know ye that ye must come unto repentance, or ye cannot be saved.
know ye that ye must lay down your weapons of war, and delight no more in the shedding of blood, and take them not again, save it be that God shall command you.
know ye that ye must come to the knowledge of your fathers, and repent of all your sins and iniquities, and believe in Jesus Christ, that he is the Son of God, and that he was slain by the Jews, and by the power of the Father he hath risen again, whereby he hath gained the victory over the grave; and also in him is the sting of death swallowed up.
and he bringeth to pass the resurrection of the dead, whereby man must be raised to stand before his judgement-seat.
and he hath brought to pass the redemption of the world, whereby he that is found guiltless before him at the judgement day hath it given unto him to dwell in the presence of God in his kingdom, to sing ceaseless praises with the choirs above, unto the Father, and unto the Son, and unto the Holy Ghost, which are one God, in a state of happiness which hath no end.
therefore repent, and be baptized in the name of Jesus, and lay hold upon the gospel of Christ, which shall be set before you, not only in this record but also in the record which shall come unto the Gentiles from the Jews, which record shall come from the Gentiles unto you.
for behold, this is written for the intent that ye may believe that; and if ye believe that ye will believe this also; and if ye believe this ye will know concerning your fathers, and also the marvelous works which were wrought by the power of God among them.
and ye will also know that ye are a remnant of the seed of Jacob; therefore ye are numbered among the people of the first covenant; and if it so be that ye believe in Christ, and are baptized, first with water, then with fire and with the Holy Ghost, following the example of our Savior, according to that which he hath commanded us, it shall be well with you in the day of judgement. amen.
~mormon 7:3-10
3 comments:
"in a state of happiness which hath no end"
I love thinking about what that might entail. Truly happy thoughts.
A Muslim translates Book of Mormon back to Egyptian and is converted --
Reflections of Sami Hanna as recorded by Elder Russell M. Nelson.
My neighbor, Sami Hanna, is a native Egyptian. He is an academic scholar who moved into our neighborhood to accept an assignment with the
university as a specialist in Middle Eastern Studies and the Semitic group of languages such as Arabic, Abyssinian, Hebrew, Aramaic, and Assyrian.
Being a newcomer into our community, he felt the Mormons were a bit of a curiosity. Upon learning the name Mormon came from our belief that the Book of Mormon is divine scripture, he was intrigued by the existence> of the Book of Mormon. He had erroneously thought this was American literature. When he was told that the Book of Mormon was translated> from the ancient Egyptian or modified Hebrew type of hieroglyphic into the English language by the prophet Joseph Smith, he became even more engrossed, for this was his native language and he knows much about the other Semitic languages as well as the modern languages.
So challenged was he by this book that he embarked on the project of translating the Book of Mormon from English to Arabic. This translation was different from other translators, for this was to be a translation back to the original language of the book. To make a long story short, the
process of this translation became the process of his conversion; for he soon knew the Book of Mormon to be a divine document even though he knew virtually nothing of the organization of the Church or of its programs.
His conversion came purely from the linguistics of the book which he found could not have been composed by an American, no matter how gifted. Some of these observations I think will be of interest to you, as they were to me, for they clarify some of the unique aspects of the book.
1. Jarom 2: "It musts needs be..." This expression, odd and awkward in English, is excellent Arabic grammar. Elsewhere in the book the use of
the compound verbs "did eat", "did go", "did smile" again awkward and rarely used in English, are classical and correct grammar in the Semitic
languages.
2. Omni 18: "Zarahemla gave a genealogy of his fathers, according to his memory.
Brother Hanna indicates that this is a typical custom of his Semitic forebearers to recite their genealogy from memory.
3. Words of Mormon 17: Reference is made here as in other parts of the Book of Mormon, to the "stiffneckedness" of his people. Brother Hanna perceives that this word would be a very unusual word for an American youth, Joseph Smith, to use. An American would likely prefer an
adjective such as stubborn or inflexible. But the custom in the Arabic language is to use just such a descriptive adjective. Stiffnecked is an adjective they use in describing an obstinate person.
4. Mosiah 11:8 "King Noah built many elegant and spacious buildings and ornamented them with fine work and precious things, including
ziff." Have you ever wondered about the meaning of the word "ziff" referred to in this scripture? This word, although in the Book of Mormon, is not contained in dictionaries of the English language. Yet it translates freely back into the Arabic language, for ziff is a special kind of curved sword; somewhat like a scimitar which is carried in a sheath and often used for ornamentation as well as for more practical purposes. The discovery of the word "ziff" in the Book of Mormon really excited my neighbor, Brother Hanna.
5. Alma 63:11 Reference is made to Helaman, son of Helaman. Why did not Joseph Smith interpret this as Helaman, Jr., which would have been more logical for him, bearing the same name as his father, Joseph, and being named Joseph Smith, Jr. In Arabic, Brother Hanna explains, there is no word "junior" to cover this circumstance. Their custom is to use the terminology Joseph, son of Joseph; Helaman, son of Helaman, etc.
6. Helaman 1:3 Here reference is made to the contending for the judgment seat. Brother Hanna observes that the use of the term "judgment seat" would be quite strange to an American who might have used a more familiar noun such as governor, president, or ruler. Yet, in Arabic custom, the place of power rests in the judgment seat and whoever occupies that seat, is the authority and power. The authority goes with the seat and not with the office or the person. So, this, in the Semitic languages, connotes the meaning exactly.
7. Helaman 3:14 In this verse, there are a total of eighteen "ands." Reviewers of the Book of Mormon have, on occasion, been critical of the grammar in such a passage where the use of the word "and" seems so repetitious. Yet Brother Hanna explains that each of the "ands" in this verse is absolutely essential to the meaning, when this verse is expressed in Arabic, for the omission of any "and" would nullify the meaning words.
8. Helaman 3:18-19. Have you wondered why the Book of Mormon cites a numbering system such as this?> Do we say "forty and six, forty and seven, forty and eight?" No! Joseph Smith's natural interpretation would more appropriately have been forty-six, forty-seven, forty-eight without the "ands". Brother Hanna excitedly observes that the use of "and" in forty and six" is pecisely correct Arabic. Remember they number, as well as read, from right to left and recite their numbers with the "and" to separate the columns.
Well, I have just cited a few of these examples. There are many more! As Latter-day Saint leaders, we are aware of the Semitic origin of the Book of Mormon. The fact that an Arabic scholar such as this sees a beautiful internal consistency in the Prophet Joseph Smith's translation of the book, is of great interest. The Prophet Joseph did not merely render an interpretation, but a word for word translation from the Egyptian type of hieroglyphic into the English language. Brother Hanna said the Book of Mormon simply flowed back into the Arabic language .
The above e-mail is interesting, and as fodder for an exercise in critical thinking, it is definitely worth something. However, the points it makes made me a bit suspicious right from the start, and they don’t hold up at all under scrutiny.
For starters, a simple Internet search of “Sami Hanna,” the alleged translator, will take you straight to a website about Mormon urban legends. The site is pro-Mormon, and maintained by Mormons, so please don’t accuse me of using biased sources. Here’s the link—
http://www.shields-research.org/Hoaxes/LDSWorld_Internet_Hoaxes_and_Mormon_Urban_Legends.htm
—which reads, in part, that:
“This message being passed around by many LDS members is titled "REFLECTIONS OF SAMI HANNA - as recorded by [Mormon “General Authority”] Elder Russell M. Nelson." It purports to be a first-hand account written by Elder Nelson of his neighbor who was a native Egyptian, and was asked to translate the Book of Mormon into Arabic.... During the process of translation, Hanna was converted by the profound internal evidences he saw in the book which could not have been written by an American. Elder Nelson did not write this account, according to his office in Salt Lake. However, he did have a neighbor named Sami Hanna many years ago, who was converted to the Church after translating the Book of Mormon.”
So it would seem that the whole account is fake. I mean, we could have at least wondered about that based on the e-mail’s premise of a guy being converted by translating the Book of Mormon into Arabic, “a translation back to the original language of the book.” The fact is no one has ever alleged that the Book of Mormon was originally written in Arabic. Joseph Smith claimed it was written in “Reformed Egyptian,” a language that non-Mormon scholars insist doesn’t even exist, and Joseph Smith, the Mormon Church’s founder, claimed Reformed Egyptian was a previously unknown written version of Hebrew.
But still, perhaps you say, maybe the points the e-mail makes are relevant.
But they’re not.
Let’s just look at it piece by piece, and point by point.
“1. Jarom 2: "It musts needs be..." This expression, odd and awkward in English, is excellent Arabic grammar. ”
All this necessarily indicates is that Joseph Smith was familiar with the King James Version of the Bible. See, for instance, Matthew 18:7, “Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come....”
“Elsewhere in the book the use of the compound verbs "did eat", "did go", "did smile" again awkward and rarely used in English, are classical and correct grammar in the Semitic languages.”
Again, this sort of language comes straight from the Bible. A search for “did eat” in a searchable online King James Bible turns up more than 700 mentions, and that’s just of that particular past-tense-verb-and-present-tense-verb pairing. You wouldn’t need a divine conduit and an untranslated ancient text to make use of this sort of language—you would only need the most common translation of the bestselling book of all time.
“2. Omni 18: "Zarahemla gave a genealogy of his fathers, according to his memory. Brother Hanna indicates that this is a typical custom of his Semitic [forbearers] to recite their genealogy from memory.”
Again, this is common in the Bible. Anyone even superficially familiar with it will easily recollect its tedious passages recounting people’s genealogy: so-and-so begat so-and-so, son of so-and-so, and so forth, and so on, ad infinitum.
As for the specific claim about people reciting their genealogies according to memory, that’s in the Bible as well. Why else would Absalom, in 2 Samuel 18:18, mourn that “I have no son to carry on the memory of my name"?
Et cetera.
“3. Words of Mormon 17: Reference is made here as in other parts of the Book of Mormon, to the "stiffneckedness" of his people. Brother Hanna perceives that this word would be a very unusual word for an American youth, Joseph Smith, to use. An American would likely prefer an adjective such as stubborn or inflexible. But the custom in the Arabic language is to use just such a descriptive adjective. Stiffnecked is an adjective they use in describing an obstinate person.”
This gets ridiculous fast. Again, this is from the Bible, the same Bible we know Joseph Smith read and drew inspiration and ideas from. The Bible is loaded with uses of “stiffnecked” as an adjective. It’s not that much of leap to add the –ness suffix and make it “stiffneckedness.” It sounds biblical, and that seems to be what Joseph Smith was going for.
Also, isn’t “Brother Hanna” a foreign scholar? How would he know what words an American youth of a previous century would be most likely to use? His opinion on that subject would not be worth much more than anyone else’s.
“4. Mosiah 11:8 "King Noah built many elegant and spacious buildings and ornamented them with fine work and precious things, including ziff." Have you ever wondered about the meaning of the word "ziff" referred to in this scripture? This word, although in the Book of Mormon, is not contained in dictionaries of the English language. Yet it translates freely back into the Arabic language, for ziff is a special kind of curved sword somewhat like a scimitar which is carried in a sheath and often used for ornamentation as well as for more practical purposes. The discovery of the word "ziff" in the Book of Mormon really excited Brother Hanna.”
This is among the more interesting arguments attempted in this fraudulently authored e-mail, but upon closer inspection, it’s also one of the dumbest.
I searched several online Arabic dictionaries for the word “ziff” and found nothing; it may, I will admit, be in one somewhere. I did find that “ziff” is Australian slang for “beard,” but ultimately this idea is totally defeated when you put the e-mail’s own definition of “ziff” into its original scriptural context.
The e-mail says “ziff” means “a special kind of curved sword.” Okay. So, now that we know what a ziff is, let’s insert that meaning into the Book of Mormon verse itself: "King Noah built many elegant and spacious buildings and ornamented them with fine work and precious things, including [a special kind of curved sword]." That makes no sense at all.
Also, if that’s what a ziff is, why not just say “scimitar” or “sword.” Both of those things were apparently translatable, and, in fact, the mentions of scimitars in the Book of Mormon, when no evidence of such weapons has ever been discovered in the pre-Columbian Americas (and steel didn’t exist with which to make them), is one of the many reasons that mainstream archeology completely dismisses the revisionist American history suggested by the Book of Mormon. What is far more likely, judging by its context, is that Joseph Smith meant ziff to be “an unknown metal,” which is how “ziff”’s evidently Mormon-edited Wikipedia entry describes it.
“5. Alma 63:11 Reference is made to Helaman, son of Helaman. Why did not Joseph Smith interpret this as Helaman, Jr., which would have been more logical for him, bearing the same name as his father, Joseph, and being named Joseph Smith, Jr. In Arabic, Brother Hanna explains, there is no word "junior" to cover this circumstance. Their custom is to use the terminology Joseph, son of Joseph; Helaman, son of Helaman, etc.”
The major point against this argument is actually included in the argument itself: “Why did not [sic] Joseph Smith interpret this as Helaman, Jr., which would have been more logical for him, bearing the same name as his father, Joseph, and being named Joseph Smith, Jr[?]” A good question. When an American translates, say, War and Peace, from the Russian, he translates it into American English. When a British person translates it, he translates it into the Queen’s English. It would have made more sense for Joseph Smith to have translated his Golden Plates into the American English being spoken during his little era of the 1800s. Instead, he dictated the book in a style entirely imitative of the King James-era English of the Bible.
And no, believers can’t just say, “Well, it was inspired, it was translated in the dialect of God,” because:
A) What? God’s hung up on using archaic English? Why? And
B) That would be employing a double standard in defense of the Book of Mormon, as Joseph Smith’s humanity and personal involvement are often invoked to explain everything from the atrocious punctuation and grammar of the original draft of the Book of Mormon, to the use of the word “Adieu” in the Book of Mormon’s Book of Jacob.
The fact is, this sort of familial “son of” labeling is how it’s done in the Bible. You can barely turn a page in the Old Testament without tripping over someone like “Manasseh the son of Joseph.” Or check out the entire last half of Luke, Chapter 3. Judging from the weird Old English tone and wording used in the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith evidently wanted the Book of Mormon to sound like the Bible, so he used biblical language.
“6. Helaman 1:3 Here reference is made to the contending for the judgment seat. Brother Hanna observes that the use of the term "judgment seat" would be quite strange to an American who might have used a more familiar noun such as governor, president, or ruler. Yet, in Arabic custom, the place of power rests in the judgment seat and whoever occupies that seat, is the authority and power. The authority goes with the seat and not with the office or the person. So, this, in the Semitic languages, connotes the meaning exactly.”
The phrase “judgment seat” was obviously taken straight from the Bible, because it appears in that book multiple times. See Romans 14:10, “For we will all stand before God's judgment seat,” or 2 Corinthians 5:10, “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ....”
“7. Helaman 3:14 In this verse, there are a total of eighteen "and"s. Reviewers of the Book of Mormon have, on occasion, been critical of the grammar in such a passage where the use of the word "and" seems so repetitious. Yet Brother Hanna explains that each of the "ands" in this verse is absolutely essential to the meaning, when this verse is expressed in Arabic, for the omission of any "and" would nullify the meaning words.”
So Cormac McCarthy originally wrote his books in Arabic? It’s called polysyndeton, using many connectors, and it’s a stylistic choice of many authors. It’s not a proof of anything. Besides, long, polysyndeton-filled sentences are all over the Bible, and a writer wanting to imitate that book’s style would certainly borrow whatever stylings might make him seem the most legitimate.
“8. Helaman 3:18-19 Have you wondered why the Book of Mormon cites a numbering system such as this? Do we say "forty and six, forty and seven, forty and eight?" No! Joseph Smith's natural interpretation would more appropriately have been forty-six, forty-seven, forty-eight without the "and"s. Brother Hanna excitedly observes that the use of "and" in forty and six" is p[r]ecisely correct Arabic. Arabic number, as well as read, from right to left and recite their numbers with the "and" to separate the columns.”
Boy, does this list ever end on a feeble note. No, most people probably haven’t wondered why the Book of Mormon uses the exact same numbering system as the King James Version of the Bible does. Pretty much everything else in it seems lifted from the Bible, so why not that?
Here are just a few examples—not just examples in which numbers are awkwardly spelled out Helaman’s way in the Bible—but examples in which the number forty-six is spelled out “forty-and-six.” This is how numbering is done throughout the Bible.
“Those that were numbered of them, even of the tribe of Reuben, were forty and six thousand and five hundred.” (Numbers 1:20-22.)
“Those that were numbered of them, even of the tribe of Gad, were forty and five thousand six hundred and fifty.” (Numbers 1:24-26.)
“And his host, and those that were numbered thereof, were forty and six thousand and five hundred.” (Numbers 2:10-12.)
And so on, and so on, and so on.
“The fact that an Arabic scholar such as this sees a beautiful internal consistency in the Prophet Joseph Smith's translation of the book,” is not a fact—and even if it were, we would be talking about a so-called scholar who is completely unable to use even the most basic logical tool of Occam’s Razor—the idea that when we’re confronted with two opposing beliefs, the simplest one tends to be more true.
In this case, what’s more likely: that Joseph Smith borrowed heavily from the Bible to write a book that is absolutely saturated with the racial and historical and religious beliefs and ideas of his time—or that a lost Jewish race once covered the Americas, brought all kinds of things with them from horses to concrete to scimitars to steel to beehives that archeologists have never found even a trace of, and then, somehow, fathered today’s Native Americans, despite repeated genetic studies (including some done by BYU) showing no Jewish blood at all in any of the tribes today?
I think it’s more than apparent that Book of Mormon is no more of a record of an ancient people than the various channeled visions of alleged psychics and seers are records of the nonexistent lands of Atlantis or Mu or Lemuria, and I think the Mormon Church should be aware that it’s treading dangerous ground by continuing to maintain and assert physical truths based on the Book of Mormon. What they are doing, and what e-mails like the one you sent to me are doing, is creating what philosophers call a God of the Gaps—a God that stakes His claims on evidence of a physical history, and whose primary evidence is really little more than the ever-shrinking gaps in historical knowledge. It’s going to be a tricky position to maintain, since as we’ve already seen with the Mormon Church recently changing the Book of Mormon’s introduction to claim that the Nephites and Lamanites were only the ancestors of some, not all, of today’s Native Americans, those gaps are going to get smaller and smaller, as will the fictional God and the fictional history that fills them.
If people really want to persist in their supernatural and pseudo-historical beliefs of this sort, they need to realize and declare that there are doing so entirely on faith and despite all evidence to the contrary, and they need to stop making physical claims that are so evidently untrue. People aren’t going to buy it forever. Say the Book of Mormon is a personally helpful collection of fictional allegories, but don’t say it’s history, because it were, there would be at least some supporting evidence for it. As it is, the evidence against Mormonism, the Book of Mormon, and such supernatural beliefs is already overwhelming, and it is only going to grow and grow.
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