Lots of interesting links throughout this blog post by Brother Peterson. I am going to need to take more time to go through them all..... like always.
Sunday, February 18, 2024
Ancient Names in the Book of Mormon Toward a Deeper Understanding of a Witness of Christ By Matthew L. Bowen
The names of individuals, places, and peoples in the Book of Mormon are strong evidence of its authenticity as an ancient scriptural record. But these names are more than mere ornaments. By reading carefully and using our knowledge of ancient Hebrew and Egyptian—the languages Book of Mormon writers claimed they knew and used—we can locate passages where names figure crucially into the meaning of the text and strengthen its impact. Sometimes, wordplay on these names illuminates important themes in a given book. These findings are consistent with what we find throughout the Hebrew Bible, where names and their meanings (real and perceived) were integral to narrative, prophecy, and poetry. As a follow-up to Name as Key-Word (2018), Ancient Names in the Book of Mormon explores many such examples and demonstrates how they contribute to our understanding of the Book of Mormon’s witness of Christ in its ancient context.
Table of Contents
Foreword, by Jeffrey Dean Lindsay
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Abbreviations
1 “O Ye Fair Ones”—Revisited
2 Shazer: The Place of the Young Gazelle
3 “If Ye Will Hearken”: Rhetorical Wordplay on Ishmael
4 Jacob’s Protector
5 “I Kneeled Down before My Maker”: Allusions to Esau in the Book of Enos
6 “I of Myself Am a Wicked Man”: Omni’s Adaptive Autobiography
7 Becoming Men and Women of Understanding: Revisiting Wordplay on Benjamin
8 “Possess the Land in Peace”: Zeniff’s Ironic Wordplay on Shilom
9 “This Son Shall Comfort Us”: An Onomastic Tale of Two Noahs
10 “He Did Go about Secretly”: Additional Thoughts on the Literary Use of Alma’s Name
11 “I Will Deliver Thy Sons”: Oracular Wordplay on Mosiah and Ammon
12 He Knows My Affliction: Onidah versus the Rameumptom
13 The Scalp of Your Head: “Chief” as Metonymic “Head”
14 “Swearing by Their Everlasting Maker”: Paanchi and Giddianhi
15 Coming Down and Bringing Down to Destruction: Jared and the Jaredites
16 “That Which They Most Desired”: Mary and Mormon Revisited
17 Messengers of the Covenant
Bibliography
Illustration Credits
Index
Name as Key-Word: Collected Essays on Onomastic Wordplay and the Temple in Mormon Scripture By Matthew L. Bowen
This hard-cover book is available directly from Eborn Books for $22.99. It is also available on Amazon and AmazonSmile for $24.95. (Prices may vary depending on vendor.)
Throughout the Bible, understanding the meaning of names of important people and places is often crucial to understanding the message of the ancient authors. In other words, names of people and places serve as “key-words” that can help unlock the intended messages of scripture.
Since the Book of Mormon is an ancient record rooted in Old Testament traditions, it is not surprising that similar patterns of wordplay emerge from its pages. Besides their important role as key-words in scriptural interpretation, the names of people and places may also provide our clearest glimpses into the text that existed on the plates from which Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon. In many instances, the names of important Book of Mormon people and places are directly related to words matching the most-likely Hebrew and Egyptian origins for those names. Textual and contextual clues suggest that this matching was done deliberately in order to enhance literary beauty and as an aid to understanding. In some cases, authorial wordplay can be verified by a close analysis of matching text structures. In others, the wordplay can be verified by using the Bible as a “control” text.
A wealth of philological, onomastic, and textual evidence suggests that the Book of Mormon, like the Bible, is the work of ancient authors rather than that of a rural nineteenth-century man of limited literary attainments. Knowing more about these names enriches our understanding of the stories that these authors tell.
Table of Contents:
Foreword by Jeffrey M. Bradshaw
Introduction
1. Nephi’s Good Inclusio
2. “Most Desirable Above All Things”: Mary and Mormon
3. Joseph, Benjamin, and Gezera Shawa
4. “What Thank They the Jews?”
5. “And There Wrestled a Man with Him”: Jacob, Enos, Israel, and Peniel
6. Young Man, Hidden Prophet: Alma
7. Father Is a Man: Abish
8. “They Were Moved with Compassion”: Zarahemla and Jershon
9. “See That Ye Are Not Lifted Up”: Zoram and the Rameumptom
10. “He Is a Good Man”
11. My People are Willing: Aminadab
12. Getting Cain and Gain
13. Place of Crushing: Heshlon (with Pedro Olavarria)
14. “In the Mount of the Lord It Shall Be Seen” and “Provided”
15. Founded Upon a Rock: Peter’s Surnaming
16. You More Than Owe Me This Benefit: Philemon and Onesimus
Bibliography
Index
Sunday, February 11, 2024
Of Martin Harris And “Spiritual Eyes”
(by Dan Peterson sic et non blog)
Among the more sophisticated critics of the Restoration, it has become popular to portray Martin Harris as denying the literal reality of the Book of Mormon plates, as saying, effectively, that he “saw” them only in his mind’s eye. They base their portrayal on two or three cherry-picked statements, ignoring the many occasions on which he testified to having seen them quite literally, with his physical eyes, and even to having held them on his lap and being impressed by their extraordinary weight. I think that Richard Lyman Bushman’s recent book Joseph Smith’s Gold Plates: A Cultural History correctly understands what was going on:
The witness statements printed in every copy of the Book of Mormon seemed to provide exactly the kind of evidence Mormons longed for. Eleven men attested they saw the plates and eight of them passed them around from hand to hand. Short of producing the plates themselves, what better evidence could be had? By the same token, discrediting their testimony would strike a fatal blow. In the midst of the defections in the spring of 1838, when the failure of the Kirtland Safety Society had embittered many former Mormons, Stephen Burnett thought he found just such a flaw. Burnett wrote to a friend, Lyman Johnson, that Martin Harris admitted in a public meeting that he “never saw the plates with his natural eyes only in vision or imagination.” Harris said he viewed the plates as a visionary sees “a city through a mountain.” Burnett understood the words to mean that Harris saw the plates only in his imagination. The admission, Burnett thought, destroyed everything. If the witnesses never saw the plates, “there can be nothing brought to prove that any such thing ever existed.” “The last pedestal gave way, in my view our foundations was sapped & the entire superstructure fell a heap of ruins.”
Martin Harris was among the defectors in 1837 and 1838; he turned on Joseph Smith for the same reasons as Burnett—the failed bank and a loss of confidence in Joseph Smith. But strangely, his statement about seeing the plates in a vision was not meant to undermine the Book of Mormon. Burnett also heard Harris say that “he was sorry for any man who rejected the Book of Mormon for he knew it was true.” Harris was actually warning his fellow apostates they would suffer if in rejecting Smith they relinquished faith in the book. Harris’s visionary description of the plates was not intended to undermine their reality. He spoke of not seeing the plates “with his natural eyes only in vision,” because he believed that was the only way a mortal could view heavenly things. Pomeroy Tucker, the Palmyra printer who later wrote a book on Mormonism, remembered Harris speaking “a good deal of his characteristic jargon about ‘seeing with the spiritual eye.’ ”
In Harris’s world, the plates were enchanted. He said he was “told by Joseph Smith that God would strike him dead if he attempted to look at them.” When Charles Anthon asked him to bring the plates to New York, Harris told him that the “human gaze was not to be permitted to rest on them.” Harris’s thinking was based on Bible passages suggesting that human eyes could not look upon God without preparation. He did not dare to look into Smith’s seer stones “because Moses said that ‘no man could see God and live.’ ” Though intensely curious, Harris had not snuck a peek of the plates while helping Smith translate. He feared that he, an unworthy mortal, would suffer if he did. When Joseph offered to show Harris the plates in return for his help, Harris refused “unless the Lord should do it.” He told Burnett’s audience that the three witnesses had seen the plates “only in vision” because that was the only safe way. He had no intention of undermining the reality of the plates or questioning the Book of Mormon. (60)
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterson/2024/02/of-martin-harris-and-spiritual-eyes.html
Richard Bushman On Witnesses To The Book Of Mormon
(by Dan Peterson sic et non blog)
Here are some notes about certain of the witnesses to the Book of Mormon — both official and unofficial — that I’ve drawn from the fourth chapter of Richard Lyman Bushman’s book Joseph Smith’s Gold Plates: A Cultural History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2023):
(more to come)
Pre-Columbian Contact Between South America And New Zealand?
(by Dan Peterson sic et non blog)
The standard view of the origins of the Polynesians, and specifically of the Māori of New Zealand, is that they derive from the Lapita civilization of Melanesia and Micronesia. Here is a passage from Māori History: A Captivating Guide to the History of the Indigenous Polynesian People of New Zealand (2022), apparently written by Matt Clayton, that I found particularly interesting:
It seems that for roughly one thousand years, the Lapita people consolidated some of the basic Polynesian cultural characteristics, like the language and religious beliefs and concepts like, for example, mana, as well as the pantheon of gods. They also formed the roots of a social system with kinship and ranks, which are today linked with the Polynesian civilization. It could also be theorized that, over time, they also improved and advanced their maritime technology and techniques. Around 700 CE, they resumed their eastward explorations, reaching the Cook Islands, Tahiti, and the rest of what is today French Polynesia. By then, the Lapita were transformed into the Polynesians, a change that is marked by the loss of their distinctive pottery.
Over the next several hundred years, the Polynesian people spread across what is today known as Polynesia, which roughly stretches from Samoa in the west to Easter Island in the east and Hawaii in the north to New Zealand in the south. This is a rather wide area that covers large chunks of open waters in the Pacific Ocean. The astonishing feat of covering such large distances and treacherous seas has made some modern scholars doubt if these Polynesian voyages were deliberate. For Western historians, it seemed inexplicable that a culture that seemed far inferior to any in Europe or around the Mediterranean Sea could travel so far, especially considering their Western contemporaries barely managed to leave their coasts. However, modern researchers have almost undoubtedly proved that the Polynesians, like their Austronesian ancestors, sailed with full intent and the knowledge of how to do so with minimal risks. . . .
Coupled with their planning techniques were their well-crafted outrigger canoes. They sometimes used the double outrigger design. Here, it is important to note that our minds often link canoes with small vessels, like a rowboat carrying a few people. However, the Polynesians, like other branches of the Austronesian people, built large ships capable of carrying dozens of people, with the boats powered by sails and the wind. It is also worth noting that the Polynesian sailors were capable navigators. They knew how to navigate with the help of the sun and the stars, and they used various methods, like spotting birds and cloud formations, to deduce if there was land beyond the visible horizon. They would pass this information on to other navigators and make repeated voyages, further reinforcing the notion that their trips were deliberate.
If that wasn’t enough to prove the maritime quality and capability of the Polynesian explorers, then there is the fact that, according to some research, they reached as far east as the western coasts of South America. There is some evidence to support such claims. The Polynesians cultivated sweet potatoes before the arrival of Europeans to the region. The sweet potato or batata, often mistakenly referred to as yams, originated in Central or South America. Thus, the Polynesians managed to reach the American continent before Christopher Columbus. On the Cook Islands, archaeologists found traces of this vegetable as early as the 11th century CE, prompting some scholars to deduce that Polynesian trips to the Americas must predate this century. Some bolder claims date Polynesian contact with the Americas to possibly the 8th century, though there is no evidence to support these claims. Another interesting facet of this implied contact is the fact that in various Polynesian languages, sweet potato is called kumara (also known as kumala or umala), while Bolivian and Peruvian Quechua sometimes refer to the plants as kumara or kumar, which is strikingly similar.
Apart from the sweet potato, some genetic studies of both chicken and human remains infer possible contact. In the case of human remains, several DNA markers found on certain Polynesian remains showed some mixture with the genes of the natives on the Columbian coast. Some scholars proposed this was a result of a single contact that took place in the late 12th or early 13th century. Also, some chicken remains found on the Chilean coast were dated to the early 14th century, with some of its genes sharing similarities to the domesticated chickens raised by the Polynesians. This has led some scholars to theorize that the Polynesians brought domesticated poultry to the Americas. However, these theories are still relatively new, and there is no conclusive scholarly agreement on them. Similarly, even less conclusive are the linguistic similarities found in a few words. Nevertheless, even if the linguistic and genetic similarities are completely disregarded, the unwavering evidence in the form of the kumara proves that the Polynesians reached South America most likely more than once. (5-9)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)