Right on Target: Gidgiddoni

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 variety of cuneiform spellings demonstrates the following points about the Assyrian name.

1. The second d is doubled. (see Gíd-gíd-da-nu).


2. 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.


3. 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 form of the name borrowed into Hebrew must have been taken from the oblique case, which may have been the form of the name they heard most often. Hebrew often changes foreign names when it adopts them (think Marduk-apil-iddina becoming Merodach-Baladan).

The following individuals bearing the name are known from Neo-Assyrian records:

1. An individual working in Dur-Sharrukin during the reign of Sargon II.


2. A man from Kalhu listed in as a member of the chariotry during the reign of Sargon II.


3. A tailor to the governor of Kalhu during the reign of Sargon II.


4. A temple carpenter from Assur during the reign of Esarhaddon.


5. A man from Assur during the reign of Assurbanipal.


6. 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.

The 600 Year Prophecy of the Birth of Christ (Howlers # 26 )

The Book of Mormon locates the birth of Christ too late in the world's history to harmonize with the Bible, claiming that Lehi left Jerusalem in the first year of Zedekiah's reign, (1st Book of Nephi, chap. 1) and that Christ's birth was six hundred years from that epoch.

William Sheldon, Mormonism Examined (1876), 9.

The chronology of the Book of Mormon is quite at fault when compared with the dates now accepted by biblical scholars. The Book of Mormon places the departure of Lehi from Jerusalem in the first year of the reign of Zedekiah (1 Nephi 1:4), the years that follow are carefully counted from that date . . . . Now scholars are agreed that the first year of Zedekiah was in 597-596 B.C., and counting 600 years from that time would date the birth of Christ in the year 4-5 A.D. But the date best attested for the birth of Christ is 6 B.C.

Paul Jones, The Bible and the Book of Mormon (1912), 5.

Smith was unaware that Zedekiah must be dated at 597 B.C. instead of the 600 B.C. date the Book of Mormon assigns him. He was unaware that the birth of Christ must now be placed some time prior to 4 B.C., . . .  so he wove into his fabric of the book a modern chronological error. The error was Dionysius Exiguus', who set up the present system of dating time from the birth of Christ in the sixth century A.D. He mistakenly equated A.D. 1 with the Roman year 754 (A.U.C.), whereas Herod the Great had died four years earlier in the Roman year 750 (A.U.C.); or in 4 B.C. by our present dating system. The only way scholars can correct this error is to date the actual birth of Christ prior to 4 B.C., yielding less than 593 years between Zedekiah and the birth of Jesus.

Wesley Walters, Examiner, Independence, Missouri, 17 September, 1977.


In his work, An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon, John Sorenson wrote:

Both by prophecy (1 Nephi 10:4; 19:8; 2 Nephi 25:19) and by Nephite historical reckoning (3 Nephi 1:1) the American scripture allots “600 years” for the interval between Lehi’s departure in Zedekiah’s first year and the birth of Jesus Christ. Yet secular historical records allow no more than about 593 years (597 B.C. to 4 B.C.) between these events.

Sorenson notes that among the Maya, whose calendar is the one we know best, there were at least three ways in which years were calculated. One of these was the tun a year consisting of 360 days.

Suppose the Nephites used the same system of counting time as the Maya. The prophesied “six hundred years” in that reckoning would constitute precisely one and one half baktuns (thirty katuns), a neat total of 216.000 days. But this count of 600 tun “years” would be about 3,156 days shorter than the total using our sidereal year today (approximately 365 days, 6 hours, 9 minutes, and 9.54 seconds long). In other words, “600 years” by the Maya tun method of calculating time would turn out 8.64 years shorter than “600 years” than today’s conventional sense. If we mark off 600 tun years from Zedekiah’s first year, 597-596 B.C., 216,000 brings us into the year overlapping 5-4 B.C., an acceptable date for Christ’s birth. . . .

If the Nephite “year” had been the same as our present year of 365+ days, then the Book of Mormon prophecies and its history as well would be in error, for from Zedekiah to Christ’s birth is in fact not 600 but closer to 592 of our solar years. But if we suppose that the Nephites used the method of calculating time that was standard in southern Mesoamerica, where ther Nephite lands must lie, then 600 of the 360-day tun years used there matches rather neatly the apparent interval from Zedekiah to Christ. Not only is the “problem” eliminated, but we obtain an important perspective of the Nephites’ use of the calendar system that prevailed in their geographical and cultural setting (John Sorenson, An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon, 1985, 272-274).


In a more recent and very careful evaluation of the historical evidence Thomas Wayment concluded that most likely, “his birth took place between the spring and winter of 5 B.C.” (Thomas A. Wayment, “The Birth and Death Dates of Jesus Christ,” in Richard Neitzel Holzapfel and Thomas A. Wayment, eds., The Life and Teachings of Jesus Christ, From Bethlehem Through the Sermon on the Mount (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2005), 394; See also Lincoln H. Blumell and Thomas A. Wayment, “When Was Jesus Born? A Response to a Recent Proposal,” BYU Studies 51/3 [2012]: 53-81).

Critics of the Book of Mormon felt that the issue of the six hundred year prophecy was important enough to dismiss the Book of Mormon as fiction, yet subsequent research suggests that it fits rather nicely into what we know about Pre-Columbian Mesoamerican chronology. Those who have never given the matter of the Book of Mormon much attention, or are prone to dismiss it out of hand, may wonder, if Joseph Smith wrote it, how he happened to get this and other significant points right. They might also give prayerful and serious consideration to the proposition that the Book of Mormon may be exactly what it purports to be.

“Filled with the Holy Ghost” in Matthew 5:6 and 3 Nephi 12:6 (Howlers # 24)

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, 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.

Reinventing the Wheel

Individuals doing research sometimes have to confront the painful truth that they are not the first people to think of an idea. One trait that distinguishes the scholar from the tyro is that the scholar is aware of previous research in the field.

Back in 1993, Russell Ball thought that he was the first person to connect the the destruction in 3 Nephi with a volcano in his article in the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies. Unfortunately, every point he made had previously been made about a half century earlier by Evan Fry in an article called "The Book of Mormon and the Crucifixion," published in the Saints Herald 1945. In all fairness to Ball, there is little way he could possibly have known about the earlier article. Both articles have since been superseded by Bart Kowallis's article in the 1997-1998 BYU Studies.