Sheum (Howlers # 16)

"Neas" and "sheum." Pray tell me what kinds of grain neas and sheum are. Joseph Smith's translation needs another translation, to render it intelligible.

Origen Bacheler, Mormonism Exposed (1838), 14.

The Book of Mormon mentions sheum as one of several crops cultivated by the people of Zeniff during the second century B.C. (Mosiah 9:9). While this term is not found in the Bible, it is an attested Akkadian cereal name dating to the third millennium B.C. (Jean Bottero, Elena Cassin and Jean Vercoutter, eds., The Near East: The Early Civilizations. New York: Delacorte Press, 1967, 63; Robert F. Smith, "Some `Neologisms' from the Mormon Canon." In Conference on the Language of the Mormons. Provo: Brigham Young University Lanaguage Research Center, 1973, 66).

Use of this ancient Akkadian term in the Book of Mormon is significant, since the Jaredite colony may have come from Mesopotamia at approximately the same time (Ether 1:33). The term would have been unknown to the translator of the Book of Mormon, however, since Akkadian could not be read until decades after the Book of Mormon was published (Ernst Doblhofer, Voices in Stone: The Decipherment of Ancient Scripts and Writings. New York: Collier Books, 1971, 121-148; Cyrus H. Gordon, Forgotten Scripts: Their Ongoing Discovery and Decipherment. New York: Dorset Press, 1987, 55-85).

The reference to sheum in an agricultural context in the Book of Mormon constitutes a significant piece of evidence supporting the antiquity of the Book of Mormon. "It is a well known fact," writes Professor Hildegard Lewy, a specialist in ancient Assyrian and Babylonian [Akkadian] languages, "that the name of plants and particularly of [grains] are applied in various languages and dialects to different species." Lewy notes that this often poses a challenge in interpreting references to Assyrian cereals in ancient near Eastern documents.  When doing so, "the meaning of these Old Assyrian terms must be inferred from the Old Assyrian texts alone without regard to their signification in sources from Babylonia and other regions adjacent to Assyria" (Hildegard Lewy, "Some old Assyrian cereal names," Journal of the American Oriental Society 76/4 October--December 1956: 201).

Other Assyriologists have observed that the ancient Assyrian term sheum was used at various times to refer to barley, grains generally, and even pine nuts (The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. Edited by John A. Brinkman, et. al. Chicago: Oriental Institute, 1992, 17, part 2: 345-55). Since sheum in the Book of Mormon account is mentioned in addition to barley and wheat, the term was likely used by Book of Mormon peoples to refer to some other new world crop of which there are a variety of possible candidates.

For more information on sheum and neas see the Willes Center's Book of Mormon Onomasticon Project.

New Article on the Book of Mormon

Stephen Ricks has published a new article on the composition of the family in Mosiah in Interpreter.

Abinadi: Master of Disguise (Howlers #3)

“The hero of this tale is a fearless prophet by the name of Abinadi who got himself into a lot of trouble by denouncing the evil deeds of the wicked king Noah. King Noah finally swore to kill Abinadi, so the prophet hid out for two years to escape the king’s wrath. We read in Mosiah 12:1 about how he surfaced again: `And it came to pass that after the space of two years that Abinadi came among them in disguise, that they knew him not, and began to prophesy among them, saying–Abinadi, go and prophesy unto this my people . . . .’ And how long do you think that disguise lasted?”

                                                Latayne Colvett Scott, The Mormon Mirage (1979), 88.

Alan Goff provides another perspective on Abinadi’s disguise:

After hiding from King Noah for two years, the prophet Abinadi came before the people in disguise, identified himself by name, and then delivered a message of condemnation to the king and his people. Some might wonder why Abinadi would go to the trouble of disguising himself only to identify himself shortly afterward. Recent scholarly studies of the biblical narrative may help shed light on this curious episode.

One example is an article by Richard Coggins that examines five biblical stories involving kings, prophets, and disguises (1 Sam. 28:3–20; 1 Kgs. 14:1–20; 20:35–43; 22:29–37; 2 Chr. 35: 20–24).  Each narrative relates a confrontation between a king and God’s prophet or spokesman. Sometimes the king or his wife dons the disguise in an unsuccessful effort to deceive God. At other times God’s prophet wears and then discards the disguise as part of his divine message.

According to Coggins, “the disguise story ends in each case with the same warning: defeat of the people in battle, and death of the king.” He also notes that it is an “unacceptable line of kingship” that is condemned by the prophetic word. All of the kings or their heirs in the biblical disguise stories meet with brutal deaths, and in each case the dynasty fails.

In this light, it isn’t hard to guess what will happen to the wicked and unrepentant King Noah. Abinadi predicts that Noah’s people will be brought into bondage and that the armies “shall be slain; and the vultures of the air, and the dogs, yea, and the wild beasts, shall devour their flesh” (Mosiah 12:2; 21:7–12). He also correctly predicts King Noah’s violent death by fire (Mosiah 12:3). Although Limhi served as king for a brief time afterward, Noah’s royal line ended as Limhi and his people were assimilated into Mosiah’s kingdom.

Coggins notes that the number and the distinctive character of the biblical disguise scenes suggest that they work typologically to make a fundamental theological point: “Nothing is hidden from God’s sight; he is presented as controlling the situation, often . . . in unexpected ways.” Because the Book of Mormon has roots in the Old World, Abinadi’s disguise may have conveyed a similar message. If so, the disguise may have been a prop to allude to the blindness of the people. While Abinadi was disguised, the people “knew him not” (Mosiah 12:1). King Noah did not know the Lord (Mosiah 11:27), and the people were blinded to God’s prophetic message (Mosiah 11:29). Noah and his supporters may have sought to hide or disguise their sins, but the Lord had seen their abominations (Mosiah 11:20) and would soon reveal them to other nations (Mosiah 12:8).

However, once the disguise was discarded, Abinadi’s divine message was clearly revealed to the people, just as “the time shall come when all shall see the salvation of the Lord; when every nation, kindred, tongue, and people shall see eye to eye and shall confess before God that his judgments are just” (Mosiah 16:1). Thus the disguise may have symbolized God’s ability to reveal and fulfill his word, notwithstanding the blindness of the people.

As in 1 Kings 20, where a prophet disguises himself “to ensure that his message would be conveyed unmistakably to the king,”  Abinadi’s use of a disguise in accord with an apparent Old Testament pattern can be seen as effectively foreshadowing Noah’s demise.  

Goff’s article was originally published in “Abinadi’s Disguise and the Fate of King Noah,” Insights: An Ancient Window 20/12 (2000): 2. For additional readings see also Goff, “Uncritical Theory and Thin Description: The Resistance to History,” Review of Books on the Book of Mormon 7/1 (1995):  170-207; Richard Coggins, “On Kings and Disguises,” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 50 (1991): 55-62.