to have been highly conservative — that is, prone to resist language change — was unable to maintain the use of adp do/did, let alone revive it. Wagner has studied a Newfoundland dialect formed over time by colonists who began immigrating in the 17c.63 They came from areas in the British Isles that maintained aspects of adp do/did syntax in their dialects. But despite the conservative nature of the Newfoundland speech community, these immigrants soon abandoned the use.

Wagner views that as having been generally applicable. In other words, similar loss of use resulted in other dialects that might have initially employed some adp syntax in colonial America. According to her analysis, eradication of adp do/did resulted by contact with the many neighboring dialects that employed a typical, simple past-tense system.64 Moreover, the strong influence of King James English (1.7% adp did) would have applied constant levelling pressure in all dialects against heavy use throughout the 18c.65

The revival of adp do/did is highly doubtful (in part because of the influence of the KJB). The construction arose in the 14c and 15c, at the same time that interrogative and negative periphrastic do/did emerged. The latter syntax grew rapidly and strongly in the 16c and that is when adp do/did surged in popularity — but only for a time. The growth appears to be related (see Figure 2). However, by the 18c there was no such concomitant increase in usage occurring that could have revived the use of adp do/did. By then periphrastic do/did with negation and questions was established and grammaticalized, and adp do/did had become moribund. From then on only the emphatic use of adp do/did spread (exemplified by the rise of did in fact + infinitive around the year 1800).

We do note that English vacillated in the late 1500s and early 1600s as to whether adp do/did would follow negative and interrogative syntax; it ultimately returned to very low rates by the early 1700s.

As a specimen of 1820s New England adp did use, we have the Vermonter Ethan Smith’s View of the Hebrews. The connection of this text with the BofM is well-known in certain circles, since View of the Hebrews has been claimed by various people to have served as a model for the composition of the BofM.66 It is apparent that some of the book’s language reflects Ethan Smith’s own usage, and the Joseph Smith family would have shared some of the same linguistic features given their proximity. (Poultney is on the New York state line and 50 miles from Sharon.) This article speaks to that issue in some depth. I will note at this point that there is no superficial similarity in terms of adp did rates between the BofM and View of the Hebrews — Ethan Smith’s book does not have much adp did usage at all — and the texts are negatively correlated in overall and deep patterns of use (see Tables 12 and 16).

High Rates of ADP did in the Sixteenth-Century

While Ellegård did not differentiate periphrastic do/did syntax by tense, most of his counts necessarily involved adp syntax. In the course of his research he found several texts that used adp do/did at high rates, mentioning three authors who used it 20% of the time or more: Thomas Elyot, Andrew Boorde, and Henry Machyn.67 As shown previously, I have found several more. Thus the texts that Ellegård found with robust adp do/did syntax are not isolated anomalies.

Thomas Elyot

Thomas Elyot employed fairly high levels of adp do/did in the 1530s. I have estimated his adp did rate at 22% in his early dietary book.68 There are many more present-tense counts in this text than past-tense counts. Elyot’s adp do rate is 25% (173 counts), confirming the estimated 22% adp did rate as reasonably accurate, calculated on the basis of only 18 counts (all this based on only 13% text sampling).

adp did % Adjacency Inversion Adverbial

22 94 2 4

Andrew Boorde

Oxford-educated Boorde employed adp did approximately 50% of the time in the 1540s; here are some representative examples from his early travel book:69

1542 Boorde Introduction of Knowledge, 203
whan they dyd come to the place, The yonge man did speke, & sayd “I am not ded . . .”

1542 Boorde Introduction of Knowledge, 145
Pascall the playn dydi wryte and [i] preach manifest thinges that were open in the face of the world to rebuke sin; wyth the which matter I haue nothyng to do, for I doo speke of many countryes & regions, . . .

The second passage has an elliptical case of adp did and an instance of adp do. There are also two finite verbs used simply: were and have. The verbs be and have are never used periphrastically in this text, and be is not used that way in other texts of this period. adp did have is rare in the OED; I have found this one:

1609 Skene tr. Quon. Attach. xxiii. §11
Provyding that the husband man did haue of him the aucht parte of ane dawache of land.

The EEBO database has at least six examples. The scarcity of did have in the textual record tells us that it was rare in the 16c; one-word had was strongly preferred (and so were other high-frequency past-tense verb forms like said). The KJB does not use did(st) have. In contrast, the BofM uses did have 19 times (an estimated adp rate of 11%):

Alma 46:38
for the space of four years did they have much peace and rejoicing in the church

Helaman 6:9
they did have an exceeding plenty of gold and of silver

Ellegård appears to have counted have when it functioned as a main verb, despite its extensive invariance. I have also counted main-verb have but not auxiliary have. The one exclusion besides be that I have made in the case of the BofM is in the fixed phrase it came to pass.70

I have calculated Boorde’s adp do/did rate at 50% (472 counts): present tense = 49%, past tense = 52%.71 These numbers are not based on sampling, but on full counts (with the exclusions noted). The BofM’s adp did rate is roughly half of Boorde’s.

adp did % Adjacency Inversion Adverbial

52 93 2 5

Henry Machyn

Another author mentioned by Ellegård with respect to high rates of adp did use was Henry Machyn. He wrote frequent diary entries for almost 14 years while living in London before his death in late 1563, probably from the plague. His adp did usage rate was 20% (403 of 2,017 counts), and he used did preach at a very high rate (93%);72 the BofM also uses did preach at a high rate (78%). Machyn’s extensive use of did preach suggests that it was a strong tendency for some speakers during his time; the BofM matches that high usage rate. And EEBO provides cross-verification. Here are some relevant examples:

1483 Caxton G. de la Tour d vj b
How syth late a hooly man dyd preche therof.

1529 S. Fish A Supplicacyon for the Beggers 22
seing there were suche profounde clerkes, & auncyent fathers, bysshops, and studentes in the same, which dyd teache & preache vnto the people contynually?

1560–1 Machyn Diary (Camden) 249
Parson Veron the Frenche man dyd pryche ther, for he was parson ther, and ys menyster.

Mosiah 18:7
And [Alma] did teach them and did preach unto them

Ellegård observed the following:

Of Machyn’s 370 do-instances, 216 involve the verb preach: the simple verb preach occurs only half a dozen times. If preach is disregarded, Machyn’s frequency figure becomes 8%, which is not abnormally high for his period.73

With the benefit of recent scholarship, I have counted 239 instances of did preach and 17 of preached, 34 more than Ellegård found. Excluding those 256 counts from the total adp did counts that I made from Machyn’s Diary, we obtain a 10% overall rate, slightly above Ellegård’s estimate.

His point about one verb unduly influencing Machyn’s adp did rate is reasonable, since 56% of the adp did counts come from the verb preach. The KJB has the same issue with the verb eat, but not to the same extent (22% of its adp did counts). On the other hand, no verb in the BofM makes up more than 3% of adp did usage.

In determining Machyn’s adp did profile, I have excluded 54 counts of did preach so that this verb does not make up more than 50% of adp did counts:

adp did % Adjacency Inversion Adverbial Ellipsis %

18 96.2 3.3 0.5 1.4

Machyn never used did die, always died (130 times). The BofM does likewise: 36 times it has simple-past died, but it never has did die. In addition, died occurs 13 times within eight words of it came to pass. This is perhaps significant since adp did is used 300 times within eight words of it came to pass. Hence, we might expect at least one occurrence of did die in that context. That being the case, the exclusive use of simple past-tense died appears to qualify as another match of the BofM with identifiable mid-16c usage.74

Next we consider two texts not mentioned in Ellegård’s work; we have seen examples from these books.

John Daniel

John Daniel’s translation from Spanish, An excelent comfort to all Christians, has a rate of use that is similar to Boorde’s, and his writing is relatively late in time as far as peak use of adp did is concerned. Here is the usage profile, based on full counts (672 total):

adp did % Adjacency Inversion Adverbial Ellipsis %

51 86.9 6 8.1 21.2

Two excerpts from this book with concentrated did usage have been given above. Here are three more passages with a considerable amount of ellipsis:

page 87 (4 examples of ellipsis)

But yet [the children and disciples of God,] armed with confidence and affiance in God, and pacience by the onely wordes of the Gospell, did convince and ouerthrow to the grounde, all the power and potencie of them all: aswell the principalles as the reste. And by beleeuyng truely in ye the Gospell, they did fyght with (and ouerthrowe) all the sublymate and supreme highnesse, that dyd rise and repugne against them: and Christ their heade in them. They did ouercome captiuitie, and bring a great number to be ruled.

page 109 (2 examples, 1 with distant ellipsis)

But yet his crucifiers in moste dispiteous or spightfull maner and signe of mockery dyd make him naked, dispoiling him of his apparreile, and [dyd] cloath him at theyr pleasures with purple, and [dyd] put a reede in his hande and a crowne of sharpe thornes vppon his bare tender head, they dyd wounde and boffet his tender body with most cruell blowes and strypes of fistes and whips.

page 120 (a mixture of use)

The holy ghost saith by the apostle S. Paule, that all those which God dyd knowe and acknowledge, he did predestinate, bycause they shoulde be conformable and lyke in shape vnto the image of his sonne. And those which were predestinate he did call, those which hee called, he also iustified, and those which he iustified, he did glorifie. So that of necessitie those which he did predestinate, he did also glorifie, and the way and meanes to come to be glorified, is to be called and iustified, by passions and crosses, to be conforme and lyke vnto his sonne.

I have estimated the present-tense adp do rate of this book to be 42%, 9% less than the past-tense rate. So this text has a higher past-tense rate, something we also see in the BofM. I have also found a similar tense distinction in A profitable and necessarye doctrine (1555), a book by another author with very high rates of adp did.

William Marshall

In 1534, a Latin work by Erasmus was translated by William Marshall. His English translation is an example of high adp did usage before Tyndale’s death and around the same time as Elyot. Here is the overall breakdown of use that I estimated following Ellegård’s sampling method (full did counts [216 total], sampled past-tense counts):

adp did % Adjacency Inversion Adverbial Ellipsis %

38 75.3 7.7 19.5 18.6

Summary

The presence of high-rate adp did syntax found in these texts tells us that the corresponding rate in the BofM was close to the syntactic preferences of some English speakers and writers during the mid-16c. The BofM is within the attested range of use: higher than some texts and lower than some texts that have been considered here. Therefore it is a fitting match with English language of this time period.

Table 8 presents the exceptional use of adp did that we have just noted. It indicates the rate of adp did adjacency in each text. This is a rigorous measure of the syntax. Only texts employing high rates of both adp did and adjacency can exceed the 20% level. The BofM is a member of this group.

Table 8. High-Rate adp did Texts.

Author / Text Year % did+inf

William Marshall 1534 28.6

Thomas Elyot 1537 20.7

Andrew Boorde 1542 48.4

Henry Machyn 1550–63 17.3

John Daniel 1576 44.4

Book of Mormon 1829 24.7

ADP did Rates with Individual Verbs

Ellegård found that adp do/did rates with individual verbs could be idiosyncratic across texts. He mentions did preach / slay / understand /
succeed /appear / think / eat as favorites for different authors.75 The latter, did eat, is the favored form in the KJB (97.5%).76

Clear favorites in the BofM include did cease / preach / minister / prosper. These four verbs are all used at rates above 70% in the text, and they all show above average usage rates during the EModE era. We have seen that did minister was particularly robust and we have noted the correspondence of did preach and died between Machyn’s Diary and the BofM.77

High-frequency disfavored verbs in the BofM include did see / begin /
say / behold / become. These five verbs are all used at rates below 5%. Three of these verbs (in boldface) are not used periphrastically very often in EModE as well. But did see shows medium usage and did behold was used quite heavily. So of the nine BofM verbs just mentioned, seven of them correlate well with EModE usage rates.

ADP did syntax with two high-frequency motion verbs — go and come — was disfavored in EModE and it is also below average in the BofM. But the text still employs did go and did come at a fairly high rate (excluding it came to pass), especially did go. That periphrasis was never very common in the EModE era. According to EEBO, adjacency use peaked for did go below 2% in the 1650s; went was always strongly preferred. Figure 7 shows that the rate in the 1690s was 0.6%. By way of comparison, another high-frequency verb, take, had a peak adp did rate of 7% in the 1550s. Still, by the 1690s adp did take was only used 1% of the time. Thus individual verbs followed their own path and their usage profile can depart significantly from the overall EModE profile.

Figure 7. Did go versus Went in EModE.

Table 9 contains a summary of the correspondences between EModE and the BofM in relation to the verbs mentioned in this and preceding sections. The best correspondences are at the top; 10 of 13 verbs align well with the EModE period. More trustworthy figures for all verbs will be available in coming years with better databases. At that point in time we will be able to carry out reliable correlations more fully between BofM usage and EModE usage for individual verbs.

Table 9. Correspondences among Individual ADP did Verbs.

Relative adp did Rates

Verb EModE BofM

become low low

begin low low

minister high high

prosper high high

say low low

take medium medium

cease med high high

come low med low

die low zero

preach med high high

go low medium

see medium low

behold high low

Ellegård’s Observations

During Tyndale’s formative years, adp do/did was emerging but still little used (under 1.5%). Nielson and Skousen studied the relationship between Tyndale’s translations and King James English. They put forward the notion that the 1611 biblical text may follow Tyndale’s language as much as 84% of the time in the New Testament, and 76% of the time in relevant Old Testament portions.78 The fact that much of the KJB borrows from Tyndale’s syntax makes the low rate of adp did in the biblical text understandable. Had the King James translators followed the syntax of the year 1600, they would have used adp did more often, probably at a 5% rate (close to the average rate Ellegård calculated for 1575 to 1625).

In discussing the KJB and his sampling of it, Ellegård wrote:

In the affirmative declarative group we find 79 instances of do (1.3%), which is somewhat less than the average for the early 17c. It would however be rash to conclude from this that the Authorized Version represents an advanced stage with regard to the use of do, for in the negative group the figure is 19 (10%), in affirmative questions 36 (24%), and in negative questions 20 (58%). This means that do is used in the same way [in the KJB] as in the early 16c . . . . The influence (partly intermediate) of Tindale’s translation . . . is thus clearly discernible in the use of do; there are also many exact correspondences in the two versions [Tyndale’s and the King James].79

Therefore, largely because of its heavy reliance on Tyndale’s translations, the early 17c biblical text reflects the early 16c in its usage. On the other hand, the adp did rate of the BofM exceeds the average use of any time period estimated by Ellegård and matches texts that exhibit peak use from the middle of the 16c, mainly after Tyndale’s death. Thus the exceptional, short-lived peak use of adp did in the middle of the 16c means that only that stage of the English language matches a significant portion of BofM syntax.

Figure 8 shows a brief, dramatic rise in adp do/did usage followed by a swift dropoff and then tapering of use.80 Reflecting usage before the rise, the KJB used the syntax at less than a 2% rate. Reflecting usage after the dropoff, Jonathan Swift in the first half of the 18c employed the syntax less than 0.25% of the time (Ellegård’s estimate). And we have seen that Scott and Cooper barely used the syntax in the early 19c. Consequently, no one in the 1820s — except for an EModE linguistics scholar with information akin to Ellegård’s 20c in-depth knowledge — would have been aware of the peak usage rates of adp did that prevailed during a small window of time roughly between the years 1535 and 1590.

Figure 8. ADP did Rates and Correspondences.81

Ellegård stated the following:

It is not until the end of the 15th century that the do-form becomes widely used in prose texts. From then on it spreads fast for about two generations. It becomes the highest fashion among the educated sections of the community. The old Caxton, as well as prelates and preachers, help to popularize it. The construction was in line with what seems to be a general tendency towards analytic expressions in the language.82

What is meant by “analytic” in this context is that in the EModE period the language used two-word periphrases like did give instead of one-word gave to a greater degree than it had in Middle English. Past-tense gave is known as a “synthetic” verb form, expressing the notions of ‘give’ and past tense with only one word. For example, “Book of Mormon” is analytic, “Mormon’s Book” synthetic. There is clearly an analytic tendency found in the book generally — for instance, “rod of iron” occurs eight times, never “iron rod” — and adp did fits perfectly within that style.83

It also makes sense that adp did would be used in a religious text, since according to Ellegård “prelates and preachers” favored its use during its rise. “In the early 16c the use of do probably continued to be more frequent with learned writers and people of high social rank than with others.”84 So the usage cannot be reasonably viewed as low, but neither is it to be viewed as something that only the upper segment of English society used throughout its short run:

It is doubtful whether the frequent use of do should still be looked upon as chiefly literary in the middle of the 16th century, at which time the literary fashion, now half a century old or more, should have had time to work itself out, to be picked up by other sections of the community. We note for example that Machyn . . . uses do remarkably often in his Diary, which certainly has no literary pretensions.85

Ellegård’s observations inform us about those involved in the development of adp did long ago, and this hints at why this particular syntax might be used so heavily in the BofM. It may have been chosen to adopt a plain syntax that is more than appropriate for a formal religious text in light of its historical development.86 (The plainness of the syntax follows from its use of unmarked infinitival stems along with high-frequency did and didst, as well as usage such as they did beat which is unambiguously past tense, as opposed to opaque they beat.)

Later Scriptural-Style Authors and ADP did Syntax

What about pseudo-biblical writings of the late 18th and early 19th centuries? Some of these have been claimed to have served as a model for the BofM’s composition.87 What sort of adp did usage do they contain?

Richard Snowden

Snowden wrote The American Revolution88 in the late 18c. We find that he hardly used adp did (estimated at close to 1% [1300+ past-tense verbs]). And when he did use the periphrasis it was in a constrained modern way, with one exception. Here are 11 examples of adp did in his book (the subjects are in small caps), taken from about 350 short pages:

and many other such things did they do (49) | The captives thou didst take with thy sword (59) | Thus did many of the people forsake the chief captain (120) | they spared not, neither did they pity! (174) | neither did his countenance change (210) | neither did they deride the servants (244) | Thus did the men of Britain stir up the sect of the tories (269–70) | Thus did the people encourage each other (279) | in the second month . . . did the men of Britain land (287) | On the same night did Horatio go forth (298) | On the same day did Nathaniel take upon him the office of chief captain (315).

Snowden almost always used did with inversion: did + subject + infinitive word order. This is syntax that can still be encountered today, but it is restricted in use. We employ it with phrases such as “not only did you …” and often with ellipsis of the infinitive after certain adverbials — as in “… neither did I,” or “… so did you.” The only time Snowden used the periphrasis in typical 16c style was when he wrote thou didst take, thereby avoiding tookest. The KJB frequently did this, and the BofM did so as well, but less often.89

The canonical word order — subject + did + infinitive — was much more common in the 16c than the inverted order; it was found, on average, more than 90% of the time through much of the century.90 For example, Boorde used inversion only twice (2%); Nicholas Harpsfield in his Life of Sir Thomas More (1557) used it more often but only about 20% of the time (Ellegård’s counts).91 However, John Studley in The pageant of popes (1574), translating John Bale, used inversion only 2% of the time, despite adp did rates below 10% (based on 50% sampling).

The bottom line is that besides thou didst take, Snowden always used did + subject + infinitive; he thus marked his own text, perhaps unwittingly, as a late–18c effort. In contrast, the BofM employed such inversion less than 5% of the time. So the texts are patently different in this regard, as well as in percentage use of adp did.

Gilbert Hunt

Next we consider Hunt’s The Late War, written in “ancient historical style.”92 We find that he used adp did more often than Snowden. I have estimated Hunt’s usage at approximately 2% (1100+ past-tense verbs). Again, when he did use the periphrasis it was with inversion, with only one exception. Here are the 23 examples of adp did in the book, taken from about 290 short pages (two elliptical cases; four counts):

Neither did the people . . . cast him into the den of lions (31) | so did the evils increase which surrounded them (53) | Neither did the sick and wounded escape (77) | and in the sight of their own havens, did they do these things (88) | So did he return to his wickedness (116) | with the points of their swords did they torment him (120) | neither did their footsteps follow after warfare (122) | Day after day and night after night did they annoy them (141) | Then . . . did the gallant Perry leap into his cock-boat (163) | Then did the enemies of Columbia weep (165) | even at the age of three-score did he go out against the enemies of Columbia (170) | Thus didi the men of Columbia triumph over them, and [i] conquer them (187) | For although the king . . . did put the instruments of death into our hands (189) | neither did he expect mercy (203) | Quickly didi the weapons of murder disturb and [i] trouble the general silence (218) | Neither did the men of war they counted upon arrive in time (230) | Thus did he . . . stamp his own name with infamy (233) | Thus did he encourage the people (276) | Thus for an hundred days did the people of New-York prepare themselves (278) | Twice did the host of Britain . . . come against the entrenchments (296) | Thus did the children of Columbia praise the Lord (305).

Notice the frequent use of neither, so, and thus before did. The sole use of subject + did word order is the king did put. Twice Hunt used two infinitives after the auxiliary: did…triumph & conquer and did…disturb & trouble. In these two cases he imitated 16c adp did syntax well:

Acts 2:40
And with many other words didi he testify and [i] exhort

Ethan Smith

Ethan Smith’s View of the Hebrews has a similar example; he combined inversion with two intervening adverbials:93

1823 E. Smith View of the Hebrews, 6
Long didi the church, while they walked, there see and [i] enjoy peace.

We have seen that the BofM combines inversion with an adverbial once, in Mosiah 11:14, and that the American author Cooper also employed the construction. It is not too hard to find EModE examples of this: Neither dyd he so much as hyde this from them.

Table 10 contains Ethan Smith’s uses of adp did, taken from about 160 pages. Nearly half of these are certainly emphatic, and one is exclamatory; that construction is syntactically similar to an interrogative (cf. Psalms 78:40). Indeed and in fact are often used in View of the Hebrews with did — never in the BofM. In fact is not found in the text, and indeed only twice — in a biblical passage in 2 Nephi 16:9 (see Isaiah 6:9). Those are emphatic uses; and did cease is certainly emphatic when the larger context is considered. The one I count as a canonical case of adp did is did cut; and even that one may be emphatic since it closely follows did indeed come.

Table 10. ADP did Counts in View of the Hebrews.

Passage

Page

Comments

Count

Long didi the church, while they walked, there see and [i] enjoy peace.

6

inverted, adverbial, elliptical

two

but little it seems did they understand the sense of the tremendous passage

37

inverted

one

A captain of the army of Titus, did in fact plough where some part of the foundation of the temple had stood

40

emphatic
(in fact)

—

Surely this man must mean a longer time than they did in ages past possess it

52

adverbial, possibly emphatic
(surely)

one

This house did cease

64

emphatic
(context)

—

Remarkable indeed it is, that they didi so diligently propagate and [i] transmit them

100

adverbial, elliptical, possibly emphatic
(indeed)

two

The natives of this land, be they who they may, did in fact arrive in this continent; and they probably must have come over those straits

106

emphatic
(in fact)

—

There can be no doubt but God did, by his special providence, direct them to some sequestered region of the world

107

adverbial, possibly emphatic

one

This prophecy did relate to the ten tribes

*107

emphatic;
in footnote, not part of narrative

—

Some people did find their way hither

118

emphatic
(context)

—

How early did the world (in several centuries after the flood) go off to gross idolatry . . . !

126

exclamatory, inverted

—

The Lord of that vineyard did indeed come in a day when they looked not for him, and in an hour when they were not aware; and did cut them asunder.

154

emphatic;
adjacent

one

The overall use of nonemphatic adp did in View of the Hebrews is thus low — only 0.6% (8 out of an estimated 1400+ past-tense verbs). There seem to be three countable instances with inverted subject–did word order. Beyond those, I have also included six counts with intervening adverbials.

Here is Ethan Smith’s profile of use compared with 16c averages:94

adp did Adjacency Inversion Adverbial

View of the Hebrews 0.6 12.5 37.5 75.0

16c averages 5.5 81.0 5.5 13.5

ADP did syntax in View of the Hebrews is nothing like what we find in the 16c, the BofM, or even the KJB. Over 90% of the time did and its infinitive occur together in the BofM. That is not the case in View of the Hebrews or in any of the scriptural-style texts just analyzed; the opposite is true. They are very different from the BofM in overall percentage use of adp did and in their patterns of use.

Besides his use of in fact, Ethan Smith also marks his text as a 19c product by using exceedingly fond (p. 13). The short form exceeding was almost always used in EModE before adjectives (the -ly form could be used with verbal past participles). For example, exceeding great is found 99.8% of the time through the 1690s. That is what the (Earliest Text of the) BofM always has unless there is a clausal complement: exceedingly anxious that…, exceedingly desirous to overtake us. There are only instances of exceeding fond found in EEBO (one with a clausal complement: I am exceeding fond to humour him). Ngram Viewer shows that the long form exceedingly overtook exceeding as the favored form to qualify adjectives in the 1770s. It also shows that did in fact + infinitive emerged around the year 1800, and that did indeed + infinitive is an exceptional case, since its rate of use did not diminish over time in the modern period. Both of these phrases are of course emphatic expressions and good indicators of the spread of that use.

Tabular Comparisons

Table 11 contains the overall percentage use of adp did in relation to total past-tense counts as well as the breakdown of use of the syntax. The table shows that those who consciously wrote in scriptural style close to the year 1800 came (fairly) close to the adp did syntax rate of the KJB. But these pseudo-biblical authors did not do well in matching biblical parameters of adjacency, inversion, and intervening adverbial use. So if they superficially approached the biblical rate, at a deeper level in their syntax they did not approach its profile of use. For the most part, Snowden, Hunt, and Ethan Smith only employed syntax whose vestiges remain in present-day English.

Table 11. Pseudo-Biblical ADP did Rates
Compared with the KJB and the BofM.

 Year adp did Adj. Inv. Adv.

Snowden 1796 1.0 9.0 91.0 0.0

Hunt 1816 2.0 5.0 95.0 0.0

E. Smith 1823 0.6 12.5 37.5 75.0

KJB 1611 1.7 61.0 31.0 8.0

BofM 1829 27.2 91.3 5.0 3.7

Table 12 contains the correlations of these figures.95 The BofM is negatively correlated with each of these pseudo-biblical texts, but the worst match is with View of the Hebrews. Statistically speaking, there is no significant relationship between any of these texts. At the very least, we can conclude from this that many other texts are more likely to have served as a model for the BofM.

Table 12. ADP did Correlations (%) with Scriptural-Style Texts.

KJB BofM

The American Revolution 23 –35

The Late War 18 –39

View of the Hebrews –25 –58

King James Bible — (p < 20%) 77

These findings are meaningful because the past tense makes up a significant component of these books’ syntax, being used hundreds, even thousands of times. In certain sections the past tense could be said to comprise the fabric of these texts. And because it’s pervasive, adp did patterns constitute a good marker of authorial origins.

These pseudo-biblical texts are very weakly correlated with the KJB. The BofM and the KJB correlate more strongly. So the unlettered laborer, Joseph Smith, matched biblical usage in this regard much more closely than better educated writers did.

Table 13 shows the adp did profiles of seven high-rate 16c texts along with 16c averages.

Table 13. ADP did Profiles of High-Rate Texts.

Author Year adp did Adj. Inv. Adv.

Marshall 1534 38.0 76.5 7.4 18.9

Elyot 1537 22.0 94.0 2.0 4.0

Boorde 1542 52.0 93.0 2.0 5.0

Harpsfield 1557 8.5 33.5 18.5 48.0

Machyn 1563 18.0 96.2 3.3 0.5

Studley 1574 6.7 59.4 1.9 38.7

Daniel 1576 51.0 86.9 6.0 8.1

Sixteenth-century averages 5.5 81.0 5.5 13.5

Table 14 contains the correlations. On average, the BofM matches high-rate texts (and 16c averages) better than the KJB. Statistically speaking, the match is significant with five of the texts. And the matching is at a deep level; the BofM is aligned with these 16c texts in terms of adjacency, inversion, and intervening adverbial use.

Table 14. ADP did Correlations (%) with High-Rate Texts.

Year King James Bible Book of Mormon

1534 63 (p < 5%) 98

1537 79 (p < 1%) 100

1542 57 (p < 5%) 96

1557 18 5

1563 (p < 10%) 83 (p < 1%) 100

1574 59 70

1576 51 (p < 5%) 95

16c averages (p < 10%) 86 (p < 5%) 95

Included are two texts whose adp did rate is closer to the biblical text. Again, the correlation that I have performed weights the breakdown in use more heavily than the overall adp did rate, so the KJB could have been closer in correlation to these texts if their rates of adjacency, inversion, and adverbial use had been a better match. Despite this, the 1574 text is more closely correlated with the BofM than it is with the KJB. However, neither scriptural text shows a significant relationship with the lower-rate 1574 text.

Of course the 1611 KJB is undoubtedly a close match with other texts from the early 16c. However, the point being made here is that the BofM is a close match with the usage patterns of certain high-rate texts from this time period: a significant relationship exists between them in terms of adp did.

Tables 15 and 16 list adp did rates and correlations for three parts of the Pearl of Great Price. Their adp did rates are all low, nothing like what is seen in the BofM, but Moses correlates well with it because they both have high rates of adjacency. Joseph Smith—History has only inversion. Abraham has very little data (only two counts of adp did).

Table 15. ADP did Rates in the Pearl of Great Price.

Book  Year adp did Adj. Inv. Adv.

Moses 1830 1.5 78 11 11

Abraham 1833 1.0 50 50 0

J. Smith—History 1838 1.2 0 100 0

Table 16. Correlations (%) with the Pearl of Great Price.

Book King James Bible Book of Mormon

Moses (p < 5%) 92 (p < 5%) 92

Abraham 88 46

J. Smith—History 13 –44

As far as adp did is concerned, Moses seems biblical, Abraham does not have enough data, and Joseph Smith—History is modern in character. It correlates significantly with Snowden and Hunt (100%; p<1%). On the other hand, it does not correlate with View of the Hebrews: 12%. So the theory of Joseph Smith as author relying substantially on Ethan Smith fails, in terms of ubiquitous past-tense syntax, on two counts. And the negative correlation of Joseph Smith—History with the BofM also indicates that Joseph Smith did not have adp did as part of his idiolect.

Inversion and Intervening Adverbials

Table 11 shows that more than 90% of Snowden’s and Hunt’s examples involve inversion. But Ellegård observed that this construction was, on average, less common in EModE than the one with intervening adverbs.96 We can look at 16c quotations in the OED for confirmation. It has five with did+subject inversion with two following infinitives. But there are fifteen with adverbs intervening between did and two following infinitives. So the dictionary’s database confirms Ellegård’s observations.

He estimated inversion at less than 5% for the first 75 years of the 16c. But he found that the inversion rate jumped during the last quarter of the century to 12%, continuing to rise thereafter.97 Consequently, the BofM, with its low rate of inversion, followed mid-16c usage in this regard. On the other hand, Hunt and Snowden followed the usage of the turn of the 19c with nearly complete inversion. But View of the Hebrews does have more adverbial use than inversion. However, Ethan Smith employed too much of both types — and therefore had very little adjacency — so his text is not a good match with earlier usage. Such arcane patterns of use are exceedingly difficult to mimic centuries after the fact when one’s native-speaker intuitions are at odds with prior syntactic usage patterns.

The BofM has 69 examples of adp did with two or more following infinitives. Sixty-three of these involve adjacency; three times it has inversion, and three times it has an intervening adverbial:

Inversion

1 Nephi 9:1
all these things did my father see and hear and speak as he dwelt in a tent

1 Nephi 10:15
after this manner of language did my father prophesy and speak unto my brethren, and also many more things

1 Nephi 17:22
after this manner of language did my brethren murmur and complain against us.

Intervening Adverbials

Alma 55:27
And it came to pass that they did, notwithstanding all the intrigues of the Lamanites, keep and protect all the prisoners

Helaman 11:32
And the robbers did still increase and wax strong, insomuch that they did defy the whole armies of the Nephites and also of the Lamanites

Ether 2:2
And they did also lay snares and catch fowls of the air

Hence there is no discernible pattern of use in the BofM in this respect. The text breaks slightly from the 16c in that it has a little more inversion than intervening adverbial use, similar to the London diarist, Henry Machyn (the KJB breaks decisively [see above tables]).

Ellegård estimated subject–do/did inversion at 4.6% for the third quarter of the 16c, when adp did usage peaked in English.98 I have carefully counted did+subject inversion in the BofM (89 counts); this represents a 4.8% rate, a very close match with Ellegård’s estimate. This constitutes additional supporting evidence that adp did in the BofM is a match with usage from this time period. From this we may conclude that the poor mimicry that the BofM has been thought to demonstrate (by some), is in all likelihood not mimicry; it is much more likely that the text is the result of independent, expert EModE authorship.

It should be noted that when we examine intervening adverbial usage for the third quarter of the 16c, there is a difference between Ellegård’s estimates for this same period and the BofM rate: 13.3% versus 3.6% (EModE versus the BofM).99 But four of the high-rate adp did texts use intervening adverbial elements at a rate that is very close to what is found in the BofM (see the last column in Table 13 above). So several high-rate texts are aligned in their use of intervening adverbials. Generally speaking, when adp did usage rates were very high, elements did not frequently intervene between did and its infinitive. As a result, because the KJB’s overall rate was low, it was more apt to employ syntax with intervening subjects and adverbials than any of the high-rate adp did texts.

Did the King James Bible Serve as a Model?

Could the KJB have been a model for adp did syntax in the BofM? No. The correlation of adp did rates for 75 individual verbs in the KJB and in the BofM is weak — 30% (p < 1%). Performing a similar correlation between Machyn’s Diary (from the 1550s and ’60s) and the BofM yields a relatively strong correlation of 79% (12 verbs; p < ½%).100 Table 17 outlines some of the conspicuous differences between the KJB and the BofM.

Table 17. Some Notable ADP did Differences.

Differences KJB BofM

Overall rate 1.7% 27.2%

ADP didst rate 23% 71%

Adjacency rate 61% 92%

Inversion rate 31% 5%

Instances of did eat 115 1

Instances of did eat & drink 20 0

Instances of did go 0 57

Instances of did cause 2 50

Instances of did come 1 41

Instances of did cry 1 31

Instances of did have 0 19

Instances of multiple ellipsis 0 6

Rate of did preach 0% 78%

Rate of did minister 6% 74%

Rate of did pursue 3% 59%

Rate of did pitch 1% 54%

Rate of did build 4% 56%

On Nineteenth-Century Composition

I find it hard to support the notion that Joseph Smith could have produced the BofM’s affirmative past-tense syntax with did. Simply put, he did not have the grammatical knowledge to be able to compose the narrative using high-rate 16c adp did syntax. Adjacency usage is frequent in the text and much less frequent in the KJB;101 the specific syntax was a rare phenomenon in English that flourished briefly and died off; and the construction is remote in time — its early distinctive patterns confined to the EModE period. Moreover, over the centuries there was a dramatic shift in rates of adjacency, inversion, and intervening adverbial use with did. That has made it extremely difficult for modern English writers to successfully imitate those aspects of the syntax. Finally, Ellegård did not find a text outside of the 16c (not having examined the BofM) with 20+% adp did adjacency. There are outliers in the 1600s, but it is highly likely that there is no text from the modern era besides the BofM that contains this particular high-rate adp did syntax. All this means that its production by Smith or any of his (proposed) associates in the 1820s was virtually impossible.

Another implication of adp did in the BofM is that it argues directly against loose control of the translation.102 Under that theory, would there have been 27% adp did rates with high levels of adjacency and low amounts of subject–did inversion? No. Would there have been 10% usage or even 5% usage? No. Would there have been 2% usage of adp did? Maybe. Under loose control we would expect either biblical patterns (about 2%), or 1820s syntax (about 1%) — that is, did used for emphasis and contrast, and with heavy doses of subject–did inversion. This array of use is of course lacking in the BofM.

Loose control theorists must view Smith as so imbued with King James English and its modes of expression that he was able to produce many of its structures in his dictation.103 But had Smith been using the biblical text as a model for past-tense narration — either consciously or subconsciously — then the most likely conclusion is that he would have used the periphrasis no more than 2% of the time, since that is the observed biblical rate. Furthermore, he would have used much more inversion and much less adjacency, since that is what is found in the KJB and that is what his own dialect of English would have demanded. And if Smith had followed his own language for past-tense verbal expression, then he would have used the periphrasis at an even lower rate.

Conceivable Biblical Explanations

Let us suppose that Joseph Smith — in dictating the BofM text in the late 1820s — used King James adp didst usage as a model for the text.104 The figures in Table 18 suggest this to be a conceivable explanation for adp did syntax in the BofM, since biblical adp didst rates are close to BofM adp did rates.105

Table 18. ADP didst.

Overall rates Adj. Inv. Adv.

BofM didst 71 100 0 0

KJB didst 23 90.5 9.5 0

BofM did 27.2 91.3 5 3.7

Presumably Smith would have had to consult the large, two-part Cruden’s Concordance extensively,106 isolating second-person singular (2sg) didst when used in adp syntax and counting the number of times 2sg past-tense main verbs were used.107 This of course would have been extremely difficult to do 200 years ago. In contrast, today it is a fairly straightforward matter to make these counts as long as one has sufficient grammatical expertise. A degree of interpretation is required but for the most part we can use a computer to quickly isolate and count qualifying words that end in -e(d)st.108 However, it would have been very difficult using an alphabetically arranged concordance to find at least ninety (90) 2sg past-tense verb forms and to accurately make 360 or so counts.109 That is because Cruden’s Concordance did not have a reversed word alphabetical listing. Furthermore, not only would it have been hard to make a complete and accurate count, but their implementation would have been a monumental task that would have necessarily stretched over years. Joseph Smith did not have a monk-like assistant tallying usage and keeping track of esoteric patterns of use; he only had scribes with at best second-rate spelling. We have seen that well-educated contemporaries failed to match King James English in this regard. That evidence alone is sufficient to put to rest the notion that this would have been an easily achievable task.

In addition, we note the following items:

The BofM has a 71.5% adp didst rate.110 Why does it have triple the KJB’s adp didst rate if the biblical rate of 23% had been painstakingly calculated and consciously used as a model?

Verb forms lack 2sg past-tense inflection five times in the BofM, against obvious King James usage. The BofM apparently followed an independent EModE option and used four nonbiblical verb forms thou received / had / beheld / did (the auxiliary adopts an unmarked shape twice in the text).111 Why don’t we find receivèdst, hadst, beheldest, and didst in 2sg contexts if the KJB’s adp didst rate had been consciously and carefully used as a template?112

The KJB employs inversion 10% of the time with adp didst but the BofM has half the inversion rate in adp did syntax.113 Had the KJB been used as a model, we would expect higher rates of inversion in the BofM, especially since the KJB has 30% inversion with adp did.

In short, had the KJB been followed in this regard, why are there so many clear differences in specifics and in patterns of use?

When dozens of verbs are considered, it is plain that the BofM is independent from King James English in its adp did use (see Table 20 in the appendix). Furthermore, the BofM is consistent with the patterns of use found in texts that employ adp did at high rates from the middle of the 16c. It has much less subject–did inversion and significantly higher rates of use of adp did(st) than the biblical text. A comparison of adp did rates and adp didst rates in the BofM and the KJB exhibit independence but a positive correlation. In other words, adp did is lower than adp didst in each text, and BofM rates are higher than each corresponding rate in the KJB. This relationship points to a match in both texts with external EModE syntactic tendencies, but from different time periods.

Another biblical explanation involves considering that Joseph Smith might have used adp did heavily on the analogy of did eat in the KJB. This periphrasis occurs 19 times in Genesis and 32 times in the New Testament. And did eat and drink is found 3 times in Genesis. Table 19 has the profile of use of did eat in the KJB if we consider a surrounding context of 11 words, compared with John Daniel’s translation of 1576, An excelent comfort to all Christians. These figures correlate at nearly 100%. Of course this is an artificial profile that I have created for the KJB, easily done in today’s digital age, but difficult to do 200 years ago.

Table 19. A Concocted ADP did eat Profile from the KJB.

adp did Adj. Inv. Adv.

KJB did eat ± 11 words 55.5 89.2 4.2 6.7

John Daniel 51.0 86.9 6.0 8.1

We note that did(st)…eat is found 115 times in the KJB, but simple past ate only three times.114 As a result, the periphrasis overwhelms the use of the simple past tense. There is not much data in the BofM, but we can say that the text does not favor the use of did eat. And it uses the verb eat in an independent fashion in other ways.115 This also argues against the existence of any biblical adp did eat influence as far as this prominent verb is concerned.

Moreover, Smith would have been unlikely to achieve a good match with the attested 16c preferential usage patterns of adp did with many verbs such as preach, die, and say (discussed previously), since he would have used adp did mechanically and at higher rates with all verbs. Under this scenario we would expect a BofM adp did rate of 50% or more, not 27%. Furthermore, pseudo-biblical authors, knowledgeable themselves in King James English and familiar with did eat, failed to come close to the typical mid-16c distribution of adjacency, inversion, and adverb placement in relation to adp did. Smith would have been hard pressed to do any better than they did, since coming close to the archaic distribution would have involved expressing himself against his own language and according to arcane patterns of use.

As we have seen, the BofM is very closely correlated with the average values of the high-rate adp did texts that have been considered individually in this paper. The KJB is only moderately correlated with these texts, and the distributional averages of scriptural-style authors is negatively correlated with them. These observations argue against the notion that adp did in the BofM could have been a possible outcome of such an endeavor on the part of Joseph Smith.

In summary, had Smith used biblical did eat as a template because of its salience, then the BofM’s adp did rate would be much higher and less principled. Had Smith followed biblical adp did due to extensive familiarity with the text, then the BofM’s adp did rate would be much lower and exhibit a different usage profile. And had Smith followed biblical adp didst, then (1) intensive research and laborious counting would have been required, (2) the process of dictation / composition would have been very different from what is known of it based on largely consistent eyewitness observations, and (3) many allied linguistic features of the BofM would be biblical in nature, not independent of the KJB.

Implications

Ellegård pored over English texts spanning centuries and found a concentration of them that had high rates of adp did syntax; these center around the middle of the 16c. As far as their syntactic patterns are concerned, there is an excellent match between certain texts from this time and the BofM. What does this mean? This constitutes concrete evidence that the language of the BofM, at least in this regard, is based on EModE from this specific period of time. How can that be? God prepared the words of the book, using this variety of English for the narrative framework, and miraculously delivered the words to Joseph Smith. What other evidence is there for language coming from this time period? According to EEBO, peak use of finite-clause syntax with the verbs cause, command, and suffer also occurs before the 1580s. That archaic and obsolete usage occurs hundreds of times in the BofM; and it is in many ways deeply different from King James English. The same can be said for nonbiblical if it so be that, occurring 39 times in the Earliest Text. The usage disappears after those decades.116

Some may be concerned that the BofM would have been translated with archaic and obsolete forms that are not found in the KJB. Others wonder why this could be so. The why is fraught with speculation. But we may ask whether nonbiblical parts of the BofM are less understandable than the KJB is. My experience tells me that no, those sections are more comprehensible.

By and large, obsolete meaning and syntax — for example, “it supposeth me that thou art a child of hell,” “if it so be that they exercise faith in him,” “the waters of the Red Sea . . . departed hither and thither,”117 and “the Lord did cause the serpents that they should pursue them no more”118 — do not interfere with one’s general understanding of the text. In fact, sometimes the old language actually promotes clarity. And of course the syntax discussed here does not impede understanding. But aren’t we missing nuance in meaning occasionally? Yes, just as we often do reading King James English. Will we have a fuller understanding of this old usage in the BofM in the near future? Yes. Does the existence of nonbiblical 16c words and syntax in the BofM increase our confidence that the words are Christ’s? Yes. And can all this strengthen our belief in the Bible (one of the stated purposes of the book)? I believe so.

Scriptural Foundation

I will now attempt to motivate this particular approach from a BofM passage — an important reference whose connection with this view was first brought forth by Royal Skousen. Consider the following extracts from 2 Nephi 27, in particular the use of the substantives words, deliver, and command, highlighted below:

v.6 . . . the Lord God shall bring forth unto you the words of a book. And they shall be the words of them which have slumbered.

9 But the book shall be delivered unto a man, and he shall deliver the words of the book . . . .

19 . . . the Lord God will deliver again the book and the words thereof to him that is not learned. . . .

20 Then shall the Lord God say unto him: . . . thou shalt read the words which I shall give unto thee.

22 Wherefore when thou hast read the words which I have commanded thee . . .

24 And again . . . the Lord shall say unto him that shall read the words that shall be delivered him:

Verses 20 and 24 in particular indicate that words were to be given to Joseph Smith by the Lord, and that Smith would be commanded to read the words as they were given to him. Verse 22 contains a figurative use of command that is frequently found in the KJB. The meaning of the verb in 2 Nephi 27:22 is ‘cause to come’ or ‘send with authority’:

OED command, v. 6b fig. To cause to come; to send with authority.

1611 Bible [ Leviticus 25:21 ]
I will command [Vulgate dabo, Wycliffe give, Coverdale send] my blessing vpon you.

1781 Cowper Hope 669
See me sworn to serve thee [Truth], and command
A painter’s skill into a poet’s hand.

Recast, this excerpt from 2 Nephi 27:22 could therefore read: “That being the case, when you have read the words . . . that I have caused to come to you -or- that I have sent to you with authority.” This recasting is based on the analogous syntax found in the two verses and the specific dictionary definition, given immediately above.

From this biblical usage we have a direct interpretation that words were (miraculously) sent to Joseph Smith by the Lord, that he was not given the responsibility of using his own language to express thoughts that were given to him.

This scriptural passage — in its repetitive use of the collective plural words — seeks to convey that Smith was given a concrete “form of expression or language” [OED word, n. 1 (collect. pl.)]. And because the dictionary makes clear elsewhere that words does not refer to thoughts but concrete verbal expression [word, n. 4], interpreting words as ‘thoughts’ is strained and unlikely. In fine, God conveyed words, not thoughts.

The other distinction to be made has to do with the interpretation of the verb read in these 2 Nephi 27 verses. The relevant OED definition is [11a], under the heading: To peruse and utter in speech. The question is: Did Smith “utter aloud (the words or sentences indicated by the writing, etc., under inspection),” or did he “render in speech (anything written, a book, etc.) according as the written or printed signs are apprehended by the mind” and put them into his own words? The former definition is indicated because of the existence in the book of dozens of instances of obscure meaning and syntax that were inaccessible to Smith in 1829.119 Some of this syntax has been discussed in this paper. In short, Smith dictated God’s words, not his own words.

In verse 19 the meaning of again may be biblical/EModE ‘back’: the Lord will give back the book — and its words — to the uneducated person (see, for example, turn again [Alma 8:25]). In verse 9 the verb deliver is used twice, with different meanings. First the Lord declares that the book is to be committed into a man’s (safe) keeping [deliver, v. 8a]; then the man, Joseph Smith, is to utter or dictate the book’s words [10a].120 This is nuanced usage.

Finally, in verse 6 the Lord tells us that “the words of a book” will be brought to light for our benefit [bring, v. †16d; unto, prep. 27].121 Consequently, I take 2 Nephi 27 as directly telling us that God prepared the words we find in the BofM. That is an immensely powerful concept.

Consider next this supporting passage:

3 Nephi 21:11
whosoever will not believe in my words — which am Jesus Christ — which the Father shall cause him to bring forth unto the Gentiles and shall give unto him power that he shall bring them forth unto the Gentiles, it shall be done, even as Moses said: They shall be cut off from among my people which are of the covenant.

Recast, the relevant portion might read: “God the Father will cause Joseph Smith to bring to light Christ’s words for the benefit of the Gentiles.” Although I can see how this verse might be read with the interpretation that Joseph was to transform Christ’s words into his own, once again the least strained, most direct, and most powerful interpretation is that Smith was to relay Christ’s words, not utter his own. And this is because of:

the language of 2 Nephi 27

the book’s 16c past-tense syntax

principled use of command syntax

refined use of suffer syntax

infrequent, obsolete layered causative constructions
(e.g. 2 Nephi 5:17; Mosiah 6:7; Alma 21:3; Mormon 3:5)

inaccessible, obsolete meaning like:

depart, v. (intr.) = ‘divide’ (Helaman 8:11)

counsel, v. = ‘ask counsel of, consult’ (Alma 37:37; 39:10)

scatter, v. = ‘separate without dispersal’ (title page)

inaccessible, obsolete usage like:

but if = ‘unless’ (Mosiah 3:19)

to that = ‘until’ (1 Nephi 18:9)

hearts delighteth, flames ascendeth, etc.
(Alma 26:24; Mosiah 2:38; Alma 12:17)

it supposeth me (e.g. Jacob 2:8; Word of Mormon 1:2)122

Important Findings Regarding Past-Tense Syntax

Sustained high-rate adp did adjacency rates (20+%) are found in 16c and 17c writings.

In the 1820s…

even experts in EModE syntax would have struggled to know peak-usage characteristics because of language change.

relevant prose texts were obscure and found only in remote research libraries.

the syntactic knowledge was inaccessible to Smith and scribe.

Yet the 1829 BofM…

matches 16c high-rate profiles with statistical significance.

differs materially from the 1611 KJB.

Still, the past-tense profile of the BofM correlates more closely with the KJB’s profile than do scriptural-style writings of the early 19c, and the BofM is completely unlike those texts.

Conclusion

As a general rule, obsolete syntax is completely inaccessible to an
author or speaker because of a lack of knowledge. This observation also applies to lost meaning. (Here I refer to language that has never been encountered, with which one is wholly unacquainted. So some obsolete usage that one knows from prominent sources such as the KJB or Shakespeare is properly excluded from this statement.) Intelligence, savant-like capabilities, automatic writing cannot overcome an absence of syntactic knowledge. Writers cannot manufacture out of thin air vanished forms and lexical meaning when language shift has taken place, thereby obscuring prior usage. That of course is precisely the case of the BofM’s past-tense syntax. High-rate nonemphatic adp did adjacency disappeared before the 18c and was not generally known. So Joseph Smith had no knowledge that it was used at high rates during the 16c and the 17c. (The anomalous use of biblical did eat would not have told him that, just as it does not tell us that today.)

In terms of adp did, we note a systematic match between the BofM and the syntactic usage of the EModE period, exclusively. On the basis of this evidence we conclude that God, consistent with his divine purposes, chose this specific language variety and syntax as a framework for much of the past-tense narrative of the BofM. Wherefore, in this and other respects the language of the book is EModE. Moreover, the pervasive use of this construction in the text and its close match with certain 16c texts (as well as other syntactic evidence alluded to above), point directly to the idea that the book is full of EModE syntax.

On the basis of the foregoing evidence and discussion, I would assert that the frequent occurrence of adp did syntax in the BofM, as well as its deeper patterns of use, cannot reasonably be ascribed to the mind of Joseph Smith or anyone else associated with, or proposed to be associated with, the composition of the text in the late 1820s. And the odds that anyone else would have or even could have written a text in this fashion 200 years ago are vanishingly small. It seems that no one has done it since the EModE period. The data discussed here are compelling, and it is hoped that the related conclusions are as well.

We have seen that some who intentionally tried to follow King James English in their writings did not match 16c adp did usage. Their efforts do not positively correlate with that stage of English: Snowden’s The American Revolution, Hunt’s The Late War, and Ethan Smith’s View of the Hebrews ended up well off the mark. Sixteenth-century texts were not readily available in the 1820s as they became later in the 19c.123 As a result, the access to the relevant texts was extremely limited in the 1820s, especially to someone living away from populated eastern cities with research libraries. And the 16c printed books containing the heavy use of this syntax were still largely to be found only in British libraries. So a compelling position — on account of the lack of any specific, credible evidence to the contrary — is that the words of the BofM were revealed to Joseph Smith through the instrument, that they came from a divine source.

Appendix

Table 20. Tabular Comparison of ADP did Rates [29.5% correlation].

King James Bible

Book of Mormon

verb

n

rate

n

rate

rate diff

die

186

0.0

36

0.0

0.0%

see

555

1.6

258

1.9

0.3%

behold

54

3.7

114

4.4

0.7%

begin

621

0.0

430

2.8

2.8%

say

3795

0.1

262

4.2

4.1%

become

69

0.0

103

4.9

4.9%

know

180

0.6

99

6.1

5.5%

send

519

2.1

99

9.1

7.0%

have

560

0.0

169

11.2

11.2%

speak

600

0.3

189

12.7

12.4%

give

470

1.5

113

14.2

12.7%

come

1744

0.1

319

12.9

12.8%

fight

56

1.8

29

17.2

15.5%

lead

47

2.1

28

17.9

15.7%

find

158

0.0

33

18.2

18.2%

bring

570

1.8

60

21.7

19.9%

take

758

0.8

169

21.3

20.5%

inquire

24

0.0

14

21.4

21.4%

return

158

0.0

70

21.4

21.4%

look

129

1.6

30

23.3

21.8%

drive

21

38.1

15

60.0

21.9%

believe

90

0.0

50

22.0

22.0%

fall

243

0.0

58

22.4

22.4%

go

1414

0.0

251

22.7

22.7%

cast

152

6.6

47

29.8

23.2%

call

362

0.6

42

23.8

23.3%

flee

123

1.6

71

25.4

23.7%

make

808

1.9

88

26.1

24.3%

cause

54

3.7

162

30.9

27.2%

bear

164

1.8

20

30.0

28.2%

pray

58

0.0

34

29.4

29.4%

repent

30

3.3

29

34.5

31.1%

belong

13

7.7

18

38.9

31.2%

smite

229

0.4

34

32.4

31.9%

hear

376

0.3

66

33.3

33.1%

appoint

76

0.0

21

33.3

33.3%

turn

156

2.6

22

36.4

33.8%

shew

72

1.4

28

35.7

34.3%

receive

78

1.3

39

35.9

34.6%

gather

134

0.0

44

36.4

36.4%

prophesy

44

4.5

22

40.9

36.4%

keep

71

2.8

29

41.4

38.6%

do

410

0.0

54

38.9

38.9%

deliver

132

3.0

33

42.4

39.4%

lay

169

0.0

24

41.7

41.7%

slay

197

0.5

45

42.2

41.7%

enter

84

1.2

23

43.5

42.3%

cry

186

0.5

72

43.1

42.5%

meet

41

0.0

23

43.5

43.5%

teach

51

0.0

40

45.0

45.0%

pass

128

0.0

35

45.7

45.7%

harden

21

0.0

17

47.1

47.1%

carry

84

1.2

18

50.0

48.8%

fill

43

0.0

10

50.0

50.0%

raise

40

0.0

26

50.0

50.0%

build

113

4.4

25

56.0

51.6%

pitch

76

1.3

28

53.6

52.3%

remain

51

5.9

12

58.3

52.5%

baptize

14

7.1

10

60.0

52.9%

beat

25

20.0

19

73.7

53.7%

obtain

13

0.0

27

55.6

55.6%

pursue

37

2.7

22

59.1

56.4%

pour

41

0.0

10

60.0

60.0%

prosper

11

9.1

21

71.4

62.3%

minister

32

6.3

23

73.9

67.7%

follow

97

0.0

13

69.2

69.2%

wax

30

0.0

17

70.6

70.6%

declare

12

8.3

10

80.0

71.7%

rejoice

47

6.4

18

83.3

77.0%

preach

32

0.0

27

77.8

77.8%

continue

25

0.0

10

80.0

80.0%

humble

12

8.3

14

92.9

84.5%

stir

16

0.0

15

86.7

86.7%

cease

24

0.0

19

94.7

94.7%

walk

88

3.4

12

100.0

96.6%

Stanford Carmack has a linguistics and a law degree from Stanford University, as well as a doctorate in Hispanic Languages and Literature from the University of California, Santa Barbara, specializing in historical syntax. In the past he has had articles published on Georgian verb morphology and object–participle agreement in Old Spanish and Old Catalan. He currently researches Book of Mormon syntax as it relates to Early Modern English and contributes, by means of textual analysis, to volume 3 of Royal Skousen’s Book of Mormon critical text project.

1 . The entry for this word in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) — there defined as ‘roundabout’ or ‘circumlocutory’ — has this example from a famous linguist:

1884 Henry Sweet Addr. Philol. Soc.
The periphrastic forms of the English verb.

2 . Alvar Ellegård, The Auxiliary Do: The Establishment and Regulation of Its Use in English (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1953), 169.

3 . Insistent use, found in the BofM at Alma 42:30.

4 . I quote exclusively from the Yale edition of the BofM: Royal Skousen, ed., The Book of Mormon: The Earliest Text (New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 2009). I am indebted to him for his scholarly work in producing a reliable early text for research. His work makes studies like this one possible.

5 . Ellegård called adjacency “contact,” and inversion “a/o inversion.” By a/o he meant that either an adverbial element or an object phrase preceded the do-auxiliary under inversion. As for intervening adverbial use, he labeled it “sdav,” standing for subject + do/did + adverbial + (main) verb. See, for example, Ellegård, Auxiliary Do, 182.

6 . I required that the verbs chosen for the correlation had to be used at least 10 times in the past tense in each text.

7 . Late Middle English cases of did be and did have are causative constructions:

c 1430 Two Cookery-bks. 26
Gelye de Fysshe . . . Do as þou dedyst be þat oþer Gelye.

1393 Gower Conf. ed Pauli, II. 306
She did him have A clue of threde.

Such old syntax is not found in either the KJB or the BofM.

8 . Ellegård counted each finite main-verb instance in 10 predetermined pages from each book; from those counts he extrapolated. Ellegård, Auxiliary Do, 157.

9 . Ellegård made 6,750 counts in 379 texts. This table is found at page 161 of Auxiliary Do. I have added the percentage column, but all counts are Ellegård’s.

10 . Jonathan Swift, Journal to Stella, 1710–13 (65 letters); see Ellegård, Auxiliary Do, 311–12.

11 . Jean-Baptiste Michel et al., “Quantitative Analysis of Culture Using Millions of Digitized Books,” Science (published online ahead of print on 16 December 2010).

12 . This prolific American author began writing in the 1820s.

13 . Royal Skousen points out, in Analysis of Textual Variants of the Book of Mormon (Provo, UT: FARMS and BYU, 2004), 1:348, that the 1830 typesetter inserted did bear in place of bare, the form found in both MSS. This is a good example of the value of Skousen’s work to the researcher. The counts and analysis of this study are much more reliable than they would be without the benefit of his painstaking work. Now we know there was a switch from adp did usage to simple past-tense bare in the dictation at this point. He also points to 1 Nephi 2:16 and 1 Nephi 18:11 where did was erroneously added.

14 . These passages show how intervening adverbial syntax is analogous to the negative declarative.

15 . These passages are taken from the Early English Books Online (EEBO) database <eebo.chadwyck.com>. I am indebted to EEBO and the Text Creation Partnership for the reliable digitization of many texts from the 16c and the 17c.

16 . Matti Rissanen, “Peripihrastic Do in Affirmative Statements in Early American English,” Journal of English Linguistics 18.2 (October 1985), 168–69.

17 . Rissanen, “Periphrastic Do,” 167–68, 174.

18 . Rissanen, “Periphrastic Do,” 176–77.

19 . Merja Kytö, “The Emergence of American English: Evidence from Seventeenth-Century Records in New England” Legacies of Colonial English, ed. Raymond Hickey (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2011), 137.

20 . Rissanen, “Salem Witchcraft Papers as Evidence of Early American English,” English Linguistics 20.1 (2003), 109.

21 . See Matti Rissanen, “Spoken language and the history of do-periphrasis,” Historical English Syntax, ed. Dieter Kastovsky (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1991), 324, 328–29, 333; Rissanen, “Periphrastic Do,” 176.

22 . It is interesting that command syntax in the BofM is similar to what is found in Caxton’s Golden Legend (1483) and Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye (1474). My purpose is not to delve deep and give late Middle English examples; I am content with showing the use in the EModE period. Most of the examples are taken from The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed. on cd-rom, v4. (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2009).

23 . The first use — did baptize — appears to be perfective, the second use — did belong — can be viewed as imperfective. This argues for the past-tense use of did being compatible with either interpretation, and against a 16c grammarian’s assertion that it was imperfective in sense. See the relevant discussion in Ellegård, Auxiliary Do, 170, which dismisses that grammarian’s view.

24 . The turn-of-the century figures are calculated from the adjacent values estimated by Ellegård — see Auxiliary Do, 161.

25 . Ellegård asserted that “there is absolutely no justification for supposing that the frequency was at any time higher in affirmative sentences than in the others” (Auxiliary Do, 161).

26 . I have estimated turn-of-the-century percentages by averaging the surrounding sampled values found in Ellegård, Auxiliary Do, 161.

27 . adp did would remain to a degree in several British dialects, “with a tendency (but by no means exclusively) to indicate not a single event, but a repeated, continued (i.e. habitual) action.” Susanne Wagner, “Unstressed periphrastic do —
from Southwest England to Newfoundland?” English World-Wide 283 (2007), 262. The use of adp did became specialized and isolated geographically. There was no maintenance of use in Newfoundland (Vernacular) English (“one of the most conservative varieties of English”) (249).

28 . The future tense is periphrastic — the auxiliary will is used before the infinitives choose and bring. There was no synthetic, one-word future tense in English, nor is there now. An example of a synthetic future is Spanish irán = ‘(they) will go’.

29 . For a discussion of the variation here, see Stanford Carmack, “A Look at Some ‘Nonstandard’ Book of Mormon Grammar,” Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture 11 (2014), 251.

30 . Forsookest occurs twice in the KJB, both times in Nehemiah; wentest occurs 14 times. The “nonbiblical” BofM does not have many instances of didst (15), while the KJB has 122, 83 occurring with following infinitives. This use may have been a strategy to avoid extra past-tense verb stems with difficult phonology. In the BofM most of the occurrences of didst are from the prophetic writings of Zenos or Isaiah. There are only seven instances in the rest of the book: Alma to his sons (5 times), Nephi to the Lord in Helaman (once), and Moroni to the Lord in Ether (once).

31 . See Rissanen, “Spoken language,” 322, 333, 338; Rissanen, “Salem Witchcraft Papers,” 109.

32 . See Ellegård, Auxiliary Do, 157, 179. Rissanen has taken a different stance, stressing that there was frequently emotive force behind the periphrasis. Rissanen, “Periphrastic Do,” 164, 177 (“emotion, emphasis, and euphony”); Rissanen, “Spoken language,” 326. We may take his judgments in this regard as speculative, since he is a native speaker of Finnish, a language that does not have the emphatic use, except by shifts in word order or by adding emphatic particles to the ends of words, but not by intonation or stress.

33 . Ellegård, Auxiliary Do, 179.

34 . Ellegård, Auxiliary Do, 157.

35 . Carmack, “Nonstandard,” 216ff.

36 . See Table 8 on p. 172 of Ellegård, Auxiliary Do.

37 . There are undoubtedly errors in these counts, but I do not believe that the true rate is different from 27% by more than half a percent. Extracting biblical passages, however, would give us a different, higher rate. The 27% rate is calculated from my nearly exhaustive counts using Skousen’s Yale edition of the Book of Mormon. I have not included contexts where did might be used as a pro-verb —that is, a substitute for the main verb — as in this example: “he did baptize them after the manner he did (ø) his brethren in the waters of Mormon” (Mosiah 25:18). In this sentence, we cannot be sure whether the second did stands in for baptized or whether baptize has been ellipted after did. I have counted six of these in the text of the BofM: Mosiah 25:18; Alma 18:4; 19:33; 39:2; 56:47; 63:2.

Besides these six cases of infinitival ellipsis following did, or did used as a pro-verb, there appear to be 35 instances of main-verb did in the BofM; 8 interrogative passages with did; and 172 with negative declarative syntax of the form did(st)…not.

38 . The estimate has been made by counting adp doth (125 counts), occurrences of third-person singular verbs ending in -eth (1070), and half the instances of saith (93 — because of frequent historical present-tense use). In addition, a 20% sampling of hath pointed to a total of 75 counts of main-verb use in the text. This yields a rate of 10.1%. This is probably an upper-bound estimate of present-tense adp do syntax in the BofM. Better counts will be made in the future.

39 . Ellegård, Auxiliary Do, 161–62.

40 . For a discussion of some EModE usage in the BofM, see, for example, Royal Skousen, “The Original Text of the Book of Mormon and its Publication by Yale University Press,” Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture 7 (2013), 89–93 and his preface to the Yale edition of the BofM. For a discussion of some syntax, see Carmack, “Nonstandard.”

41 . The KJB has only this one clear example of three successive uses of didst. Note the use of wentest but then the switch to didst increase, thereby avoiding exceptional *increasèdst and *debasèdst, not found in the biblical text or in the OED (sentest occurs 4 times in the KJB).

42 . Cf. analogous future-tense expression — “I willi go and [i] see him before I die” (Genesis 45:28) and “I willi go and [i] do the things which the Lord hath commanded” (1 Nephi 3:7).

43 . Here is a similar quotation from the first half of the 16c:

a1533 Ld. Berners Huon lxvi. 226
He dyd ete & drynke but lytell.

44 . Mark Davies, Early English Books Online, 400 million words, 1470s–1690s (2013–). I am indebted to Mark Davies for allowing me to use his large corpus and excellent interface; it has made this study much better and more reliable.

45 . Skink, v. = ‘serve liquor’.

46 . The weighted values were obtained by dividing did counts by and the counts, and then multiplying by 1,000. The 16c and 17c counts were based in part on sampling.

47 . Ellegård, Auxiliary Do, 157.

48 . Ellegård, Auxiliary Do, 161, 169. The BofM adp did percentage is my estimate based on thousands of individual counts.

* Ellegård states: “The high figure for 1475–1500 is due to one very large single text, Polychronicon [Caxton — 1482]. If that text is discounted — which is justifiable — the figure becomes instead 1.2% for the period” (p. 160). This statement applies to overall periphrastic do, but more than 95% of Ellegård’s counts are of adp syntax. On that basis I have calculated a 3.5% rate for Caxton’s Polychronicon. This text is a prime example of the early emergence of adp do/did. Hence Ellegård’s conclusion that Caxton was an early driver of the usage (p. 209). Interestingly, his use of command syntax in the 1470s and ’80s is a good match with the BofM’s.

49 . See Ellegård, Auxiliary Do, 171–72, 209.

50 . Here is the formula used to generate the chart: ((he did _verb_+they did _verb_+and did _verb_+who did _verb_+I did _verb_+that did _verb_+which did _verb_+we did _verb_+God did _verb_)*22222); smoothing of 5 was used.

51 . Here is the formula used to generate the chart: ((they did minister+he did minister+who did minister+and did minister)/(they did minister+he did minister+who did minister+and did minister+they ministered+he ministered+and ministered+who ministered)).

52 . The calculation: 27% * 10 / (132 * 20). If Scott had employed did ellipsis at the same rate that the BofM does, then he would have had 1,300 examples of it in his body of work.

53 . Cooper used inversion with an intervening adverbial, as in Mosiah 11:14.

54 . Cooper used went more than 1,500 times but employed did go three times for emphasis and three times in inverted subject–verb structures: twice did he go and no sooner did he go and I make no doubt I should have been blown out of the top, could I have reached it, did I let go my hold to do any work (a stylish speculative construction without if). I have excluded only one italicized emphatic use as well as all interrogative, negative, poetic, and non-native contexts.

55 . By way of contrast, the use of did go in the BofM is 22.7% (with an adjacency rate of 20.5%), slightly below the textual average. On the other hand, biblical usage is zero. That’s just one more way in which BofM language differs significantly from King James English.

56 . Rissanen, “Periphrastic Do,” 179 note 12.

57 . Rissanen, “Periphrastic Do,” 168, 173.

58 . Rissanen, Periphrastic Do, 180 note 14. Counts taken from Helle M. Alpert, Robert Keayne: Notes of Sermons by John Cotton and Proceedings of the First Church of Boston from 23 November 1639 to 1 June 1640 (Diss. Tufts University, 1974), 103–30, 270–85.

59 . See Ellegård’s diagram based on his Table 9 at page 182 of Auxiliary Do.

60 . The correlation of this profile with that of the BofM is 85% (p<10%).

61 . Rissanen justifies giving the percentage as 51 counts per 10,000 words at Salem Witchcraft Papers, 109 note 15.

62 . Rissanen, Salem Witchcraft Papers, 108. The 3% figure derives from Ellegård’s upper bound 1.8% rate for the last half of the 17c, multiplied by 1.6 = 2.88%.

63 . Susanne Wagner, “Unstressed periphrastic do — from Southwest England to Newfoundland?” English World-Wide 283 (2007), 249–78.

64 . Wagner, Newfoundland, 249, 271–72.

65 . The periphrasis did eat shows the influence of King James English, while being an anomalous case itself. That is, we see clear biblical influence when we compare the falling usage rates of did minister and did eat during the 18c. Did minister was used at a higher rate than did eat in the EModE period, although did eat was used at a very high rate too. (These two verbs were exceptional in this regard.) But Google books shows that did eat rates in the 18c did not drop as sharply as did minister rates did. That fact can be reasonably ascribed to the almost 100% usage levels of did eat in the KJB, as opposed to ate.

66 . I. Woodbridge Riley, The Founder of Mormonism (New York, 1902), 124–26; Fawn M. Brodie, No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith, the Mormon Prophet, 2nd ed. (New York: Knopf, 1971), 46–47; David Persuitte, Joseph Smith and the Origins of the Book of Mormon (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1985).

67 . Ellegård, Auxiliary Do, 160, 166–67.

68 . Thomas Elyot, The Castel of Helth (London: Thomas Berthelet, 1541) [New York: Scholars’ Facsimiles & Reprints, n.d.] <archive.org/details/castelofhelthcor00 elyoiala>. Accessed July 2014. The initial publication date is given variously as 1533 or 1537, but this is conjectural.

69 . Andrew Boorde, The Fyrst Boke of the Introduction of Knowledge [1542], ed. F. J. Furnivall (London: Trübner, 1870) [Early English Text Society. Extra Series. No. x].

70 . If that phrase were counted as a case of the simple past, then the adp did come rate would be 2.4%, not 12.9%, and overall adp did would be 22.5%.

71 . I also excluded from counts invariant treateth (used in chapter headings), as well as Boorde’s curious poetic passages. They have been excluded because poetic rhyme and meter and fixed phraseology akin to it came to pass could have strongly, and artificially, influenced the choice of forms. If main verb have is excluded from counts, the rates of use of adp do and did in Boorde are 66% and 56%, respectively.

72 . These are my counts based on an online modernized transcription (Richard W. Bailey, Marilyn Miller, and Colette Moore, eds., A London Provisioner’s Chronicle, 1550–1563, by Henry Machyn: Manuscript, Transcription, and Modernization, <quod.lib.umich.edu/m/machyn> [n.d.], accessed June 2014).

73 . Ellegård, Auxiliary Do, 166.

74 . However, the BofM is not a close match with Machyn’s Diary in relation to go, come, and take; yet neither is it discordant. The BofM’s adp did rate is relatively low with these three verbs. But still, their rate of use is 10% or higher, while it is 0% or nearly so in Machyn’s text.

75 . Ellegård, Auxiliary Do, 167.

76 . adp did eat was strong throughout the EModE period, strengthened in the 17c by the biblical text’s high usage. Here is an early example showing simple past left followed immediately by the periphrasis with eat:

1493 Festivall (W. de W. 1515) 153 b
He came in company of recheles people, & by comforte of them he lefte his faste and dyde ete.

77 . According to EEBO, did cease rates may have peaked during the decade of the 1600s, did preach during the 1550s, did minister in the 1620s, and did prosper in the 1660s.

78 . Jon Nielson and Royal Skousen, “How Much of the King James Bible Is William Tyndale’s? An Estimation Based on Sampling,” Reformation 3 (1998), 49.

79 . Ellegård , Auxiliary Do, 169.

80 . Of course the other kinds of periphrastic do flourished and persisted — that is, did they not hear?, did they depart?, they did not leave, do not cry, etc.

81 . Ellegård , Auxiliary Do, 161–62.

82 . Ellegård, Auxiliary Do, 209.

83 . See John A. Tvedtnes, “Hebraisms in the Book of Mormon: A Preliminary Survey” BYU Studies 11.1 (1970), 55, for some discussion about the construct state.

84 . Ellegård, Auxiliary Do, 166.

85 . Ellegård, Auxiliary Do, 166.

86 . We note that Rissanen asserted that the use of adp did could function as a “discursive device underlining the importance of the narrative” in “Salem Witchcraft Papers,” 109. And he wrote that “[c]lusters of do also occur in solemn declarations” in “Periphrastic Do,” 169. But he also pointed out more recently that “this use [was] of course related to the emphatic use of do in Present-Day English.” Rissanen, “Morphology and Syntax,” Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, ed. Bernard Rosenthal (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2009), 80.

87 . See, for example, I. Woodbridge Riley, The Founder of Mormonism (New York, 1902), 124–26; Benjamin L. McGuire, “The Late War Against the Book of Mormon,” Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture 7 (2013), 323 notes 2 and 3.

88 . Richard Snowden, The American Revolution: written in scriptural, or, ancient historical style (Baltimore: W. Pechin, n.d.). Apparently published in parts and serially in the 1790s. <www.worldcat.org> gives a date of [1796], <archive.org> has [1802].

89 . The periphrasis didst comfort would be a good solution in later editions of the BofM for phonologically awkward comfortedst at 2 Nephi 22:11 (Isaiah passage).

90 . Ellegård, Auxiliary Do, 182. See his Table 9 and the accompanying diagram.

91 . Ellegård, Auxiliary Do, 287.

92 . Gilbert J. Hunt, The Late War, between the United States and Great Britain, from June 1812, to February 1815 (New York: David Longworth, 1816).

93 . Ethan Smith, View of the Hebrews; Exhibiting the Destruction of Jerusalem; the Certain Restoration of Judah and Israel; and an Address of the Prophet Isaiah Relative to their Restoration (Poultney, VT: Smith & Shute, 1823): 5–167. <archive.org/details/viewhebrewsexhi00smitgoog>. Accessed July 2014.

94 . Ellegård, Auxiliary Do, 182.

95 . The array that I have compared in order to calculate correlation is the overall adp did rate along with the three breakdown percentages. So the correlation measures the internal syntactic structure of adp did as well as its overall rate.

96 . Ellegård, Auxiliary Do, 182.

97 . Ellegård, Auxiliary Do, 182.

98 . Ellegård, Auxiliary Do, 162, 182.

99 . According to Ellegård, an intervening adverbial rate similar to what is found in the BofM obtained during the first quarter of the 16c.

100 . A correlation has been made with verbs used at least 10 times in each text. We are 99% confident that only a weak relationship exists between the BofM and KJB, and we are 99.5% confident that a fairly strong relationship exists between the BofM and Machyn’s writing.

101 . The BofM has more than 1,600 instances, and the KJB has only about 350, and more than 100 of those are did(st) eat.

102 . “Ideas were revealed to Joseph Smith, and he put those ideas into his own language (a theory advocated by many Book of Mormon scholars over the years).” Royal Skousen, “How Joseph Smith Translated the Book of Mormon: Evidence from the Original Manuscript,” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 7.1 (1998), 24.

103 . See Brant A. Gardner, The Gift and Power: Translating the Book of Mormon (Salt Lake City: Kofford, 2011), 302.

104 . There is no historical evidence for such an endeavor. According to multiple eyewitnesses, neither the KJB nor any related books were consulted during the dictation process. And to my knowledge, Joseph Smith was never accused of poring over a large biblical concordance.

105 . One thing in Table 18, however, immediately casts doubt on this approach: the BofM adp didst rate is much higher than the corresponding biblical rate.

106 . For example: Alexander Cruden, A Complete Concordance to the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament: or, a Dictionary and Alphabetical Index to the Bible: very useful to all Christians who seriously read and study the inspired writings, 10th ed. (London: Thos. Tegg and Wm. Baynes & Son, 1824). 856 pages. <archive.org/details/complet0crud>. Accessed July 2014.

107 . I have counted 83 instances of adp didst. Three of these are used with two infinitives, but under this hypothetical assumption I will assume that these instances would have been counted only once. Beyond these fairly easy counts, one must make counts of irregular and regular 2sg past-tense verb forms. There are perhaps 278 of these: 194 irregular + 84 regular.

108 . This involves discarding words that are not past-tense main verbs. For example, diddest in Acts 7:28 is a pro-verb. And layest, rentest, cuttest, lettest, settest, and puttest are opaquely present tense.

109 . There may be 30 irregular 2sg past-tense verb forms: abodest, badest, barest, becamest, brakest, broughtest, camest, drewest, fellest, fleddest, forgavest, forsookest, foundest, gavest, heardest, knewest, leddest, madest, sawest, slewest, smotest, spakest, stoodest, swarest, thoughtest, threwest, tookest, wentest, withheldest, wroughtest.

There may be 59 regular 2sg past-tense verb forms: anointedst, answeredst, buildedst, calledst, castedst, chargedst, comfortedst, commandedst, consentedst, coveredst, crownedst, cursedst, deckedst, defiledst, deliveredst, desiredst, diggedst, driedst, executedst, filledst, followedst, fouledst, hearkenedst, humbledst, killedst, longedst, layedst, longedst, lovedst, marchedst, movedst, multipliedst, obeyedst, paintedst, passedst, plantedst, playedst, pouredst, preparedst, promisedst, provokedst, receivedst, redeemedst, refusedst, sacrificedst, servedst, shewedst, skippedst, sowedst, strengthenedst, stretchedst, subduedst, testifiedst, troubledst, trustedst, vowedst, walkedst, wateredst, woundedst.

Many of these verb forms are found two or more times in the KJB.

110 . The only nonbiblical main-verb occurrences of the 2sg affirmative declarative past-tense in the BofM are madest, saidst, saidest, beheld, received, and had.

111 . See Carmack, “Nonstandard,” 228–30.

112 . Receivèdst (Luke 16:25); hadst (cf. main-verb usage in Genesis 30:30, Psalms 44:3, Jeremiah 3:3, and Hebrews 10:8); beheldest (on the analogy of withheldest in Nehemiah 9:20).

113 . I exclude four cases of didst not and count one case of elliptical (thou) did go (Alma 39:3).

114 . Psalms 106:28; Daniel 10:3; Revelation 10:10.

115 . Excluding Isaiah passages, the BofM has one instance of did eat (Enos 1:20), two of ate (Alma 8:22; Ether 15:26), four of had eat (Alma 8:23; 3 Nephi 18:4; 20:4; 20:9), and two of had (not) eaten (3 Nephi 6:2; 18:5). There is little data, but the BofM’s adp did rate with eat is only one-third. In addition, it uses eat four times as a past participle (two-thirds of the time) (pronounced /εt/); the KJB uses only eaten (105 times):

1519 W. Horman Vulg. 164 b
He hath eate all the braune of the lopster.

1594 Daniel Cleopatra iv. Wks. (1717) 286
To have eat the sweet-sower Bread of Poverty.

116 . EEBO shows hardly any use in the 17c. Biblical “if so be that” was dominant throughout the period except in the middle of the 16c (but still more common than “if it so be that”). There is some British revival in the latter half of the 18c, continuing on into the 19c. Google books has many false positives from reprinted older language. No American usage found, yet.

117 . Helaman 8:11. This is an intransitive use of depart = ‘divide’; the last example given in the OED is dated 1577: “[The sinews] depart agayne into two, and eche goeth into one eye.” Recast, the BofM phrase might read “the waters of the Red Sea divided to the left and right.”

118 . In this obsolete causative construction the serpents is the indirect object of caused, and it is repeated pronominally in the embedded object clause. This nonbiblical syntax is attested in the EModE textual record but it is relatively infrequent. The BofM has 12 examples of this structure.

119 . See Skousen’s various publications on point, referenced above; see also Carmack, “Nonstandard.”

120 . OED def. 10a has ‘give forth in words, utter, enunciate, pronounce openly or formally’; Webster’s 1828 def. 6 has ‘utter; pronounce; speak; send forth in words; as, to deliver a sermon, an address, or an oration’. Using words as the object of deliver has been less common through the centuries than delivering a speech of some kind, but the use is possible even today.

121 . Most present-day English speakers use bring forth to mean other things. It was a common verbal phrase in the EModE period; Shakespeare employed it nearly 30 times. Two examples with the meaning of ‘bring to light, or public view’ are:

1601 Shakes. All’s Well v. iii. 151
To bring forth this discou’rie.

1605 Shakes. Macb. iii. iv. 125
Augures and vnderstood Relations haue . . . brought forth
The secret’st man of Blood.

122 . Items like depart, but if, to that, it supposeth me — all found in the OED —
show that Webster’s 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language is insufficient to cover the range of usage found in the BofM.

123 . For instance, the Early English Text Society began its effort of making old texts accessible to researchers and the general public 20 years after Joseph Smith’s death.

The Implications of Past-Tense Syntax
in the Book of Mormon

Stanford Carmack

Abstract: In the early editions of the Book of Mormon, Alma refers to the Nephite interpreters as directors. Because director(s) elsewhere refers to the brass ball that guided Lehi’s family through the wilderness, Alma’s use of the term was apparently considered a mistake, and directors was changed to interpreters for the 1920 edition of the Book of Mormon. There are reasons, however, to believe that Alma’s use of directors was intentional. I present contextual evidence that Alma was actually using the Hebrew word urim, which was later translated into English as directors (for the interpreters) and director (for the brass ball), and biblical evidence that those translations are appropriate. Alma may have called the instruments urim to emphasize their sacred importance. As English prose, Alma’s discussion of these sacred instruments is wordy and at times confusing. As Hebrew poetry built around the word urim, it makes more sense. Alma’s apparent sophisticated use of this word suggests that he had a thorough understanding of the ancient connotations of urim and remarkable talent as a classical Hebrew poet.

Instrument Confusion in the Book of Mormon

One of the more substantial changes to the Book of Mormon since its 1830 publication was the replacement of the word directors in Alma chapter 37 with interpreters (Alma 37:21, 24). The change was made for the 1920 edition of the Book of Mormon and has been preserved in all subsequent Latter-day Saint (LDS) editions. The change made sense because Alma is speaking of the two sacred stones used to interpret ancient writings, and everywhere else in the Book of Mormon those stones are fittingly called interpreters. Also, director (i.e., in the singular) in the Book of Mormon and directors in the Doctrine and Covenants always refer to the brass ball that guided the Nephites to their promised land, not to the two interpreter stones.1

So was the use of directors to refer to the interpreters in Alma 37 an error? Did Joseph Smith dictate the wrong word during the translation process, or did Alma forget what the interpreter stones were called? Not likely. There are reasons to believe that the use of directors in Alma’s message was intentional.

First, even though Joseph Smith made many corrections and clarifications in the Book of Mormon text for the 1837, 1840, and 1847 editions, he apparently saw no need to change directors to interpreters. Being intimately familiar with the interpreters and the translation process, he should have known if a correction was needed.

Second, Alma uses director(s) to refer to both the interpreters and the brass ball in Alma 37 and seems to be aware of that fact. He calls the interpreters “these directors” and the brass ball “this director” (not “the director”), suggesting that he considers directors to be a class of instruments of which the interpreters and the brass ball are two examples.

Third, even the brass ball is rarely called a director in the Book of Mormon. While it’s called a ball or compass 17 times, it’s called a director only three times, and two of those are in Alma 37. The third instance, which may also be based on Alma’s writing, is in Mormon’s list of names for the instrument in Mosiah 1:16. The interpreters are called directors twice — both times in Alma 37. If director(s) should refer exclusively to one instrument, it isn’t obvious from these few occurrences that the instrument is the brass ball and not the interpreters. More likely, Alma intentionally applied the term to both instruments.

Fourth, there is no closely preceding occurrence of director(s) in the Book of Mormon that might have prompted Joseph Smith to dictate (or his scribe to record) directors when interpreters was intended. The only previous instance is director in Mosiah 1:16.

If the word directors in Alma 37 was not a mistake, why was it used? Why didn’t Alma just call the interpreters ... interpreters? For that matter, why did he call the brass ball a director instead of referring to it by its more usual names?

I will present evidence that, in Alma’s original composition of his message, he was actually using the Hebrew word urim, which was later translated into English as directors (for the interpreters) and director (for the brass ball).2 He may have called the instruments urim for the same reason Joseph Smith eventually called the interpreters Urim and Thummim — to emphasize their sacred importance.

I will show that the interpreters and brass ball are similar to the biblical Urim and Thummim in being physical instruments of divine revelation, that the Urim and Thummim was sometimes simply called Urim or belonged to a class of instruments called Urim in the King James Bible, that directors and director are reasonable English translations of urim, that urim is an appropriate label for the interpreters and brass ball given Alma’s purpose in writing, and that urim fits naturally in the poetry of his message.

Instruments Like the Urim and Thummim

The Urim and Thummim was an instrument through which the word of the Lord was revealed to ancient Israel. Its first mention in scripture is when the Lord commands Moses to place it in the breastplate of the ephod worn by the high priest (Exodus 28:30). The Bible says nothing of its physical nature or of how it communicated the Lord’s word, but in several of the early traditions, revelation by Urim and Thummim involved light-emitting stones, or luminous or projecting letters that formed messages. A king or other important person who desired to consult the Urim and Thummim would make his question known to the high priest, who would then “inquire of the Lord” and receive the Lord’s response (Numbers 27:21).3

The Nephite interpreters were two seer stones given by the Lord to the Jaredites and later used by the Nephites and by Joseph Smith in translating ancient records. Like the biblical Urim and Thummim, they were associated with a breastplate. Joseph Smith also had other seer stones. He used one of these interchangeably with the interpreters in receiving the translation of the gold plates. He also used seer stones to receive other revelations. These revelations were prompted by his “inquiring of the Lord,” after which he would look into a hat in which he had placed the stone, for the answer. At least in the case of the Book of Mormon translation, the answer appeared in the form of written words.4

Joseph Smith initially called the interpreters “spectacles.” The first recorded identification of the interpreters with the biblical Urim and Thummim was in 1833, nearly three years after the Book of Mormon was published, when W. W. Phelps suggested that the interpreters may have been known anciently as Urim and Thummim.5 Thereafter Joseph Smith and his associates often referred to the interpreters as well as his individual seer stones as “the Urim and Thummim,” apparently considering Urim and Thummim to be a class of revelatory instruments.6 The term is used this way in Doctrine and Covenants 130:10, and Orson Pratt, a close associate of Joseph Smith, taught that “the Urim and Thummim is a stone or other substance sanctified and illuminated by the Spirit of the living God, and presented to those who are blessed with the gift of seeing.”7

The brass ball (or Liahona, interpreted as compass) contained two spindles, or pointers.8 At least one of the spindles pointed the way Lehi’s group should travel in their journey to their promised land (1 Nephi 16:10; Alma 37:40). While the brass ball guided Lehi’s family as a physical compass, it also gave them “understanding concerning the ways of the Lord” in the form of written messages on the spindles (1 Nephi 16:29). In one instance, written “directions” (1 Nephi 16:30) were given after Lehi, the group’s high priest, “did inquire of the Lord” (1 Nephi 16:24). In this second function, that of revealing the word of the Lord, it served a similar purpose for the first Nephites as the Urim and Thummim did for the biblical Israelites and as the interpreters and Joseph Smith’s seer stones did for the early Mormons. They were all oracular instruments.

After making early use of these instruments for divine direction, the Nephites, biblical Israelites, and Joseph Smith all eventually came to rely less on them and more on the spirit of prophecy and revelation (i.e., the power of the Holy Ghost) and on their growing collections of written revelations.9

Translations of Urim

Urim and Thummim is a transliterated Hebrew phrase. It has usually been interpreted as “lights and perfections” based on its Hebrew associations, or as “manifestations and truth” based on some of the Greek renderings in the Septuagint.10 Urim probably expresses the main idea of the name, with Thummim being of secondary importance. Accordingly, Thummim is sometimes omitted altogether and the instrument simply called Urim, as in 1 Samuel 28:6 (NASB; see also Numbers 27:21): “When Saul inquired of the Lord, the Lord did not answer him, either by dreams or by Urim or by prophets.” Alternatively, given the lack of the definite article, Urim in this passage may be referring more generally to oracular instruments, not just the divinely sanctioned Urim and Thummim. In fact, Saul could not have inquired of the Lord by the Urim and Thummim, because Abiathar had fled with the ephod to the camp of David (1 Samuel 23:9). Saul may have attempted to use a different “urim.”

Urim can mean “flames” or “fires” in Hebrew, but the Urim in Urim and Thummim is as likely derived from orim, meaning “lights” in classical Hebrew.11 (There is currently, however, nothing approaching consensus on the word’s origin, and numerous other derivations have been proposed.12) Even though Urim referred specifically to an oracular instrument, it would have anciently carried some degree of connotation of fire and light due to its similarity to these words. In fact, evidence from ancient Greek translations tends to confirm an association of Urim with light. In the Septuagint’s Ezra and Nehemiah, Urim was translated into Greek by forms of photizo, which means “to shine” or “to give light.” Translations of Urim elsewhere in the Septuagint suggest that it had other ancient connotations as well. In the books of Moses, it was translated by forms of deloi, likely signifying “manifestations,” and by delosis, signifying “manifestation” or “revelation,” or perhaps “direction” or “instruction.”13 These Greek renderings suggest that the light implied in Urim was understood anciently as a spiritual or metaphorical light — a light that manifested or revealed what was hidden, or that provided direction.

The Urim represented the word of the Lord to ancient Israel, for when the high priest inquired of the Lord, his word came by Urim. Not only did the Urim and Thummim convey and represent the word of the Lord, it also belonged explicitly to him, as Moses said to the Lord, “Let thy Thummim and thy Urim be with thy holy one” (Deuteronomy 33:8). Although plural in form, Urim may be a plural of respect referring to a single object. In classical Hebrew, single objects belonging to royalty or other important persons were sometimes named in the plural.14

Given the possible connotations of Urim in the Bible, including that of direction, director(s) is a reasonable English translation. If urim was used by Alma as a plural of respect, it could have been translated with both a plural and a singular meaning — as directors (for the interpreters) and as director (for the brass ball) — just as elohim is translated as both gods and God in the Bible.

Not only is director a reasonable translation of urim, it also aptly describes how the Urim was used in ancient Israel. The Lord’s instructions regarding the use of the instrument are given in Numbers 27:21 (NASB):

Moreover, he shall stand before Eleazar the priest, who shall inquire for him by the judgment of the Urim before the Lord. At his command they shall go out and at his command they shall come in, both he and the sons of Israel with him, even all the congregation.

In this passage, the Lord indicates that Joshua, the national leader, is to inquire (through the high priest) “by the judgment of the Urim” in order to receive the Lord’s directions for matters of national importance. Although there is no record of Joshua making use of the Urim and Thummim, the Bible does relate at least twelve cases in which subsequent leaders “inquired of the Lord” and received a response, apparently by the Urim and Thummim.15 In eight of these cases (Judges 1:1-2; 20:18; 20:23; 20:27-28; 1 Samuel 23:2-4; 30:8; 2 Samuel 5:19; 5:23), the Lord provides military direction. In one case (1 Samuel 10:22), he provides information regarding the whereabouts of Saul in the context of directing his ascension to the throne. In two cases, he provides strategic information to David to help him in his struggle with Saul (1 Samuel 22:10-13; 23:10-12), and in the final case (2 Samuel 2:1), he directs David in his ascension to the throne. In addition, Numbers 31:6 indicates that Moses sent men to war “with the holy instruments.” Targum Pseudo-Jonathan renders this as “with the Urim and Thummim to inquire by them,” again suggesting that the Lord directed Israelite warfare through the Urim and Thummim. Judging from these likely instances of the use of the Urim and Thummim in ancient Israel, its principlal function was to provide divine direction in practical matters of national importance. Director would be a pretty good — and perhaps the best — one-word English description of that function.

Directors and director could have been translated from the Hebrew word urim in Alma’s original text. But why would Alma have wanted to use this label for the instruments?

Alma’s Motivation to Use a Special Word

In Alma chapter 37, Alma charges his son Helaman with the keeping of the Nephites’ sacred instruments and records. He instructs Helaman regarding the plates of Nephi, the plates of brass, the twenty-four Jaredite plates and the interpreters used to translate them, and the brass ball. Alma is clearly concerned that Helaman realize the importance of his charge:

And I also command you that ye ... keep all these things sacred which I have kept.... And now remember, my son, that God has entrusted you with these things, which are sacred, which he has kept sacred, and also which he will keep and preserve for a wise purpose in him, that he may shew forth his power unto future generations. (Alma 37:2, 14)

Alma reiterates the sacred nature of the charge as he sums up his message to Helaman in verse 47: “And now, my son, see that ye take care of these sacred things.”

In order to impress upon Helaman the seriousness of his charge, Alma emphasizes the importance of the records and instruments in spiritual terms. The plates of brass were the means of bringing thousands of souls to repentance. The interpreters are not just for translating, but are also the subject of a prophecy concerning the fate of a nation. The brass ball is not just a compass, but a type of the word of Christ. Since his message is to be an important and enduring testament to his son, Alma follows the classical Hebrew practice of using chiasmus and other poetic devices to highlight its most important elements.16

With Alma’s efforts to emphasize the sacred nature of the interpreters and brass ball, it makes sense that he would use the most sacred labels available to refer to them. In the English text, directors and director don’t seem to be any better in this regard than the usual labels, but urim, the name of one of the most sacred objects to the ancient Israelites, would have certainly met the need. With its connotation of manifestation or revelation, urim would have also been a fitting label for the two revelatory instruments — the interpreters that manifested hidden truths, and the brass ball that provided divine direction and instruction.

The fact that urim would have been a fitting label for these instruments doesn’t in itself tell us whether Alma used the term. Evidence for Alma’s use of urim, however, may be found in the context. When a word at a key location in a poem has been obscured, it can sometimes be revealed again by analysis of nearby words.

Consider the following poem:

Roses are red, violets are blue.
The called are many, but the chosen are ___.

With a little scriptural knowledge and attention to rhyme, meter, and meaning, most readers would be able to correctly fill in the blank with the missing word few. Few is a good fit because it agrees with the words found in parallel positions — its sound is reflected in blue while its meaning is reflected in many. It also agrees in number with are and completes a meaningful scriptural allusion (to Matthew 22:14). A similar method of analysis is used in exegesis of ancient writing to address text-critical and lexicographical questions. Although rhyme and meter aren’t typically apparent as poetic devices in classical Hebrew writing, parallelism of meaning usually is, and other rhetorical devices such a repetition, imagery, and allusion can also be important. Alma’s writing is in the form of a classical Hebrew poem, and an analysis of its poetic features can show just how well urim fits where the English text has director(s).

The Interpreters or “Directors” as Urim

In his instructions to Helaman, Alma speaks of the interpreters (or “directors”) in the context of making known the sins of the extinct Jaredites. He uses repetition as a poetic device to establish a theme. In the passage below, the words and phrases shown in bold all express the idea of manifestation, or revealing what is hidden:17

And now, I will speak unto you concerning those twenty-four plates, that ye keep them, that the mysteries and the works of darkness, and their secret works — or the secret works of those people who have been destroyed — may be made manifest unto this people — yea, all their murders and robbings, and their plunderings, and all their wickedness and abominations, may be made manifest unto this people — yea, and that ye preserve these directors. For behold, the Lord saw that his people began to work in darkness; yea, work secret murders and abominations; therefore the Lord said, if they did not repent they should be destroyed from off the face of the earth. And the Lord said: I will prepare unto my servant Gazelem a stone which shall shine forth in darkness unto light, that I may discover unto my people who serve me, that I may discover unto them the works of their brethren, yea, their secret works, their works of darkness, and their wickedness and abominations.

And now, my son, these directors were prepared that the word of God might be fulfilled, which he spake, saying: I will bring forth out of darkness unto light all their secret works and their abominations; and except they repent I will destroy them from off the face of the earth; and I will bring to light all their secrets and abominations, unto every nation that shall hereafter possess the land. And now, my son, we see that they did not repent; therefore they have been destroyed, and thus far the word of God hath been fulfilled; yea, their secret abominations have been brought out of darkness and made known unto us. (Alma 37:21-26)

While the subject of this poem is the importance of the interpreters, the theme is manifestation (the idea of manifestation is repeated nine times in the five sentences).

An unusual word choice in a poem can sometimes be explained by its contribution to the theme. Directors is certainly an unusual word choice for a translating instrument, but it makes no obvious contribution to the theme in the English text. In Hebrew, with urim (connoting manifestation or revelation) in place of directors, the word choice would have aptly reinforced the theme.

Not satisfied with repetition as his principal poetic device, Alma set this poem in chiastic form. The parallel elements that form the framework of the chiasm are in italics, below. The first half of the chiasm tells of an ancient prophecy, and the second half describes its fulfillment.

A And now, I will speak unto you concerning those twenty-four plates, that ye

keep them,

that the mysteries and the works of darkness, and their secret

works — or the secret works of those people who have been

destroyed — may be made manifest unto this people —

yea, all their murders and robbings, and their plunderings, and all

their wickedness and abominations, may be made manifest unto

this people —

yea, and that ye preserve these directors.

B For behold, the Lord saw that his people began to work in darkness, yea,

work secret murders and abominations;

C therefore the Lord said, if they did not repent they should be destroyed

from off the face of the earth.

D And the Lord said: I will prepare unto my servant Gazelem a

stone which shall shine forth in darkness unto light, that I

may discover unto my people who serve me, that I may discover

unto them the works of their brethren, yea, their secret works,

their works of darkness, and their wickedness and abominations.

D’ And now, my son, these directors were prepared that the word

of God might be fulfilled, which he spake, saying: I will bring

forth out of darkness unto light all their secret works and their

abominations; and except they repent I will destroy them from

off the face of the earth; and I will bring to light all their secrets

and abominations, unto every nation that shall hereafter

possess the land.

C’ And now, my son, we see that they did not repent; therefore they

have been destroyed, and thus far the word of God hath been

fulfilled;

B’ yea, their secret abominations have been brought out of darkness

A’ and made known unto us.

Note that element A is itself a chiasm. In the outer level of this small chiasm, Alma tells his son to preserve the sacred instrument and to “keep” (which can also mean preserve, as in Genesis 2:15) the sacred plates. However, it is only the subject of the inner level — the manifestation of secrets and sins — that is mirrored in A’.

The arrangement of text in chiastic form draws the reader’s attention to the center, and that’s where the main message is often focused. In this case, a stone, which shall shine forth in darkness unto light and directors are at the two focal points at the center of the large chiasm, so they might be expected to reflect the chiasm’s overall theme of manifestation. The Gazelem stone shining “in darkness unto light” certainly does, but directors doesn’t, at least not in the English text.18 As urim (connoting manifestation or revelation), it would.

The theme of this chiasm is further reinforced by a chiasm of similar size that immediately follows it (Alma 37:27‒32).19 The four levels of the second chiasm have more or less the same topics as the corresponding levels of the first. The innermost and outermost levels are about what should (or should not) be made known, or manifest, to the people, and the second and third levels are, again, about darkness and destruction. The theme of manifestation that characterizes these paired chiasms is also associated with the interpreters elsewhere in the Book of Mormon:

And the things are called interpreters.... And whosoever is commanded to look in them, the same is called seer.... And by them ... shall secret things be made manifest, and hidden things shall come to light. (Mosiah 8:13, 17)

The same idea of manifesting hidden things is associated with the biblical Urim in the Targum Pseudo-Jonathan reading of Exodus 28:30:

And you shall put into the breastplate the Urim, which illuminate their words and make manifest the hidden things of the House of Israel.

Both of these passages associate the idea of illumination or light, as well as manifestation, with the sacred instrument. Light is a prominent element in Alma’s poetry as well. In the center of his first interpreters chiasm, directors is parallel to a stone which shall shine forth in darkness unto light. With its connotations of light and shining, urim (in place of directors) would have properly mirrored the shining stone. The interpreters are not only associated with the shining Gazelem stone poetically, but also prophetically. Alma says that the interpreters are the fulfillment of a prophecy that a shining stone would be prepared. The interpreters must therefore be shining stones, at least metaphorically. The label urim would have properly expressed that identification.20

In addition to using repetition to establish a theme for his chiastic poem, Alma uses it to create a dark mood. In the paired chiasms, he repeats secret(s) twelve times, darkness and abominations each ten times, and murders, destroyed, and wickedness each five times. Blood, robbings, plunderings, cursings, and destruction add to the gloom. The Jaredites are “workers of darkness”; and the Nephites, if not careful, will “fall into darkness also and be destroyed.” The only nouns (excluding proper names) or adjectives that suggest light or goodness in these chiasms are light, which appears three times, and prophets. The situation is the reverse in the remainder of the chapter, where words with positive connotations predominate. The effect of this contrasting mood is that the light of the sacred stones appears even brighter as it shines forth “in darkness.” The imagery of light is a key element in the poem, and urim, with its connotation of light, would have been an obvious word choice for the interpreter stones.21

While interpreters is the usual word for the instrument under discussion, with its mundane connotation of translation, it wouldn’t have worked particularly well in apposition to the shining Gazelem stone or at a focal point of a dark chiasm about manifesting secrets and sins. Alma understandably chose a different word. Although in English (as directors) his word choice appeared so poor that it was eventually rejected by editors, in Hebrew (as urim) it would have made sense.

The Brass Ball or “Director” as Urim

Alma’s discussion of the brass ball with its two internal spindles consists of two chiasms set within a larger parallel structure.22 Parallel words and phrases are shown in italics in Alma’s text (Alma 37:38-46) below.

A And now, my son, I have somewhat to say concerning the thing which our fathers

call a ball or director — or our fathers called it Liahona, which is, being

interpreted, a compass, and the Lord prepared it. And behold, there cannot any

man work after the manner of so curious a workmanship. And behold, it was

prepared to shew unto our fathers

B the course which they should travel in the wilderness.

C And it did work for them according to their faith in God; therefore, if

they had faith to believe that God could cause that those spindles

should point the way they should go, behold, it was done;

D therefore they had this miracle, and also many other miracles,

wrought by the power of God, day by day.

D’ Nevertheless, because those miracles were worked by small means

(nevertheless it did shew unto them marvelous works),23

C’ they were slothful and forgat to exercise their faith and diligence, and

then those marvelous works ceased, and they did not progress in their

journey;

B’ Therefore, they tarried in the wilderness, or did not travel a direct course, and

were afflicted with hunger and thirst, because of their transgression.

E And now, my son, I would that ye should understand that these things are

not without a shadow; for as our fathers were slothful to give heed to this

compass (now these things were temporal) they did not prosper; even so it is

with things which are spiritual.

F For behold, it is as easy to give heed to the word of Christ, which will

point to you a straight course to eternal bliss,

G as it was for our fathers to give heed to this compass, which would

point unto them a straight course to the promised land.

G’ And now I say: Is there not a type in this thing? For just assuredly as

this director did bring our fathers, by following its course, to the

promised land,

F’ shall the word of Christ, if we follow its course, carry us beyond this vale

of sorrow into a far better land of promise.

E’ O my son, do not let us be slothful because of the easiness of the way, for so was

it with our fathers;

A’ for so was it prepared for them, that if they would look they might live; even so it is

with us: the way is prepared, and if we will look, we may live forever.

The first internal chiasm tells how the brass ball provided physical direction for the Nephite fathers in their journey through the wilderness. The second internal chiasm presents that miracle as a shadow of a greater truth — that the word of Christ gives us vital spiritual direction. This word of Christ analogy is in the form a double parallel in which director (or urim) is parallel to both compass and word of Christ. With its connotation of the word of the Lord, urim would have fit well parallel to word of Christ; and with its likely connotation of direction, it would have also fit well parallel to compass and expressed the poem’s overall theme of direction.

Urim also provides plausible answers to a couple of mysteries in Alma’s word of Christ analogy.

First, it’s unclear, based on the English text, why Alma refers to the brass ball as a compass through most of his discussion and then suddenly calls it a director when he gets to his word of Christ analogy. In fact, in his analogy, Alma seems to be doing nothing more than repeating himself — the compass pointed the fathers to the promised land, and the director brought the fathers to the promised land. In the English reading, there’s no obvious reason for the use of director instead of the usual word, compass. However, if director is translated from urim, with its connotations of light and fire, possible reasons for the change of labels become apparent.

While a compass can only point the way, a light can also direct a traveler by illuminating the path. As a compass, the brass ball “would point ... a straight course” to the promised land, but as a director (or urim, suggesting light), it “did bring” the fathers to the promised land, just as the word of Christ will, if we follow its course, “carry” us beyond our valley of sorrow.24 The Old Testament uses similar imagery in presenting light as a metaphor for the word of the Lord that shows us the path to higher ground.25 In Psalm 119:105, his “word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path”; and in Psalms 43:3, we read, “O send out thy light and thy truth: let then lead me; let them bring me unto thy holy hill.” The Hebrew word for light in both of these psalms comes from the same root that urim is potentially related to. In fact, the phrase “thy light and thy truth” in Psalm 43 has been seen by some authors as a reference to the Urim and Thummim.26 Alma himself compares the word of the Lord to a light elsewhere (Alma 5:7; 32:35). Also, the Lord had told the first Nephites that he, as their “light in the wilderness,” “did bring” them out of Jerusalem and would, according to their obedience, prepare the way before them and lead them towards the promised land (1 Nephi 17:13‒14). Urim, with its connotation of light, would have thus fit naturally in Alma’s analogy and could have strengthened it by bringing to mind these earlier writings.

Urim’s alternative meaning of “flames” or “fires” would have created another biblical allusion in Alma’s text, especially if urim were read as a plural of respect referring to the Lord’s “fire.” The fire that “did bring our fathers ... to the promised land” in Alma’s poem would have brought to the Hebrew mind the pillar of cloud and fire that directed the Israelite fathers under Moses to their promised land (Exodus 13:21).

That Alma was thinking in biblical terms, and particularly in terms of the Israelite fathers journeying to their promised land, is evidenced by his allusion to Moses’s brass serpent in his closing sentence. Alma echoes his own words from an earlier sermon referencing the brass serpent when he says that the brass ball was prepared for the fathers “that if they would look they might live.”27 Together with this allusion, Alma’s use of urim for the brass ball would have portrayed it as a three-in-one instrument for the Nephite fathers in their journey to their promised land. It played the role of the biblical Urim in providing instruction, the role of the fiery pillar in showing physical direction, and the role of the brass serpent in testing their faith.

The second mystery relates to Christ typology. After comparing the “compass” to the word of Christ, Alma asks, “Is there not a type in this thing?” But where is his answer? The for that begins the next sentence suggests he is about to provide an answer, but then he essentially repeats the comparison he just made, this time substituting director for compass. It reads as if, by using the word director, Alma is providing the answer to his question. This makes no sense in English — a director is no more a type of the word of Christ than is a compass. In Hebrew, however, with urim in place of director, it would have made more sense. The Urim was, as the word of the Lord to the Israelite fathers, a fitting type of the word of Christ.

Alma’s use of urim to create these biblical references would have not only provided greater depth to his word of Christ analogy, but would have also suited his purpose in emphasizing the sacredness of the brass ball. As urim, the ball is no longer just a pointer — it’s the Nephite counterpart of the biblical Urim and Thummim and pillar of cloud and fire, and a physical representation of the light and word of the Lord.

Conclusions

Although we can’t say for certain whether directors and director in Alma 37 represent the Hebrew word urim, the circumstantial evidence suggests they do. When Alma’s work is read as English prose, his uses of directors and director seem unnecessary, awkward, or even erroneous. If these terms are translations of urim, however, his word choices make sense. Urim aptly expresses the revelatory function as well as the sacred nature of the interpreters and brass ball. It also fits naturally in Alma’s chiastic poetry.

Given its likely connotation of manifestation, urim would have reflected the principal theme of Alma’s interpreters poem. With its connotation of light or shining, it would have focused the imagery of light “in darkness” and properly mirrored the shining Gazelem stone at the center of a chiasm. At the same time, with a connotation of direction, urim would have reflected the principal theme of Alma’s brass ball poem.

Urim would have also strengthened Alma’s comparison of the brass ball to the word of Christ by echoing biblical imagery of God’s word as a directing light and by creating an allusion to the fiery pillar that guided Israel in the wilderness. Finally, as a reference to the biblical Urim and Thummim that revealed the word of the Lord, urim would have answered Alma’s question regarding a type of the word of Christ.

While interpreters, ball, directors and director are mundane words ill-suited for poetic reference to divine instruments, urim is rich in sacred meaning. It suits Alma’s resplendent poetry and appears to be reflected in it. Alma’s apparent sophisticated use of this word suggests he had a thorough understanding of the ancient connotations of urim and remarkable talent as a classical Hebrew poet. Together with the chiastic structure of the text, it also suggests that this portion of the Book of Mormon was originally composed in Hebrew.

Stan Spencer earned a BS from Brigham Young University and a PhD from Claremont Graduate University, both in botany. He has worked as a research scientist at Brigham Young University and the Smithsonian Institution’s Laboratory of Molecular Systematics and now works as a consultant in California. He has a particular interest in the textual origins of Mormon scripture.

1 The earliest manuscript of the revelation in Doctrine and Covenants (D&C) 17 reads, “directors which was given to Lehi.” Revelation, June 1829-E [D&C 17], The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed 26 November 2014, http://josephsmithpapers.org/paperSummary/revelation-june-1829-e-dc-17. The singular verb was suggests that directors may have been an error and director was intended. Alternatively, directors in this case may refer to the two pointers within the brass ball. On the other hand, director in D&C 3 may be referring to the interpreters or a seer stone: “And this is the reason that thou hast lost thy privileges for a season — for thou hast suffered the counsel of thy director [directors in the earliest manuscript] to be trampled upon from the beginning” (D&C 3:14-15). That the earliest manuscript had directors in the plural suggests that it is referring to the interpreters through which the counsel may have been received rather than to the one who gave it. For the earliest manuscript of this revelation, see Revelation, July 1828 [D&C 3], The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed 26 November 2014, http://josephsmithpapers.org/paperSummary/revelation-july-1828-dc-3. Elizabeth Ann Whitmer Cowdery, a witness to the translation of the Book of Mormon, referred to the instrument with which Joseph Smith translated (and through which he may have received the trampled counsel) as a “director.” “Elizabeth Ann Whitmer Cowdery Affidavit, 15 February 1870,” in Early Mormon Documents, ed. Dan Vogel (Salt Lake City, UT: Signature Books, 1870), 5:260.

2 As Hebrew was the predominant language in Jerusalem at the time of his departure in about 600 bce, it would have been the most likely language spoken by Nephi. According to Mosiah 24:4, the “language of Nephi” was still spoken in Alma’s father’s generation. Also, according to Omni 1:15‒17, the people of Zarahemla were of Jewish descent, but “their language had become corrupted; and they had brought no records with them; and they denied the being of their Creator; and Mosiah, nor the people of Mosiah, could understand them,” implying that, had it not become corrupted, their Hebrew language would have been understandable to the Nephites. Even if some alteration of Hebrew wasn’t a spoken language in Alma’s day, it must have been a written language familiar to the Nephite recordkeepers, given Moroni’s statement in Mormon 9:33 that “if our plates had been sufficiently large we should have written in Hebrew; but the Hebrew hath been altered by us also.”

3 Cornelis Van Dam, The Urim and Thummim: A Means of Revelation in Ancient Israel (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1997). See pages 9-23 and 27-32 for identification of the Urim as stones, and 24-25, 33 for identification as luminous or projecting letters. The prevailing modern theory is that the Urim and Thummim was a lot oracle (see pp. 34-37). This theory, however, is hardly compatible with the biblical evidence, as explained by Van Dam (pp. 197-217), who believes that Urim refers to the verifying light that emitted from what was probably a single gem (p. 230). The lot theory does not readily explain, for example, how Saul could fail to get an answer when consulting the Urim (1 Samuel 28:6) or how the Urim could provide answers such as “Behold, he is hiding himself by the baggage” in response to an inquiry of “Has the man come here yet?” (1 Samuel 10:22 NASB). Nor does the lot theory accord well with early traditions regarding the instrument. For persons who could consult the Urim, see Van Dam, Urim and Thummim, 181. Also see note 15 below regarding the significance of the phrase “inquired of the Lord.”

4 For a description of the interpreters as seer stones and their relationship to the breastplate, see Joseph Smith — History 1:35. For a discussion and references relating to Joseph Smith’s use of the interpreters and his seer stones, see Richard Van Wagoner and Steven C. Walker, “Joseph Smith: The Gift of Seeing,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 15/2 (1982): 48-68, especially 57‒58. David Whitmer, among others, speaks of Joseph Smith inquiring of the Lord: “Joseph did not know how it was, so he enquired of the Lord about it, and behold the following revelation came through the stone.” David Whitmer, An Address to All Believers in Christ (Richmond, MO: n.p., 1887), 31. Orson Pratt, a close associate of Joseph Smith beginning in late 1830, in 1887 provided a signed report of a meeting held that same year, during which he “explained the circumstances under which several revelations were received by Joseph, the Prophet, and the manner in which he received them, he being present on several occasions of the kind. Declared that sometimes Joseph used a seer stone when enquiring of the Lord, and receiving revelation.” “Report of Elders Orson Pratt and Joseph F. Smith,” Millennial Star 15 (17 Sep 1878): 787. The first revelation Orson Pratt witnessed was directed at him. Upon meeting Joseph Smith, Orson Pratt asked if there was a revelation for him. Joseph took him and John Whitmer upstairs, “produced a small stone called a seer stone, and putting it into a hat soon commenced speaking.” James R. B. Vancleave to Joseph Smith III, 29 Sep 1878, in David Whitmer Interviews: A Restoration Witness, ed. Lyndon W. Cook (Orem, UT: Grandin, 1991), 239-240. That revelation is now found in D&C 34.

5 In about summer of 1832, Joseph Smith recorded in his personal history that “the Lord had prepared spectacles for to read the book.” History, circa Summer 1832, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed 24 Nov. 2014, http://josephsmithpapers.org/paperSummary/history-circa-summer-1832. In January 1833, The Evening and the Morning Star, edited by William W. Phelps, reported that the Book of Mormon “was translated by the gift and power of God, by an unlearned man, through the aid of a pair of Interpreters, or spectacles — (known, perhaps, in ancient days as Teraphim, or Urim and Thummim),” “The Book of Mormon,” Evening and the Morning Star 1 (Jan 1833): 58.

6 After a meeting with other apostles in which Joseph Smith showed one of his seer stones, Wilford Woodruff wrote in his journal, “I had the privilege of seeing, for the first time in my day, the Urim and Thummim.” Van Wagoner, 59‒60. Oliver Cowdery referred to the seer stone by which Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon as “the Urim and Thummim,” then added that the Nephites would have considered it an interpreter: “Day after day I continued, uninterrupted, to write from his mouth, as he translated, with the Urim and Thummim, or, as the Nephites whould [sic] have said, ‘Interpreters.’” Oliver Cowdery to W.W. Phelps, 7 Sep 1834, Messenger and Advocate 1 (Oct 1834): 14. On another occasion, Oliver Cowdery referred to the same stone as a “Urim and Thummim” in connection with Joseph Smith’s use of it to receive an 1830 revelation (Van Wagoner and Walker, “Gift of Seeing,” 57‒58). See Van Wagoner and Walker, 49-63, for additional examples of the use of this term for Joseph Smith’s seer stones and the Nephite interpreters.

7 Masterful Discourses of Orson Pratt, ed. N. B. Lundwall (Salt Lake City, UT: Bookcraft Publishers, 1962), 552.

8 Liahona appears to be a properly constructed Hebrew word from li, which can indicate the possession of something; iaho, which is a short form of Jehovah, used in coining words; and ona, which can be translated as “whither,” as it is in “whither wilt thou go?” in Genesis 16:8. Together they mean, more or less, “whither of Jehovah” or “direction of the Lord,” or by analogy, the Lord’s compass. See Jonathan Curci, “Liahona: ‘The Direction of the Lord’: An Etymological Explanation,” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 16/2 (2007): 60-67, 97-98. Compass is more an analogy than a translation for Liahona. Although the brass ball, like a compass, was a navigational instrument, it worked by faith, not magnetism, and pointed toward a destination, not magnetic north. The unexpected “and the Lord [Jehovah] prepared it” following the word Liahona in Alma 37:38 may be a wordplay on its iaho (Jehovah) element. The prophet Nephi seems to introduce this instrument with the same type of wordplay whenever he refers to it as a compass (presumably Liahona in the original Hebrew text; 1 Nephi 18:12-21, 2 Nephi 5:12) but not when he refers to it as a ball (1 Nephi 16:10-16; 1 Nephi 10:26-30).

9 There is no clear scriptural indication of use of the revelatory instruments by the Nephites after the second King Mosiah or by the biblical Israelites after King David. David Whitmer reported: “After the translation of the Book of Mormon was finished early in the spring of 1830 before April 6th, Joseph gave the stone to Oliver Cowdery and told me as well as the rest that he was through with it, and he did not use the stone anymore.” Whitmer, “All Believers,” 32. The spirit of revelation is equated to the power of the Holy Ghost in D&C 8:2-3. The spirit of prophecy and spirit of revelation are associated with each other throughout the Book of Mormon, including the title page, and throughout the Doctrine and Covenants. While many of the early revelations contained in the Doctrine and Covenants were received through the “Urim and Thummim” (as noted in headings of D&C sections 3, 6, 7, 11, 14, and 17; Van Wagoner and Walker, “Gift of Seeing,” 61), the heading to D&C 20 is consistent with David Whitmer’s statement, indicating it was given in April 1830 “by the spirit of prophecy and revelation.” However, Joseph Smith reportedly used another seer stone on later occasions, including for a revelation given to Orson Pratt (now D&C 34), on November 4, 1830 (James R. B. Vancleave to Joseph Smith III, 239-240), and in translating the Book of Abraham (Van Wagoner and Walker, 60) in 1835.

10 For traditional interpretations of Urim and Thummim, see Van Dam, Urim and Thummim, 93, 132-136.

11 Although modern Hebrew creates the plural of or (“light”) with a feminine ending to give orot, “lights” could be represented in classical Hebrew by orim (a masculine ending), as it is in Psalms 136:7. The gender of or is given as masculine but “sometimes f.” in David J. A. Clines (ed.), Dictionary of Classical Hebrew, vol. 1 (Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993). For urim as “light” or “lights,” see Van Dam, Urim and Thummim, 93, 132-136. Ur, the singular form of urim, is translated as “light” (of fire) in Isaiah 50:11.

12 For derivations of urim related to the lot theory, see Van Dam, 94-98. For a short summary of proposed derivations, see Ann Jeffers, Magic and Divination in Ancient Palestine and Syria (New York: Brill, 1996), 210‒211.

13 Those who translated the Hebrew Old Testament into English generally chose to simply transliterate (not translate) Urim and Thummim, thus preserving it in English as a proper name. Those who produced the Septuagint, in contrast, chose to render Urim and Thummim into Greek by translating its connotations. For translations of urim in the Septuagint, see Van Dam, Urim and Thummim, 85, 132-135, including footnotes, and particularly page 85 for connotations relating to deloi and delosis. Delosis is “a pointing out, manifestation, explaining, shewing” or “a direction, order.” Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, 8th ed. (New York: American Book Co., 1897), 338.

14 See Van Dam, Urim and Thummim, 137, including footnotes; and Ronald J. Williams, Williams Hebrew Syntax, revised and expanded by John C. Beckman, 3rd ed. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007), 2. Cornelis Van Dam, arguably the foremost authority on the biblical Urim and Thummim, believes that it most likely consisted of a single object (Van Dam, 230).

15 The Hebrew phrases translated as “inquired of the Lord” and “inquired of God” in the New American Standard Bible (NASB) likely indicate the use of the Urim and Thummim when no other means of revelation are indicated, even when the instrument is not mentioned by name (see Van Dam, Urim and Thummim, 109, 182-189). All of the twelve cases mentioned include such a phrase except 1 Samuel 23:1-4, which specifically states that the ephod (which contained the Urim and Thummim) was involved.

16 A chiasm is an inverted parallel structure. Chiasmus was used as a poetic device by the ancient Hebrews and other Semitic peoples, and is common in the Bible and Book of Mormon.

17 For these and other Book of Mormon passages in this paper, I have used the reconstructed earliest text from the Book of Mormon Critical Text Project (Royal Skousen, The Book of Mormon: The Earliest Text [New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009]) and have adjusted the punctuation in some instances for clarity. Punctuation was almost completely lacking in the original Book of Mormon manuscript, being added later by the printer. Biblical passages are from the King James Version unless otherwise indicated.

18 Whether Gazelem refers to the servant or the stone is unclear, but it could refer to either one without changing the structure or message of the chiasm. If it is the name or title of a servant, Gazelem could refer to the brother of Jared, who received the interpreters from the Lord, or to Mosiah, who used them to translate the Jaredite record for the benefit of the Nephites. In any case, Alma declares that the Gazelem prophecy has “thus far … been fulfilled” with the interpreters having “made known” the secrets and sins of the Jaredites to the Nephite people (Alma 37:26). If Gazelem refers to a class of instruments — perhaps the Jaredite counterpart to Urim — then “a stone which shall shine forth in darkness unto light” may have been intended as its parenthetical definition. The mismatch in number between the singular Gazelem stone and the plural interpreters may well be an artifact of translation. But even in English, the interpreters could be described as “a shining stone” (referring to the material of which they are made) or as “shining stones” (speaking of the stones as individual objects).

19 The structure of the chiasm in Alma 37:27-32 is as follows: (A) And now, my son, I command you … (B) lest peradventure they should fall into darkness and be destroyed. For behold, there is a curse … (C) therefore I desire that this people might not be destroyed. (D) Therefore ye shall keep these secret plans of their oaths and their covenants from this people, (D’) and only their wickedness and their murders and their abominations shall ye make known unto them .. (C’) and ye shall also teach them that these people were destroyed…. (B’) Yea, and cursed be the land forever… . (A’) And now, my son, remember the words which I have spoken unto you; trust not those secret plans unto this people, but teach them an everlasting hatred against sin and iniquity. Elements A, D’, and C’ are themselves chiasms.

20 The beginning of the fulfillment of the Gazelem prophecy is recorded in Ether 3. The brother of Jared, apparently invoking the prophecy, asks the Lord to touch 16 stones and “prepare them that they may shine forth in darkness ... that we may have light.” The Lord grants his request, causing the stones to produce physical light, and also gives him the two interpreter stones to provide eventual spiritual enlightenment.

21 The dark mood becomes starkly evident when all neutral words are removed from the two chiasms. The following sequence of words is Alma’s interpreters poem reduced to nouns (excluding proper names) and adjectives that have connotations of physical or metaphysical light or darkness, with the positive/light words in capital letters and negative/dark words in bold: mysteries darkness secret secret murders robbings plunderings wickedness abominations darkness secret murders abominations destroyed darkness LIGHT secret darkness wickedness abominations darkness LIGHT secret abominations LIGHT secrets abominations destroyed secret abominations darkness secret abominations darkness destroyed curse destruction darkness destroyed secret wickedness murders abominations wickedness abominations murders destroyed wickedness abominations murders PROPHETS iniquities blood vengeance murderers judgments darkness secret cursed darkness secret destruction secret hatred sin iniquity. Notice the three instances of light shining out of the uniform darkness of the interpreters poem. The same process applied to the remainder of Alma 37 produces the following sequence of words: SACRED WISE HOLY SCRIPTURES LORD mysteries BRIGHTNESS BRIGHTNESS HOLY foolishness WISE WISE SALVATION WISDOM error KNOWLEDGE GOD SALVATION incorrect REPENTANCE KNOWLEDGE GOD REDEEMER stiffnecked sin iniquities KNOWLEDGE REDEEMER mysteries WISDOM SACRED SACRED SACRED chaff SACRED hell DILIGENT DILIGENT — [interpreters poem] — REPENTANCE FAITH MEEK temptation devil FAITH GOOD MEEK WISDOM GOOD night sleep DAY wilderness FAITH FAITH MIRACLE MIRACLES DAY DAY MIRACLES slothful FAITH DILIGENCE wilderness transgressions shadow slothful BLISS sorrow slothful SACRED SOBER.

22 Whether intentional or not, the morphology of the brass ball is represented in the morphology of Alma’s discussion of the instrument. The same morphological relationship exists between the pair of interpreter stones and the pair of chiasms in which they and the Jaredite record are discussed.

23 This line is confusing in LDS editions of the Book of Mormon because the second nevertheless, which was present in the original manuscript, is missing. Royal Skousen (ed.), The Original Manuscript of the Book of Mormon: Typographical Facsimile or the Extant Text. (Provo, UT: The Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 2001), 333. The punctuation is mine.

24 Carry in King James English meant to take something to a different place, but not necessarily by holding or supporting it. For example, Moses “carried” the Israelites out of Egypt (Exodus 14:11).

25 While the current LDS edition of the Book of Mormon has the director being compared to the words (plural) of Christ, the earliest text has word (Skousen, 2009). It is the singular word of the Lord that is compared to a light in Psalm 119.

26 Van Dam, Urim and Thummim, 225, including footnotes.

27 After referring to the brass ball as a type of the word of Christ for the Nephite fathers in their wilderness, Alma says, “Do not let us be slothful because of the easiness of the way, for so was it with our fathers; for so it was prepared for them, that if they would look they might live” (Alma 37:46). This phrase echoes Alma’s words from an earlier sermon, in which he had warned against being “slothful” and spoken of Moses’s brass serpent, which, as a “type” of Christ, was “raised up in the wilderness, that whosoever would look upon it might live” (Alma 33:19,21; also Numbers 21:8-9). Nephi had similarly taught that “because of the simpleness of the way, or the easiness of it, there were many which perished” because they would not look at the brass serpent (1 Nephi 17:41).

Reflections of Urim: Hebrew Poetry Sheds Light on the Directors-Interpreters Mystery

Stan Spencer

Mormon’s Codex: An Ancient American Book is unquestionably a monument to an impressive career defending, defining, and explaining the Book of Mormon. John L. Sorenson has been for the New World setting of the Book of Mormon what Hugh Nibley was for the Old World setting. From his earliest 1952 publications using anthropology and geography to defend the Book of Mormon to the 2013 publication of Mormon’s Codex, Sorenson has been the dominant force in shaping scholarly discussions about the Book of Mormon in its New World setting.1 With an impressive 714 pages of text with footnotes, Mormon’s Codex is physically an appropriate capstone to his long publishing career.

Sorenson’s name has become synonymous with a specific geographic correlation between the Book of Mormon and a Mesoamerican geography. Although his is certainly not the only one, the strength of his position is such that it is practically impossible to discuss Book of Mormon geography without referencing his model.2 Premier among all other elements of Sorenson’s legacy in Book of Mormon studies is the effectiveness of that model. Mormon’s Codex makes minor modifications to some of his correlations, but the general thesis continues to be as strong today as it was perhaps a half century or more ago.3

Important to his legacy is the shrinking of the potential Book of Mormon lands from the entire Western hemisphere to a region roughly comparable to the geographic scope of the history of the Hebrews in the Old World. In addition to convincingly arguing for a more limited geography, Sorenson proposed specific sites that might have taken part in the Book of Mormon story. Those archaeological sites were in the approximate correct interrelationship with other locations according to the text, and the sites all dated from the time periods when the Book of Mormon indicates there should be a city in that location. The strength of his correlations has been such that while there may not be agreement on the specifics of some of his site-correlations, better correlations have not been proposed. The general geography has been widely accepted even when some doubt about specific locations might be expressed. The Sorenson limited geography for the Book of Mormon is an important foundation of and monument to his legacy.

The second important aspect of Sorenson’s legacy is what he did with the geography after establishing a plausible relationship with the real world. He expanded beyond geography and into the culture and history of that geography to compare it with the Book of Mormon. The first part of the lasting legacy is that it is now a requirement that proposed geographies deal with the human historical element along with the physical features. Any geography that might be argued as plausible but cannot provide similar plausible correlations to the people living in that geography during Book of Mormon times cannot be accepted as a potential location for Book of Mormon events. Sorenson’s premise led to a new approach to Book of Mormon studies and influenced others such as the authors of this review to direct their own academic pursuits to those same studies.

For decades, Sorenson’s 1985 publication, An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon,4 has been the only single-volume book that we have been willing to recommend to those interested in how the Book of Mormon relates to the New World. Importantly, that publication has been the only recommended single book for nearly forty years. Of course, there has been substantial new information about Mesoamerica discovered in the years since the book was written.5 After so much time and with the availability of additional data, an update has been sorely needed.

Mormon’s Codex is very much an updated version of the earlier book rather than a new work. Although the structure of the two books differs, the same general topics are treated. In many cases, what were sections inside of chapters in An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon have become standalone chapters in Mormon’s Codex. As one would hope and expect, a quick perusal of the dates for the publications cited in the 2013 book show a large number that are more recent than those in the 1985 book. However, the expansion takes the form of additional evidence for the foundations laid in his Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon. Other than the addition of the chapter on transoceanic voyages, little new ground is plowed.

At its best, Mormon’s Codex amplifies support for the best arguments found in An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon. Many of those are found in “Part 3: Correspondences from Archaeology and History.” This is the strongest section of the book. While we have some reservations on various specifics, the overall arguments provide a good picture of how one might see the Book of Mormon as having taken place in a Mesoamerican geographical and cultural setting. Chapter 3, “The Book of Mormon in Culture History Terms,” is an excellent overview and should not be skipped. Chapter 4, “The Early Culture History of Mesoamerica,” also provides a good overview of Mesoamerican cultural history without specific correlations to the Book of Mormon.6 Because so many of Sorenson’s ideas have stood the test of time, his prominence in the field is unlikely to be challenged in the foreseeable future. The breadth of his work and the remarkable timespan that work covers may never be equaled.

Nevertheless, even Sorenson has not been immune to starting down trails that have led to dead ends. While the beginnings of these trails can be seen in his early works and are apparent to the careful reader of An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon, some of those misfires have become more obvious and lamentable in Mormon’s Codex. We hasten to add that while we suggest a necessary pruning of some of the many branches of Sorenson’s thought, this in no way diminishes the importance of the many ideas he puts forth that continue to withstand the test of time and further research.

Cautions in Reading Mormon’s Codex

The first important caution when reading Mormon’s Codex is simply that it really is Sorenson’s Codex. It is a monument to the expanse of his vision, but it is also limited by an insistence on focusing on only his own vision. Mormon’s Codex shows Sorenson continuing to comb sources for more evidence to support the theses laid out in his earlier works, but he has paid little or no attention to those LDS scholars who have built upon his foundation. This makes Mormon’s Codex a monument to Sorenson, not necessarily to the state of current Book of Mormon studies about its place in the ancient world.

One of the continuing geographic issues for a Mesoamerican correlation is the presence of two Mesoamerican rivers that are candidates for the Book of Mormon Sidon: the Grijalva and the Usumacinta. While Sorenson argues for the Grijalva, others strongly defend the Usumacinta.7 Mormon’s Codex does not recognize that discussion and makes no attempt to resolve it. Mormon’s Codex presents Sorenson’s opinion without defending it against any possible contrary evidence. Not only does Sorenson neglect to engage LDS scholars with a different position, but he also totally ignores LDS scholar Lawrence Poulsen’s work that provides more in depth support for Sorenson’s Grijalva/Sidon identification.8 In this oversight, Sorenson misses the opportunity to strengthen his argument.

An even more controversial aspect of Sorenson’s correlation has been the necessity to see “north” in the Book of Mormon as something other than the cardinal direction. Mormon’s Codex simply finds newer quotations supporting the thesis just as he proposed it in An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon. Sorenson misses the opportunity to interact with LDS scholars who have at least attempted to provide a stronger cultural underpinning for Book of Mormon directions in a Mesoamerican setting.9 Perhaps because he was a lone voice for so many years, Sorenson has failed to consider the merits of the work of other LDS scholars publishing on the same issues.

The second important limitation in Mormon’s Codex is the continuation of a fundamentally flawed methodology. Sorenson’s approach to the cultural data in the Book of Mormon has long rested upon the assumption that Book of Mormon peoples were the source of perceived cultural similarities between Mesoamerica and the Ancient Middle East. Although the causal nature of the relationships was toned down in An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon, the undercurrent was there and Sorenson’s earlier work that was the foundation for what he wrote in An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon was more explicit. At one point, Sorenson states, “The phenomena in the following statement were nearly all shared three ways — in the Book of Mormon (as shown in specific verses, cited in the original paper), in Mesoamerican beliefs, and in Near Eastern thought during Old Testament times.”10 From that original paper, we have the more direct statement that feeds Sorenson’s ideas that flow through An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon and will reemerge in their more explicit form in Mormon’s Codex. The premise re-emphasized reads: “A list of cultural traits is presented which could be found without surprise in a translated Mesoamerican document of codex form. As phrased, these elements are also found in the Book of Mormon or else are attributable to the ancient Near Eastern cultural background which it claims for itself.”11

The documentation for these connections has been lists of traits that are described in terms that fit both the Old World and New World context and assert their relevance by the number of such items in the list. That methodology was explicit in an early article prepared for a non-LDS audience.12 There is a reason that in the four decades Sorenson has been describing such parallels that they have not been widely accepted. It is a methodology that too easily leads to false positives. A non-Book of Mormon related example can be seen in two books Dennis R. MacDonald wrote suggesting the New Testament echoes Homer.13 M.D. Hooker notes the methodological issue behind any work suggesting similarities between two different texts (relevant also to the comparison of a text to culture):

To be sure, some of MacDonald’s parallels are intriguing, but they cannot on their own provide an explanation of what Mark is doing. Odd details in Mark’s narrative do sometimes ‘echo’ events in Homer’s story (like the feast where participants sat in nine units of ‘five hundred men’) and sometimes provide contrasts (as with the storm, in which Odysseus was awakened but was helpless to do anything). But are these parallels and contrasts deliberate? Or are they accidental? … After all, as MacDonald admits, ‘feasting and sleeping [and] journeys are common in ancient writings; these and other similarities do not require mimesis.’ … One is left wondering why — if MacDonald is right — Mark should have chosen to depict Jesus in this way, sometimes in imitation of Odysseus and sometimes in contrast to him. What would Mark have hoped to achieve? … MacDonald’s suggestion is that he ‘crafted a myth to make the memory of Jesus relevant to the catastrophes of his day,’ and that he was ‘adapting cultural monuments to address new realities’ (p. 190). So was Mark’s Gospel simply a re-telling of Homeric myth? … To show that there are similarities in plot and theme between two authors is one thing, to prove dependence is quite another. That there are certain parallels between two narratives is hardly surprising, for similar themes reappear constantly in stories told by very different people. But suggestions that there is deliberate mimesis can easily topple into parallelomania.14

It would appear that Sorenson acknowledges that any methodology relying upon parallels is currently deemed suspect. Perhaps for that reason he is much more explicit about methodology in Mormon’s Codex. He suggests:

A promising model for pursuing the question of the Book of Mormon’s connection to ancient Mesoamerica was published in 2001. Archaeologist William Dever used it in What did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It? He … builds his argument by identifying “convergences,” specific points of agreement between statements in the biblical text and findings by archaeologists. When the sacred written source is supported on a given point by excavational evidence, no explanation for this fact makes sense except that the archaeological datum and the text both refer to the same cultural moment and that the author of the record could not have written as he did without intimate, contemporary knowledge of the area documented in his account of the facts for that time period educed by archaeology.15

In spite of his admiration for Dever’s methodology, Sorenson simply reworks Dever until Sorenson’s methodology can continue to be parallel but with a different name. Sorenson suggests: “Dever’s term convergences has many synonyms — correspondences, parallels, analogies, similarities, agreements, conformities, counterparts, and congruencies. Each has a slightly different shade of meaning. Convergence may suggest distinct processes that end up with similar results; parallel connotes a general or unfocused degree of similarity; analogy points to likeness in form without any particular historical connection implied between the features compared. The comparisons upon which this book relies will usually be called correspondences, in the dictionary sense of “a particular similarity.”16

What Dever defined was a means of making comparisons between a text and archaeology that depended upon a close alignment of features and time.17 In Sorenson’s adaptation, a methodological argument becomes a semantic shift from parallel to correspondence, without a corresponding shift in essential methodology. It is simply a synonym for parallels, albeit ones that Sorenson suggests might have “a particular similarity.” Fortunately, there are still some of the parallels that hold up even under more rigorous conditions, but Mormon’s Codex won’t help the reader discern between the stronger and the weaker.

The third limitation of Mormon’s Codex is that it continues to bolster ideas that might have been at least plausible when Sorenson was writing what became An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon but subsequently gathered evidence demonstrates that the original thesis was incorrect. Rather than remove these arguments, Sorenson’s update simply searches for more statements that appear to bolster the original thesis. We will examine those that are the focus of whole chapters.

Chapter 9: Transoceanic Voyages

This chapter summarizes an important aspect of Sorenson’s academic career. He has long been a champion of transoceanic voyages. In 2009, he and Carl L. Johannessen published a large compendium of evidence of pre-Columbian biological and botanical contact with Old World locations.18 This chapter pays homage to Sorenson’s long interest and work on the topic. The information should be analyzed on its own merits. The problem with this chapter is not necessarily the issue of transoceanic voyages, but what the chapter is doing in this book. The evidence he discusses has no direct relationship to the Book of Mormon. Put simply, the evidence from the right time is from the wrong place, and that which is from the right place is from the wrong time.

Chapter 10: Language

Sorenson is an anthropologist, not a linguist. There is no indication in his writings that he has a deep understanding of historical linguistics or the relevant literature on New World languages. Consequently, he attempts to continue the idea proposed in An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon that there might have been Old World languages in the New World by adding newer sources he believes support his original thesis.19 Sorenson wasn’t particularly careful with his sources then, citing the now discredited Barry Fell.20 Mormon’s Codex continues to cite controversial theories. He favorably cites Merritt Ruhlen’s massive early language families that are not only controversial but also would only have been applicable far earlier than the Book of Mormon timeframe.21 Most disappointing is Sorenson’s favorable citation of Michael Xu’s suggestions about early Chinese writing in the Americas, a proposal that has been thoroughly discredited.22 We suggest that readers skip this chapter.

Chapter 12: Human Biology

This chapter highlights an important contradiction in Sorenson’s thought process. In recent decades, scholars have been able to use DNA reconstructions to establish large patterns of migration among peoples. Thomas W. Murphy suggested that because these studies indicated an Asian origin for New World peoples that there was no room for the Book of Mormon’s Near Eastern immigrants.23 Sorenson responds to that argument in a section entitled “The Indeterminate Nature of Molecular Genetic Data and the Origins of Amerindians.”24 The thrust of the section is to explain why these studies of overall genetic patterns cannot be determinative of specific smaller genetic admixtures into populations. This is consonant with the work Sorenson has done to show the limited number of people in Lehi’s party who might have supplied their Near Eastern genes into the much larger pool of peoples inheriting the Asian DNA.25 For example, Sorenson discusses “a study of over 131,00 Icelanders and their ancestors back to 1789 … [which] showed that the majority of people living today in Iceland had ancestors ‘that could not be detected based on the Y-chromosome and mitochondrial DNA tests being performed and yet the genealogical records exist showing that these people lived and were real ancestors.’”26 From the viewpoint of genetic studies, this is the proper understanding of the relationship of the macro migration trends in relation to micro immigration that might have taken place.

What Sorenson misses is that this argument fundamentally undercuts the rest of what he attempts to do in this same chapter. He opens the chapter with the statement: “Maintaining the position that transoceanic migrants arrived in Mesoamerica demands that we find evidence that ancient humans in that area had biological characteristics that match those of peoples from the Old World.”27 This leads him to look for what he deems European features among Mesoamerican populations, even though his DNA argument is essentially that we shouldn’t find them. This appears to be the result of retaining his previous desire to see Book of Mormon peoples as a significant cultural and genetic presence in Mesoamerica.

We particularly note his section entitled “Varied Peoples as Shown in Mesoamerican Art,” which attempts to use artistic representations to suggest there were peoples of fundamentally differing skin pigmentations, include the presumably European-inherited “white.”28 Sorenson makes the mistake of assuming that painted colors necessarily reflect skin pigmentation. Studies of Mesoamerican art show that many of these presumed pigmentation differences are the result of the practice of painting the skin.29 We recommend that readers skip the section on varied peoples as shown in Mesoamerican art.

Chapter 20: Ideology and Religion

In this chapter Sorenson makes explicit his continuation of the parallel list methodology from early years, citing his article in Man Across the Sea and “The Book of Mormon as a Mesoamerican Codex.”30 Of the latter he says. “It presented a first version of the argument elaborated in this book. Some 75 correspondences were described and documented under three headings: (1) present in the ancient Near East, (2) referred to in the Book of Mormon, and (3) present in pre-Columbian Mesoamerican cultures. In recent years further detailed similarities have been identified.”31 The current chapter continues the methodology with more examples. Parallels, even when called correspondences, are too often created by the way the correspondences are described. Frequently, describing the items differently would remove similarities, and also frequently the descriptions simply ignore important differences between the items listed as parallel or corresponding. A particularly important example is Sorenson’s elaboration of his support for the parallels between Quetzalcoatl and Jesus Christ.32 Perhaps because Sorenson has isolated himself from the work of other LDS scholars, he has missed a wider study of the Quetzalcoatl material that explicitly denies the correlation.33 This entire chapter rests too heavily on an inadequate methodology and should be read only with caution.

In Summary

Mormon’s Codex is intended to summarize a long and important labor explicating the Book of Mormon. It is unquestionably a monument to that career. As with the earlier book it updates, there are important ideas that form the foundation of much of the current work on the relationship between the Book of Mormon and a real world place and time. It represents Sorenson’s best thinking on these topics, but not necessarily the best work currently available in the LDS scholarly community.

Sorenson once provided a brief jacket cover comment for a book which read: “The careful reader of this work is bound to discoverer a good deal of valuable new information.”34 It was a cautious endorsement because although there were some good things in the book, it required a background in Mesoamerican studies that most careful readers didn’t possess in order to find the “valuable new information.” We can wholeheartedly apply the same recommendation to Sorenson’s Mormon’s Codex. There is much in this book that adds new information to the sound arguments made in An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon. There is also much that demands a careful reading.

Brant A. Gardner (M.A. State University of New York Albany) is the author of Second Witness: Analytical and Contextual Commentary on the Book of Mormon and The Gift and Power: Translating the Book of Mormon, both published through Greg Kofford Books. He has contributed articles to Estudios de Cultura Nahuatl and Symbol and Meaning Beyond the Closed Community. He has presented papers at the FairMormon conference as well as at Sunstone.

Mark Alan Wright earned his BA in Anthropology at UCLA and his MA and PhD in Anthropology (with a subfield of specialization in Mesoamerican Archaeology) from UC Riverside. He regularly conducts research in Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and Belize. Dr. Wright is Assistant Professor of Ancient Scripture at Brigham Young University and Associate Editor of the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies at the Maxwell Institute.

1 David J. Whittaker, comp., “A Bibliography of the Published and Unpublished Works of John Leon Sorenson,” Mormons, Scripture, and the Ancient World: Studies in Honor of John L. Sorenson, ed. Davis Bitton (Provo, UT: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 1998), 480.

2 Most interesting is the process of discussing an alternate geography by contrasting it with Sorenson’s. Ralph A. Olsen has proposed a Malay site for the Book of Mormon, and says, “In particular, I’ve focused on the problems associated with the Mesoamerican setting proposed by John L. Sorenson in Ancient American Setting (and in many other books and articles), which is currently the hypothesis driving most geographical studies conducted by the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS).” Ralph A. Olsen, “A Malay Site for Book of Mormon Events,” Sunstone, 131 (March 2004): 34, note 6.

3 While Sorenson’s publication of the geography came in 1985 with An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon, it was in place in the manuscript for that book at least a decade earlier. At least the general outline of the geography appears to date back to the 1950s.

4 John L. Sorenson, An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon (Provo, UT: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1985).

5 An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon was essentially written a decade prior to its publication, though some new references were added closer to its publication date. As a point of comparison, the early 1970s not only saw the essentially completed manuscript for An Ancient American Setting but also saw the beginnings of the widespread efforts to use the understanding of the phonetic elements of the Maya glyphs. The explosion of information which has followed the translation of many Maya texts was unavailable when Sorenson published his 1985 book. Those translations have dramatically revolutionized our understanding of the Maya.

6 A more recent overview of Mesoamerican cultures can be found in Mark Alan Wright, “The Cultural Tapestry of Mesoamerica,” Journal of the Book of Mormon and Other Restoration Scripture 22/2 (2013): 4-21.

7 See V. Garth Norman, Book of Mormon Geography — Mesoamerican Historic Geography. A graphic of the map is available at http://www.ancientamerica.org/library/media/HTML/7hvlmli5/bookofmormon20map.htm. A review of this geographic model is provided in Lawrence L. Poulsen, “‘The Light is Better Over Here,’ Review of ‘Book of Mormon Geography — Mesoamerican Historic Geography’ by V. Garth Norman,” FARMS Review 19/2 (2007): 11-20; F. Richard Hauck, Deciphering the Geography of the Book of Mormon: Settlements and Routes in Ancient America (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1988), 121; John E. Clark, “A Key for Evaluating Nephite Geographies (Review of F. Richard Hauck, Deciphering the Geography of the Book of Mormon),” Review of Books on the Book of Mormon, 1 (1989): 20-70; William J. Hamblin, “A Stumble Forward? (Review of F. Richard Hauck, Deciphering the Geography of the Book of Mormon),” Review of Books on the Book of Mormon, 1 (1989): 71-77; Jerry L. Ainsworth, The Lives and Travels of Mormon and Moroni (PeaceMakers Publishing, 2000), 81; Jerry L. Ainsworth, “Response to Allens’ [sic] Article on River Sidon,” Book of Mormon Archeological Forum, accessed February 2, 2015, http://www.bmaf.org/articles/response_allens_river_sidon__ainsworth; Kirk Magleby, “Book of Mormon Model,” Book of Mormon Resources, accessed February 2, 2015, http://bookofmormonresources.blogspot.com/2012/07/book-of-mormon-model.html.

8 Lawrence Poulsen, “The River Sidon,” accessed February 2, 2015, http://bomgeography.poulsenll.org/grijalvasidon.html; Lawrence Pousen, “The Tale of Two Rivers,” accessed February 2, 2015, http://bomgeography.poulsenll.org/tworivers.html.

9 See Lawrence Poulsen, “Book of Mormon Geography,” paper presented at the FAIR (now renamed FairMormon) Conference, August 2008, accessed February 2, 2014, http://www.fairmormon.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/2008-Larry-Poulsen.pdf. See also Brant A. Gardner, “From the East to the West: The Problem of Directions in the Book of Mormon, Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture, 3 (2013): 119-53. While this version was likely too late to be included in Mormon’s Codex, it is essentially a version of a paper of the same name presented at the FAIR Conference in August 2013 at which Sorenson presented an outline of the information that would be included in Mormon’s Codex.

10 Sorenson, An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon, 58.

11 John L. Sorenson, “The Book of Mormon As a Mesoamerican Codex,” Newsletter and Proceedings of the S.E.H.A., 139 (December, 1976), 4.

12 In “The Significance of an Apparent Relationship between the Ancient Near East and Mesoamerica,” in Man across the Sea: Problems of Pre-Columbian Contacts. eds. Carrol L. Riley, J. Charles Kelley, Campbell W. Pennington, and Robert L. Rands (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1971), 227-41, Sorenson provides parallel columns: the first for the described cultural trait, the second a column for Mesoamerica, and the third a column for the Near East.

13 Dennis R. MacDonald, The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000) and Dennis R. MacDonald, Does the New Testament Imitate Homer? Four Cases from the Acts of the Apostles (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003).

14 M.D. Hooker, Journal of Theological Studies, 53/1: (196-98); British punctuation revised. Douglas F. Salmon applies the same methodological issues to the explication of LDS scriptures. Douglas F. Salmon, “Parallelomania and the Study of Latter-day Scripture: Confirmation, Coincidence, or the Collective Unconscious?” Dialogue 33/2 (2000): 130.

15 Sorenson, Mormon’s Codex, 7-8. The ellipses represent two and a half paragraphs that were skipped. Sorenson’s introduction to Dever is now closer to Sorenson’s description of Dever’s methodology. Note that this is Sorenson’s description, not Dever’s words. The authors might restate Dever’s methodology differently. Nevertheless, the restatement preserves the need for detailed convergences, where Sorenson’s actual use of Dever’s methodology is reduced to borrowing the idea of using a different label for what is essentially Sorenson’s long-standing use of parallels as a methodological foundation.

16 Sorenson, Mormon’s Codex, 16.

17 William G. Dever notes: “Of course one may object at this point that seeking such ‘convergences’ was just what the now-discredited older ‘biblical archaeology’ sought to do. The critical difference between that and what I propose here has to do with the independent but parallel investigation of the two sources of data for history-writing, and the subsequent critical dialogue between them that scholars must undertake.” William G. Dever, What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It? (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2001), 106.

18 John L. Sorenson and Carl L. Johannessen, World Trade and Biological Exchanges Before 1491 (2004; rpt., New York and Bloomington: iUniverse, 2009). In the 456 pages of text, this book provides a literature review of books and articles discussing such contacts, including bibliographic information and short summaries.

19 Sorenson, An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon, 74-81.

20 Ibid., 80.

21 Sorenson, Mormon’s Codex, 174. Ruhlen knows that his theories are controversial. See Merritt Ruhlen, The Origin of Language: Tracing the Evolution of the Mother Tongue (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1994), 154.

22 Sorenson, Mormon’s Codex, 178-79, 511-12. See Karl Taube, Olmec Art at Dumbarton Oaks (Washington, D.C.: Trustees for Harvard University, 2004), 1 note 1.

23 Thomas W. Murphy, “Lamanite Genesis, Genealogy, and Genetics,” 52-59.

24 Sorenson, Mormon’s Codex, 247-54.

25 John L. Sorenson, “The Composition of Lehi’s Family,” in Nephite Culture and Society, ed. Matthew R. Sorenson (Salt Lake City: New Sage Books, 1997), 2-24.

26 Sorenson, Mormon’s Codex, 250-51.

27 Ibid., 233.

28 Ibid., 236-42.

29 Stephen Houston, David Stuart, and Karl Taube, The Memory of Bones: Body, Being, and Experience among the Classic Maya (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006), 22-23.

30 Sorenson, Mormon’s Codex, 452-53.

31 Ibid., 453.

32 Ibid., 468-99; 472-78.

33 See Brant A. Gardner, Second Witness: Analytical and Contextual Commentary on the Book of Mormon (Draper, UT: Greg Kofford Books, 2007), 5:353-95.

34 Bruce W. Warren and Thomas Stuart Ferguson, The Messiah in Ancient America (Provo, UT: Book of Mormon Research Foundation, 1987), back cover.

John L. Sorenson’s Complete Legacy:
Reviewing Mormon’s Codex

Brant A. Gardner and Mark Alan Wright

A strong case has been made by John A. Tvedtnes and Jeffrey R. Chadwick that Lehi was a metalworker by profession.1 Although the text gives several indications of Nephi’s (and by implications, Lehi’s) familiarity with the craft of working metals, prominent Book of Mormon scholar John L. Sorenson nonetheless disagreed with this assessment on the grounds that, “it would be highly unlikely that a man who had inherited land and was considered very wealthy (1 Nephi 3:25) would have been a metalworker, for the men in that role tended to be of lower social status and were usually landless.”2 More recent findings, however, are changing the picture.

In the latest issue of Biblical Archaeology Review, editor Hershel Shanks has a short comment entitled “Life Was Not So Bad for Smelters,” which draws on the very recent findings at both Timna and Faynan, both mining towns in antiquity, to conclude, “While life for miners at ancient copper mining sites was ‘hell on earth,’ the smelters of the better class feasted like visitors at a first-class spa!”3 According to Shanks, Lidar Sapir-Hen and Erez Ben-Yosef, the archaeologists at Timna, “draw a distinction between the low-class miners and the higher-class smelters.” The abstract of their study describes the nature of the evidence:

The popular image of metalworking sites in desert settings envisages armies of slaves engaged in back-breaking labour. This is in conflict with ethnographic evidence indicating that skilled specialist metalworkers are often accorded high social status. This study approaches that contradiction directly by studying the remains of domesticated food animals from domestic and industrial contexts at Timna in southern Israel. The authors demonstrate that the higher-value meat cuts come from industrial contexts, where they were associated with the specialist metalworkers, rather than the ‘domestic’ contexts occupied by lower status workers engaged in support roles. It is suggested that the pattern documented here could also have been a feature of early metalworking sites in other times and places.4

The authors go on to explain, “Metalworkers are commonly perceived to have been a cheap labour force, but a growing set of data shows the contrary, especially in the pyrotechnological stage of primary metal production.”5 They are looking specifically as the remains of animal bones, which indicate that smelters enjoyed the meat from the best body parts on local and imported species, while the miners and others got the butchers scraps. “This observation,” they note, “implies that different ranks may be attributed to the two populations, with the people engaged in smelting enjoying the higher status.”6 They conclude,

We suggest that the people engaged in smelting were actually highly skilled craftpersons and were treated as such. This fundamental observation stems from the inherent complexity of the technology that demanded and created an idiosyncratic class of workers, and hence we believe it should apply to smelting activities across time and space, namely at different periods, in different cultures and even in relation to different metals.7

According to Shanks, archaeologists in the Faynan have attested similar findings that will soon be published. The findings at both sites date to the early first millennium bc.

Chadwick has specifically argued for a business association between Lehi and the mines of Timna, since they are near the Red Sea in the area Lehi most likely traveled too (see 1 Nephi 2:5).8 Daniel C. Peterson likewise feels that Lehi’s smelting skills “might have dictated the direction they went. It would be a known route. If you do metalwork, then you probably know the mines of Timna at that period.”9 It is therefore significant that evidence for the higher socioeconomic status of smelters comes from this same area.

While we may never know for certain what Lehi’s profession was, metalworking is an increasingly appealing option. Not only does it fit with Nephi’s apparent knowledge and interest in metallurgy but also lends explanatory power to the direction Lehi traveled. Now, it can also be said to be consistent with Lehi’s apparent socioeconomic status.

Neal Rappleye is a history student who actively pursues research interests in early Church history and the ancient setting of the Book of Mormon. He blogs about Latter-day Saint topics at http://www.studioetquoquefide.com/

1 See John A. Tvedtnes, The Most Correct Book: Insights from a Book of Mormon Scholar (Springville, UT: Horizon, 2003), 78-97; Jeffrey R. Chadwick, “Lehi’s House at Jerusalem and the Land of his Inheritance,” in Glimpses of Lehi’s Jerusalem, ed. John W. Welch, David Rolph Seely, and Jo Ann H. Seely (Provo, UT: FARMS, 2004), 113-117. Also see Brant A. Gardner, Second Witness: Analytical and Contextual Commentary on the Book of Mormon, 6 vols. (Salt Lake City, UT: Greg Kofford Books, 2007), 1:78-80.

2 John L. Sorenson, “The Composition of Lehi’s Family,” in By Study and Also By Faith: Essays in Honor of Hugh W. Nibley on the Occasion of His Eightieth Birthday, 27 March 1990, 2 vols., ed. John M. Lundquist and Stephen D. Ricks (Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book and FARMS, 1990), 2:176.

3 Hershel Shanks, “Life Was Not So Bad for Smelters,” Biblical Archaeology Review (January/February 2015): 6.

4 Lidar Sapir-Hen and Erez Ben-Yosef, “The Socioeconomic Status of Iron Age Metalworkers: Animal Economy in the ‘Slaves’ Hill’, Timna, Israel,” Antiquity 88/341 (2014): 775, emphasis mine.

5 Ibid., 776.

6 Ibid., 785.

7 Ibid., 787.

8 See Chadwick, “Lehi’s House at Jerusalem,” 117.

9 Daniel Peterson, in Journey of Faith: From Jerusalem to the Promised Land, ed. S. Kent Brown and Peter Johnson (Provo, UT: Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, 2006), 62.

Lehi the Smelter:
New Light on Lehi’s Profession

Neal Rappleye

Abstract: The name Heshlon, attested once (in Ether 13:28), as a toponym in the Book of Mormon most plausibly denotes “place of crushing.” The meaning of Heshlon thus becomes very significant in the context of Ether 13:25–31, which describes the crushing or enfeebling of Coriantumr’s armies and royal power. This meaning is also significant in the wider context of Moroni’s narrative of the Jaredites’ destruction. Fittingly, the name Heshlon itself serves as a literary turning point in a chiastic structure which describes the fateful reversal of Coriantumr’s individual fortunes and the worsening of the Jaredites’ collective fortunes. Perhaps Moroni, who witnessed the gradual crushing and destruction of the Nephites, mentioned this name in his abridgement of the Book of Ether on account of the high irony of its meaning in view of the Jaredite war of attrition which served as precursor to the destruction of the Nephites.

Toponymy and Toponymic Wordplay

The observation that the Book of Mormon repeatedly correlates the name Jershon and the land given as a place of “inheritance” (cf. Heb. *yrš)1 to the people of Ammon (see Alma 27:22–26; 35:14; 43:22, 25), has laid a foundation not only for more thoroughgoing studies of onomastic wordplay in the Book of Mormon,2 but also for a wider study of toponymy in the Book of Mormon.3 In a number of instances, Joseph Smith’s English language translation renders toponyms wholly (e.g., Bountiful, Desolation)4 or partly in English (e.g., Desolation of Nehors),5 perhaps so that the narrative function of the toponyms and events pertaining to them are clearer to the audience. The translated toponyms Bountiful6 and Desolation serve important literary functions: in the former instance, sharpening the contrast between the Arabian Desert through which the Lehites had traveled and the land of “abundance”7 to which they were providentially led and, in the latter instance, the contrast between the permanently devastated land northward8 where the Jaredites met their demise and where history began to repeat itself among the Nephites9 and all of the rest of the land that is repeatedly characterized as “choice above all other lands.”10 Desolation and Bountiful particularly provide contrast to each other in later Nephite toponymy (see Alma 63:5; 3 Nephi 3:23).

Other names like Jershon, however, are transliterated but untranslated. And yet, using our knowledge of the languages that the Book of Mormon writers said they used,11 we are able to propose reasonable suppositions about their etymology and literary function in the context in which they occur. Thousands of newly converted Lamanites had recently entered into a covenant with the Lord and needed not merely a place of refuge from their unconverted brethren who threatened them, but a land — or a place — of inheritance, a Jershon,12 such as had historically accompanied covenant-making by the patriarchs and ancient Israel including the Nephites themselves. The name itself functions in the Lamanite conversion narrative (and later)13 as a sign that the Nephites themselves recognized and approved of the covenant that Ammon’s converts had made, even though they apparently felt that they would be unable to fully assimilate them into the population of Zarahemla (see Alma 27:21–24).

In this brief article, we suggest a similar literary phenomenon involving the name Heshlon in Ether 13:28–29. Moroni mentions the plains of Heshlon as the scene of a great reversal — both a victory and defeat for Coriantumr that epitomized not only the fluctuating and worsening fortunes of Coriantumr personally, but of those of the Jaredites collectively, all of whom had rejected the prophet Ether’s call to repentance. The Nephites of Mosiah2’s time, for whom flight from the land of Nephi and the decimation of the people of Limhi were fresh memories, probably would have appreciated the significance of military events at a place that connoted “(place of) crushing.” Moroni himself in later years would not have failed to appreciate the ironic parallels between battles that he witnessed during his own lifetime — fleeting victories over the Lamanites, followed by the increasingly devastating defeats at the hands of the Lamanites14 that led to the destruction of the Nephites as a nation (see especially Moroni’s comments in Mormon 8:6-7). Like Mormon’s ominous use of the toponym translated “Desolation” in Mormon 3:5, 7; 4:1–19, the untranslated toponym “Heshlon,” serves as a kind of literary cenotaph for what eventually happened to both the Jaredites and Nephites due to their failure to heed prophetic warnings: they were crushed and ultimately destroyed.

“Heshlon” as an Israelite/Nephite Toponym

Like Gilgal,15 Heshlon is a toponym of Semitic origin which the Nephites either newly applied to their geographic environs or adapted as an alteration or updating of existing Jaredite toponymy.16 Both names occur together within the same verses and within the same context. Hugh Nibley classed Heshlon with the names Emron, Jashon, Moron, etc. on the basis of the archaic Semitic – ôn termination.17 According to grammatical rules preserved in Hebrew, the – ôn termination on both personal and place names was “a particular nominal or adjectival form serving as an appellative”18 that “describ[ed] some feature [or] aspect of the [site]”19 named.

John Tvedtnes, who has suggested that the – ôn suffix in these names denotes “place of X,”20 suggests that “Heshlon” is formed from the Hebrew verb *ḥāšal as attested in Deuteronomy 25:18,21 where it is stated that the Amalekites attacked “the crushed” or “the feeble” (kjv), i.e., “the stragglers” (hanneḥĕšālîm),22 at the rear of Israel’s hosts. Here *ḥāšal is used in a military context.

In addition to the attestation of *ḥāšal in Deuteronomy, the Aramaic cognate ḥāšēl is attested in Daniel 2:40: “And the fourth kingdom shall be strong as iron: forasmuch as iron breaketh in pieces and subdueth [wĕḥāšēl] all things: and as iron that breaketh all these, shall it break in pieces and bruise.” The kjv translates ḥāšēl as “subdue,” but its use as a synonym of *dqq (“break in pieces” or “crush in small pieces”23) indicates that a better translation would be “and crushes.”24 The context here is also a military one.

Marcus Jastrow suggests that postbiblical Hebrew ḥāšal means “to scrape off, polish; to reduce” and that in the durative (Piel) stem, it means to “crush” or “batter.”25 In support of this he cites Koheleth Rabbah 1:6,26 a midrashic text which describes how the Lord “breaks,” “crushes,” or “weakens” (mĕḥaššĕlô, i.e., blunts) the force (or strength) of the wind by means of the mountains.27 This extra-biblical attestation of ḥāšal has possible relevance for Moroni’s description of what happens to Coriantumr at Heshlon, whose armies’ strength was crushed, enfeebled, or blunted to such a degree that Coriantumr thereafter had no power to “constrain” the Jaredites from shedding blood en masse (Ether 13:31, critical text; see further below).28

Intriguingly, the Sifre Devarim (or Sifre Deuteronomy), a rabbinic exegetical commentary on the Book of Deuteronomy — commenting specifically on the hanneḥĕšālîm mentioned in Deuteronomy 25:18 — interprets this word as a reference to “the children of men who have withdrawn themselves from the ways of the Existence [i.e., the Lord] and have been crushed away from underneath the [protective] wings of the Cloud.”29 The Jaredite nation, like the Nephite nation, was crushed and destroyed precisely because they had withdrawn themselves from the Spirit of the Lord, and the Lord had thus withdrawn his Spirit from them (cf. Mosiah 2:36; Helaman 4:24; 6:35; 13:8; Mormon 2:26; Ether 11:13).

Jastrow glosses the Targumic Aramaic term ḥăšal or ḥăšîl as “to furbish, forge, or hammer” something. A ḥāšlāʾ was a “furbisher” or “smith” with the secondary sense, “to plan”30 (cf. modern English, “forge a plan” or “hammer out a plan”).31 Here, too, the root *ḥšl suggests the action or product of the action of striking or dealing a blow.

Just as importantly, Hebrew *ḥāšal and Aramaic ḥāšēl are both cognate with the Akkadian verb ḫašālu, which means “to crush, to shatter”32 As a military term, it means to “crush” in the sense of “destroy”33 — e.g., Ishtar “crushes the unsubmissive.”34 It can be used statively of a person who “is crushed.”35 We can say, then, with some assurance that Hebrew ḥāšal meant to “crush” with the idea of making feeble (enfeeble) and that its usage was, at least sometimes, a military one.

Thus, Heshlon (with the toponymic – ôn suffix) would mean “place of crushing,” i.e., “place of (a) crushing” and would make sense as a Semitic, Hebrew, and even a Nephite name. Although its sole attestation in the Book of Mormon is in the story of Coriantumr and the destruction of the Jaredites, it appears with the name Gilgal, which as noted above, is a Semitic name. Moroni, relying on Mosiah2’s earlier translation (see especially Mosiah 28:11–19) or his own memory of that record,36 frequently uses Israelite/Nephite toponymy rather than Jaredite (e.g., Gilgal, Ramah),37 or at least updates Jaredite toponymy.

Beating and Crushing: The Repetition of “Beat” and “Heshlon”

By the time Ether came to Coriantumr and uttered his prophetic ultimatum (i.e., repent and be spared or otherwise be destroyed, Ether 13:20–21), Coriantumr and his sons had already “fought much and bled much” (13:19). Immediately thereafter, the name “Heshlon” (a hapax legomenon)38 occurs within the greatest concentration of the word beat, i.e. “defeat” in a military sense, anywhere in the scriptures.

The word beat (i.e., “attack and destroy,” cf. Heb. nākâ in the causative stem)39 occurs as a military term twenty times in the Book of Mormon, first in Mosiah 21:8.40 Mormon uses beat as a military technical term nine times (eight times in his personal record, Mormon 1–8, and once in Mosiah 21:8); Moroni uses beat eight times in Ether compared to only one by other Book of Mormon writers — Helaman1 once (Alma 57:22). Tellingly, Mormon and Moroni together account for nineteen out of twenty uses of beat as a military technical term. This is unsurprising considering the relentless “beatings” — military victories and defeats — that they witnessed, these culminating in the final crushing and “extinction”41 of their people.

It must be significant that the verb beat occurs in its largest cluster here: five times in Ether 13:23–30 (13:23–24, 28–30). We suggest that the name Heshlon — “place of crushing” — has been juxtaposed with a verb translated “beat” in a fivefold repetition as, perhaps, a synonymic play involving Heshlon and its root meaning, “(place of) crushing” in order to emphasize just how disastrous this series of battles was for the Jaredite nation: Coriantumr and his opponents “beat” and “crushed” each other so severely that Coriantumr’s royal power became fragile and his opponents became too feeble to overthrow him. Thus the Jaredite bloodshed thereafter became unstoppable (Ether 13:31). The nation was doomed at Heshlon and Gilgal, as a close reading of the structure of Ether 13:25–31 also suggests.

Heshlon within the Chiastic Structure of Ether 13:25–31

Although the structure of any text can be variously arranged and diagrammed,42 Ether 13:25–31 exhibits a remarkable degree of chiasticity. Heshlon can be viewed as the turning point of this chiasm:

A a Now there began to war upon all the face of the land

b. Every man

c. with his band

d. fighting for that which he desired

c′ And there were robbers,

b′ and in fine, all manner of wickedness

a′ upon all the face of the land.

B a And it came to pass that Coriantumr was exceedingly angry with Shared,

b and he went against him with his armies to battle

a′ and they did meet in great anger

b′and they did meet in the valley of Gilgal and the battle

a″ became exceedingly sore

b″ And it came to pass that Shared fought against him for the

space of three days.

C And it came to pass that Coriantumr beat him,

D and did pursue him until he came to the plains

X of Heshlon.

D′ And it came to pass that Shared gave him battle again

upon the plains;

C′ and behold, he did beat Coriantumr,

B′ and drove him back again to the valley of Gilgal

b″ And Coriantumr gave Shared battle again in the valley of Gilgal

a‴ in which he beat Shared and slew him

a‴ and Shared wounded Coriantumr in his thigh

b‴ That he did not go to battle again for the space of two years

A′ b″ In the which time all the people

a′ upon the face of the land

d′ were a43 shedding blood

b‴ and there was none to constrain44 them.

A-A′

The chiastic structure of Ether 13:25–31 is bracketed with the phrases upon all the face of the land and upon the face of the land. The phrases Every man and all manner of iniquity correspond to the phrases all the people and there was none to restrain them and are linked by the synonyms and antonyms every, all, and none. Ether 13:25–26 evidences a small self-contained chiasm, the center phrase of which, fighting for that which he desired, emphasizes the nature of the pandemic conflict during Ether’s and Coriantumr’s time. There is elemental progression at the end of the chiasm (A′) as “every man” becomes “all the people,” “fighting for that which he desired” worsens to “were a shedding blood” and a ubiquitous national amorality (“every man”, “all manner of iniquity”) is amplified by the fact that now “there was none to constrain them” — not Coriantumr’s authority and still less the Spirit of God.

B-B′

These elements emphasize two different “battle[s]” that were fought in “the valley of Gilgal.” These elements also describe a time factor attached to both battles — i.e., that Shared “fought” Coriantumr “for the space of three days” and that after the second battle, which culminated in Shared’s death and a near-mortal wound for Coriantumr, the latter “did not go to battle again for the space of three years.” The great anger described in B bears awful fruit in the death of Shared and in Coriantumr’s massive blood loss in B′. The “space of three days” mentioned in B becomes a “space of two years” in B′.

C-C′

Coriantumr’s defeat of (“beat[ing]”) Shared in C is matched by the unexpected defeat of (“did beat”) Coriantumr by Shared in C′. Narrative progression in the chiasm is marked not only by the opposite outcome of the second battle, but by Shared’s driving Coriantumr back to the “the valley of Gilgal,” which is mentioned twice in epistrophe (repeated endings to clauses) in C′.

D-D′

The D-D′ elements set up “the plains” as the scene of the battle that will dramatically change and worsen the fortunes of Coriantumr and the Jaredite nation as a whole. A “pursuit” becomes a “battle” upon the plains. And Coriantumr’s presumed rout becomes something wholly different from what he imagined.

Chiastic Center (X): Heshlon

The name Heshlon in the text (Ether 13:28) marks a reversal of the text’s structural flow. Appropriately, the battle on the plains of Heshlon marks a dramatic reversal of Coriantumr’s expectations and fortunes. What Coriantumr had hoped would be a final victory over Shared, his archenemy, instead turned out to be the crushing or breaking of the strength of his own forces on the plains of Heshlon. Although Coriantumr subsequently again beats Shared and his forces again in the valley of Gilgal, Coriantumr is badly wounded and his forces so defeated that he cannot enforce any authority over his kingdom: “all the people upon the face of the land were a shedding blood, and there was none to constrain [i.e., force] them” (Ether 13:31, printer’s manuscript). This description reminds us of Moroni’s earlier words following the extinction of the Nephites: “the whole face of this land is one continual round of murder and bloodshed; and no one knoweth the end of the war” (Mormon 8:8). Perhaps incidentally, but ironically, the name Gilgal, which is repeated three times in Ether 13:27–30 in connection with the name Heshlon, connotes a “circle” or “round,” perhaps a “cycle.”

Coriantumr and his supporters who had not only rejected Ether’s prophecies, but also sought to kill him, begin to reap the consequences of these actions. The mention of “Heshlon” (“place of crushing [defeat]”) serves in Ether 13:28 as a didactic inference that the judgments of God as pronounced by a prophet are inescapable. From this point forward, the narrative drives inexorably toward the final Jaredite destruction.

Coriantumr cannot and does not escape Ether’s prophecy. Although Coriantumr eventually prevails over Shared (13:30), Coriantumr himself is wounded and cannot “constrain” Jaredites on either side of the conflict from their willful shedding of blood (13:31). New archenemies arise in Shared’s stead (Lib, Shiz) and deal further defeats to his armies as often as he is able to do the same to them. Before long, the Jaredites on both sides are crushed to extinction in a war of attrition. Unlike Shez, when the Jaredites had previously nearly warred themselves into annihilation, Coriantumr will not be able to “build up again a broken people” (Ether 10:1). The curse is set (Ether 14:1) and the entire nation will be completely destroyed.

Moroni’s Late Literary Use of “Heshlon”

Moroni’s late use of the name “Heshlon” in his abridgment of the Jaredite record may owe a literary debt to Mosiah2’s earlier translation of that record, even if Moroni wrote his own account from memory.45 Moreover, it is possible that the idea of “place of crushing” originally referred to some feature of the topography of that place. It is additionally possible that this toponym was applied to those plains by earlier record-keepers in connection with previous battles. However, one can only speculate on these points.

Nevertheless, naming a place after what occurred there was not uncommon in ancient Israel or among the Nephites (e.g., Judges 15:15–17; Alma 22:30). The open plains (including the plains of Heshlon) are sites of battles in at least four instances in the Book of Mormon.46 Moreover, one cannot rule out the possibility that a Jaredite name that denoted something like “place of destruction”47 was rendered “Heshlon” by Mosiah2 and then left transliterated but untranslated by Joseph Smith. The name Heshlon may even constitute an adaptation or updating of a similar Jaredite name.48 And yet the key point is that the Hebrew root *ḥšl denotes “crushing” and the affixation of the appellative – ôn termination, together with the expected vowel changes to the root, easily produce Heshlon and the meaning, “place of crushing.”

In that case, the name Heshlon would have been especially evocative for Nephites, both to Moroni who witnessed the crushing of his nation, but perhaps also to earlier generations of Nephites, including those who lived under the reign of King Mosiah2 some of whom had experienced wars with the Lamanites under King Benjamin, and others who had been king Noah’s and King Limhi’s subjects and had been nearly destroyed in ill-conceived wars. It is certainly clear that Mosiah2’s initial translation of the Jaredite record was a major motivating factor in his and the people’s decision to bring monarchy to an end. For them, the names Heshlon and Desolation (i.e., Hormah,49 or whatever word was used to represent “desolation” in their language) would have been unambiguous portents of what monarchic evil and covenant disobedience could bring upon them. We likewise can and should consider the portents evident in these names.

Conclusion

We have made a plausible, if not a compelling case that Heshlon is of Semitic origin, was a toponym whose meaning would have been significant to the Nephites, and would have meant “place of crushing.” These observations are significant when we consider Moroni’s abridgment of the Jaredite record and its concluding scenes which describe the fulfillment of Ether’s prophecies regarding the total destruction of the Jaredite nation. Heshlon, the “place of crushing,” sits appropriately at the chiastic center of a block of text which describes the reversal of Coriantumr’s fortunes to the great weakening of his power, which eventuated in additional bloodshed and loss of life. If these observations are not amiss, Heshlon represents yet another instance in the Book of Mormon in which nomen est omen: the name is the sign.

The authors would like to thank Robert F. Smith and John A. Tvedtnes for suggestions that improved this paper.

Matthew L. Bowen was raised in Orem, Utah and graduated from Brigham Young University. He holds a PhD in Biblical Studies from the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC and is currently an Assistant Professor in Religious Education at Brigham Young University-Hawaii. He and his wife (the former Suzanne Blattberg) are the parents of three children: Zachariah, Nathan, and Adele.

Pedro A. Olavarria is an independent researcher from Southern California. He has a BA from UCLA in Asian Humanities.

1 Stephen D. Ricks and John A. Tvedtnes, “The Hebrew Origin of Some Book of Mormon Place Names,” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 6/2 (1997): 255–59.

2 On this subject see, e.g., recently Matthew L. Bowen, “The Faithfulness of Ammon,” Religious Educator 15/2 (2014): 65–89; Matthew L. Bowen, “‘And There Wrestled a Man with Him’ (Genesis 32:24): Enos’s Adaptations of the Onomastic Wordplay of Genesis,” Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture 10 (2014): 151–160; Matthew L. Bowen, “Becoming Sons and Daughters at God’s Right Hand: King Benjamin’s Rhetorical Wordplay on His Own Name,” Journal of Book of Mormon and Restoration Scripture 21/2 (2012): 2–13. For a study of wordplay on a Book of Mormon personal name turned toponym, see David E. Bokovoy and Pedro A. Olavarria, “Zarahemla: Revisiting the Seed of Compassion,” Insights 30/5 (2010): 2–3.

3 Toponymy (Greek topos “place” + onoma “name”) is the study of the giving place names (toponyms) and their significance.

4 On the naming of Bountiful on the Arabian peninsula (Old World Bountiful) see 1 Nephi 17:5–6; On the naming of Desolation, see Alma 22:30–32 (cf. Alma 46:17; 50:34; 63:5; Ether 7:6), Note how ominously Desolation functions in Mormon’s narrative in Mormon 3:5, 7; 4:1–19. We submit that Heshlon functions similarly in Ether 13:28–29.

5 See Alma 16:11.

6 I.e., “Bountiful” and “Desolation” are translations of proper names in the underlying text of the Book of Mormon that do not appear in an untranslated, transliterated form in the Book of Mormon.

7 The naming of Old World Bountiful is explained twice in 1 Nephi 17:5–6 in terms of the land’s “much fruit”: “we did come to the land which was called Bountiful, because of its much fruit and also wild honey (v.5); “and we called the place Bountiful, because of its much fruit” (v.6). Nephi further notes that they sailed from this land with much fruits … and honey in abundance” (1 Nephi 18:6).

8 Cf. Omni 1:22; Mosiah 8:8; 21:26; Alma 22:30; Ether 11:6.

9 Mormon 6:15.

10 The land of promise is so described in 1 Nephi 2:20; 13:30; 2 Nephi 1:5; Ether 1:38, 42; 2:7, 10, 15; 9:20; 10:28; 13:2.

11 I.e., Hebrew and Egyptian: see especially 1 Nephi 1:2; Mormon 9:32–33.

12 Jershon is also attested as a toponym in the story of Abraham in the Book of Abraham (see Abraham 2:16–18, and the accompanying footnote).

13 See Alma 27:22–26; 35:14; 43:22, 25.

14 The story of crushing of the Nephite nation is largely the narrative of Mormon 1–7.

15 Cf. the Ugaritic personal name (bn) glgl. See Cyrus H. Gordon, Ugaritic Textbook (Analecta Orientalia 38; Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1965), glossary #577, text 2068:13.

16 Like many biblical names, Gilgal is an older, apparently Semitic toponym that was later adopted and adapted into Hebrew. Compare Judges 5:9, where Gilgal is etiologized in terms of the Hebrew verb *gll, to “roll away.” John A. Tvedtnes (“A Phonemic Analysis of Nephite and Jaredite Proper Names,” Newsletter and Proceedings of the SEHA No. 141 [December 1977]) suggests that toponyms in the Book of Ether, except for a few (e.g., except names accompanied by formulae such as “which was called,” “which they called”) were Nephite in origin. Robert F. Smith, however, suggests that “Nephite scribes may have altered such toponyms to suit their updated understanding of cognate name-formation. The Arabs did this with many former Hebrew toponyms in Palestine as they moved in and took over” (personal communication, December 2014). Yohanan Aharoni, The Land of the Bible: A Historical Geography, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1979) provides numerous examples of this phenomenon.

17 Hugh W. Nibley, Lehi in the Desert; The World of the Jaredites; There Were Jaredites (ed. John W. Welch; Collected Works of Hugh W. Nibley [hereafter CWHN] 5; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book and FARMS, 1988), 38; Hugh W. Nibley, An Approach to the Book of Mormon (ed. John W. Welch; 3rd ed.; CWHN 6; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book and FARMS, 1988), 81. On the archaic Northwest Semitic nominalizing termination -on, see Arthur E. Cowley and Emil Kautzsch, Gesenius’ Hebrew Grammar, 2nd ed. (London: Oxford University Press, 1910), § 85s-v; Martin Noth, Die israelitischen Personennamen im Rahmen der Gemeinsemitischen Namensgebung (BWANT 3/10; Stuttgart: W. Kolhammer, 1928; reprint Hildesheim, 1966), 56; William F. Albright, The Vocalization of the Egyptian Syllabic Orthography (American Oriental Society 5; New Haven: Yale University Press, 1934; reprint Millwood, N.Y., 1974), 10:12, cited by Hugh W. Nibley, “The Book of Mormon as a Mirror of the East,” Improvement Era, 51 (April 1948): 249 = Nibley, Lehi in the Desert (CWHN 5), 131.

18 Anson F. Rainey, “The Toponymics of Eretz-Israel,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, No. 231 (Oct., 1978): 5.

19 Ibid., 4. On Hebrew – ôn names in the Book of Mormon, see Stephen D. Ricks and John A. Tvedtnes, “Notes and Communications: The Hebrew Origin of Some Book of Mormon Place Names,” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 6/2 (1997): 258.

20 See John A. Tvedtnes, “I Have a Question,” “Since the Book of Mormon is largely the record of a Hebrew people, is the writing characteristic of the Hebrew language?” Ensign (October 1986): 65. See additionally Tvedtnes, “What's in a Name? A Look at the Book of Mormon Onomasticon,” FARMS Review of Books 8/2 (1996): 41; Paul Y. Hoskisson, “An Introduction to the Relevance of and a Methodology for a Study of the Proper Names of the Book of Mormon,” By Study and Also by Faith: Essays in Honor of Hugh W. Nibley, ed. John M. Lundquist and Stephen D. Ricks (Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book and FARMS, 1990), 2:129; Paul Y. Hoskisson, “Book of Mormon Names,” in Encyclopedia of Mormonism, 1:187.

21 John A. Tvedtnes, “Hebrew Names in the Book of Mormon,” paper presented at the Thirteenth World Congress of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem, August 2001. Reprinted by FAIR (2002): 4 (http://www.fairlds.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/tvedtnes-HebrewNames.pdf).

22 Cf. Ludwig Koehler and Walter Baumgartner, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 362. Hereafter cited as HALOT.

23 See HALOT, 1855.

24 HALOT (p. 1881–1882) defines ḥāšēl as to “crush.”

25 Marcus Jastrow, A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature (New York: Judaica Press, 1996), 511.

26 The Koheleth Rabbah, or Ecclesiastes Rabbah, is a rabbinic midrash of (i.e., commentary on) the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes.

27 Jastrow, Dictionary, 511.

28 Following Royal Skousen, The Book of Mormon: The Earliest Text (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 788; see also Royal Skousen, Analysis of Textual Variants of the Book of Mormon, Part Six: 3 Nephi 19 – Moroni 10, Addenda (Provo, UT: FARMS, 2009), 3822, 3858; Royal Skousen, Analysis of the Textual Variants of the Book of Mormon, Part One: Title Page, Witness Statements, 1 Nephi 1–2 Nephi 10 (Provo, UT: FARMS, 2004), 490–91.

29 See Sifre Devarim 296 (or Sifre Deuteronomy 296) “ʾlʾ bny ʾdm šnmškw mdrky mqwm wnḥšlw mtḥt knpy hʿnn” = “… but [they are] the children of men who have withdrawn themselves from the ways of the Existence [i.e., the Lord] and have been crushed away from under the (protective) wings of the Cloud.” Cf. also Jastrow, Dictionary, 511.

30 Jastrow, Dictionary, 511.

31 Ibid.

32 The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of The University of Chicago, Volume 6: Ḫ [ḥet], ed. A. Leo Oppenheimer, Erica Reiner, et al (Chicago: Oriental Institute, 1956), 137.

33 Jeremy Black, Andrew George, Nicholas Postgate, eds., Concise Dictionary of Akkadian (SANTAG 5; Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2000), 110.

34 Hayim ben Yosef Tawil, An Akkadian Lexical Companion for Biblical Hebrew: Etymological, Semantic and Idiomatic Equivalence with Supplement on Biblical Aramaic (Jersey City, NJ: KTAV Publishing House, 2009), 122.

35 Ibid.

36 Daniel B. Sharp and Matthew L. Bowen are working on the possibility that Moroni composed his Book of Ether in part or in whole from memory (study forthcoming).

37 Ramah denotes “height” in Hebrew; Cf. also Akkadian ramû “to lay, cast down; to set up” = Hebrew rāmâ “to throw, cast, shoot” (Exodus 15:1, 21; Jeremiah 4:29; Psalm 78:9). See Tawil, Akkadian Lexical Companion, 366 (citing The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of The University of Chicago, Volume 14: R, ed. Erica Reiner and Martha T. Roth [Chicago: Oriental Institute, 1999], 133a).

38 Greek hapax legomenon (”said once”) denotes a word or grammatical construction that is attested only once in a given context (i.e., in a language or work).

39 In the kjv, the verb beat is used in the military same sense only once, 2 Kings 13:25: “Three times did Joash beat him [hikkāhû] [i.e., Ben-Hadad], and recovered the cities of Israel.” In that passage, a hiphil form of the verb nākâ (literally, “smite” = “attack, attack and destroy [a company]” is used; see Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament [Oxford: Clarendon, 1907; Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1996], 645–46). The hiphil form of the verb nākâ is extremely common in the Hebrew Bible, however, and it is used often in the military sense of to “attack and destroy.” It is plausible, if not probable, that it remained the Nephite term “beat” in the sense of to “defeat” militarily.

40 Mormon recounts that king Limhi’s people lobbied him (Mosiah 21:6) to go up to battle against the Lamanites who were harshly oppressing them and that they did so with disastrous results: “And it came to pass that the Lamanites did beat them, and drove them back, and slew many of them” (21:8). This was the first such of three disastrous assaults on the Lamanites (21:10–11). Mormon could appreciate the pathos (21:9–10) of Limhi and his people’s predicament.

41 “Extinct” in fulfillment of Alma 45:11, 14: “Yea, and then shall they see wars and pestilences, yea, famines and bloodshed, even until the people of Nephi shall become extinct … But whosoever remaineth, and is not destroyed in that great and dreadful day, shall be numbered among the Lamanites, and shall become like unto them, all, save it be a few who shall be called the disciples of the Lord; and them shall the Lamanites pursue even until they shall become extinct. And now, because of iniquity, this prophecy shall be fulfilled.”

42 For example, Donald W. Parry, Poetic Parallelisms in the Book of Mormon: The Complete Text Reformatted (Provo, UT: Neal A. Maxwell Institute, 2007), 546, proposes a polysyndetic arrangement based on the repetition of and.

43 . Following Royal Skousen, Earliest Text, 788; see also Royal Skousen, Analysis of Textual Variants of the Book of Mormon, 6:3822, 3858; ibid., 1:490 – 91.

44 . See note 28.

45 See note 34.

46 Battles on the open “plains” are mentioned not only here in Ether 13:28–29, but also in Alma 52:20; 62:19 and Ether 14:16.

47 In the Book of Ether, these names come to us through five layers of transmission: written Jaredite histories (Ether’s historical sources), Ether’s redaction and use of his sources in his own record, Mosiah2’s translation of Ether’s record, Moroni’s recitation (in whole or in part) of Mosiah2’s translation of his and his father Mormon’s abridgment of the Nephite record, and (finally) Joseph’s translation of Moroni’s account.

48 If the Jaredites were of originally of Semitic/northern Mesopotamian origin (see Nibley, Lehi in the Desert, rev. ed., CWHN 5, 245), then the name Heshlon could conceivably be an adaptation or updating of a similar Jaredite (cf. again Akkadian ḫašālu = “crush”), although this far from certain in view of the wider Jaredite onomasticon. Nevertheless, based on evidence from the Hebrew Bible, Ether 1–2 and elsewhere, William Hamblin, “Jaredite Civilization,” in Dennis L. Largey, ed., Book of Mormon Reference Companion (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2003), 435, writes: “it is generally assumed that Jared and his brother originally lived in Mesopotamia.”

49 On Hormah as the Hebrew toponym that possibly represented Desolation in the Book of Mormon, see Hugh W. Nibley, Since Cumorah (ed. John W. Welch; 2nd ed.; CWHN 7; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book and FARMS, 1988), 171. This is another good example of a toponym that derives (at least etiologically) from events that occurred at the place named (cf. Numbers 21:3; Judges 1:17).

Place of Crushing: The Literary Function of Heshlon in Ether 13:25-31

Matthew L. Bowen and Pedro Olavarria