In a previous post, I showed that the
presence of Greek terms (Alpha and Omega) and alleged names, such as Lachoneus,
were not anachronisms in the Book of Mormon. In this post, I would like to add
to the body of evidence against the common claim that the Book of Mormon
contains anachronistic terms.
Church
The term “church” denotes any
convocation or gathering of individuals, whether secular (as in 1 Nephi 4:26)
or religious in nature. In the Hebrew Bible, there are two terms that denote an
“assembly” or “congregation,” קהל and
עדה; the LXX translates these terms using words such as εκκλησια (the same term used in Matt
16:18); συναγωγη ("assembling"/"bringing together"); and
the verb, εξεκκλησιαζω ("to summon to an assembly").
Apostle
The term “apostle”
comes from the Greek αποστολος, meaning,
literally, a sent-out one. It is not an anachronism in the Book of Mormon, as
the same concept is found in the Hebrew Bible. The verb שׁלח appears
over 800 times in the Old Testament; its noun form appearing in Ezra 7:14 and
Dan 5:24, having the same meaning as the English term “apostle,” viz., one sent
out by another/an agent to a benefactor (cf. the use of the term to denote the relationship between God and Jesus in Heb 3:1).
Baptism
The concept of immersion is
part-and-parcel of the Hebrew Bible; for example, the Hebrew verb meaning “to
wash” רחץ appears
74 times in 73 verses in the OT; often having the meaning of a full immersion
of either a person or an object (e.g., Exo 2:5; 1 Kgs 22:38).
Another
Hebrew verb, טבל appears
16 times in the OT, having the meaning of "to dip" or "to
immerse," all part-and-parcel of "baptism" (e.g., Gen 37:31; Num
19:18; 2 Kgs 5:14; Job 9:31).
With
respect to 2 Kgs 5:14, the LXX translates טבל using the Greek verb meaning “to baptise” βαπτιζω that appears three other times in the LXX (Isa 21:4 in the
proto-canonical texts; Judith 12:7; Sirach 34:35 in the Apocrypha)
For a full-length study, see the book
by Jonathan Lawrence, Washing in Water: Trajectories of Ritual Bathing in
the Hebrew Bible and Second Temple Literature (Society of Biblical
Literature, 2006).
Bible
The word “Bible” is the English form of the Greek
term meaning “books.” The term was not used until the fifth century C.E. to
describe the entire collection of sacred books, so of course the word “Bible”
was not used in Nephi’s time. But when Joseph Smith translated the gold plates,
he knew that the collection of books or scriptures the Prophet Nephi was
talking about in 2 Nephi 29:3-4, 6 was the latter-day Bible, so he used that
word so there would be no doubt to the world what the prophecy was about. Using
the word “Bible” would be expected since the Book of Mormon was translated from
an ancient language to a modern-day language. There are other places in the
Book of Mormon where apparently anachronistic words are used to convey the
meaning of the text, such as the French word “adieu” at the end of the Book of
Jacob, because at the time Joseph translated it, that word seemed the most
appropriate 19th century word to use to represent Jacob’s feelings
as he said god-bye. Bible translators also used French derived words such as
“tache” (Exo 26:6) and “bruit” (Jer 10:22) to best convey the meanings of the Hebrew
words they are translating.
As we have seen from the above, the claim that the
above terms are anachronistic only represent poor research skills by critics
(e.g., Richard Packham; the Tanners) who make such silly allegations.
