From the very beginning, Joseph Smith testified that he translated the Book of Mormon by the gift and power of God from an ancient record written upon thin plates of gold. From the beginning, critics have claimed that Joseph either wrote it himself or copied from fanciful book about the lost tribes of Israel written by Solomon Spaulding, who died in 1821. Other critics have hypothesized that perhaps Oliver Cowdery wrote it, he being a school teacher. Some have even said that Joseph just copied a lot of things from the King James version of the Bible and invented a fictional narrative around them. Anyone who dismisses the Book of Mormon on any of these arguments doesn't really know the Book of Mormon. Along with the many obvious arguments for translation is the book itself.
The Book of Mormon is poor English. It is, however, excellent Hebrew. President Nelson spoke of an Islamic scholar of his acquaintance undertook the task of translating the English Book of Mormon into Arabic. Sami Hana said that the task was easy to do because if was full of evidences, words, phrased, and grammatical structure were so consistent to records from the Middle East BCE. Jewish converts to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have also remarked on the similarities to Hebrew. These things fascinate me.
One of the things that prompted my thinking of these things came from the 8th Chapter of the Book of Nephi. Lehi recounts his vision of the Tree of Life to his sons. He began by saying Behold I have dreamed a dream; or, in other words, I have seen a vision.
When I read this in my late teens, I thought, "What a funny, awkward way of beginning." I have since learned that this is just one example of many grammatical and structural Hebrew that somehow survived translation into English. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of examples of ancient Hebrew writing styles found in the Book. Scholars call them Hebraisms.
The verse I quoted is an example of a grammatical construct known as a cognitive accusative. It sometimes appears in English such as in the song, dream a little dream of me, but it occurs frequently in Hebrew and other near-Eastern languages. It existed when the verb in a sentence is reintroduced as a noun in another part of the sentence. This example is a clear representation of the literary form. I have dreamed is the verb a dream is the noun. Similarly, I have seen is the verb and a vision is the noun. In the original Hebrew, the word vision would be translated as a seeing or in other words it would read I have dreamed a dream and seen a seeing. Example of cognitive accusatives are found often in the Book of Mormon.
Remember when I said that Sami Hanna found it easy to translate the Book of Mormon into Arabic? Here is an example of this same literary form in Arabic: :أكرمني إكراما عظيما , which literally means He honored me with a great honoring.[1]
Below, you will find a link to a YouTube discussion of other Hebraisms.
These evidences won't give you a testimony of the book of Mormon. Only the Holy Ghost can do that. But they can certainly strengthen the testimony you already have.
[1] www.allthearabicyouneverlearnedthefirsttimearound.com
©January 2020, Dr. Kathleen Rawlings
Buntin Danielson
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