Eric Herman, who posts online as Grundunza, wrote the following on the Mormon Discussions forum in response to the article I plugged on my blog, Book of Mormon Names No Fiction Writer Would Choose:
Or Joseph thumbed through John Walker's pronunciation dictionary, published in 1823, which includes many of the Book of Mormon names:
Firstly, it should be noted that Benjamin McGuire has soundly refuted Rick Grunder and his parallelomania in his Mormon Parallels: A Bibliographic Source (2008):
Another flaw, among many, is that, allowing Joseph Smith to have read a copy of Walker’s volume, and even having it next to him during the production of the Book of Mormon does not explain the wordplays based on the Semitic background of the names in the Book of Mormon. Let us examine a few examples.
Jerson
The Hebrew verb meaning “to inherit” is ירשׁ which would be transliterated yrsh or jrsh.
ון (-on) at the end of a word denotes “place of.” Jershon or Yershon would mean “place of inheritance.”
On its own, Book of Mormon “Jershon” has a valid Hebrew etymology, meaning “place of inheritance.” However, there is more.
“Jershon” (“place of inheritance”) is used in a parallelism in the Book of Mormon which plays on its Hebrew meaning:
And it came to pass that the voice of the people came, saying: Behold, we will give up the land of Jershon, which is on the east by the sea, which joins the land Bountiful, which is on the south of the land Bountiful; and this land Jershon which we will give unto our brethren for an inheritance . . . And now behold, this will we do unto our brethren, that they may inherit the land Jershon; and we will guard them from their enemies with our armies, on condition that they will give us a portion of their substance to assist us that we may maintain our armies. (Alma 27:22, 24)
And Alma, and Ammon, and their brethren, and also the two sons of Alma returned to the land of Zarahemla, after having been instruments in the hands of God of bringing many of the Zoramites to repentance; and as many as were brought to repentance were driven out of their land; but they have lands for their inheritance in the land of Jershon, and they have taken up arms to defend themselves, and their wives, and children, and their lands. (Alma 35:14)
Notice the parallelism (representative of Semitic literature) between "Jershon" and "inherit/inheritance" in these two passages, a parallelism that only works in light of the Hebrew meaning of Jershon (“place of inheritance”)
Zarahemla
Hebrew זרע (zerah) means “seed” (alt. offspring/progeny) and חמל (chemla) means “compassion/pity.”
Zarahemla has a valid Hebrew etymology, meaning “seed of compassion/pity.” As with "Jershon" the Hebrew meaning plays a role in the narrative of the Book of Mormon that Joseph Smith et al. could not have faked.
" . . . and we returned, those of us that were spared, to the land of Zarahemla" (Mosiah 9:2)
" . . . and then would our brethren have been spared, and they would not have been burned in that great city Zarahemla" (3 Nephi 8:24)
Now when Ammon and his brethren saw this work of destruction among those whom they so dearly beloved, and among those who had so dearly beloved them — for they were treated as though they were angels sent from God to save them from everlasting destruction — therefore, when Ammon and his brethren saw this great work of destruction, they were moved with compassion, and they said unto the king: Let us gather together this people of the Lord, and let us go down to the land of Zarahemla [alt.the land of the-seed-of-compassion] to our brethren the Nephites, and flee out of the hands of our enemies, that we be not destroyed. (Alma 27:4-5)
And now behold, I have somewhat to say concerning the people of Ammon, who, in the beginning, were Lamanites; but by Ammon and his brethren, or rather by the power and word of God, they had been converted unto the Lord; and they had been brought down into the land of Zarahemla, and had ever since been protected by the Nephites. And because of their oath they had been kept from taking up arms against their brethren; for they had taken an oath that they never would shed blood more; and according to their oath they would have perished; yea, they would have suffered themselves to have fallen into the hands of their brethren, had it not been for the pity and the exceeding love which Ammon and his brethren had had for them. And for this cause they were brought down into the land of Zarahemla; and they ever had been protected by the Nephites [cf. Alma 27:23-24]. But it came to pass that when they [the converted Lamanites] saw the danger, and the many afflictions and tribulations which the Nephites bore for them, they were moved with compassion and were desirous to take up arms in the defence of their country. (Alma 53:10-13)
Not only does Zarahemla have a perfectly reasonable Hebrew etymology, the Book of Mormon engages in wordplays in its narrative structure that plays off its Hebrew meaning. This only makes sense if the Book of Mormon text we have is a translation of a record influenced by Hebrew.
Gazelam
The name “Gazelam” is associated with a stone (cf. Joseph Smith’s seer stones [“Gazelam” was the code name for Joseph in early LDS editions of the D&C]):
And the Lord said: I will prepare unto my servant Gazelam a stone, which shall shine forth in darkness unto light, that I may discover the works of their brethren, yea, their secret works, their works of darkness, and their wickedness and abominations. (Alma 37:23)
There is a verb in Hebrew גִּזְרָה (gezerah) that means to cut/polish [a stone], and appears in the Old Testament. As one example:
Her Nazarites were purer than snow, they were whiter than milk, they were more ruddy in body than rubies, their polishing ( גִּזְרָתָֽם gizratam) was of sapphire. (Lam 4:7)
Gazelam, in Hebrew, would mean "stones cut by God."
Alternatively/additionally, it could be a pun on the abominations that “Gazelam” would reveal. Hebrew גֵּזֶל (gazel) refers to “robbery” while גָּזֵל (gazal) and גְּזֵלָה (gezelah) both refer to “robbery” and “loot.”
Again, we have another Book of Mormon name with a perfectly good Hebrew etymology and where the text engages in a word play based on the underlying Hebrew meaning.
Mulek
While not a word play, this is another “hit” for the historicity of the Book of Mormon. Even allowing Joseph Smith to have derived Mulek from Mo'lok (p. 80 of Walker) does not explain why Joseph Smith would go against the commonly held belief even today that all of Zedekiah's sons died and had a surviving son called Mulek, as well as how he would "luck out" with respect to the Hebrew of Jer 38:6 and modern archaeological discoveries.
“Mulek” in the Printer’s Manuscript of the Book of Mormon was spelt Muloch and “Mulok” in printed editions from 1830 to 1852. The root in Hebrew, however, would be the same (*MLK מלך)
The Book of Mormon informs us that one of King Zedekiah’s sons survived the Babylonian Conquest of Jerusalem and fled to the New World:
Now the land south was called Lehi and the land north was called Mulek, which was after the son of Zedekiah; for the Lord did bring Mulek into the land north, and Lehi into the land south. (Helaman 6:10)
And now will you dispute that Jerusalem was not destroyed? Will ye say that the sons of Zedekiah were not slain, all except it were Mulek? Yea, and do ye not behold that the seed of Zedekiah are with us, and they were driven out of the land of Jerusalem? . . . (Helaman 8:21)
There is a possibility “Mulek” appears in the Old Testament. Firstly, a note on Hebrew names:
A name that contains the “divine element” (‘el; yah[u]) is called a theophoric (e.g., Isaiah—the iah is a transliteration of yah).
Sometimes, these divine name elements are removed to shorten the name. Such is the hypocoristic form of a name.
Book of Mormon Mulek represents a hypocoristic form of a longer name. This will be important in a moment.
Jer 38:6 in the KJV reads:
Then took they Jeremiah, and cast him into the dungeon of Malchiah the son of Hammelech, that was in the court of the prison: and they let down Jeremiah with cords. And in the dungeon there was no water, but mire: so Jeremiah sunk in the mire.
“Hammelech” is a mistake by the KJV translators. The Hebrew is הַמֶּ֗לֶךְ (ha-melech) which means “the king.” Instead of translating, they incorrectly transliterated the Hebrew.This figure Malchiah is the “son of the king”; the king would have been Zedekiah.
מַלְכִּיָּהוּ (Malchiah in the KJV; alt. Malkiyahu) is made up of the yah[u] theophoric (יָּהוּ ) and the triconsonantal root מלך (MLK) which means “king,” similar to Mulek. This *MLK “son of the king [Zedekiah]” could very well be Book of Mormon Mulek.
A seal of this royal figure was found in 1997 written in Paleo-Hebrew, calling him "Malkiyahu, son of the king [Zedekiah].” It is a very real possibility that this seal attests to the historicity of a Book of Mormon character.
For more:
Jeffrey R. Chadwick, "Has the Seal of Mulek Been Found?" Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 12/2 (2003):72-83, 117-18
As LDS apologist, Jeff Lindsay, writes:
[O]ne thing is clear: the Book of Mormon account is highly plausible, and offers details consistent with modern scholarship in ways that seem to make Joseph Smith either a miraculously lucky guesser, or a miraculously blessed prophet who translated a genuine ancient record with the power of God. (Mulek, Son of Zedekiah)
One could go on, but it is clear that an appeal to Walker’s 1823 pronunciation dictionary to be a rather desperate attempt to explain away the onomasticon of the Book of Mormon.
Update
On the ever truth challenged Mormon Discussions forum, one poster made the following comment about this article:
The only person lacking in the intelligence department is “Grindael.” There is a difference between alleged parallels between texts and the poetical device of parallelism. Is Grindael really this disingenuous? It appears so.
