In my post, Non-KJV Hebraisms in the Book of Mormon, I reproduce excerpts from John A. Tvedtnes and Matt Roper’s review of The New Mormon Challenge, One Small Step wherein Hebraisms, not found in the KJV, are attested to in the Book of Mormon.
I recently found out that this blog post was discussed as part of a larger discussion on a thread on the Mormon Dialogue Forum:
Robert F. Smith, a very knowledgeable member of the Church and one who is well-informed about Semitic and Egyptian texts and languages, offered some discussion, showing that Egyptian, not just Hebrew, explains such non-KJV Hebraisms and, following Nibley but contra Tvedtnes (with whom he had a long-standing friendship) and most modern LDS scholars, that the language, not just the script, of the Book of Mormon, was Egyptian (Tvedtnes et al., argue for Nephi et al., using Egyptian characters but the underlying language was Hebrew). He is also joined by other Latter-day Saints who I consider very bright, including D. Charles Pyle.
Responding to “RevTestament,” Robert F. Smith wrote (I have edited the presentation to make it more readable, but made no other changes):
In Alma 49:4, we read that the Lamanites attempted to “cast their stones and their arrows” at the Nephites atop the wall of the city Ammonihah. Alma 49:22 speaks of “the stones and arrows which were thrown.” While in English, we would appropriately use the verb “throw” for stones, this is not so for arrows, where we would expect “shoot.” But the Hebrew verb yrh, meaning “to throw” or “to cast” (e.g., Exodus 15:4, 25; Joshua 18:6; Job 30:19), also has the meaning of “shoot” for arrows (e.g., Exodus 19:13; 1 Samuel 20:11, 20, 36-37; 2 Kings 13:17; 19:32). Indeed, in 2 Chronicles 26:15, the Hebrew verb (with a variant spelling) is used in the passage rendered “to shoot arrows and great stones” in the King James Version of the Bible.
Since the Book of Mormon was written in ancient Egyptian, it is worth pointing out that Egyptian wdi, ndi "throw; shoot (arrow); throw down," is equally valid, for the same reasons.
In 1 Nephi 1:6, we read that as Lehi “prayed unto the Lord, there came a pillar of fire and dwelt upon a rock before him.” The English term “dwelt” normally connotes setting up house or at least staying for a long time, and we would expect to read that the pillar of fire “sat” or “rested” on the rock. Significantly, the Hebrew verb ysb means both “dwell” and “sit.” For example, Jacob’s sons “sat down to eat” (Genesis 37:25), but “Israel dwelt in that land” (Genesis 35:22). The same verb is used in both passages.
Egyptian ḥmsi "sit down; dwell," fits equally well.
in Helaman 9:6, we read that the Nephite judge had been “stabbed by his brother by a garb of secrecy.” Critics have contended that this makes no sense in English, since “garb” has the same meaning as “garment” or “clothing.” This idiom is the same as the English “under cloak of secrecy.”60 But the Hebrew word beged means both “garment” or “garb” (e.g., Genesis 39:12-13) and “treachery.”
This would seem to be a wordplay in the Hebrew original of the Book of Mormon. As for the preposition “by,” in Hebrew its range of meaning includes “in,” “with,” and “by means of.” The notion of cloak, garb, garment, and treachery in one concept is well paralleled by Egyptian sdb "a garment; fringe of cloth," and sdb, sdb "opposition (verbal); ill will; evil; impediment, obstacle." Or, alternatively, the Egyptian-Hebrew cognate ḥăbîšā, ḥābaš = Egyptian ḥbs(wt), as in the expression ḥbs rmn "clothe of arm (with arms hidden in clothing); hide, cover up." The Hebrew is not nearly as effectively as the Egyptian.
Jacob wrote that Nephi instructed him regarding Nephite sacred preaching, revelations, and prophecies that “I should engraven the heads of them upon these plates” (Jacob 1:4). We really expect something more like “most important” to be used here. Indeed, the Hebrew word for the head of the body is sometimes used to describe things as “chief” (Deuteronomy 33:15; Psalm 137:6; Proverbs 1:21; Amos 6:1) or “precious” (Song of Solomon 4:14; Ezekiel 27:22), which seems to be the sense in which Jacob used the word.
Egyptian tp "head; chief; best of," is eminently well-suited here. Certainly works every bit as well, if not better, than the well-known Classical Hebrew word for “head.”
The land of Jershon has a valid Hebrew etymology, Yershon, meaning “place of inheritance.” Significantly, it appears in passages that employ the words “inherit” (Alma 27:24) and “inheritance” (Alma 27:22; 35:14). The wordplay makes sense only in Hebrew.
This is a good Hebraism, and Hirsch Miller’s 1922 Hebrew translation of the Book of Mormon properly renders it as yēršôn, and applies the obvious wordplay in verse 24.
Elsewhere, Smith offers his reasoning for his theory, following Nibley and others, that the Nephites used, not just an Egyptian script, but language, too:
There are Mormon scholars who share your view that the BofM was written in Hebrew using Egyptian script, but that seems somewhat absurd: Why not simply write in alphabetic Hebrew, as suggested by Mormon 9:33? Use of Egyptian ideograms made possible the saving of precious space on the plates (Mormon 9:32-33). Aside from which the BofM is quite explicit that the records (Bronze Plates) were written in actual Egyptian (Mosiah 1:2-4). As Hugh Nibley has said, "The language of Lehi's forefathers was a foreign language; and when the Book of Mormon tells us it was the language of the Egyptians, it means what it says." Nibley, "Lehi in the Desert," part II, Improvement Era, 53/2 (Feb 1950):155 = Collected Works of Hugh Nibley, V:24. He also said: "people who were not crowded for space would not have continued to write Hebrew in the difficult Egyptian characters for hundreds of years, when all the time they might just as well have been writing in the twenty-two simple and practical characters of the Hebrew alphabet. Nibley, Lehi in the Desert, 2nd ed., Collected Works of Hugh Nibley, V:16. Cf. Brant A. Gardner, “Nephi as Scribe,” FARMS Review, 23/1 (2011):45–55, online at https://publications.mi.byu.edu/fullscreen/?pub=1462&index=4 .
We also know that, when the Hebrew Bible has been translated into another language, it has been done wholesale into the other language, as with the Septuagint, the Aramaic Targums, and the Coptic Christian Bible.
However, it isn't only those claims in the BofM which are relevant, but also the existence of many Egyptianisms which could not exist in Hebrew. In the case of those Hebraisms listed by you from the work of the late John Tvedtnes, my listing of good Egyptian equivalents only moots the point you made. Egyptianisms which could not be Hebraisms provide us with a much more powerful diagnostic tool:
1. There is no ancient Hebrew word or phrase appropriate to the expression "make (write) an abridgment" (I Nephi 1:17, Words of Mormon 1:3, Mormon 5:9, Moroni 1:1), although the Egyptian phrase sḥwy p3w n šfdw pn "abridgment of this book" seems suitable, and "to make an abridgment" would simply be irt sḥwy. The late Hugh Nibley found it a particularly Egyptian concept. Nibley, BYU Studies, 11/2 (Winter 1971):164.
2. “Ites” in IV Nephi 17 “nor any manner of -ites,” has no known parallel in Hebrew as a single word, but could be represented by the Egyptian determinative sign for “people,” which is not vocalized, but is frequently accompanied by a plural termination -w, as in šЗsw “bedouin” (accompanied by a man & woman over plural signs as the determinative). It could also serve an ideographic function in this generic case on the Book of Mormon plates. Here, for example, is the ethnicon "Israelites" from the Merneptah Stele:
3. Only two words in the entire Book of Mormon contain the double-ff, and both are Zeniffite words: The personal name Zeniff, and the common noun ziff (Mosiah 7:9, 11:3,8, 25:5). The single f is the voiceless labiodental fricative sound for non-plosive (no dagesh) Hebrew p. However, we only see the double-ff in ancient Egyptian, as in Egyptian ˁff, ˁffj “fly (insect).” A. Loprieno, Ancient Egyptian, 31; R. Faulkner, Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian, 42.
4. Pedro Olavarria and Matthew Bowen have suggested that an excellent Egyptianism can be found in I Nephi 11:25, 15:23-25, where “the rod of iron” is equated with “the word of God” (I Samuel 9:27 Hebrew děbar ʼĕlōhîm) Just so, Egyptian mdw ntr (Demotic mtw ntr) “word of god, scripture,” uses the word mdw which can mean both “word” and “rod, staff.” Interestingly, the Hebrew phrase “rod of God” maṭṭē hāʼĕlōhîm occurs at Exodus 4:20 and 17:9 (cf. maṭṭē ʼahărōn Numbers 17:21, 23 = KJV Numbers 17:6, 8; Genesis 38:18, 25), and the Hebrew word for “rod” there, maṭṭē, is cognate with Egyptian mdw“rod, staff.” However, this pun only works in Egyptian, not Hebrew. Olavarria on MDDB at http://www.mormondialogue.org/topic/52705-zarahemla-revisiting-the-seed-of-compassion ; Bowen at http://publications.mi.byu.edu/publications/ insights/25/2/S00004-quotWhat_Meaneth_the_Rod_of_Ironquot.html . Faulkner, Concise Dictonary of Middle Egyptian, 122.
The upshot is that, when Nephi exhorts his brethren to “give heed to the word of God [mdw ntr] and remember to keep his commandments” (I Nephi 15:25), he is not only suggesting that one must give heed to the commandments given in Holy Scripture (mdw ntr) – and making a not very subtle reference to the Brass Plates which contained those very commandments – but also saying that those plates were specifically incised or engraved in Egyptian script (mdw ntr).
5. Brian Stubbs recently called our attention to a common Middle and Late Egyptian idiom or way of saying “to leave a place or return from” (r)di sЗ n/r “set my back to”; the pronominal suffix following “back” tells whose back or who is leaving/returning; and n/r “toward/ against.” In Alma 8:24, Alma writes, “I was about to set my back towards this land forever” (italics added for emphasis), that is, “leave it forever.” Stubbs, Changes in Languages: From Nephi to Now (Blanding, UT: Four Corners, 2016), 25; Faulkner, CDME, 156,205, citing A. Gardiner, Notes on the Story of Sinuhe, 34-35.
6. John Gee suggests an instance of haplography in the Book of Mormon attributable specifically to use of the Egyptian preposition n "of, for," at Alma 24:19,
they buried their weapons of peace,
or they buried the weapons of war, for peace.
As Gee points out, the Book of Mormon scribe apparently looked away from the master text for a moment while engraving, then returned and continued copying at the second n, then noted his mistake and immediately corrected it by adding "or they buried the weapons of war for peace." Gee adds that this would only work in Egyptian where the preposition n can be used as an indirect genitive, and then also meaning "for." (Gee, personal communication, 2010). This could not happen in Hebrew.
There are many more examples along these and other lines, but you get the picture.
I am partial towards the position of Tvedtnes et al., but Robert F. Smith, D. Charles Pyle, and others have raised very good arguments with respect to features in the text that make better sense in Egyptian than Hebrew (though, as Smith himself acknowledges with Jershon, Hebraisms and other Hebraic features can and do appear in the text). I would be curious as to what other Latter-day Saints think about this, so feel free to drop me an email at irishLDS87ATgmailDOTcom. I am even considering picking up some Egyptian now, if anything, to check out these claims in further detail, so if you have any recommended resources, let me know!
