A couple of years ago, the now-Dr. David E. Bokovoy (PhD, Hebrew Bible [Brandeis]) commented on an article produced by the late Luke Wilson of the Institute for Religious "Research" (anti-Mormons like to use [loosely] the term "research" in the names of their ministries, including Bill McKeever]). The post is no longer online, but I did save it for future use. It contains some interesting material, so I believe it worthwhile to reproduce it here:
Today, I would like to point out another example of the incompetence manifested by the Institute for Religious Research.
In an embarrassing article entitled, “The Names of God in the Old Testament: The Implications for the Mormon Doctrine of Deity,” IRR attempts to belittle the Prophet Joseph Smith for not understanding several grammatical rules associated with Biblical Hebrew.
With this move, IRR demonstrates the same sort of cognitive dissonance for which their Institute is now famous. In the same article making fun of Joseph’s lack of knowledge concerning Semitic grammar, IRR stands guilty of promoting the following misnomer:
“[Elohim] is thought by many scholars to be related to the Hebrew word El, meaning "strength," "mighty," or "the Almighty."
The reality is that no scholar in the world believes that Elohim is related to the Hebrew word El. Such an association would leave the consonantal letter “h” unexplained—a major blooper when analyzing Semitic words.
Instead of El, Elohim is related to the Hebrew name Eloah. As Pardee explains, “there can be no doubt that the more common biblical and Jewish designation of ‘god’ as Elohim represents an expansion of Eloah, though there is debate both as to the ‘meaning’ of Eloah and as to the origin of the expanded form” (D. Pardee, “Eloah,” Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible, 285)
The divine name Eloah has a variety of Semitic cognates: Aramaic, ’ilah; Arabic, ’Allah; and even Ugaritic, ’ilhm—which contains the plural marker “m” just like the Hebrew name (see Koehler and Baumgartner, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, 1:52).
This final form 'ilhm is very significant for our present focus, for this form illustrates another example of IRR’s incompetence. The article mistakenly professes that the form Elohim “is unique to monotheistic Israel and is not found in the languages of any of her polytheistic, Semitic neighbors.”
Um…. the Ugaritic form derives from Israel’s polytheistic, Semitic neighbors.
The reason Eloah and Elohim have an “o” vowel, when the aforementioned cognates do not, is that Hebrew was subjected to the famous Canaanite shift.
If you're wondering right about now, how IRR can get away with making fun of Joseph Smith for not understanding Hebrew grammar while making these types of fundamental errors, believe me, so am I!
Honestly, the more I read, the more I shake my head wondering to myself who are these ignorant people promoting themselves as a legitimate institution devoted to the field of religious scholarship?
Recently, Robert Bowman has responded to this piece, and from the get-go, has accused me of some shady tactics:
Bokovoy or Boylan?
On May 8, 2016, Boylan posted a piece he titled “David Bokovoy vs. Luke Wilson on the names of God.” Boylan begins as follows:
A couple of years ago, the now-Dr. David E. Bokovoy (PhD, Hebrew Bible [Brandeis]) commented on an article produced by the late Luke Wilson of the Institute for Religious “Research” (anti-Mormons like to use [loosely] the term “research” in the names of their ministries, including Bill McKeever]). The post is no longer online, but I did save it for future use. It contains some interesting material, so I believe it worthwhile to reproduce it here:
The colon at the end of the paragraph indicates that what follows is to be understood as simply reproducing the post by David Bokovoy. The rest of the post exhibits the same tone and perspective, and there is no indication that any of the post other than the introductory paragraph is by Boylan. The reader is thus given to understand that except for that first paragraph David Bokovoy is the author of the post.
As it turns out, David is a friend of mine, so I contacted him about the article. David kindly responded, assuring me that he did not recognize the post attributed to him, that it does not represent his views or feelings toward the Institute for Religious Research, and that I had his permission to state as much in my response to Boylan.
Since I prefer to think the best of someone until forced to do otherwise by the evidence, I will suggest that it is possible that Boylan thought the material came from Bokovoy and confused him with someone else. Since I cannot prove otherwise, it is also possible that David wrote part of what Boylan quotes and that it has been repurposed by Boylan for his polemical purpose. What can be fairly said is that Boylan should have requested Bokovoy’s permission to use his comments, if they actually came from Bokovoy, before posting them on his blog. I take David at his word that he did not recognize the post as coming from him, and I therefore conclude that Boylan posted it without asking for permission or checking to make sure it accurately represented Bokovoy’s position
I will try to find time to respond to Bowman's response in the near future, however, as the following accusations are clearly thrown out to cast me into bad light (a common tactic used), let me respond with the following:
1. David Bokvoy is the author of this piece. He posted it under his very own name, and fortunately, I managed to find the original thread here from 2006. Unfortunately, due to a change in software and/or some other issue related to the forum, not all of David's posts have words contained therein, but it does show that Bokovoy was pretty active online against the IRR.
2. The article is on a public forum. I found it to be pretty useful and reproduced David's response to Luke Wilson with attribution. There is nothing wrong with such.
If Bowman has integrity, he will retract these bogus accusations he wrote against me.