Monday, December 8, 2014

Allegedly Anachronistic Greek Words in the Book of Mormon

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.