Hebraisms in the Book of Mormon

A sample of Demotic writing, a type of "reformed Egytian"

Just a quick point before diving into what (for me, at least) is a fascinating topic: This post will only deal with “external” or logical evidences of the authenticity of the Book of Mormon. Gaining a spiritual or internal witness that the book was written by prophet-authors under the Lord’s direction and by inspiration is a completely different matter. It requires the reader to study the book with an open mind and heart, then to ask God in prayer about its authenticity. (See Moroni 10:3-5, Book of Mormon.) Although we should never accept “external” evidences in place of spiritual witnesses of Divine truth, they often support and reinforce the spiritual knowledge a person has gained. It’s from this perspective that I’ll describe just a few of the thousands of linguistic evidences that the various writings that make up the compilation we know as the Book of Mormon was written by Semitic groups using the linguistic structure of the “learning of the Jews.”  (See 1 Nephi 1:2 and 1 Nephi 3:19)

Click on the following link for a brief explanation of the origin of the Book of Mormon.

Book of Mormon

LDS Book of Mormon scholar-linguists such as Sidney B. Sperry and Hugh Nibley have written extensively about Hebraisms in the Book of Mormon. I’ll touch on just a few examples of these unique linguistic elements that these authors haven’t already commented on, at least not to my knowledge. The Hebraisms I’ll reference here are examples of (1) Hebrew possessive constructs, (2) the use of conjunctions for lists, and (3) other Classical Hebrew idioms that weren’t commented on by Sperry in an article I'll reference at the end of this post. At this time I won’t delve into a fourth category of Hebraisms - singular nouns in English that have plural endings in Hebrew - since I already covered that topic in my blog post dated January 24th, 2014.

Possessive Constructs

In English we generally express possession through the use of possessive pronouns that function like adjectives (my, your, his, her, our, etc.) or by using an apostrophe + an "s". But in Hebrew, the most common grammatical construct used to show possession is the preposition sheh שׁ (of) + a corresponding indirect personal pronoun (me, you, him, her, us, etc.). For example, notice the differences in possessive syntax between English and Hebrew detailed below:

English construct - “Yesterday I saw his dog.”

Hebrew construct - “Yesterday I saw the dog of him.” (Eht-MOHL rah-EE-tee eht hah-KEH-lehv sheh-LOH .אתמול ראיתי את הכלב שלו)

The sentence using the Hebrew possessive structure sounds extremely unnatural and foreign to us, just as it would have to 19^th Century English speakers such as Joseph Smith. But for some reason, perhaps as a type of “external” evidence that I discussed earlier, the Lord preserved the original Hebrew-based structure in many passages of the translation of the Book of Mormon into English. The following is just a short list of examples from my study of the book last month. Again, the phrasing sounds foreign because it truly is foreign to 19th Century English.

“Wherefore, he has given a law; and where there is no law given there is no punishment; and where there is no punishment there is no condemnation; and where there is no condemnation the mercies of the Holy One of Israel have claim upon them, because of the atonement; for they are delivered by the power of him.” (Note that “his power” wasn’t used here in 2 Nephi 9:25, emphasis added)

This is one of my favorite examples because it sounds so unusually awkward to the English-trained ear:

“Behold, great and marvelous are the works of the Lord. How unsearchable are the depths of the mysteries of him; and it is impossible that man should find out all his ways. And no man knoweth of his ways save it be revealed unto him; wherefore, brethren, despise not the revelations of God.” (Jacob 4:8, emphasis added)

And finally,

“Hearken, O ye house of Israel, and hear the words of me, a prophet of the Lord.” (Jacob 5:2, emphasis added)

Again, the common English structure would be “my words”, but this phrase can be seamlessly rendered in Hebrew as “eht hah-mee-LEEM sheh-LEE (מילים שלי), “the words of me.”

Conjunctions

I’ll use only two of many examples here from the Book of Mormon. In 19^th Century and contemporary English, lists are grammatically structured using commas to separate each of the items in sequence, with the last member in the list being flagged with an “and”. In Classical and Biblical Hebrew, however, an initial “and” (vav ו) marks each item in the list, not just the last one. For comparison, note the following passages. The first comes from the Old Testament: 

“The sons of Leah; Reuben, Jacob’s firstborn, and Simeon, and Levi, and Judah, and Issachar, and Zebulun.” (Genesis 35:23, emphasis added)

These next two passages are from the Book of Mormon. They both show the same Hebrew-based conjunctive structure:

“And four of them were the sons of Mosiah; and their names were Ammon, and Aaron, and Omner, and Himni; these were the names of the sons of Mosiah.” (Mosiah 27:34)

“Therefore the people of the Nephites were aware of the intent of the Amlicites, and therefore they did prepare to meet them; yea, they did arm themselves with swords, and with cimeters, and with bows, and with arrows, and with stones, and with slings, and with all manner of weapons‍ of war, of every kind.” (Alma 2:12)

Hebraic Idioms

Some of the most common Hebrew idioms that emigrated to the Americas from the Middle East as God guided various groups here are the expressions “As I live”, “As thou livest”, and “As the Lord liveth.” These phrases were often used in ancient Semitic languages to initiate an oath. The Hebrew root contains two parts: a conjugated form of the verb "to live" (xai חַי), followed by the person whose name the oath-taker is referencing.

From the Old Testament:

“And the mother of the child said, As‍ the Lord‍ liveth, and as‍ thy soul liveth, I will not leave thee. And he arose, and followed her.” (2 Kings 4:30)

From the Book of Mormon:

“But behold I said unto them that: As the Lord liveth, and as we live, we will not go down unto our father in the wilderness until we have accomplished the thing which the Lord hath commanded us.” (1 Nephi 3:15)

“And it came to pass that I spake with him, that if he would hearken unto my words, as the Lord liveth, and as I live, even so that if he would hearken unto our words, we would spare his life.” (1 Nephi 4:32)

“Lift up thine eyes round about and behold; all these gather themselves together, and they shall come to thee. And as I live, saith the Lord, thou shalt surely clothe thee with them all, as with an ornament, and bind them on even as a bride.” (1 Nephi 21:18)

To close out this post, I included a link to an article by Sidney B. Sperry of Sperry Symposium fame. In it he details a wide array of Hebrew idioms found in the Book of Mormon. (The PDF can be found at the bottom left of the webpage.)

Sperry article