William Hamblin, emeritus professor of history at Brigham Young University, has published a series of observations about the methodology of studying the Book of Mormon. This series of posts is part of a larger dialogue:
The Centrality of Hermeneutics
Other observations include:
Expertise
Rules of Engagement
Scholarship
Peer Review
Rules of Engagement
Book of Mormon Studies
Empiricism and the Past
Historicity and Authenticity
Epistemology
The Real Problem
Pottery 2
Refusing to Read
Quantity of Evidence
Why Methodology?
Why No Inscriptions?
Place Names
Tuesday, June 30, 2015
Saturday, June 20, 2015
"Without anything wherewith to steer her" (Mormon 5:18)
George Q. Cannon, having witnessed more than fifty years of Church History offered the following reflections:
Our pathway from the beginning, it may be said, is lined with the graves of those who have lost their faith, who were buried before they died, having lost faith and remained behind. They thought the work of God could not stand the pressure, that his promises could not be fulfilled. They felt as though they must save themselves or they would be destroyed, and they sought safety in apostasy, in denying God, and in breaking loose from their brothers and sisters. What has been the result? You who have had friends, relatives and acquaintances in this condition know what the result has been. Would you exchange your circumstances today with theirs? . . . .
The man that loves God; the man that maintains his virtue, and refrains from committing any sin that will grieve the Spirit of God . . . or other habits that destroy the faith that God has planted in our hearts, will continue to prosper, and will continue to live. They may not live in the flesh, but they will live hereafter. They will live with the blessed, they will live with those whom they love and with whom they can associate; and while they do live upon the earth they will live in the enjoyment of the Spirit of God, they will have peace at night, and through the night, and peace through the day. It is true they may suffer, but God will be with them. His angels will be around them to sustain them; and he will not only bless and prosper them but bless their children after them, for they will sow seed the fruit of which their children will gather in years to come.
God does not forget his faithful people. He loves the righteous and he loves the courageous. He loves the true; but traitors–those who betray their brethren–He–I was going to say–despises them; at any rate they fall under His displeasure; they become like wrecks, castaways stripped of their former power, bereft of the Spirit and blessing that attended them in former times. Some of you have no doubt seen fine vessels that have done good service stranded and wrecked, with nothing much besides the ribs and keel left; those who become darkened lose the Spirit and their faith, and thus become human wrecks, remind me of such unfortunate vessels.
[George Q. Cannon, 23 February, 1890, Collected Discourses 2:17-18].
Our pathway from the beginning, it may be said, is lined with the graves of those who have lost their faith, who were buried before they died, having lost faith and remained behind. They thought the work of God could not stand the pressure, that his promises could not be fulfilled. They felt as though they must save themselves or they would be destroyed, and they sought safety in apostasy, in denying God, and in breaking loose from their brothers and sisters. What has been the result? You who have had friends, relatives and acquaintances in this condition know what the result has been. Would you exchange your circumstances today with theirs? . . . .
The man that loves God; the man that maintains his virtue, and refrains from committing any sin that will grieve the Spirit of God . . . or other habits that destroy the faith that God has planted in our hearts, will continue to prosper, and will continue to live. They may not live in the flesh, but they will live hereafter. They will live with the blessed, they will live with those whom they love and with whom they can associate; and while they do live upon the earth they will live in the enjoyment of the Spirit of God, they will have peace at night, and through the night, and peace through the day. It is true they may suffer, but God will be with them. His angels will be around them to sustain them; and he will not only bless and prosper them but bless their children after them, for they will sow seed the fruit of which their children will gather in years to come.
God does not forget his faithful people. He loves the righteous and he loves the courageous. He loves the true; but traitors–those who betray their brethren–He–I was going to say–despises them; at any rate they fall under His displeasure; they become like wrecks, castaways stripped of their former power, bereft of the Spirit and blessing that attended them in former times. Some of you have no doubt seen fine vessels that have done good service stranded and wrecked, with nothing much besides the ribs and keel left; those who become darkened lose the Spirit and their faith, and thus become human wrecks, remind me of such unfortunate vessels.
[George Q. Cannon, 23 February, 1890, Collected Discourses 2:17-18].
Friday, June 12, 2015
Right on Target: Gidgiddoni
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| Art by James H. Fullmer |
There are generally two approaches to Book of Mormon names. One of them searches for plausible etymologies for Book of Mormon names; the other looks at whether the name is actually attested. If it is attested it does not matter much whether or not we can figure out an etymology for the name (that is, whether we can determine what the name originally meant). Both of these approaches are useful and have their merits.
The Book of Mormon name Gidgiddoni can now be added to the list of names that are attested.
Gidgiddoni, it will be remembered, was "great commander of all the armies of the Nephites" (3 Nephi 3:18) during the reign of Lachoneus. He is first mentioned during events of "the sixteenth year from the coming of Christ" (3 Nephi 3:1), and is last mentioned ten years later (3 Nephi 6:6).
The name Gidgiddoni, with its reduplication and doubled consonant, is unusual for a Hebrew name. We now know that it is not. It is a well attested name in Neo-Assyrian records. It comes from the same Assyrian empire that is discussed so extensively in the works of Isaiah. The name is mentioned many times in Assyrian records, covering a number of individuals. It is spelled a number of ways:
- Gíd-gi-da-nu (SAA 1: 152:6)
- Gíd-gi-da-a-n[i] (SAA 1: 152 r 9)
- [Gíd-g]i-da-a-[ni] (SAA 1: 152 r 6)
- [Gí]d-gi-da-a-[ni] (SAA 1: 39 :4)
- Gíd-gi-da-a-nu (SAA 6: 31 r 23)
- Gíd-gíd-da-nu (SAA 11: 123 ii 13)
- Gíd-gíd-da-[nu] (SAA 12: 51 r 12)
- The second d is doubled. (see Gíd-gíd-da-nu).
- The a is long. (see Gíd-gi-da-a-nu). This is important because Assyrian (Akkadian) long a goes to an o in Hebrew. Cuneiform does not have an o sound and uses a variety of strategies to reproduce it.
- The form of the name borrowed into Hebrew is the oblique case. Hebrew does not have case endings but does have names ending in -i.
The following individuals bearing the name are known from Neo-Assyrian records:
- An individual working in Dur-Sharrukin during the reign of Sargon II.
- A man from Kalhu listed in as a member of the chariotry during the reign of Sargon II.
- A tailor to the governor of Kalhu during the reign of Sargon II.
- A temple carpenter from Assur during the reign of Esarhaddon.
- A man from Assur during the reign of Assurbanipal.
- A man mentioned during the reign of Assur-etel-ilani.
(The Prosopography of the Neo-Assyrian Empire [Helsinki: The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, 1999], 1.2:422-23.)The simplest explanation is that an Assyrian individual with the name Gidgiddanu was mentioned in the brass plates. This was then the source of the name for this particular military leader several centuries later.
Interestingly, the Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project was not able to determine an etymology or meaning for this name.
Thus the number of attested non-biblical names in the Book of Mormon has just increased by one.
Thursday, June 11, 2015
“For They Shall be filled with the Holy Ghost” (Howlers # 28)
In 1978 Krister Stendahl, a prominent Lutheran Leader and scholar of the New Testament was invited by Truman Madsen to read and comment on the teachings of Jesus in the Sermon at the Temple in 3 Nephi. Stendahl graciously provided an insightful discussion on the subject which was subsequently published in a collection of essays written by other non–LDS scholars entitled Reflections on Mormonism, a volume which is still of value and well worth reading. In his article, however, Stendahl did take note of 3 Nephi 12:6, which parallels Matthew 5:6, “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled,” except that the passage in Jesus’ sermon in 3 Nephi adds the phrase “with the Holy Ghost.” Stendahl thought that the additional phrase seemed out of place:
The Greek word behind filled is chortazo, which means “fill the stomach,” as one fills the stomach of animals, not “fill up” in the sense pleroo, which is the biblical term for being filled with the Holy Spirit. it is rather unnatural to use the Greek chortazo for making the addition “with the Holy Spirit”
(Krister Stendahl, “The Sermon on the Mount and Third Nephi,” in Truman G. Madsen, ed., Reflections on Mormonism, 1978), 142.
The following is taken from John W. Welch, The Sermon At the Temple and the Sermon on the Mount (Deseret Book and FARMS, 1990, 114-15.
Krister Stendahl has suggested one such translation problem in the way the Sermon at the Temple renders the fourth Beatitude. It reads, "Blessed are all they who do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled with the Holy Ghost" (3 Nephi 12:6). He remarked that it seemed unnatural to associate the Greek word chortazo ("physically filled") with a spiritual filling, since the New Testament Greek usually uses a different word, pleroo, when it speaks of being filled with the Spirit and since chortazo appears in passages about actual feedings of multitudes, eating crumbs, and so on.
The problem, however, is solved when we turn to Old Testament backgrounds of the Sermon. The promise of Jesus, that those who hunger and thirst after "righteousness" (dikaiosunen) shall be filled (chortasthesontai), is closely related to the last two verses of Psalm 17 in the Greek Septuagint (the "LXX"), a rarely mentioned text that Stendahl apparently overlooked. The Psalm contrasts the filling (echortasthesan) of the stomach in uncleanliness with beholding the face of God in righteousness (dikaiosune): "I shall be satisfied [chortasthesomai] when I awake, with thy likeness" (Psalm 17:15). Here the word chortazo is used to describe one's being filled with the Spirit and being satisfied by beholding the righteousness of God.
The distinctiveness of this use of chortazo in Psalm 17 and Matthew 5:6 only increases the likelihood that Jesus' New Testament audience would have recognized his allusion to these words in the Psalm, a passage that would have been quite familiar to them. It shows that the translation in the Sermon at the Temple does well by making explicit this particular understanding of chortazo as having reference to a spiritual filling by the Holy Ghost, such as that which comes when a person beholds the face of God in righteousness.
The Greek word behind filled is chortazo, which means “fill the stomach,” as one fills the stomach of animals, not “fill up” in the sense pleroo, which is the biblical term for being filled with the Holy Spirit. it is rather unnatural to use the Greek chortazo for making the addition “with the Holy Spirit”
(Krister Stendahl, “The Sermon on the Mount and Third Nephi,” in Truman G. Madsen, ed., Reflections on Mormonism, 1978), 142.
The following is taken from John W. Welch, The Sermon At the Temple and the Sermon on the Mount (Deseret Book and FARMS, 1990, 114-15.
Krister Stendahl has suggested one such translation problem in the way the Sermon at the Temple renders the fourth Beatitude. It reads, "Blessed are all they who do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled with the Holy Ghost" (3 Nephi 12:6). He remarked that it seemed unnatural to associate the Greek word chortazo ("physically filled") with a spiritual filling, since the New Testament Greek usually uses a different word, pleroo, when it speaks of being filled with the Spirit and since chortazo appears in passages about actual feedings of multitudes, eating crumbs, and so on.
The problem, however, is solved when we turn to Old Testament backgrounds of the Sermon. The promise of Jesus, that those who hunger and thirst after "righteousness" (dikaiosunen) shall be filled (chortasthesontai), is closely related to the last two verses of Psalm 17 in the Greek Septuagint (the "LXX"), a rarely mentioned text that Stendahl apparently overlooked. The Psalm contrasts the filling (echortasthesan) of the stomach in uncleanliness with beholding the face of God in righteousness (dikaiosune): "I shall be satisfied [chortasthesomai] when I awake, with thy likeness" (Psalm 17:15). Here the word chortazo is used to describe one's being filled with the Spirit and being satisfied by beholding the righteousness of God.
The distinctiveness of this use of chortazo in Psalm 17 and Matthew 5:6 only increases the likelihood that Jesus' New Testament audience would have recognized his allusion to these words in the Psalm, a passage that would have been quite familiar to them. It shows that the translation in the Sermon at the Temple does well by making explicit this particular understanding of chortazo as having reference to a spiritual filling by the Holy Ghost, such as that which comes when a person beholds the face of God in righteousness.