Monday, February 13, 2023

Note on the Construct State in the Book of Mormon

While I do believe that there are genuine Hrabsisms in the Book of Mormon, one that I do not think holds up is the "construct state" in the Book of Mormon, as there is an inconsistency in its usage in the Book of Mormon. While the book was pretty piss poor, Wunderli in An Imperfect Book is correct in the following footnote:


In support of Tvedntes, an article in the Encyclopedia of Mormonism asserts that “consistent with a translation from the Hebrew,” there is no “apostrophe possession in the Book of Mormon” (Stubbs, “Book of Mormon Language,” 164). The encyclopedia is wrong because possessives are constructed with apostrophes thirty-five times in such phrases as “our father’s inheritance” and “the king’s army” (1 Ne. 3:16; Mosiah 18:34). They are also used in quotes from Isaiah, Malachi, and the biblical Jesus in reference to a “cockatrice’s den” (2 Ne. 21:8; 30:14), “horses’ hoofs” (2 Ne. 15:28), a “man’s heart” (2 Ne. 23:7), the “refiner’s fire” (3 ne. 24:2), and “sheep’s clothing” (3 Ne. 14:15), among others (1 Ne. 20:9; 2 Ne. 17:7; 18:1; 23:29; 3 Ne. 12:10; 24:2). One can find other conventional possessives in Mosiah chapters 6, 7, 9, 18, 20, 23, 24; Alma 4, 8, 18, 21, 22, 24, 30, 38, 45, 46, 63; Helaman 4, 5; 13; 3 Nephi 19; Mormon 1; Ether 10. (Earl M. Wunderli, An Imperfect Book: What the Book of Mormon Tells us About itself [Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2013], 232 n. 15)