The Doctrine and Covenants, a selection from the Lord's new revelations, also brings us glimpses of ancient understanding. I recall Hugh Nibley telling a Sunday School class about the Egyptian nature of Section 88 of that book, a section he cites time and again in his elucidation of Abraham's cosmos, One Eternal Round. That cosmos indeed courses One Eternal Round, as depicted also in the round figure of the hypocephalus (Book of Abraham Facsimile 2).
One Eternal Round speaks to continual renewal, to a newness of life, to creation and resurrection; it bespeaks a timeless Day in which all things are present before the Lord. Latter-day Saint Prophets teach of a great assembly of all Father's children, prior to the Creation of the Earth, in which the Plan of Happiness, even the Gospel of Jesus Christ, was first revealed. I once asked Brother Nibley whether the hypocephalus had anything to do with the Grand Council in Heaven. "Yes," he replied, with his manner of swift surprise. (Facsimile 2: http://www.lds.org/scriptures/pgp/abr/fac-2?lang=eng)
The same ancient ideas about the Grand Council and Creation also appear in the Doctrine and Covenants. Take the revealed interpretation of the Divine Title, Lord of Sabaoth (or Lord of Hosts) in Doctrine and Covenants 95:7; 35:1; 38:1. (See also Abraham 3 and Abraham Facsimile 2.)
And for this cause I gave unto you a commandment that you should call your solemn assembly, that your fastings and your mourning might come up into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth, which is by interpretation, the creator of the first day, the beginning and the end (95:7, http://www.lds.org/scriptures/dc-testament/dc/95?lang=eng).
The Lord expands on the interpretation of his Eternal Name in the final verse 17, while also leaving us, as always, to ponder the implications and connections:
And let the higher part of the inner court [of the House] be dedicated unto me for the school of mine apostles, saith Son Ahman; or, in other words, Alphus; or, in other words, Omegus; even Jesus Christ your Lord. Amen.
The first part of verse seven reflects the themes and imagery of the second chapter of Joel, and note the emphasis on calling a Solemn Assembly in the Lord's House; while the second part, the interpretation of "Lord of Sabaoth," catches the breath away, as does sacred verse 17.
The revealed interpretation of Lord of Sabaoth cleanly and simply by-passes the dictionary definition (a transliteration of the Hebrew word for hosts = tzabaot) and instead proposes an interpretation. Now it's likely--although it hardly matters one way or the other--that the Prophet Joseph, prior to his formal study of Hebrew, had no idea what Sabaoth meant; nor might he have grasped how the revealed interpretation refers back to the creation story and its summation (its beginning and end) in Genesis 1:1 and 2:1:
Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.
And what is "all the host of them"? Answer (as found in any lexicon or commentary): the stars and planets and the holy angels make up the hosts of heaven. Indeed Latter-day students have often treated Genesis 2:1 as one key to the revealed interpretation of Lord of Sabaoth (Dana Pike, Robert Boyle).
Semiotics, the theory of signs, differentiates between dictionary and encyclopaedia. The interpretation in Doctrine and Covenants 95:7 touches on dictionary and expands into encyclopaedia. In fact the verse packs both denotation and connotation into a surprisingly small compass of eleven words. Let us first recall that many students have wrestled with the interpretation and origins of the name, a title which Professor Choon Seow terms "one of the most enigmatical divine names in the Holy Bible" (cited in Maire Byrne, The Names of God in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam).
We start with two of the formulaic introductions to revelations in the Doctrine and Covenants (Joseph McConkie considers these one key to Doctrine and Covenants 95:7). These formulae introduce God, in his own terms, to humankind.
Listen to the voice of the Lord your God, even Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, whose course is one eternal round, the same today as yesterday, and forever (Doctrine and Covenants 35:1).
http://www.lds.org/scriptures/dc-testament/dc/35?lang=eng
Here we have the name of God, as found in the Apocalypse of John and taken from the Greek letters, Alpha and Omega.
Or, in other words: Why, then, should the 95th Section speak of Alphus and Omegus, using an unusual, indeed unknown, form of the Greek letters? The names--and note these are presented more as names than name--are not Latin, rather Anglicized forms, that is, made-up forms--"in other words" is how the Lord phrases it. Greek Alpha and Omega here take Latinate (as if 2nd declension), or even general Indo-European nominative masculine case endings. Hugh Nibley explains the word Telestial as a like coinage, framed in harmony with Latin celestial and terrestrial, that combines both Greek root and Latin ending in an Anglicized form (to telos, the ultimate or lowest kingdom of glory in Doctrine and Covenants Section 76).
To show another example, the same verse speaks of Son Ahman, a purely semiotic construct consisting of an English word or name plus a name in a different language. We are given a sacred revealed name, true; but we are also presented with what linguists call a sign, signifier, or semiotic pointer to the Divine, not the Divine itself. Our word son is hardly newfangled anyway: sunus in Vedic and Gothic is the very same word, minus the archaic masculine nominative case -us; as for Ahman, for Hugh Nibley the name evokes, among other, deeper things, the Egyptian Pantocrator, Amun. The Cosmic Amun, or Transcendent Amun-Re, as Professor David Klotz calls the figure, appears at the center of all Egyptian hypocephali (Abraham Facsimile 2).
I'll not forget meeting one rabbi in Long Beach, California: learned, perceptive, keen. No introductions about my own faith were necessary; he let me know I was a Latter-day Saint the moment he saw me and, in a trice, had my Hebrew Bible open and therefrom began to expatiate on the Hebrew origins of the name Ahman. (He startled me by saying I should publish these findings.) Someday we'll know more about God's Divine Names; for now, He clearly is inviting us all--Jew and Gentile alike--to ponder, to study, to compare. (For the Indo-European cases see Frederik Kortlandt, "An Outline of Proto-Indo-European," www.kortlandt.nl.)
This is good news because if there is anything new to be published in Biblical studies, I'll give you five dollars. I wouldn't be caught dead in Biblical scholarship. But, you see, the Doctrine and Covenants is "all things divinely new."
English alone often seems to be an inadequate vehicle for what the Lord wishes to teach the Latter-day Saints. One possible reason for the Lord presenting us with these startling new or archaizing names, or Alpha and Omega in other words, lies in the origins of that name in the Hebrew encyclopaedia. From the Hebrew perspective, the world was organized or framed in One Eternal Round and, in the semiotic system which encodes said organization, the first and last letters of the alphabet round that world. These letters are aleph and tau. The observation is nothing new. . .
But the Doctrine and Covenants always intertwines the ancient with the everlastingly new (for Christ is primus et novissimus). By emphasizing the translated, approximated, European nature of the name (or names) Alpha and Omega, or Alphus and Omegus, the Lord points our minds back to the ancient name Aleph and Tau and thus invites us not only to look at the Greek symbols as mere signifiers of a former semiotic system but also at all these earthly symbols as purely signifiers of an Eternal Order. Doubtless He is also letting us know by means of Section 95, if we choose to ponder further, that the use of Alpha and Omega in the Book of Mormon, is only by way of translation; or in other words, in accord with our own English usage, as taken from the Greek Testament. Christ introduces himself in our translated Book of Mormon as Alpha and Omega, although to the Nephites He would have introduced Himself as Alpha and Tau (another insight from Hugh Nibley!).
In the same way hosts and armies only approximates the calling forth of the Sabaoth, which name, studied over centuries, also sorely calls out for illumination! By way of stunning originality, Frank Moore Cross reads the name Lord of Hosts, or Jehovah Sabaoth, as YHWH Tzavaot as Elohim YHWH Tzavaot, or, in other words, "God, He (Who) Causes to Come Into Being the Hosts." The reading, whether indeed correct, evokes Joseph Smith's interpretation, "Creator of the First Day," and also references Genesis 2:1. None of these readings need exclude another. Consider the name, eternally open-ended, which God revealed to Moses in the burning bush. And He Will Be what He Will Be.
The introduction of Section 35 answers to the second part of the interpretation of Sabaoth: "the beginning and the end"; in fact the Lord reveals four titles by way of elucidation. One of these four titles is not to be found in the Holy Bible but occurs three times in the Book of Mormon: "Whose course is one eternal round" (the One whose course is one eternal round). The phrase one eternal round also appears more than once in the Doctrine and Covenants. Its use by both Nephi and Alma, and similar wording in the various other places in Scripture, clearly shows it to be a quotation (with its own tradition of variants!) from yet other Scriptures in their possession. The phrase does recall the theme of the first chapters of the Book of Enoch: "And all His works go on thus from year to year for ever" (Enoch 5:2; tr. R. H. Charles), the Semitic word for year deriving from "that which goes round." The phrase also appears in Watts's hymns, and in various British and American poets, but any future study of it must show just how unique it is to Restoration Scripture. The Prophet used what language was at his disposal to teach the gospel, or to translate the gospel in a familiar way, but the phrasing of the Scriptures from which he translated reflects ancient wording time-out-of-mind.
Doctrine and Covenants 38, although revealed prior to Section 95, not only revisits the titles found in Section 35, it also expands upon the first part of the interpretation of Sabaoth as "creator of the first day":
Thus saith the Lord your God, even Jesus Christ, the Great I AM, Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the same which looked upon the wide expanse of eternity, and all the seraphic hosts of heaven, before the world was made. The same which knoweth all things, for all things are present before mine eyes; I am the same which spake, and the world was made, and all things came by me (38:1-3).
http://www.lds.org/scriptures/dc-testament/dc/38?lang=eng
Seraphic is the only way to describe this prelude to revelation, and seraphic is surely another of those Hebrew words (found only in Isaiah 6) that comes unelucidated into our own tongue (s-r-f or ll-r-f, to burn, be fiery); its interpretation requires, in fact, the cloven "tongue of angels" and of fire. In the revelation given to Brother Joseph, seraphic describes the premortal spirit sons and daughters of Father and also evokes the glory that emanates from God and fills the seraphim with everlasting burnings. I hear the glowing stars "Forever singing as they shine: 'The hand that made us is divine' " (Addison).
The First Day is that Seraphic Day. God, sitting on His Throne, surrounded by His Seraphim (as in Isaiah 6), looked upon the wide expanse--the great maidan of eternity--and made the First Day. "This is the Day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice--sing the angelic hosts--and be glad in it" (Psalm 118:24). For Latter-day Saints, the very words Isaiah speaks in the sod, the Council, "Here am I, send me," bespeak imitatio christi. In the Grand Council in Heaven, standing before the Throne and in the presence of all the seraphic hosts of heaven, in blessed witness, Christ offered Himself a sacrifice for sin with these very words: "Here am I, send me" (Abraham 3:27). Here I AM, send me. Isaiah Chapter Six therefore also fits our scenario of the Grand Assembly, before the world was. After all, God dwells in an Eternal Present; Isaiah was not in time, temporal, when he so communed. His offering and call, in imitatio christi, was also first made "before the world was made."
Or, in other words, all things were decided and planned spiritually in the Council, for "all things were before created; but spiritually were they created," then "naturally" (Moses 3: 5,7). God, who knows "the end from the beginning" (Abraham 2:8), planned the creation and called forth, in Grand Council, the First Day. The Babylonians had a word for all these actions, a word very much like tzabu (hosts, troops): tzubbum ("to look at something from a distance; to carry out, execute properly, according to plan"--John Huehnergard, A Grammar of Akkadian, 519-20). My point, by means of wordplay, is that our English "looked upon" should be read as compactly, as poetically as possible. To look upon the wide expanse of heaven and its hosts of seraphim is to plan for them: it is the First Day of the Plan of Happiness--and what a beautiful day that would be! All the sons of God sang for joy. The Lord of Hosts is the Lord of the First Day--the day of the mustering of the hosts, that is, the Day of the Mustered Ones, in glorious though Solemn Assembly (Hebrew tz-b-'-t). "Call your Solemn Assembly," says the Lord, even as I have called Mine: "on earth as it is in heaven."
We're already deep into the Pearl of Great Price, so let's move at once to Facsimile 2. There, too, we see "God sitting upon His throne" and revealing his light and knowledge "through the heavens." At center, we find what the Prophet Joseph calls the grand, governing star Kolob, the "first creation," or, in other words, "lord of the first day." Kolob stands nearest of all created things to the throne of God, and students notably associate the title Lord of Sabaoth with the enthronement of God, of which the Mercy Seat on the Ark of the Covenant is symbolic (William F. Albright, Frank Moore Cross). Describing Facsimile 2, Hugh Nibley concludes: "The theme of the hypocephalus is the creation drama" (Hugh Nibley and Michael Rhodes, One Eternal Round, 137).
"God sitting upon His Throne" and surrounded by his assembled hosts (his Sabaoth), announces, or calls forth the First Day. It is also the Day of the Grand Council in Heaven, the heavenly panegyris or Solemn Assembly. We again recall how Section 95:7 begins by referring to the Solemn Assembly, what in Hebrew is called 'atzarah (lit. "cessation of work," and thus, following call of trump and preparatory fasting, "festive assembly") or eidah (assemblage, gathering = Koehler-Baumgartner Lexicon) and, in Greek, the panegyris (Hebrews 12:23: "the general assembly"). The Greek lexicon yields: pas, aguris/agora, "all, assembly or council," that is, "an assembly of a whole nation, a high festival, a solemn assembly" (Liddell-Scott Lexicon). You recall I once asked Hugh Nibley whether Facsimile 2 had reference to the Great Council of Heaven. "Yes," he answered directly--and many other things:
"The great year-rite in one form or another seems to be found throughout the ancient world. What we are talking about is what the Greeks call the panegyris, the great assembly of the entire race to participate in solemn rites essential to the continuance of its corporate well-being. . . .At hundreds of holy shrines, each believed to mark the exact center of the universe and represented as the point at which the four quarters of the earth converged---'the navel of the earth'--one might have seen assembled at the New Year---the moment of creation, the beginning and ending of time--vast concourses of people, each thought to represent the entire human race in the presence of all its ancestors and gods" (One Eternal Round, 103-4). The ceremonies "at the hierocentric center" become "the exact reflection" "of what goes on in heaven" (106-7).
And an "exact reflection" of the places in the Doctrine and Covenants!
The "timing" marks "the ending of one cycle and the beginning of the next," as "the sun begins a new life every year at the winter solstice" (One Eternal Round, 108); "The whole universe and all that is in it must be 'jump-started' for a new round of existence" (109); and it is Facsimile 2 that "touches on the New Year's rites at many points" (130). According to Hugh Nibley, the Book of Abraham opens with a retelling of the Year-Rite, the scenario that matches all three facsimiles from altar to coronation.
The expression Lord of Sabaoth thus marks the First Day, the "moment of creation," of renewal in the on-going cycles of existence: to Latter-day Saints not the ultimate beginning but an again-beginning order of creation, "for the works of God continue"; "My works never cease."
The First Day is thus both end and beginning. The Assembly always comes at the end of the festival, and here we have the end of our first primordial childhood and the beginning of a fresh plan of happiness. The Doctrine and Covenants yields a glimpse of the panegyris or Solemn Assembly, the Seraphic Sabaoth that encircle the Throne at Center of the Universe--and that's also what we see depicted on Facsimile 2: the starry hosts encircling the Center, all standing in hierarchic order, as planned from the beginning "before the world was." These are the Ogdoad, the Council of Eight Souls or Powers--and the Prophet associates them with stars (for the Ogdoad, see Nibley and Rhodes, One Eternal Round). We also see depicted therein, in the lower panel that represents solsticial North, the Hathor Cow (mother of the Sun, or feminine sun), the Four Quarters of the Earth, as also the four elements of life and creation, and the Lotus-Lion-Lam cryptogram (s-m-s = to cause to be born; or come into existence; smsw = the Eldest) that works renewal. It is both the Birthday of the Sun and the day of coronation and royal endowment of power. Kolob, near the throne of God, sits surrounded by the hierarchy of the wide expanse of eternity, as that describes a circle or sphere. Here are the stars; here, the encircling seraphic hosts praising God with uplifted hymning hands at the morning of the world, the beginning and the end. "It's a hologram," Brother Nibley went on to tell me that day in chapel.
Why labor such an obscure theme? It burdens the scriptures. Considering the apocalyptic literature on Abraham, now being taken seriously for the first time, Nibley asks:
"Why such an obsession with the year-rite? It is because Abraham is a prime example of the tradition in literature, while Joseph Smith, long before the phenomenon emerged, provided us with at least five splendid examples of the great assembly. There is the celebration before the throne of God (1 Nephi 1:8-11); then there is the gathering of the righteous posterity of Adam at Adam-ondi-Ahman just before Adam's death (Doctrine and Covenants 107:53); the future gathering of the righteous at Adam-ondi-Ahman before the second coming of the Savior (Doctrine and Covenants 116:1); and the gathering at the temple after Christ's resurrection (3 Nephi 11-26). But the most striking of all is the coronation of King Mosiah, which we are explicitly told took place at the beginning of a new age," One Eternal Round, 167.
To this list, Hugh Nibley now adds the Book of Abraham (coherently assembling all three of the accompanying facsimiles), and shall we not then also include the Prophet Joseph's many other teachings about the Grand Council in Heaven, a description of which clearly appears in Doctrine and Covenants 38:1 and 95:7? These are events heralding a spiritual rebirth and a "renewing of their bodies" (Doctrine and Covenants 84) as well, for: "It was the universal birthday, also the day of creation," One Eternal Round, 168, and resurrection, the beginning and the end.
Hugh Nibley frequently compared the rescuing visit of Christ to the Nephites with the Descensus motif ("Christ among the Ruins," Ensign, July 1983). (The first time I ever saw or talked to him, was the occasion this very talk in Long Beach, California.) And President Joseph F. Smith saw in vision "gathered together in one place an innumerable company of the spirits of the just"; "all these. . . mingled in the vast assembly"--then "the Son of God appeared, declaring liberty to the captives" (Doctrine and Covenants 138: 12, 16, 18, 49; see Isaiah 61:1). Professor James A. Sanders, ever sensitive to how one prophet quotes another, often observed to his students at Claremont College how Isaiah's "declaring liberty to the captives" refers to the epoch-marking celebration of Jubilees, a new beginning. Now we have a modern prophet quoting from Isaiah's Messianic verses; and, by so doing, opening to our view Christ's Descensus as a Jubilee Panegyris, even the jubilee trump of resurrection.
http://www.lds.org/scriptures/dc-testament/dc/138?lang=eng
The scriptures of the restoration are telling us something again and again, and by means of various media and using a variety of titles and phraseology. The scriptures teach that the power of creation is awesome and indeed purposely beautiful, and they even bring us directly into the picture as participants (Nibley was keen on that idea). We join with God in the work of creation. We are Sabaoth--the Seraphic Sabaoth that "at His bidding post." In the Explanation of Facsimile 2, given by the Prophet Joseph Smith, God shares His power, or priesthood blessings with a succession of named patriarchs, Adam, Seth, Noah, Melchizedek, Abraham, and thence with their children. Fittingly, the four heads of the Kolob figure, say all who have studied the hypocephali, represent the first four divine kings, the first patriarchal dynasty, of Ancient Egypt. Kolob, "as the great, governing star," is exactly that--an embodiment, says Donald Redford, of the nationhood of Egypt. The iconography of the hypocephalus thus fits the prophetic Explanation.
This priesthood bond is the Abrahamic covenant. President Lorenzo Snow long pondered the scripture: "Behold, I am from above, and my power lieth beneath. I am over all, and through all, and search all things" (Doctrine and Covenants 63:59; Conference Reports). This Latter-day Prophet came to perceive that God's power lay below in and through the power of His priesthood hosts on earth. Through this divine priesthood army or Sabaoth or Baneemy ("my sons"--another semiotic "construct" of archaic feel), God will finally subject all things to himself: "And the day cometh that all things shall be subject unto me" (63:59), in perfect harmony and cooperation, after the pattern of the stars, after the music of the spheres.
"Behold, I am Alpha and Omega, even Jesus Christ" (63:60).
http://www.lds.org/scriptures/dc-testament/dc/63?lang=eng
Some years ago at UCLA, I examined the Gardner Library copy of Brother Nibley's dissertation, "The Roman Games as the Survival of an Archaic Year-Cult" (University of California, Berkeley, Dec. 1938). It's all about the ancient panegyris at the Year-Rite. Whether the Romans, Greeks, Persians, Hopi, Aztecs, Egyptians, or Abraham, whether Heliopolis or Stonehenge, Hugh Nibley never dropped the Year-Rite; he was always adding to his tally of knowledge about it and tying it in with all his work on the Restoration. I count eight decades of study on the Year-Rite. No wonder One Eternal Round sums things up in such concise language. Other students have written on the theme--Mircea Eliade for instance--but Nibley had both priority and control of languages and sources--and, thus, comprehensiveness. And what he accumulates still makes for new scholarship in the 21st Century.
And notice there's no mysticism in any of it: no bells, no incense, no inward absorption into the divine. It's all historical research. His argument perforce ranges over ideas borrowed by the mystics, and certainly Nibley had much to say about mystery: religious protocols, the lodge, the temple. But if there was one thing Hugh Nibley eschewed it was mysticism. I heard him voice this dislike time and again. To him, all systems of mysticism stand exactly opposite to what Facsimile 2 conveys and to what all modern and ancient revelation teaches. Mysticism and Mormonism have nothing in common. Panegyris is history, folks.
As the title of Hugh Nibley's last book reminds us, and as the Book of Mormon states in triplicate, God's "course is one eternal round" (Alma 7:20; 1 Nephi 10:19; Alma 37:12; Doctrine and Covenants 3:2; 35:1). The title refers to Facsimile 2, the round drawing on papyrus, the book's ostensible subject, but Nibley is reaching for something more--he is reaching into eternity. The facsimile is just that: a simile or mirror of God's continuing creative power, a work to which we are all invited. This coming-together party to participate in eternal creation, this assembly or panegyris, constitutes the burden of Hugh Nibley's ministry. We see Creation as Celebration.
Creation as Celebration as One Historical Round: "In ancient Egypt," notes Erik Hornung, "history was a religious drama in which all of humanity participated. . . From the earliest annals on, the elaborate festivals and their celebration by the king were recorded as historic events. Thus we might characterize the ancient Egyptian sense of history with the phrase 'history as celebration.'" "The ceremonial character of history" gyrates according to a "basic pattern" set at the first festive all-gathering at the first royal coronation (Erik Hornung, Idea into Image, 187). The three facsimiles of the Book of Abraham, taken together, capture that moment or "basic pattern" even better than the annals Hornung cites:
"And, happy melodist, unwearied,
For ever piping songs for ever new;"
The vital teaching about One Eternal Round turns up (or comes round) everywhere in the scriptures, for "the works of God continue." The Eternal Round and the Plan of Happiness describe one and the same "work and glory"--"to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man." For the Latter-day Saints, God is not the Creator, past tense, but the Creative: "for my works never cease" (2 Nephi; cf. Truman Madsen).
We end with the Divine Name I AM THAT I AM. What does the Hebrew tell us? The name is open-ended, an eternal going-around. In another Sunday School class, Hugh Nibley sat listening. In the Hebrew, our teacher (Jeff Lindsay) explained, the Name more fully expresses I SHALL BE WHAT I SHALL BE. "Is that right, Brother Nibley"? he asked. Brother Nibley nodded with gusto: "Yes!"
We glimpse Kolob, among the Sabaoth, as "the grand governing star," early to rise, "first in time," on the first day, even the gathering sunrise coronation of the earth, our eternal home. The renewed earth stands "crowned with glory, even with the presence of God the Father" (Doctrine and Covenants 88:19). In Creation as Panegyris we see God's work and glory for "the immortality and eternal life of man," for Adam redeemed: I SHALL BECOME FOR YOU WHAT I SHALL BECOME. And in that Name, I hear Jehovah saying to all Israel that--"Look and behold the condescension of God!"--He will become the Messiah and save His people "for ever, even for ever and ever" (Daniel 7:18--a panegyris text; 1 Nephi 11:26).
NOTES
A detailed overview of the name "Lord of Sabaoth" is to be found is Maire Byrne, The Names of God in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The quotes from Frank Moore Cross and Choon Seow come from this book, and someday I will even add the correct page numbers.
LDS commentary: Joseph Fielding McConkie and Craig J. Ostler, Revelations of the Restoration: A Commentary of the Doctrine and Covenants and Other Modern Revelations (2000). The authors note the tie between 95:7, 38:1, and 45:1.
The article to read is Dana M. Pike's "Biblical Words You Already Know and Why They are Important," in By Study and By Faith: Selections From the Religious Educator, Richard Neitzel Holzapfel, Kent P. Jackson (eds) (Provo, 2009), 183-201.
Robert Boyle's Web page also has a concise essay posted on this topic.
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Monday, October 10, 2011
Who can stand before Shiz? Inana: She sweepeth the earth before her! (Ether's Song of Death on the Plain--and America's Political Future)
Final Tally
Mighty Men versus Coriantumr
Shared versus Coriantumr
Gilead versus Coriantumr
Lib versus Coriantumr
Shiz versus Coriantumr
All down: Coriantumr versus Nobody
Coriantumr Loses
Because Jared and his brother "came forth" "from the great tower" (Ether 1:33), we turn to the records of ancient Mesopotamia to elucidate the idiom and themes of the Jaredite Book of Ether.
http://www.lds.org/scriptures/bofm/ether?lang=eng.
Unswerving Shiz, the Book of Mormon's most terrifying character, has nothing on the Sumerian goddess, Inana, as described by earth's first named poet, the High Priestess Enheduanna, daughter of Sargon of Agade. A comparison of the poetic language of Ether, prophet-historian of the Jaredites, to the poetry attributed to Enheduanna (a Mesopotamian contemporary of Classical Jaredite civilization) reveals the closest parallels. But why should we make Shiz out to be more terrible than relentless Coriantumr--the ultimate victor, earth's ultimate loser? Let's move toward the bitterest end and compare notes as we go.
He Sweepeth the Earth Before Him!
Now the name of the brother of Lib was called Shiz. And it came to pass that Shiz pursued after Coriantumr, and he did overthrow many cities, and he did slay both women and children, and he did burn the cities.
And there went a fear of Shiz throughout all the land; yea, a cry went forth throughout the land—Who can stand before the army of Shiz? Behold, he sweepeth the earth before him! (Ether 14:17-18; and cf. verse 27).
And we now turn to the Hymn to Inana (Inana C), in the first portion of which, says Professor Sjoberg, "any sign of mercy and love is absent." Moroni, the editor of Ether, arrives at the same conclusion in Ether 12:33-37.
(ll. 11-17) At her loud cries, the gods of the Land become scared. Her roaring makes the Anuna gods tremble like a solitary reed. At her rumbling, they hide all together. Without Inana great An makes no decisions, and Enlil determines no destinies. Who opposes the mistress who raises her head and is supreme over the mountains? Wherever she ……, cities become ruin mounds and haunted places, and shrines become waste land. When her wrath makes people tremble, the burning sensation and the distress she causes are like an ulu demon ensnaring a man.
The editors of a new anthology conclude in some surprise: "The tone of the hymn is so emphatic as to Inana's superiority to all other gods that the composition can only have issued from a religious milieu fanatically devoted to her cult," The Literature of Ancient Sumer, 93. Inana brooks no rivals--not even "the supreme god An" or "the great god Enlil." The word to note is fanatical. Americans are starting to learn the word also.
Raining Blazing Fire
Hymn to Inana (Inana C):
(l. 36) "Setting on fire, in the high plain" (izi = fire; ra = to set; an = high; edin = plain)--the words of the hymn recall the Jaredite Battle of the Plains of Agosh and the burning of the cities by the army of Shiz.
Another hymn, The Exaltation of Inana (Inana B), evoking both flood and fire, echoes Ether's idiom of "throughout all the land"; "throughout the land"; "sweepeth the earth":
(l. 11) As a flood descending upon? these foreign lands.
(amaru kur.bi.ta ed.e: amaru = flood; kur = foreign lands)
(l. 13) Raining blazing fire down upon the land.
(izi barbar.ra kalam.e sheg.a)
(izi = fire; bar = to burn; a = nominalizing particle ~ burning fire; kalam, land; e = upon; sheg = to rain ~ participle)
(l. 18) Beloved of Enlil, you have made awesome terror weigh upon the Land.
(kalam.a = land; on)
Who Can Stand?
Both Inana and Shiz call forth the stunned query "Who can stand"? "Who rivals her?"
The Sumerian wording in Inana C (l. 15) merits a close look: innin (lady) sag (head) ila (raises), kur.ra (mountain + to the) abdirig (superior); aba (who) sag (head) mungaga (gaga ~ gar = to place). Who can place his head in opposition to the lady who raises her head in superiority to the very mountains?
For the answer--which also embraces the terrible interrogative Who?--we turn to lines 53-4 of the same hymn: "No one":
No one can oppose her murderous battle -- who rivals her? No one can look at her fierce fighting, the speeding carnage.
The Sumerian interrogative aba, marking terrible supremacy--fanatical supremacy--packs rhetorical force: Aba munabsigge? Who can be put up (sig) against (her)? The parallel "Who can stand against the army of Shiz?" takes away the breath. We meet the same cultural milieu in both Ether and Enheduanna. The Prophet Joseph Smith did not borrow this rhetoric of violent desperation from the comparatively tame Old Testament.
In a tigi to Inana (Inana E) we again find answer to the rhetorical question "Who can stand?"
(l. 30) Lady whom no one can withstand in battle, great daughter of Suen who rises in heaven and inspires terror.
(nin me.n.a nugub.a)
(nin = lady; me.n.a =battle, with locative a= in; nu = not; gub = to stand = one cannot stand against)
Exaltation of Inana (Inana B)
(l. 26) In the van of battle [lit. igi me.ta = the eye of battle], all is struck down before you.
The Swift and Speedy Game
Now back to Ether and its terrible swift sweeping:
And so great and lasting had been the war, and so long had been the scene of bloodshed and carnage, that the whole face of the land was covered with the bodies of the dead.
And so swift and speedy was the war that there was none left to bury the dead, but they did march forth from the shedding of blood to the shedding of blood, leaving the bodies of both men, women, and children strewed upon the face of the land, to become a prey to the worms of the flesh (Ether 14: 21-2).
Exaltation of Inana (Inana B)
(l. 28) You charge forward like a charging storm.
Hymn to Inana (Inana C)
(ll. 18-21) She stirs confusion and chaos against those who are disobedient to her, speeding carnage and inciting the devastating flood, clothed in terrifying radiance. It is her game to speed conflict and battle, untiring, strapping on her sandals. Clothed (?) in a furious storm, a whirlwind.
Game? The terrifying word is ene. The idioms for speeding carnage and to speed conflict and battle also eerily echo Ether. We read: (l. 19) gisgisla sulsul (gisla = battle; sulsul =to hasten); (l. 20) shenshen me hab sar akd.e (shenshen = combat; me = battle; hub =foot; sar = run; ak.e = to do/done), that is "battle done at a run." ("And for fun!")
And what natural force sweeps speedy battle? We find three tossed together--at a run: devastating flood, furious storm, whirlwind. Like some terrible broom maker, nature twists strands of maruru (tempest = flood), ud (storm), and dalhamun (duststorm). Dalhamun blows "chaos" and "confusion": it signifies an end to order (John Halloran's Lexicon of Sumerian). All of which compels us to compare the choice of the translators of Inana C (l.55) in describing the tempestuous force of the collected waters as "sweeping"--would they have had any other choice for a force that "leave[s] not a rack behind"?--to the same imagery describing Shiz in the Book of Ether: He sweepeth the earth before him!
(l.55) Engulfing? water, raging [lit. angry], sweeping [lit. ur-ur = collecting again and again? and thus overwhelming] over the earth, she leaves nothing behind [nijnam nudada = anything at all, she not leaves behind].
Better news comes from a prophecy of Enoch:
"And righteousness and truth will I cause to sweep the earth as with a flood" (Moses 7:62), a prophecy which foretells the coming forth of the Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ--including the unavoidable Book of Ether--a sweeping warning to our generation! "And this cometh unto you, O ye Gentiles," that ye may not "be swept off when the fulness of his wrath shall come" (Ether 2:11; 9).
On the Wide and Silent Plain
Things only get worse in Ether 15. And here the parallels with Enheduanna, with her oddly beautiful turns of phrase--or is it one continual round of howlings?--begin to startle:
Exaltation of Inana (Inana B)
(ll. 24-5) Because of you, the threshold of tears is opened, and people walk along the path of the house of great lamentation.
Ether 15:
And it came to pass that when they were all gathered together, every one to the army which he would, with their wives and their children—both men, women and children being armed with weapons of war, having shields, and breastplates, and head-plates, and being clothed after the manner of war—they did march forth one against another to battle; and they fought all that day, and conquered not.
And it came to pass that when it was night they were weary, and retired to their camps; and after they had retired to their camps they took up a howling and a lamentation for the loss of the slain of their people; and so great were their cries, their howlings and lamentations, that they did rend the air exceedingly.
And it came to pass that on the morrow they did go again to battle, and great and terrible was that day; nevertheless, they conquered not, and when the night came again they did rend the air with their cries, and their howlings, and their mournings, for the loss of the slain of their people (Ether 15:15-17).
Hymn to Inana (Inana C)
(ll. 49-55) On the wide and silent plain, darkening the bright daylight, she turns midday into darkness. People look upon each other in anger, they look for combat. Their shouting disturbs the plain, it weighs on the pasture and the waste land. Her howling is like Iškur's [the storm god] and makes the flesh of all the lands tremble. No one can oppose her murderous battle -- who rivals her? No one can look at her fierce fighting, the speeding carnage. Engulfing (?) water, raging, sweeping over the earth, she leaves nothing behind.
The place merits a closer look:
On the wide and silent plain
darkening the bright daylight,
she turns midday into darkness.
People look upon each other in anger,
they look for combat.
The wide and silent plain evokes the settings of Coriantumr's great battles, even as it also recalls Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach" (ll. 35-37):
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
And it came to pass that Coriantumr was exceedingly angry with Shared, and he went against him with his armies to battle; and they did meet in great anger, and they did meet in the valley of Gilgal; and the battle became exceedingly sore.
And it came to pass that Shared fought against him for the space of three days. And it came to pass that Coriantumr beat him, and did pursue him until he came to the plains of Heshlon.
And it came to pass that Shared gave him battle again upon the plains (Ether 13:27-29: thence back to Gilgal).
And it came to pass that Lib did smite the army of Coriantumr, that they fled again[!] to the wilderness of Akish. And it came to pass that Lib did pursue him until he came to the plains of Agosh. . . And when he had come to the plains of Agosh he give battle unto Lib (Ether 14:14-5).
And on the morrow they fought even until the night came. And when the night came they were drunken with anger, even as a man who is drunken with wine; and they slept again upon their swords (Ether 15:22).
Around and again the game wheels from Gilgal to Gilgal, Gog and Magog, Akish, Agosh (Semitic, glgl ~ gll, to be round, go round).
The turns of phrase, as of battle, haunt: lu-u lu-ra (man to [ra] man) igi mu-un-suh-re (eye + tear out; that is, they stare intently); inbir igi binduru (they look for inbir, they look for combat, lit. the eye spreads for combat). "Battle again upon the plains. . ."
The silent plain, the sullen stares, the dilated pupils--the berserker moment--and all is broken by the shouts, the cries, and then the howl, then the mournful drum:
Exaltation of Inana (Inana B)
(l. 33) With the lamenting balag drum a lament is struck up.
(bala[n]g anirata ilu imdabe)
(bala[n]g; anir.a.ta: anir = lament; a=genitive; ta = with; ilu = (sad) song; imdab.e: dug = to say ~ chant)
With the thump of the tambor, there tempts the return of the human--but it's too late.
Drums throb; howlings: Let us revisit the words in Inana C and glimpse the unfathomable workings of translation:
(l. 51) gu ri-a-ta edin-ta (gu = voice; ri = to direct), that is, a "directed voice"--so that's a shout? It seems so. Again (l. 52): sheg gi-a-ni ishkur-gin (sheg = loud noise; gi = to return, send back; -ani = her; ishkur.gin = like the storm god Ishkur), which could read: She echoes back a loud noise like that of the Storm god. But if Enheduanna were an English major, how would she translate sheg? Just as do the editors of Oxford's Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature. After all, storms howl: She howls in answer like the howling of Stormwind.
We recall the words of the Prophet Abinadi to the Lord's people--there are no favorites, none spared--the people first fated to discover the ruins of the Jaredites, including the ominous twenty-four plates left behind to reveal "the sad tale": "And it shall come to pass that I will smite this my people with sore afflictions, yea, with famine and with pestilence; and I will cause that they shall howl all the day long" (Mosiah 12:4; "sad tale"--from record of Zeniff in the same book).
The Path to the House of Lamentation
He saw that there had been slain by the sword already nearly two millions of his people, and he began to sorrow in his heart; yea, there had been slain two millions of mighty men, and also their wives and their children (Ether 15:2).
And it came to pass that the people repented not of their iniquity; and the people of Coriantumr were stirred up to anger against the people of Shiz; and the people of Shiz were stirred up to anger against the people of Coriantumr; wherefore, the people of Shiz did give battle unto the people of Coriantumr (Ether 15:6).
Hymn to Inana (Inana C)
(ll. 39-48) …… she performs a song. This song …… its established plan, weeping, the food and milk of death. Whoever eats …… Inana's food and milk of death will not last. Gall will give a burning pain to those she gives it to eat, …… in their mouth ……. In her joyful heart she performs the song of death on the plain. She performs the song of her heart. She washes their weapons with blood and gore, ……. Axes smash heads, spears penetrate and maces are covered in blood. Their evil mouths …… the warriors ……. On their first offerings she pours blood, filling them with death.
In Ether 15 Inanna again "performs the song of her heart" washing "their weapons with blood and gore...... Axes smash heads, spears penetrate and maces are covered in blood":
The Song of Death on the Plain
And it came to pass that they fought all that day, and when the night came they slept upon their swords.
And on the morrow they fought even until the night came.
And when the night came they were drunken with anger, even as a man who is drunken with wine; and they slept again upon their swords (Ether 15: 20-22).
And...and...and (repeated five times). And it came to pass that eventually nothing came to pass; Lincoln's "awful arithmetic" has summed its sum.
She Performs the Song of Her Heart
Hymn to Inana (Inana C)
(ll. 30-1) She abases those whom she despises. The mistress, an eagle that lets no one escape.
Wherefore, he did pursue them, and on the morrow he did overtake them; and they fought again with the sword. And it came to pass that when they had all fallen by the sword, save it were Coriantumr and Shiz, behold Shiz had fainted with the loss of blood.
And it came to pass that when Coriantumr had leaned upon his sword, that he rested a little, he smote off the head of Shiz.
And it came to pass that after he had smitten off the head of Shiz, that Shiz raised up on his hands and fell; and after that he had struggled for breath, he died.
And it came to pass that Coriantumr fell to the earth, and became as if he had no life (Ether 15: 29-32).
The rest is silence; for who remains to strike the sad song of the balang? who to howl lament?
A Warning
The songs of Inana tumble out of time. Of what piquancy are they today? The timeless wars of Mesopotamia: Do they really have any anything to say about our wars today? even our Mesopotamian wars? The Tigris and the Euphrates change course; kingdoms fall; kingdoms rise. There is nothing new under the sun.
Except the Book of Mormon, that is. Ether presents us with a new story, but we write our own ending. The Gog-and-Magog battling of Coriantumr and Shiz comes as a warning to America today. It comes as a warning against our paralyzing anger, our drunken refusal to call a halt, to compromise. We sleep in anger and rise to march. Forget the hungry generations. The Valley of Gilgal and the Wilderness of Akish, Agosh and Ramah, the edin and the hill: these are American places, as yet unchanged, ever awaiting--and just around the corner.
We write our own ending.
Notes
Transliterations and translations of the hymns to Inana may be found on the online resource:
Black, J.A., Cunningham, G., Ebeling, J., Flückiger-Hawker, E., Robson, E., Taylor, J., and Zólyomi, G., The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature (http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/), Oxford 1998–2006.
Concise introductions to The Exaltation of Inana (Inana B) and a Hymn to Inana (Inana C), including discussion of the thorny matters of attribution and dating, may be found in Jeremy Black, Graham Cunningham, Eleanor Robson, and Gabor Zolyomi, The Literature of Ancient Sumer (Oxford, 2004), 92-9 (Hymn to Inana) and 315-20 (Exaltation of Inana).
I have also consulted Ake W. Sjoberg, "in-nin sa-gur4-ra: A Hymn to the Goddess Inanna by the en-Priestess Enheduanna," Zeitschrift fur Assyriologie 65 (1975), 161-253. The quotation "Any sign of mercy and love is absent," is found on p. 162.
Analysis of Sumerian Words:
"There is no dictionary of the Sumerian language": Such is the bad news which greets every student of Sumerian. The good news is that it is great fun to study a language without a dictionary--witness the success of the Rosetta Stone series. After a few seminars, (a little) vocabulary sinks in. It therefore came as a surprise to find English "translations" instantaneously appear over the highlighted words of the transliterated texts in the ETCSL. Some of these translations are old hat, most new; I'll take them all.
Copyright 2011 by Val Hinckley Sederholm
Mighty Men versus Coriantumr
Shared versus Coriantumr
Gilead versus Coriantumr
Lib versus Coriantumr
Shiz versus Coriantumr
All down: Coriantumr versus Nobody
Coriantumr Loses
Because Jared and his brother "came forth" "from the great tower" (Ether 1:33), we turn to the records of ancient Mesopotamia to elucidate the idiom and themes of the Jaredite Book of Ether.
http://www.lds.org/scriptures/bofm/ether?lang=eng.
Unswerving Shiz, the Book of Mormon's most terrifying character, has nothing on the Sumerian goddess, Inana, as described by earth's first named poet, the High Priestess Enheduanna, daughter of Sargon of Agade. A comparison of the poetic language of Ether, prophet-historian of the Jaredites, to the poetry attributed to Enheduanna (a Mesopotamian contemporary of Classical Jaredite civilization) reveals the closest parallels. But why should we make Shiz out to be more terrible than relentless Coriantumr--the ultimate victor, earth's ultimate loser? Let's move toward the bitterest end and compare notes as we go.
He Sweepeth the Earth Before Him!
Now the name of the brother of Lib was called Shiz. And it came to pass that Shiz pursued after Coriantumr, and he did overthrow many cities, and he did slay both women and children, and he did burn the cities.
And there went a fear of Shiz throughout all the land; yea, a cry went forth throughout the land—Who can stand before the army of Shiz? Behold, he sweepeth the earth before him! (Ether 14:17-18; and cf. verse 27).
And we now turn to the Hymn to Inana (Inana C), in the first portion of which, says Professor Sjoberg, "any sign of mercy and love is absent." Moroni, the editor of Ether, arrives at the same conclusion in Ether 12:33-37.
(ll. 11-17) At her loud cries, the gods of the Land become scared. Her roaring makes the Anuna gods tremble like a solitary reed. At her rumbling, they hide all together. Without Inana great An makes no decisions, and Enlil determines no destinies. Who opposes the mistress who raises her head and is supreme over the mountains? Wherever she ……, cities become ruin mounds and haunted places, and shrines become waste land. When her wrath makes people tremble, the burning sensation and the distress she causes are like an ulu demon ensnaring a man.
The editors of a new anthology conclude in some surprise: "The tone of the hymn is so emphatic as to Inana's superiority to all other gods that the composition can only have issued from a religious milieu fanatically devoted to her cult," The Literature of Ancient Sumer, 93. Inana brooks no rivals--not even "the supreme god An" or "the great god Enlil." The word to note is fanatical. Americans are starting to learn the word also.
Raining Blazing Fire
Hymn to Inana (Inana C):
(l. 36) "Setting on fire, in the high plain" (izi = fire; ra = to set; an = high; edin = plain)--the words of the hymn recall the Jaredite Battle of the Plains of Agosh and the burning of the cities by the army of Shiz.
Another hymn, The Exaltation of Inana (Inana B), evoking both flood and fire, echoes Ether's idiom of "throughout all the land"; "throughout the land"; "sweepeth the earth":
(l. 11) As a flood descending upon? these foreign lands.
(amaru kur.bi.ta ed.e: amaru = flood; kur = foreign lands)
(l. 13) Raining blazing fire down upon the land.
(izi barbar.ra kalam.e sheg.a)
(izi = fire; bar = to burn; a = nominalizing particle ~ burning fire; kalam, land; e = upon; sheg = to rain ~ participle)
(l. 18) Beloved of Enlil, you have made awesome terror weigh upon the Land.
(kalam.a = land; on)
Who Can Stand?
Both Inana and Shiz call forth the stunned query "Who can stand"? "Who rivals her?"
The Sumerian wording in Inana C (l. 15) merits a close look: innin (lady) sag (head) ila (raises), kur.ra (mountain + to the) abdirig (superior); aba (who) sag (head) mungaga (gaga ~ gar = to place). Who can place his head in opposition to the lady who raises her head in superiority to the very mountains?
For the answer--which also embraces the terrible interrogative Who?--we turn to lines 53-4 of the same hymn: "No one":
No one can oppose her murderous battle -- who rivals her? No one can look at her fierce fighting, the speeding carnage.
The Sumerian interrogative aba, marking terrible supremacy--fanatical supremacy--packs rhetorical force: Aba munabsigge? Who can be put up (sig) against (her)? The parallel "Who can stand against the army of Shiz?" takes away the breath. We meet the same cultural milieu in both Ether and Enheduanna. The Prophet Joseph Smith did not borrow this rhetoric of violent desperation from the comparatively tame Old Testament.
In a tigi to Inana (Inana E) we again find answer to the rhetorical question "Who can stand?"
(l. 30) Lady whom no one can withstand in battle, great daughter of Suen who rises in heaven and inspires terror.
(nin me.n.a nugub.a)
(nin = lady; me.n.a =battle, with locative a= in; nu = not; gub = to stand = one cannot stand against)
Exaltation of Inana (Inana B)
(l. 26) In the van of battle [lit. igi me.ta = the eye of battle], all is struck down before you.
The Swift and Speedy Game
Now back to Ether and its terrible swift sweeping:
And so great and lasting had been the war, and so long had been the scene of bloodshed and carnage, that the whole face of the land was covered with the bodies of the dead.
And so swift and speedy was the war that there was none left to bury the dead, but they did march forth from the shedding of blood to the shedding of blood, leaving the bodies of both men, women, and children strewed upon the face of the land, to become a prey to the worms of the flesh (Ether 14: 21-2).
Exaltation of Inana (Inana B)
(l. 28) You charge forward like a charging storm.
Hymn to Inana (Inana C)
(ll. 18-21) She stirs confusion and chaos against those who are disobedient to her, speeding carnage and inciting the devastating flood, clothed in terrifying radiance. It is her game to speed conflict and battle, untiring, strapping on her sandals. Clothed (?) in a furious storm, a whirlwind.
Game? The terrifying word is ene. The idioms for speeding carnage and to speed conflict and battle also eerily echo Ether. We read: (l. 19) gisgisla sulsul (gisla = battle; sulsul =to hasten); (l. 20) shenshen me hab sar akd.e (shenshen = combat; me = battle; hub =foot; sar = run; ak.e = to do/done), that is "battle done at a run." ("And for fun!")
And what natural force sweeps speedy battle? We find three tossed together--at a run: devastating flood, furious storm, whirlwind. Like some terrible broom maker, nature twists strands of maruru (tempest = flood), ud (storm), and dalhamun (duststorm). Dalhamun blows "chaos" and "confusion": it signifies an end to order (John Halloran's Lexicon of Sumerian). All of which compels us to compare the choice of the translators of Inana C (l.55) in describing the tempestuous force of the collected waters as "sweeping"--would they have had any other choice for a force that "leave[s] not a rack behind"?--to the same imagery describing Shiz in the Book of Ether: He sweepeth the earth before him!
(l.55) Engulfing? water, raging [lit. angry], sweeping [lit. ur-ur = collecting again and again? and thus overwhelming] over the earth, she leaves nothing behind [nijnam nudada = anything at all, she not leaves behind].
Better news comes from a prophecy of Enoch:
"And righteousness and truth will I cause to sweep the earth as with a flood" (Moses 7:62), a prophecy which foretells the coming forth of the Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ--including the unavoidable Book of Ether--a sweeping warning to our generation! "And this cometh unto you, O ye Gentiles," that ye may not "be swept off when the fulness of his wrath shall come" (Ether 2:11; 9).
On the Wide and Silent Plain
Things only get worse in Ether 15. And here the parallels with Enheduanna, with her oddly beautiful turns of phrase--or is it one continual round of howlings?--begin to startle:
Exaltation of Inana (Inana B)
(ll. 24-5) Because of you, the threshold of tears is opened, and people walk along the path of the house of great lamentation.
Ether 15:
And it came to pass that when they were all gathered together, every one to the army which he would, with their wives and their children—both men, women and children being armed with weapons of war, having shields, and breastplates, and head-plates, and being clothed after the manner of war—they did march forth one against another to battle; and they fought all that day, and conquered not.
And it came to pass that when it was night they were weary, and retired to their camps; and after they had retired to their camps they took up a howling and a lamentation for the loss of the slain of their people; and so great were their cries, their howlings and lamentations, that they did rend the air exceedingly.
And it came to pass that on the morrow they did go again to battle, and great and terrible was that day; nevertheless, they conquered not, and when the night came again they did rend the air with their cries, and their howlings, and their mournings, for the loss of the slain of their people (Ether 15:15-17).
Hymn to Inana (Inana C)
(ll. 49-55) On the wide and silent plain, darkening the bright daylight, she turns midday into darkness. People look upon each other in anger, they look for combat. Their shouting disturbs the plain, it weighs on the pasture and the waste land. Her howling is like Iškur's [the storm god] and makes the flesh of all the lands tremble. No one can oppose her murderous battle -- who rivals her? No one can look at her fierce fighting, the speeding carnage. Engulfing (?) water, raging, sweeping over the earth, she leaves nothing behind.
The place merits a closer look:
On the wide and silent plain
darkening the bright daylight,
she turns midday into darkness.
People look upon each other in anger,
they look for combat.
The wide and silent plain evokes the settings of Coriantumr's great battles, even as it also recalls Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach" (ll. 35-37):
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
And it came to pass that Coriantumr was exceedingly angry with Shared, and he went against him with his armies to battle; and they did meet in great anger, and they did meet in the valley of Gilgal; and the battle became exceedingly sore.
And it came to pass that Shared fought against him for the space of three days. And it came to pass that Coriantumr beat him, and did pursue him until he came to the plains of Heshlon.
And it came to pass that Shared gave him battle again upon the plains (Ether 13:27-29: thence back to Gilgal).
And it came to pass that Lib did smite the army of Coriantumr, that they fled again[!] to the wilderness of Akish. And it came to pass that Lib did pursue him until he came to the plains of Agosh. . . And when he had come to the plains of Agosh he give battle unto Lib (Ether 14:14-5).
And on the morrow they fought even until the night came. And when the night came they were drunken with anger, even as a man who is drunken with wine; and they slept again upon their swords (Ether 15:22).
Around and again the game wheels from Gilgal to Gilgal, Gog and Magog, Akish, Agosh (Semitic, glgl ~ gll, to be round, go round).
The turns of phrase, as of battle, haunt: lu-u lu-ra (man to [ra] man) igi mu-un-suh-re (eye + tear out; that is, they stare intently); inbir igi binduru (they look for inbir, they look for combat, lit. the eye spreads for combat). "Battle again upon the plains. . ."
The silent plain, the sullen stares, the dilated pupils--the berserker moment--and all is broken by the shouts, the cries, and then the howl, then the mournful drum:
Exaltation of Inana (Inana B)
(l. 33) With the lamenting balag drum a lament is struck up.
(bala[n]g anirata ilu imdabe)
(bala[n]g; anir.a.ta: anir = lament; a=genitive; ta = with; ilu = (sad) song; imdab.e: dug = to say ~ chant)
With the thump of the tambor, there tempts the return of the human--but it's too late.
Drums throb; howlings: Let us revisit the words in Inana C and glimpse the unfathomable workings of translation:
(l. 51) gu ri-a-ta edin-ta (gu = voice; ri = to direct), that is, a "directed voice"--so that's a shout? It seems so. Again (l. 52): sheg gi-a-ni ishkur-gin (sheg = loud noise; gi = to return, send back; -ani = her; ishkur.gin = like the storm god Ishkur), which could read: She echoes back a loud noise like that of the Storm god. But if Enheduanna were an English major, how would she translate sheg? Just as do the editors of Oxford's Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature. After all, storms howl: She howls in answer like the howling of Stormwind.
We recall the words of the Prophet Abinadi to the Lord's people--there are no favorites, none spared--the people first fated to discover the ruins of the Jaredites, including the ominous twenty-four plates left behind to reveal "the sad tale": "And it shall come to pass that I will smite this my people with sore afflictions, yea, with famine and with pestilence; and I will cause that they shall howl all the day long" (Mosiah 12:4; "sad tale"--from record of Zeniff in the same book).
The Path to the House of Lamentation
He saw that there had been slain by the sword already nearly two millions of his people, and he began to sorrow in his heart; yea, there had been slain two millions of mighty men, and also their wives and their children (Ether 15:2).
And it came to pass that the people repented not of their iniquity; and the people of Coriantumr were stirred up to anger against the people of Shiz; and the people of Shiz were stirred up to anger against the people of Coriantumr; wherefore, the people of Shiz did give battle unto the people of Coriantumr (Ether 15:6).
Hymn to Inana (Inana C)
(ll. 39-48) …… she performs a song. This song …… its established plan, weeping, the food and milk of death. Whoever eats …… Inana's food and milk of death will not last. Gall will give a burning pain to those she gives it to eat, …… in their mouth ……. In her joyful heart she performs the song of death on the plain. She performs the song of her heart. She washes their weapons with blood and gore, ……. Axes smash heads, spears penetrate and maces are covered in blood. Their evil mouths …… the warriors ……. On their first offerings she pours blood, filling them with death.
In Ether 15 Inanna again "performs the song of her heart" washing "their weapons with blood and gore...... Axes smash heads, spears penetrate and maces are covered in blood":
The Song of Death on the Plain
And it came to pass that they fought all that day, and when the night came they slept upon their swords.
And on the morrow they fought even until the night came.
And when the night came they were drunken with anger, even as a man who is drunken with wine; and they slept again upon their swords (Ether 15: 20-22).
And...and...and (repeated five times). And it came to pass that eventually nothing came to pass; Lincoln's "awful arithmetic" has summed its sum.
She Performs the Song of Her Heart
Hymn to Inana (Inana C)
(ll. 30-1) She abases those whom she despises. The mistress, an eagle that lets no one escape.
Wherefore, he did pursue them, and on the morrow he did overtake them; and they fought again with the sword. And it came to pass that when they had all fallen by the sword, save it were Coriantumr and Shiz, behold Shiz had fainted with the loss of blood.
And it came to pass that when Coriantumr had leaned upon his sword, that he rested a little, he smote off the head of Shiz.
And it came to pass that after he had smitten off the head of Shiz, that Shiz raised up on his hands and fell; and after that he had struggled for breath, he died.
And it came to pass that Coriantumr fell to the earth, and became as if he had no life (Ether 15: 29-32).
The rest is silence; for who remains to strike the sad song of the balang? who to howl lament?
A Warning
The songs of Inana tumble out of time. Of what piquancy are they today? The timeless wars of Mesopotamia: Do they really have any anything to say about our wars today? even our Mesopotamian wars? The Tigris and the Euphrates change course; kingdoms fall; kingdoms rise. There is nothing new under the sun.
Except the Book of Mormon, that is. Ether presents us with a new story, but we write our own ending. The Gog-and-Magog battling of Coriantumr and Shiz comes as a warning to America today. It comes as a warning against our paralyzing anger, our drunken refusal to call a halt, to compromise. We sleep in anger and rise to march. Forget the hungry generations. The Valley of Gilgal and the Wilderness of Akish, Agosh and Ramah, the edin and the hill: these are American places, as yet unchanged, ever awaiting--and just around the corner.
We write our own ending.
Notes
Transliterations and translations of the hymns to Inana may be found on the online resource:
Black, J.A., Cunningham, G., Ebeling, J., Flückiger-Hawker, E., Robson, E., Taylor, J., and Zólyomi, G., The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature (http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/), Oxford 1998–2006.
Concise introductions to The Exaltation of Inana (Inana B) and a Hymn to Inana (Inana C), including discussion of the thorny matters of attribution and dating, may be found in Jeremy Black, Graham Cunningham, Eleanor Robson, and Gabor Zolyomi, The Literature of Ancient Sumer (Oxford, 2004), 92-9 (Hymn to Inana) and 315-20 (Exaltation of Inana).
I have also consulted Ake W. Sjoberg, "in-nin sa-gur4-ra: A Hymn to the Goddess Inanna by the en-Priestess Enheduanna," Zeitschrift fur Assyriologie 65 (1975), 161-253. The quotation "Any sign of mercy and love is absent," is found on p. 162.
Analysis of Sumerian Words:
"There is no dictionary of the Sumerian language": Such is the bad news which greets every student of Sumerian. The good news is that it is great fun to study a language without a dictionary--witness the success of the Rosetta Stone series. After a few seminars, (a little) vocabulary sinks in. It therefore came as a surprise to find English "translations" instantaneously appear over the highlighted words of the transliterated texts in the ETCSL. Some of these translations are old hat, most new; I'll take them all.
Copyright 2011 by Val Hinckley Sederholm
Saturday, September 24, 2011
"One in Mine Hand": The Constellative Purpose of the Book of Mormon and the Books of Abraham, Joseph, and Others Yet to Be
While the Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ makes up the scriptural "cornerstone of our religion" (Joseph Smith), and thus becomes the instrument by which Israel in the latter-days will come to the knowledge of the True Shepherd and be gathered, it takes nothing from its glory and splendor to acknowledge yet other books, other records of matching though matchless supernal value.
To the contrary, the Book of Mormon specifically says that part of its role is "to establish the truth of the first" collection of books, meaning the Holy Bible, the primary scriptural record of God's dealings with humanity. Why is the Holy Bible our primary scripture? Because it records all things "from the creation of Adam," and especially the birth, ministry, atonement, and resurrection of Jesus Christ (see Moroni 10:3).
To acknowledge the primacy of the Holy Bible does not diminish the latter-day role of the Book of Mormon in providing crucial teachings about the saving ordinances of baptism, sacrament, and the priesthood as delivered by Christ to his "other sheep," face-to-face. Here we find "directions given to the Nephites from the mouth of the Savior of the precise manner in which men should build His Church": "And they must come [unto Christ] by the words which shall be established by the mouth of the Lamb" to both his Nephite and his Jewish ministers (Joseph Smith History-1 [Oliver Cowdery except]; 1 Nephi 13:41). The Stick of Judah and the Stick of Joseph are not, then, rivals but "shall be one in mine hand," as the fullness of the gospel of Jesus Christ (Ezekiel 37:19).
As all readers discover, no record is as self-aware as the Book of Mormon, replete as it is with prophecies about itself, clear statements of its purpose and mission, and a sense of self wonder. And yet she does not grab all the limelight; she never says "I have no need of thee."
The light that shines from Cumorah's lonely hill, however self-aware, is a shared light. The Book of Mormon heralds "other books," "other records" just as concrete as the golden plates and just as purposeful. In fact the Book of Mormon even includes itself, at one point, under the heading of these "other books," "these last records" (1 Nephi 13:40)--it makes no distinction among them at all. Just so, Enoch's prophecy about truth sent forth "out of the earth," while clearly a reference to Mormon's plates, leaves the door open to all true records yet to be revealed--even as it tells us how they will be revealed (Pearl of Great Price: Moses 7:62). The Lord is so eager to give us more, He even shares the underlying principles for translating "all records that are of ancient date": Sections Six through Nine of the Doctrine and Covenants constitute a primer in sacred translation (see also Mosiah 8:13; Doctrine and Covenants 88:11; and Elder Boyd K. Packer, 'The Voice of Angels,' in "The Candle of the Lord," Ensign, Jan. 1983).
The angel tells Nephi of the threefold purpose of "these last records": 1) to establish the Biblical truth; 2) to make known "plain and precious things" that went missing from the Bible; 3) "to make known to all. . . that the Lamb of God is the Son of the Eternal Father, and the Savior of the world; and 4) that all men must come unto him, or they cannot be saved"--"And they must come according to the words which shall be established by the mouth of the Lamb" (1 Nephi 13:40-1). Here is the test by which all fresh claimants to scripture are to be measured. As we look over the standard works of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we ask: Do any of "these books" fall short? Is any one new record less "established by the mouth of the Lamb" than the other? We invite the reader to ponder. . . The Book of Mormon's 531 pages recall Jupiter's mass and invite the house of Israel to a daily feast of restorative truth; still, as they "swim into ken" as a like "new planet," the 61 pages of The Pearl of Great Price provide no less a refreshment. Indeed the covenants of eternal exaltation fall under the name of Abraham. And Abraham's covenants lead us to Christ, even "according to the words [established] by the mouth of the Lamb."
One prophetic book builds on, reflects another. Prophecies about the coming forth of the Book of Abraham and its subsequent correct translation from a roll of Egyptian papyrus are therefore also to be found by the attentive. To Oliver Cowdery, who lost the opportunity of Book of Mormon translation, came the word of prophecy that he would assist in translating "other records" (again the phrase!) no less important in the eyes of God--his very Word--and it must also be pointed out that a Record is a concrete object, a tangible book "in mine hands" (Doctrine and Covenants 9:2). No less than do the words of Christ in the Doctrine and Covenants, the Book of Mormon also points to the essential Book of Abraham, a record which it vigorously defends. After all--and also to paraphrase Hugh Nibley--to fight against any of God's words is to fight against all, and it is ultimately to fight against his Church and his Israel. After learning that "my people, which are of the house of Israel, shall be gathered home," we read "and my word also shall be gathered in one." Then follows: "And I will show unto them that fight against my word and against my people, who are of the house of Israel, that I am God, and that I covenanted with Abraham that I would remember his seed forever" (2 Nephi 29:14).
We can no more differentiate the terms of the Abrahamic covenant, as recorded in Abraham, Genesis, or 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Nephi, than we could separate Mormon from Moroni. We can no more separate the explanations of the three facsimiles of the Book of Abraham from the witness and martyrdom of Abinadi, from the observations about the sun and the planets in Alma and Helaman, or from the vista of King Benjamin teaching from his tower, than we could cut asunder the paired witness of 1st and 2nd Nephi.
And, in accord with the recovery of bright plates from Cumorah's tumulus, the recovery of the papyrus rolls, bitumen dipped, from the wrapping of burial and the sealed stillness of an ancient tomb becomes a witness of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The God of Abraham is, indeed, a God "of the living" (Luke 20:38). And is the living Abraham not able to call to life his ancient book? "And by it he being dead yet speaketh" (Hebrews 11:4). The dynamic presence of a living Joseph, rightful heir of the covenant, draws the papyri, as by magnetic force, from Joseph to Joseph--and, then, from papyrus to paper. Just so, a fragrant remnant of the coat of Joseph "was preserved and had not decayed," but remained in the hands of Jacob as token of the recovered life of Joseph and of his everlasting posterity--including his American posterity (Alma 46:24-26). As with Abraham and Isaac, so with Jacob and Joseph: "Accounting that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead; from whence also he received him in a figure. . .[and] By faith Jacob, when he was a dying, blessed both the sons of Joseph" (Hebrews 11:19, 22). As Jacob of old held to his heart the precious remnant and partook of its undying, covenantal fragrance, so Joseph anew, as son and heir, unrolled the returning gift of "a little balm, and a little honey, spices, and myrrh" (Genesis 43:11). Joseph of Egypt never stood on the land of blessing, yet the papyrus of Joseph, sealed up in earnest of the resurrection, and sealed and delivered to American Joseph, also becomes a documentary surety of "the precious things of the lasting hills," as promised by God to Joseph's seed long, long ago (Deuteronomy 33:14). "Abraham!" "Joseph!": "Though thou wast dead, yet am I not able to give it thee?" (JST Genesis 15: 10). Precious Mary, with "a pound of spikenard, very costly," "anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his feet with her hair: and the house was filled with the odour of the ointment." "Then said Jesus": "Against the day of my burying hath she kept this, for she hath preserved this ointment until now, that she might anoint me in token of my burial" (John 12:3 and 7, and Joseph Smith Translation). The Garden of Resurrection shimmers "with the odour of the ointment" of Mary.
But a preserved record of Creation, Garden, and the story of Abraham written on Egyptian papyrus and in Egyptian characters--is it a bridge too far? (And there can be bridges too far for faith--thankfully no Latter-day Saint must add a straining faith in scholarly commentary to the simple but attainable faith in the literal word of Scripture!) Says the Lord: "I may preserve the words," if I so choose; "I am able to do mine own work"; "For behold, I am God; and I am a God of miracles; and I will show unto the world that I am the same yesterday, today, and forever; and I work not among the children of men save it be according to their faith" (2 Nephi 27). One way in which God's word about his eternal sameness comes to fulfillment can be by showing us Today that papyrus record of Yesterday. It is a sign and a wonder, but without such Red Sea demonstrations, for which saving faith is required on the part of all beneficiaries, God hardly could show himself as God. And God is God--and thank God for "one in whom he could confide," even Joseph Smith, who had the faith of Enoch and the faith of Abraham, and who could accordingly reveal their very words to a receptive few in an unbelieving generation.
Again, by the simple means of Nephi's noting that his father found the Five Books of Moses on the Plates of Brass, God sees fit to testify to us that Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and, yes, blessed Deuteronomy were all written by the hand of Moses. Nephi's record stands proud against the great magic act by which all things uniquely Jewish vanish from the historical record; the hiss, however, remains. "For they do wrest the scriptures and do not understand them": God foresaw the cut-and-paste-and-more-cut nature of biblical scholarship with its fostering, foundational anti-Semitism, its perceived Canaanite cultural matrix for ancient Israelite faith and practice, its replacement of prophetic foretellings with fictive views of Deuteronomistic Historians and Deutero-Isaiahs, its wisdom goddesses and leafy asherahs, and such like windlass philosophies of men. And God foresaw, given the all-pervasive powers of scholarship to persuade even the very elect, that it would be essential for us to have Nephi's simple, unwitting witness about Deuteronomy, Isaiah, and the rest, including the historical verity of the Exodus, in order for faith to be nurtured, even as a child is to be nurtured, in the Word of the Lord (see Doctrine and Covenants 10:63; 2 Peter 3:16; Alma 13:20).
The restoration to and through Joseph Smith of the papyrus record of Abraham was as fully a part of his divine mission as Prophet-Restorer as anything else. "The Lord God will proceed to do a marvelous work among the Gentiles. . . And it shall also be of [saving] worth unto the Gentiles; and not only unto the Gentiles but unto all the house of Israel, unto the making known of the covenants of the Father of heaven unto Abraham, saying: In thy seed shall all the kindreds of the earth be blessed" (2 Nephi 22:8-9). The core doctrinal and covenantal message of the Roll Revealed is as essential to our salvation as anything else recorded on plates or parchment. Indeed: "There are many things engraven. . .which do throw greater views upon my gospel" than anything heretofore imagined, and we are therefore to "receive knowledge from all those ancient records which have been hid up, that are sacred" (Doctrine and Covenants 10:45; 8:11).
As for the manner of translation, it does not become us to inquire too deeply. "A seer is greater than a prophet" even, possessor of a "high gift." And how does the Lord define a "high gift"? "A gift which is greater can no man have, except he should possess the power of God." Again, a "high gift" yields nothing less than "mighty miracles," not the mundane (see Mosiah 8). And can anyone imagine that the seer who translated the Book of Mormon had no "high gift" in his encounter with the papyri? Or that he was somehow now subject to error? Brother Joseph's scribes--those in the "know"--loved to detail the workings of translation, yet none of them knew, none of them even came close to knowing. Nor should we overly concern ourselves with the manner of such high translation, given the seeric right to unspeakable instruments forever withheld from our own sight: "for he has wherewith that he can look, and translate" (Mosiah 8: 13). "Wherewith that he can look," while the briefest of descriptions, remains the only one authoritatively vouchsafed to us. As for Abraham, when he looked through the Urim and Thummim: "I saw the stars, that they were very great" (Abraham 3:2; Ether 3:24).
In his 38 years the Prophet-Seer had no time for peripheral matters. He may have farmed, gardened, or kept store; he may have shot at a mark or played baseball, but--make no mistake--his translations were of-a-piece and none can be altered or removed without a corresponding removal of salvific knowledge necessary to the making and keeping of priesthood covenants of Abrahamic exaltation. In Abraham's autobiography also lies further needed affirmation of the Divine Creative and Atoning power of Jesus Christ: "And one answered like unto the Son of Man: Here am I, send me" (Abraham 3:27). Again, it was somehow necessary for us, in order to confirm the doctrine of a premortal home in God--and to chart our course back home--to see through Abraham's eyes God "moving in his majesty and power" amidst the starry kingdoms (Doctrine and Covenants 88; Abraham 3; Abraham Facsimile 2). And to check our arrogant pose at eternity's door: "I am the Lord thy God, I am more intelligent than they all" (Abraham 3:19). Indeed, without the knowledge set forth in the Abraham translations, there is no way to conceive of the ultimate ordinance of salvation, that of Abrahamic covenantal marriage, the New and Everlasting Covenant of Marriage, including the promise of eternal lives in worlds without number. Neither could there be a 132nd section of the Doctrine and Covenants, the revelation on celestial marriage, without a corresponding ancient affirmation by Abraham, written "by his own hand, upon papyrus." Otherwise, there can be no fully attested grounds, no recorded evidence, for faith in these now assured though unseen new and everlasting endowments and covenants of Christ.
"Hearken unto me, ye that follow after righteousness. Look unto the rock from whence ye are hewn, and the hole of the pit from whence ye are digged. Look unto Abraham, your father, and unto Sarah, she that bare you; for I called him alone, and blessed him" (Isaiah 51:1 and 2 Nephi 8:1). Can anyone professing belief in the Bible read these words of Isaiah and yet wonder whether the Lord is able to bring forth (hewing and digging) an ancient papyrus roll of Abraham? And given the direct command to "search diligently" the words of Isaiah, shall less be said of the words of the parent-prophet to whom Isaiah himself would have us look (see 3 Nephi 23:1)? Indeed we look to Abraham and Sarah as the faithful exemplars of Endowed and Exalted Man in the New and Everlasting Covenant of Marriage.
Our own Book of Abraham cuts off suddenly, with the promise of more to come. Yet even that cut is providential; for, remarkably, our portion ends with an explanation of how Adam and Eve entered that very Covenant of Marriage, a covenant which makes a perfect literary frame with the opening verses about seeking the priesthood and blessings of Adam, "or first father" (Abraham 5:14-21; Abraham 1:1-4). We also need to frame our lives around the blessings of Adam and Eve. As for Joseph, it is essential only to know that his latter-day namesake, standing on promised soil, held something redolent of a living Joseph in his hands; the actual words of that ancient record are not necessary to our salvation as yet, and so were never translated or published. Still, Joseph of America did reveal many essential covenants and prophecies of Egyptian Joseph, as 2 Nephi, Alma, and the Joseph Smith Translation variously register. Yes we do possess a saving remnant of the ancient Book of Joseph.
Finally, the Book of Mormon, despite all her self-awareness, does not hesitate to speak of another sealed record found on the very same plates, which, while in no wise diminishing her gathering role, will transcend in witness of Christ her own bright glory. The Book of Mormon itself will be swallowed up in another, brighter Testament of Christ (2 Nephi 27:7ff).
There are yet more books of scripture to be revealed, for "righteousness and truth [sent forth from the earth] will I cause to sweep the earth as with a flood" (Moses 7:62). When a flood comes, it comes fast. Who shall stand when these appear? Who, we ask, "with great anxiety even unto pain," will be prepared to receive these "other books"? It stands to reason that those who accept, study, and love all scriptures available today, including the words of the current Prophet, and who also accept the mirroring, constellative miracles of their coming forth, will be best prepared to receive more. Others, unfamiliar with the scriptures of the Restoration now available, will be drawn to the Book of Mormon for the first time, only after receiving with gladness pearls of great price as yet unknown; the witness of the Book of Mormon will then confirm the testimony of Christ with convincing power. Thus there will be a complete cycle in which the Book of Mormon, while remaining the brightest glory of the Restoration firmament, will be seen as constellative rather than single star.
Eventually all God's words shall be gathered in one. In the broadest sense of the imagery used by Ezekiel, the Stick of Judah (the Bible) will also comprehend the soon-to-be revealed Gospel of John the Baptist and the promised Enoch, along with the full account of the Mount of Transfiguration, the parchment of John, "my beloved," the fullness of the New Translation of the Bible, and the records of Abraham and of Joseph--to name a few. Just so, the Stick of Ephraim, "and the tribes of Israel his fellows" (the Book of Mormon), will ultimately comprehend the records of all other tribes associated with Ephraim, including the Book of Doctrine and Covenants. Yet however we choose to class the Scriptures, they all, finally, in at-one-ment, "shall be one in mine hand."
Notes
The authoritative statements to read on the coming forth of new scriptures include: Elder Dallin H. Oaks, "All Men Everywhere," General Conference, April 2006 (on lds.org) and Elder Neal A. Maxwell, A Wonderful Flood of Light, page 18. Many of us recall hearing Elder Maxwell foretell the coming of so many scriptures that we would need a "little red wagon," as it were, to carry these "other books" to the meetinghouse.
Elder M. Russell Ballard, "The Miracle of the Holy Bible," General Conference, April 2007, sets forth the primacy of the Bible in the Latter-day canon.
Abraham 5:14-21: I'm sure many readers have been blessed by the manner in which the sudden ending of the Book of Abraham with the creation of Eve lends a powerful emphasis to the New and Everlasting Covenant of Marriage. The ending turns the heart back to the promises made to the fathers in Abraham 1:1-4.
Copyright 2010 by Val Hinckley Sederholm
To the contrary, the Book of Mormon specifically says that part of its role is "to establish the truth of the first" collection of books, meaning the Holy Bible, the primary scriptural record of God's dealings with humanity. Why is the Holy Bible our primary scripture? Because it records all things "from the creation of Adam," and especially the birth, ministry, atonement, and resurrection of Jesus Christ (see Moroni 10:3).
To acknowledge the primacy of the Holy Bible does not diminish the latter-day role of the Book of Mormon in providing crucial teachings about the saving ordinances of baptism, sacrament, and the priesthood as delivered by Christ to his "other sheep," face-to-face. Here we find "directions given to the Nephites from the mouth of the Savior of the precise manner in which men should build His Church": "And they must come [unto Christ] by the words which shall be established by the mouth of the Lamb" to both his Nephite and his Jewish ministers (Joseph Smith History-1 [Oliver Cowdery except]; 1 Nephi 13:41). The Stick of Judah and the Stick of Joseph are not, then, rivals but "shall be one in mine hand," as the fullness of the gospel of Jesus Christ (Ezekiel 37:19).
As all readers discover, no record is as self-aware as the Book of Mormon, replete as it is with prophecies about itself, clear statements of its purpose and mission, and a sense of self wonder. And yet she does not grab all the limelight; she never says "I have no need of thee."
The light that shines from Cumorah's lonely hill, however self-aware, is a shared light. The Book of Mormon heralds "other books," "other records" just as concrete as the golden plates and just as purposeful. In fact the Book of Mormon even includes itself, at one point, under the heading of these "other books," "these last records" (1 Nephi 13:40)--it makes no distinction among them at all. Just so, Enoch's prophecy about truth sent forth "out of the earth," while clearly a reference to Mormon's plates, leaves the door open to all true records yet to be revealed--even as it tells us how they will be revealed (Pearl of Great Price: Moses 7:62). The Lord is so eager to give us more, He even shares the underlying principles for translating "all records that are of ancient date": Sections Six through Nine of the Doctrine and Covenants constitute a primer in sacred translation (see also Mosiah 8:13; Doctrine and Covenants 88:11; and Elder Boyd K. Packer, 'The Voice of Angels,' in "The Candle of the Lord," Ensign, Jan. 1983).
The angel tells Nephi of the threefold purpose of "these last records": 1) to establish the Biblical truth; 2) to make known "plain and precious things" that went missing from the Bible; 3) "to make known to all. . . that the Lamb of God is the Son of the Eternal Father, and the Savior of the world; and 4) that all men must come unto him, or they cannot be saved"--"And they must come according to the words which shall be established by the mouth of the Lamb" (1 Nephi 13:40-1). Here is the test by which all fresh claimants to scripture are to be measured. As we look over the standard works of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we ask: Do any of "these books" fall short? Is any one new record less "established by the mouth of the Lamb" than the other? We invite the reader to ponder. . . The Book of Mormon's 531 pages recall Jupiter's mass and invite the house of Israel to a daily feast of restorative truth; still, as they "swim into ken" as a like "new planet," the 61 pages of The Pearl of Great Price provide no less a refreshment. Indeed the covenants of eternal exaltation fall under the name of Abraham. And Abraham's covenants lead us to Christ, even "according to the words [established] by the mouth of the Lamb."
One prophetic book builds on, reflects another. Prophecies about the coming forth of the Book of Abraham and its subsequent correct translation from a roll of Egyptian papyrus are therefore also to be found by the attentive. To Oliver Cowdery, who lost the opportunity of Book of Mormon translation, came the word of prophecy that he would assist in translating "other records" (again the phrase!) no less important in the eyes of God--his very Word--and it must also be pointed out that a Record is a concrete object, a tangible book "in mine hands" (Doctrine and Covenants 9:2). No less than do the words of Christ in the Doctrine and Covenants, the Book of Mormon also points to the essential Book of Abraham, a record which it vigorously defends. After all--and also to paraphrase Hugh Nibley--to fight against any of God's words is to fight against all, and it is ultimately to fight against his Church and his Israel. After learning that "my people, which are of the house of Israel, shall be gathered home," we read "and my word also shall be gathered in one." Then follows: "And I will show unto them that fight against my word and against my people, who are of the house of Israel, that I am God, and that I covenanted with Abraham that I would remember his seed forever" (2 Nephi 29:14).
We can no more differentiate the terms of the Abrahamic covenant, as recorded in Abraham, Genesis, or 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Nephi, than we could separate Mormon from Moroni. We can no more separate the explanations of the three facsimiles of the Book of Abraham from the witness and martyrdom of Abinadi, from the observations about the sun and the planets in Alma and Helaman, or from the vista of King Benjamin teaching from his tower, than we could cut asunder the paired witness of 1st and 2nd Nephi.
And, in accord with the recovery of bright plates from Cumorah's tumulus, the recovery of the papyrus rolls, bitumen dipped, from the wrapping of burial and the sealed stillness of an ancient tomb becomes a witness of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The God of Abraham is, indeed, a God "of the living" (Luke 20:38). And is the living Abraham not able to call to life his ancient book? "And by it he being dead yet speaketh" (Hebrews 11:4). The dynamic presence of a living Joseph, rightful heir of the covenant, draws the papyri, as by magnetic force, from Joseph to Joseph--and, then, from papyrus to paper. Just so, a fragrant remnant of the coat of Joseph "was preserved and had not decayed," but remained in the hands of Jacob as token of the recovered life of Joseph and of his everlasting posterity--including his American posterity (Alma 46:24-26). As with Abraham and Isaac, so with Jacob and Joseph: "Accounting that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead; from whence also he received him in a figure. . .[and] By faith Jacob, when he was a dying, blessed both the sons of Joseph" (Hebrews 11:19, 22). As Jacob of old held to his heart the precious remnant and partook of its undying, covenantal fragrance, so Joseph anew, as son and heir, unrolled the returning gift of "a little balm, and a little honey, spices, and myrrh" (Genesis 43:11). Joseph of Egypt never stood on the land of blessing, yet the papyrus of Joseph, sealed up in earnest of the resurrection, and sealed and delivered to American Joseph, also becomes a documentary surety of "the precious things of the lasting hills," as promised by God to Joseph's seed long, long ago (Deuteronomy 33:14). "Abraham!" "Joseph!": "Though thou wast dead, yet am I not able to give it thee?" (JST Genesis 15: 10). Precious Mary, with "a pound of spikenard, very costly," "anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his feet with her hair: and the house was filled with the odour of the ointment." "Then said Jesus": "Against the day of my burying hath she kept this, for she hath preserved this ointment until now, that she might anoint me in token of my burial" (John 12:3 and 7, and Joseph Smith Translation). The Garden of Resurrection shimmers "with the odour of the ointment" of Mary.
But a preserved record of Creation, Garden, and the story of Abraham written on Egyptian papyrus and in Egyptian characters--is it a bridge too far? (And there can be bridges too far for faith--thankfully no Latter-day Saint must add a straining faith in scholarly commentary to the simple but attainable faith in the literal word of Scripture!) Says the Lord: "I may preserve the words," if I so choose; "I am able to do mine own work"; "For behold, I am God; and I am a God of miracles; and I will show unto the world that I am the same yesterday, today, and forever; and I work not among the children of men save it be according to their faith" (2 Nephi 27). One way in which God's word about his eternal sameness comes to fulfillment can be by showing us Today that papyrus record of Yesterday. It is a sign and a wonder, but without such Red Sea demonstrations, for which saving faith is required on the part of all beneficiaries, God hardly could show himself as God. And God is God--and thank God for "one in whom he could confide," even Joseph Smith, who had the faith of Enoch and the faith of Abraham, and who could accordingly reveal their very words to a receptive few in an unbelieving generation.
Again, by the simple means of Nephi's noting that his father found the Five Books of Moses on the Plates of Brass, God sees fit to testify to us that Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and, yes, blessed Deuteronomy were all written by the hand of Moses. Nephi's record stands proud against the great magic act by which all things uniquely Jewish vanish from the historical record; the hiss, however, remains. "For they do wrest the scriptures and do not understand them": God foresaw the cut-and-paste-and-more-cut nature of biblical scholarship with its fostering, foundational anti-Semitism, its perceived Canaanite cultural matrix for ancient Israelite faith and practice, its replacement of prophetic foretellings with fictive views of Deuteronomistic Historians and Deutero-Isaiahs, its wisdom goddesses and leafy asherahs, and such like windlass philosophies of men. And God foresaw, given the all-pervasive powers of scholarship to persuade even the very elect, that it would be essential for us to have Nephi's simple, unwitting witness about Deuteronomy, Isaiah, and the rest, including the historical verity of the Exodus, in order for faith to be nurtured, even as a child is to be nurtured, in the Word of the Lord (see Doctrine and Covenants 10:63; 2 Peter 3:16; Alma 13:20).
The restoration to and through Joseph Smith of the papyrus record of Abraham was as fully a part of his divine mission as Prophet-Restorer as anything else. "The Lord God will proceed to do a marvelous work among the Gentiles. . . And it shall also be of [saving] worth unto the Gentiles; and not only unto the Gentiles but unto all the house of Israel, unto the making known of the covenants of the Father of heaven unto Abraham, saying: In thy seed shall all the kindreds of the earth be blessed" (2 Nephi 22:8-9). The core doctrinal and covenantal message of the Roll Revealed is as essential to our salvation as anything else recorded on plates or parchment. Indeed: "There are many things engraven. . .which do throw greater views upon my gospel" than anything heretofore imagined, and we are therefore to "receive knowledge from all those ancient records which have been hid up, that are sacred" (Doctrine and Covenants 10:45; 8:11).
As for the manner of translation, it does not become us to inquire too deeply. "A seer is greater than a prophet" even, possessor of a "high gift." And how does the Lord define a "high gift"? "A gift which is greater can no man have, except he should possess the power of God." Again, a "high gift" yields nothing less than "mighty miracles," not the mundane (see Mosiah 8). And can anyone imagine that the seer who translated the Book of Mormon had no "high gift" in his encounter with the papyri? Or that he was somehow now subject to error? Brother Joseph's scribes--those in the "know"--loved to detail the workings of translation, yet none of them knew, none of them even came close to knowing. Nor should we overly concern ourselves with the manner of such high translation, given the seeric right to unspeakable instruments forever withheld from our own sight: "for he has wherewith that he can look, and translate" (Mosiah 8: 13). "Wherewith that he can look," while the briefest of descriptions, remains the only one authoritatively vouchsafed to us. As for Abraham, when he looked through the Urim and Thummim: "I saw the stars, that they were very great" (Abraham 3:2; Ether 3:24).
In his 38 years the Prophet-Seer had no time for peripheral matters. He may have farmed, gardened, or kept store; he may have shot at a mark or played baseball, but--make no mistake--his translations were of-a-piece and none can be altered or removed without a corresponding removal of salvific knowledge necessary to the making and keeping of priesthood covenants of Abrahamic exaltation. In Abraham's autobiography also lies further needed affirmation of the Divine Creative and Atoning power of Jesus Christ: "And one answered like unto the Son of Man: Here am I, send me" (Abraham 3:27). Again, it was somehow necessary for us, in order to confirm the doctrine of a premortal home in God--and to chart our course back home--to see through Abraham's eyes God "moving in his majesty and power" amidst the starry kingdoms (Doctrine and Covenants 88; Abraham 3; Abraham Facsimile 2). And to check our arrogant pose at eternity's door: "I am the Lord thy God, I am more intelligent than they all" (Abraham 3:19). Indeed, without the knowledge set forth in the Abraham translations, there is no way to conceive of the ultimate ordinance of salvation, that of Abrahamic covenantal marriage, the New and Everlasting Covenant of Marriage, including the promise of eternal lives in worlds without number. Neither could there be a 132nd section of the Doctrine and Covenants, the revelation on celestial marriage, without a corresponding ancient affirmation by Abraham, written "by his own hand, upon papyrus." Otherwise, there can be no fully attested grounds, no recorded evidence, for faith in these now assured though unseen new and everlasting endowments and covenants of Christ.
"Hearken unto me, ye that follow after righteousness. Look unto the rock from whence ye are hewn, and the hole of the pit from whence ye are digged. Look unto Abraham, your father, and unto Sarah, she that bare you; for I called him alone, and blessed him" (Isaiah 51:1 and 2 Nephi 8:1). Can anyone professing belief in the Bible read these words of Isaiah and yet wonder whether the Lord is able to bring forth (hewing and digging) an ancient papyrus roll of Abraham? And given the direct command to "search diligently" the words of Isaiah, shall less be said of the words of the parent-prophet to whom Isaiah himself would have us look (see 3 Nephi 23:1)? Indeed we look to Abraham and Sarah as the faithful exemplars of Endowed and Exalted Man in the New and Everlasting Covenant of Marriage.
Our own Book of Abraham cuts off suddenly, with the promise of more to come. Yet even that cut is providential; for, remarkably, our portion ends with an explanation of how Adam and Eve entered that very Covenant of Marriage, a covenant which makes a perfect literary frame with the opening verses about seeking the priesthood and blessings of Adam, "or first father" (Abraham 5:14-21; Abraham 1:1-4). We also need to frame our lives around the blessings of Adam and Eve. As for Joseph, it is essential only to know that his latter-day namesake, standing on promised soil, held something redolent of a living Joseph in his hands; the actual words of that ancient record are not necessary to our salvation as yet, and so were never translated or published. Still, Joseph of America did reveal many essential covenants and prophecies of Egyptian Joseph, as 2 Nephi, Alma, and the Joseph Smith Translation variously register. Yes we do possess a saving remnant of the ancient Book of Joseph.
Finally, the Book of Mormon, despite all her self-awareness, does not hesitate to speak of another sealed record found on the very same plates, which, while in no wise diminishing her gathering role, will transcend in witness of Christ her own bright glory. The Book of Mormon itself will be swallowed up in another, brighter Testament of Christ (2 Nephi 27:7ff).
There are yet more books of scripture to be revealed, for "righteousness and truth [sent forth from the earth] will I cause to sweep the earth as with a flood" (Moses 7:62). When a flood comes, it comes fast. Who shall stand when these appear? Who, we ask, "with great anxiety even unto pain," will be prepared to receive these "other books"? It stands to reason that those who accept, study, and love all scriptures available today, including the words of the current Prophet, and who also accept the mirroring, constellative miracles of their coming forth, will be best prepared to receive more. Others, unfamiliar with the scriptures of the Restoration now available, will be drawn to the Book of Mormon for the first time, only after receiving with gladness pearls of great price as yet unknown; the witness of the Book of Mormon will then confirm the testimony of Christ with convincing power. Thus there will be a complete cycle in which the Book of Mormon, while remaining the brightest glory of the Restoration firmament, will be seen as constellative rather than single star.
Eventually all God's words shall be gathered in one. In the broadest sense of the imagery used by Ezekiel, the Stick of Judah (the Bible) will also comprehend the soon-to-be revealed Gospel of John the Baptist and the promised Enoch, along with the full account of the Mount of Transfiguration, the parchment of John, "my beloved," the fullness of the New Translation of the Bible, and the records of Abraham and of Joseph--to name a few. Just so, the Stick of Ephraim, "and the tribes of Israel his fellows" (the Book of Mormon), will ultimately comprehend the records of all other tribes associated with Ephraim, including the Book of Doctrine and Covenants. Yet however we choose to class the Scriptures, they all, finally, in at-one-ment, "shall be one in mine hand."
Notes
The authoritative statements to read on the coming forth of new scriptures include: Elder Dallin H. Oaks, "All Men Everywhere," General Conference, April 2006 (on lds.org) and Elder Neal A. Maxwell, A Wonderful Flood of Light, page 18. Many of us recall hearing Elder Maxwell foretell the coming of so many scriptures that we would need a "little red wagon," as it were, to carry these "other books" to the meetinghouse.
Elder M. Russell Ballard, "The Miracle of the Holy Bible," General Conference, April 2007, sets forth the primacy of the Bible in the Latter-day canon.
Abraham 5:14-21: I'm sure many readers have been blessed by the manner in which the sudden ending of the Book of Abraham with the creation of Eve lends a powerful emphasis to the New and Everlasting Covenant of Marriage. The ending turns the heart back to the promises made to the fathers in Abraham 1:1-4.
Copyright 2010 by Val Hinckley Sederholm
Saturday, September 17, 2011
Luram: "The Lord alone shall be exalted in that day"
The Second Epistle of Mormon to his son Moroni, which comprises the second to last chapter in the entire Book of Mormon, has things to "grieve thee, to weigh thee down unto death." "But," continues Mormon, "may Christ lift thee up" (Moroni 9: 25).
The great military installation, the Tower of Sherrizah, has fallen to the enemy, and Nephite "men, women, and children" face execution, torture, deprivation--"no water, save a little"--and, finally, even abandonment in the Wasteland: leaving "them to wander whithersoever they can for food; and many old women do faint by the way and die." "Betwixt Sherrizah and me" lies a road of death; "but may Christ lift thee up, and may his sufferings and death. . .and the hope of his glory and of eternal life, rest in your mind forever." Rest, for "I dwell no longer upon this horrible scene" ("Come out in judgment, O God!"), for even "betwixt Sherrizah and me" stands Christ "filled with compassion towards the children of men; standing betwixt them and justice" (Moroni 9: 7, 8, 15, 16, 17, 20, 25; Mosiah 15: 9).
We turn with a shudder from the Tower of Sherrizah, to the Nephites a tower of terror, and look to "the Father, whose throne is high in the heavens, and our Lord Jesus Christ, who sitteth on the right hand of his power" (verse 26).
The Nephites driven from "every high tower" and "every fenced wall"--even every strong-walled Sharriruta--now desert a shattered world, a broken tower, their fall now complete, but "God is Exalted," for "the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day" (see Isaiah 2: 11, 15, 17). Sharriruta may well be the Aramaic equivalent of our Sherrizah, and signifies soundness, integrity, Festigkeit. But "the Lord alone shall be exalted": ein Feste Burg ist unser Gott. A Mighty Fortress is our God.
"We did not conquer" is the final word; yet "all things shall become subject unto him," even Christ--and that is the final word (Moroni 9:2, 26).
The very names of the Nephite fallen somehow attest, ironically attest, to the very same matter.
"And Archeantus has fallen by the sword, and also Luram and Emron; yea, and we have lost a great number of our choice men" (verse 2)--"we have lost." The name element Arche- clearly comes from the Greek (Hugh Nibley has explained the presence of Greek names in the Book of Mormon), and bespeaks the lost rulership, the lost command. Arche- also signifies the beginning, even Creation, but we are now at the end: "the end of all flesh is come."
Luram catches the eye too. The name signifies, attests "God is Exalted" and is to be found in its complete form in both Ugaritic, Amorite, and even Ammonite (Ugaritic: 'Ilrm, Ilu-rama; Ammonite: 'l-rm; Amorite: E-lu-ra-ma; Elu (God) Rama (On High; Exalted).
Even choice Luram has fallen, for "the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day."
Notes
James Hoch, Semitic Words in Egyptian Texts of the New Kingdom and Third Intermediate Period, 205
For a latter-day instance of Moroni 9, I refer the reader to the strikingly similar accounts from Sirte, Libya in 2011 (articles on cnn.com). June 13, 2013: Fox News reports 6,500 children among the 93,000 killed in the Syrian Civil War.
Copyright 2011 by Val H. Sederholm
The great military installation, the Tower of Sherrizah, has fallen to the enemy, and Nephite "men, women, and children" face execution, torture, deprivation--"no water, save a little"--and, finally, even abandonment in the Wasteland: leaving "them to wander whithersoever they can for food; and many old women do faint by the way and die." "Betwixt Sherrizah and me" lies a road of death; "but may Christ lift thee up, and may his sufferings and death. . .and the hope of his glory and of eternal life, rest in your mind forever." Rest, for "I dwell no longer upon this horrible scene" ("Come out in judgment, O God!"), for even "betwixt Sherrizah and me" stands Christ "filled with compassion towards the children of men; standing betwixt them and justice" (Moroni 9: 7, 8, 15, 16, 17, 20, 25; Mosiah 15: 9).
We turn with a shudder from the Tower of Sherrizah, to the Nephites a tower of terror, and look to "the Father, whose throne is high in the heavens, and our Lord Jesus Christ, who sitteth on the right hand of his power" (verse 26).
The Nephites driven from "every high tower" and "every fenced wall"--even every strong-walled Sharriruta--now desert a shattered world, a broken tower, their fall now complete, but "God is Exalted," for "the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day" (see Isaiah 2: 11, 15, 17). Sharriruta may well be the Aramaic equivalent of our Sherrizah, and signifies soundness, integrity, Festigkeit. But "the Lord alone shall be exalted": ein Feste Burg ist unser Gott. A Mighty Fortress is our God.
"We did not conquer" is the final word; yet "all things shall become subject unto him," even Christ--and that is the final word (Moroni 9:2, 26).
The very names of the Nephite fallen somehow attest, ironically attest, to the very same matter.
"And Archeantus has fallen by the sword, and also Luram and Emron; yea, and we have lost a great number of our choice men" (verse 2)--"we have lost." The name element Arche- clearly comes from the Greek (Hugh Nibley has explained the presence of Greek names in the Book of Mormon), and bespeaks the lost rulership, the lost command. Arche- also signifies the beginning, even Creation, but we are now at the end: "the end of all flesh is come."
Luram catches the eye too. The name signifies, attests "God is Exalted" and is to be found in its complete form in both Ugaritic, Amorite, and even Ammonite (Ugaritic: 'Ilrm, Ilu-rama; Ammonite: 'l-rm; Amorite: E-lu-ra-ma; Elu (God) Rama (On High; Exalted).
Even choice Luram has fallen, for "the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day."
Notes
James Hoch, Semitic Words in Egyptian Texts of the New Kingdom and Third Intermediate Period, 205
For a latter-day instance of Moroni 9, I refer the reader to the strikingly similar accounts from Sirte, Libya in 2011 (articles on cnn.com). June 13, 2013: Fox News reports 6,500 children among the 93,000 killed in the Syrian Civil War.
Copyright 2011 by Val H. Sederholm
Monday, June 27, 2011
A Small Matter of Paragraphing: Joseph Smith Translation Jeremiah 37:16
The paragraphing of the Geneva Bible, which is the first direct English translation of the Prophets from the Hebrew, and of the King James Version of Jeremiah 37 differs from that found in the Hebrew Masoretic Text--and in the Joseph Smith Translation. In the KJV verse 16 begins a new paragraph; in Hebrew manuscripts verse 16 ends one paragraph and verse 17 begins another:
15 Wherefore the princes were wroth with Jeremiah, and smote him, and put him in prison in the house of Jonathan the scribe: for they had made that the prison.
16 ¶When Jeremiah was entered into the dungeon, and into the cabins, and Jeremiah had remained there many days;
17 Then Zedekiah the king sent, and took him out: and the king asked him secretly in his house, and said, Is there any word from the Lord? And Jeremiah said, There is: for, said he, thou shalt be delivered into the hand of the king of Babylon.
The KJV closely follows the Geneva Bible (The Geneva Bible: a Facsimile of the 1560 Edition, 2007):
Wherefore the princes were angry with Ieremiah, and smote him, and laid him in prison in the house of Iehonathan the scribe: for they had made that the prison (37:15).
When Ieremiah was entred into the dungeon, and into the prisons, and had remained there a long time (37:16),
Then Zedekiah the King sent, and toke him out, and the King asked him secretly in his house, and said, Is there any worde from the Lord? And Ieremiah sayd, Yea: for, sayd he, thou shalt be deliuered into the hand of the King of Babel (37:17).
The layout of Hebrew Bibles in manuscript, excluding the Psalms, apportions text into open and closed paragraphs (or parashot). The letter peh, shorthand for petuxa (open), marks the beginning of a clear-cut, new paragraph. Peh marks a new act in the narrative or a new, distinct idea and signals the kind of paragraph familiar to readers of modern prose. Such a stand-alone paragraph can hardly begin on the same manuscript line as the previous paragraph; what space remains in the line must therefore be left blank. The blank space is what bears the name petuxa, being the "open section" of manuscript line. The new, or open, paragraph accordingly begins on its own, fresh line.
The letter samekh marks a closed paragraph (setuma). A closed paragraph but momentarily pauses the flow of speech, idea, or narrative, and therefore continues to fill the very same line of manuscript on which the prior paragraph ends. No visible break is contemplated, however small or great the seeming pause in action or idea--one letter follows another right to the end of the closely indited manuscript line. There is no such mode of paragraphing in English prose (see Page H. Kelley, Daniel S. Mynatt, and Timothy G. Crawford, The Masorah of Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia: Introduction and Annotated Glossary [Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1998], 155, 167).
The Hebrew system of open and closed paragraphs thus contemplates two distinct kinds of parashot--semicolon and full stop, as it were; but what must be remembered, if we are to understand the terms, is that it is the manuscript line itself which is, in the first instance, open or closed.
Again:
"Peh 'Open.' 'Abbreviation for petuxa' (cf. setuma). This refers to the short paragraphs ('pareshyot') into which the entire Bible (except Psalms) was divided. Such paragraphs could be either 'open' ('ptuxa') or 'closed' ('stuma'). An open paragraph (indicated by peh placed between two verses) had to commence at the beginning of a new line, with the preceding line left partly or wholly blank. These rules applied to handwritten texts but are no longer valid for printed Bibles, since their line and paragraph divisions are of necessity different from those of ancient manuscripts" (ibid., 155).
In manuscripts--though not necessarily in printed Hebrew Bibles--an "open section" of blank line follows Jeremiah 37:16; verse 17 begins at the head of a new line.
The Bomberg Bible, the print edition of the Hebrew Bible used in preparing the KJV, still preserved the manuscript notations for open and closed paragraphs--so why did the KJV translators arrange and translate Jeremiah 37:16-17 as they did? The simple answer is: Because they simply followed the Geneva Bible translators. But why did Anthony Gilby, a gifted Hebraist, and his Geneva group so translate? (For Gilby and the Geneva translators see Lloyd E. Berry, "Preface," The Geneva Bible: a Facsimile of the 1560 Edition.)
Taking the Hebrew particle ki as a marker of temporal conjunction, the equivalent of English when--a dictionary definition--the Geneva translators render the Hebrew into English as a complex sentence opening with a subordinate temporal clause (When Jeremiah was entered into the dungeon, etc.), followed by a temporal main clause (Then Zedekiah the king sent, and took him out:), which, in its turn, is followed in this archaic syntax by what ought, by all rights, to be a new sentence or two (and the king asked him secretly in his house, and said, Is there any word from the Lord?). The tight clausal balance of English When. . .Then focuses our attention, with the insistence of argument, on the translators' own layout of the text, the new mise-en-page, with its altered view of the temporal relation between these two verses.
Because the Geneva scholars understood ki as marking a temporal conjunction (when), translation of these verses required adjustments in the paragraphing; they accordingly moved the sign posts that marked the beginning of a new paragraph from verse 18 back to verse 16. But all such little words as ki make up the linguistic stumbling blocks of centuries to the awkward feet of scholars; for it is often the case that native speakers understand such nuanced linguistic markers differently than do the learned.
I should like to compare the readings of these Englishmen to what may be found in other Genevan translations of Jeremiah, made directly from Hebrew, into Latin, French, Italian, and Spanish. I'd like to know which learned Hebraist first tripped over little ki. The error, it is clear, was not of ancient date: Jerome translated ki with the logical conjunction itaque (thus, and so it was), a translation most Hebraists would have gladly followed. (See David Daniell, "The Translation of the Geneva Bible: The Shocking Truth.") The best known of the French Genevan bibles, the Olivetan Bible, translated directly from the Hebrew by Pierre Robert Olivetan (Calvin's kinsman) in 1558, separates verses 15 and 16, which end and begin on the same line of print, by leaving a significant empty space between the two. The division recalls the paragraph division in the KJV at verse 16. But the new verse begins: Et ainsi Jeremiah (And so Jeremiah); verse 17 begins: Mais le Roy Zedekiah (Then King Zedekiah). The opposition is thus one of: Et ainsi. . . Mais, And so. . . Then, which clearly differs from the "when-then" of the English bibles.
The verse in Hebrew reads: ki va yiremiyahu el-bet habor ve'el-haxanuyot vayeshev-sham yiremiyahu yomim rabim, which, if we parse word for word, says: when (or, as logical conjunction, so it was, or indeed) came in Jeremiah to the house of the pit and the xanuyot [whatever those rooms might be] and he sat, or stayed there days a-plenty). Verse 17 follows: Veyishlax ha-melekh, etc: And he sent, the king, i.e., And the king sent.
Following the Greek Septuagint, which has kai elthein (and he went in), some students have postulated that the Hebrew is corrupt. They accordingly emend ki va to veva (and he entered). Yet, says Professor McKane: "It should not be too readily assumed that Sept. kai elthen (v. 16) is evidence of a Vorlage (v-b-') different from MT (ki va), though this may be correct (so Giesebrecht, Cornill, Volz, Rudolph). Kai elthen, however, may be no more than a free rendering of the awkward ki va in order to secure a smoother translation" (William McKane, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Jeremiah [Edinburgh, 1996], vol. 2: 929). A smoother translation? Here is belated but good advice for the old English translators: Loosen up; go with a free rendering here and there; secure the smoother idiom, let the awkward alone. Alas! the advice comes just a nod after the 17th century scholars sent the manuscript off to the printers. Another student (S. R. Driver) "supposes that ki is a corruption of koh, 'So Jeremiah came'"; another, Ehrlich, "emends to keva, 'When Jeremiah came.'" Comes along just one little Hebrew word, and we're all completely bowled over.
The wording in both the Greek Septuagint and the Masoretic Hebrew show the verse as marking the end of an act: "And (or So it was that) Jeremiah went into the pit, and there he sat"--end of idea--end of paragraph. And that's how modern translators render the matter today. And that's also what Coverdale's Bible, the first English translation of Jeremiah, though dependent on Jerome not on the Hebrew, renders: "Thus was Ieremy put in to the dongeon and preson, and so [itaque] laye there a longe tyme" (see The Bible Corner Web pages). From Coverdale to the latter-day translators certainly marks "a longe tyme."
Let's consider both Anchor Bible editions of Jeremiah.
John Bright (page 225): Verse 16: "Jeremiah was, indeed, put in one of the vaults in the cistern house and left there for some time."
Verse 17 [New Paragraph] But then King Zedekiah sent and had him brought to him," etc.
(Page 225 note): Heb. "Indeed [or "when"] Jeremiah went into. . ." (ki va). LXX (wayyavo'), "and Jeremiah went into. . .," may be preferable.
(Page 230 note): and left there. Literally "and he stayed there," Hebrew awkwardly repeats 'Jeremiah' as the subject, which we omit with LXX for smoothness' sake."
The Anchor Bible Jeremiah John Bright (Garden City, New York, 1965, 2nd ed, 1980).
Jack R. Lundbom (Pages 3-4): Verse 16: "Indeed Jeremiah went to the Pit House, yes, to the cells! And Jeremiah dwelt there many days."
17 "Then King Zedekiah sent and brought him"
(Page 60): "The initial ki is best read as an asseverative, i.e., 'Indeed.' Some commentators get a comparable reading from the LXX's 'And Jeremiah came' (kai elthen Ieremias). The AV and RSV render as 'When,' beginning an awkward dependent clause. This is remedied in the NRSV, although for some reason the final 'Jeremiah' in the verse continues to be untranslated. The Hebrew reads: 'And Jeremiah dwelt there many days.'" Further: "...The LXX omits 'Jeremiah,' which could be more haplography (homoeoarcton y. . .y)." Jack R. Lundbom Jeremiah 37-52 (The Anchor Bible; NY, 2004).
It's surprising that Joseph Smith should follow the old manuscript Hebrew mise-en-page, rather than the KJV. The Prophet had not yet studied Hebrew, and the KJV lay open before him as he worked. But what's the surprise? Joseph Smith is a Prophet--like Jeremiah. And like Jeremiah, Joseph was often detained, tried, and imprisoned (he calls Liberty Jail a "dungeon") on charges of blasphemy and treason. Yet despite the constant persecution, Brother Joseph was given sight and power to reveal the fullness of the scriptures, including changes both substantial and seemingly insubstantial to the Book of Jeremiah. The whole thing is marvelous; thus we shouldn't be surprised when the Prophet, going beyond paragraphing, changes the Geneva Bible (and the KJV) yet a bit more by dropping the verse's second, and thus superfluous, Jeremiah. Professor McKane, after all, reads: "Jeremiah was taken to dungeons under the house and there he was held for a long period" (922). That lopping makes for smoother translation into English; it would have made for a better text in the original Hebrew as well (the Septuagint, after all, drops a Jeremiah or two in verses 16 and 17).
Here's how verses 16-17 read in Sir Lancelot C. L. Brenton's translation (The English Translation of the Greek Septuagint Bible as found on http://ecmarsh.com/):
LXX (Greek Septuagint) Chapter 44:15
And the princes were very angry with Jeremias, and smote him, and sent him into the house of Jonathan the scribe: for they had made this a prison.
(A new paragraph follows in Sir Lancelot's translation of the LXX! something which we should not find in the original Greek):
16 So Jeremias came into the dungeon, and into the cells, and he remained there many days. 17 Then Sedekias sent, and called him; and the king asked him secretly, saying, Is there a word from the Lord? and he said, There is: thou shalt be delivered into the hands of the king of Babylon.
Now for the Prophet Joseph Smith, another type and witness of Christ, for whom the following verse from his New Translation prefigures both the tortured months in the dungeon of Liberty, Missouri and the bloodstained moments of witness in Carthage Jail, Illinois:
And Jeremiah was entered into the dungeon, and into the cabins, and he remained there many days.
End of Paragraph.
p
Notes:
Though I claim no priority in pointing out how the Joseph Smith Translation of Jeremiah 37:16 matches the ancient mise-en-page of the text, and thus avoids the linguistic trap into which the Geneva translators fell, I have not found any published studies of JST Jeremiah 37:16. Still, there are many Latter-day Saint students of the Hebrew Bible and the Septuagint. . .p
15 Wherefore the princes were wroth with Jeremiah, and smote him, and put him in prison in the house of Jonathan the scribe: for they had made that the prison.
16 ¶When Jeremiah was entered into the dungeon, and into the cabins, and Jeremiah had remained there many days;
17 Then Zedekiah the king sent, and took him out: and the king asked him secretly in his house, and said, Is there any word from the Lord? And Jeremiah said, There is: for, said he, thou shalt be delivered into the hand of the king of Babylon.
The KJV closely follows the Geneva Bible (The Geneva Bible: a Facsimile of the 1560 Edition, 2007):
Wherefore the princes were angry with Ieremiah, and smote him, and laid him in prison in the house of Iehonathan the scribe: for they had made that the prison (37:15).
When Ieremiah was entred into the dungeon, and into the prisons, and had remained there a long time (37:16),
Then Zedekiah the King sent, and toke him out, and the King asked him secretly in his house, and said, Is there any worde from the Lord? And Ieremiah sayd, Yea: for, sayd he, thou shalt be deliuered into the hand of the King of Babel (37:17).
The layout of Hebrew Bibles in manuscript, excluding the Psalms, apportions text into open and closed paragraphs (or parashot). The letter peh, shorthand for petuxa (open), marks the beginning of a clear-cut, new paragraph. Peh marks a new act in the narrative or a new, distinct idea and signals the kind of paragraph familiar to readers of modern prose. Such a stand-alone paragraph can hardly begin on the same manuscript line as the previous paragraph; what space remains in the line must therefore be left blank. The blank space is what bears the name petuxa, being the "open section" of manuscript line. The new, or open, paragraph accordingly begins on its own, fresh line.
The letter samekh marks a closed paragraph (setuma). A closed paragraph but momentarily pauses the flow of speech, idea, or narrative, and therefore continues to fill the very same line of manuscript on which the prior paragraph ends. No visible break is contemplated, however small or great the seeming pause in action or idea--one letter follows another right to the end of the closely indited manuscript line. There is no such mode of paragraphing in English prose (see Page H. Kelley, Daniel S. Mynatt, and Timothy G. Crawford, The Masorah of Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia: Introduction and Annotated Glossary [Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1998], 155, 167).
The Hebrew system of open and closed paragraphs thus contemplates two distinct kinds of parashot--semicolon and full stop, as it were; but what must be remembered, if we are to understand the terms, is that it is the manuscript line itself which is, in the first instance, open or closed.
Again:
"Peh 'Open.' 'Abbreviation for petuxa' (cf. setuma). This refers to the short paragraphs ('pareshyot') into which the entire Bible (except Psalms) was divided. Such paragraphs could be either 'open' ('ptuxa') or 'closed' ('stuma'). An open paragraph (indicated by peh placed between two verses) had to commence at the beginning of a new line, with the preceding line left partly or wholly blank. These rules applied to handwritten texts but are no longer valid for printed Bibles, since their line and paragraph divisions are of necessity different from those of ancient manuscripts" (ibid., 155).
In manuscripts--though not necessarily in printed Hebrew Bibles--an "open section" of blank line follows Jeremiah 37:16; verse 17 begins at the head of a new line.
The Bomberg Bible, the print edition of the Hebrew Bible used in preparing the KJV, still preserved the manuscript notations for open and closed paragraphs--so why did the KJV translators arrange and translate Jeremiah 37:16-17 as they did? The simple answer is: Because they simply followed the Geneva Bible translators. But why did Anthony Gilby, a gifted Hebraist, and his Geneva group so translate? (For Gilby and the Geneva translators see Lloyd E. Berry, "Preface," The Geneva Bible: a Facsimile of the 1560 Edition.)
Taking the Hebrew particle ki as a marker of temporal conjunction, the equivalent of English when--a dictionary definition--the Geneva translators render the Hebrew into English as a complex sentence opening with a subordinate temporal clause (When Jeremiah was entered into the dungeon, etc.), followed by a temporal main clause (Then Zedekiah the king sent, and took him out:), which, in its turn, is followed in this archaic syntax by what ought, by all rights, to be a new sentence or two (and the king asked him secretly in his house, and said, Is there any word from the Lord?). The tight clausal balance of English When. . .Then focuses our attention, with the insistence of argument, on the translators' own layout of the text, the new mise-en-page, with its altered view of the temporal relation between these two verses.
Because the Geneva scholars understood ki as marking a temporal conjunction (when), translation of these verses required adjustments in the paragraphing; they accordingly moved the sign posts that marked the beginning of a new paragraph from verse 18 back to verse 16. But all such little words as ki make up the linguistic stumbling blocks of centuries to the awkward feet of scholars; for it is often the case that native speakers understand such nuanced linguistic markers differently than do the learned.
I should like to compare the readings of these Englishmen to what may be found in other Genevan translations of Jeremiah, made directly from Hebrew, into Latin, French, Italian, and Spanish. I'd like to know which learned Hebraist first tripped over little ki. The error, it is clear, was not of ancient date: Jerome translated ki with the logical conjunction itaque (thus, and so it was), a translation most Hebraists would have gladly followed. (See David Daniell, "The Translation of the Geneva Bible: The Shocking Truth.") The best known of the French Genevan bibles, the Olivetan Bible, translated directly from the Hebrew by Pierre Robert Olivetan (Calvin's kinsman) in 1558, separates verses 15 and 16, which end and begin on the same line of print, by leaving a significant empty space between the two. The division recalls the paragraph division in the KJV at verse 16. But the new verse begins: Et ainsi Jeremiah (And so Jeremiah); verse 17 begins: Mais le Roy Zedekiah (Then King Zedekiah). The opposition is thus one of: Et ainsi. . . Mais, And so. . . Then, which clearly differs from the "when-then" of the English bibles.
The verse in Hebrew reads: ki va yiremiyahu el-bet habor ve'el-haxanuyot vayeshev-sham yiremiyahu yomim rabim, which, if we parse word for word, says: when (or, as logical conjunction, so it was, or indeed) came in Jeremiah to the house of the pit and the xanuyot [whatever those rooms might be] and he sat, or stayed there days a-plenty). Verse 17 follows: Veyishlax ha-melekh, etc: And he sent, the king, i.e., And the king sent.
Following the Greek Septuagint, which has kai elthein (and he went in), some students have postulated that the Hebrew is corrupt. They accordingly emend ki va to veva (and he entered). Yet, says Professor McKane: "It should not be too readily assumed that Sept. kai elthen (v. 16) is evidence of a Vorlage (v-b-') different from MT (ki va), though this may be correct (so Giesebrecht, Cornill, Volz, Rudolph). Kai elthen, however, may be no more than a free rendering of the awkward ki va in order to secure a smoother translation" (William McKane, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Jeremiah [Edinburgh, 1996], vol. 2: 929). A smoother translation? Here is belated but good advice for the old English translators: Loosen up; go with a free rendering here and there; secure the smoother idiom, let the awkward alone. Alas! the advice comes just a nod after the 17th century scholars sent the manuscript off to the printers. Another student (S. R. Driver) "supposes that ki is a corruption of koh, 'So Jeremiah came'"; another, Ehrlich, "emends to keva, 'When Jeremiah came.'" Comes along just one little Hebrew word, and we're all completely bowled over.
The wording in both the Greek Septuagint and the Masoretic Hebrew show the verse as marking the end of an act: "And (or So it was that) Jeremiah went into the pit, and there he sat"--end of idea--end of paragraph. And that's how modern translators render the matter today. And that's also what Coverdale's Bible, the first English translation of Jeremiah, though dependent on Jerome not on the Hebrew, renders: "Thus was Ieremy put in to the dongeon and preson, and so [itaque] laye there a longe tyme" (see The Bible Corner Web pages). From Coverdale to the latter-day translators certainly marks "a longe tyme."
Let's consider both Anchor Bible editions of Jeremiah.
John Bright (page 225): Verse 16: "Jeremiah was, indeed, put in one of the vaults in the cistern house and left there for some time."
Verse 17 [New Paragraph] But then King Zedekiah sent and had him brought to him," etc.
(Page 225 note): Heb. "Indeed [or "when"] Jeremiah went into. . ." (ki va). LXX (wayyavo'), "and Jeremiah went into. . .," may be preferable.
(Page 230 note): and left there. Literally "and he stayed there," Hebrew awkwardly repeats 'Jeremiah' as the subject, which we omit with LXX for smoothness' sake."
The Anchor Bible Jeremiah John Bright (Garden City, New York, 1965, 2nd ed, 1980).
Jack R. Lundbom (Pages 3-4): Verse 16: "Indeed Jeremiah went to the Pit House, yes, to the cells! And Jeremiah dwelt there many days."
17 "Then King Zedekiah sent and brought him"
(Page 60): "The initial ki is best read as an asseverative, i.e., 'Indeed.' Some commentators get a comparable reading from the LXX's 'And Jeremiah came' (kai elthen Ieremias). The AV and RSV render as 'When,' beginning an awkward dependent clause. This is remedied in the NRSV, although for some reason the final 'Jeremiah' in the verse continues to be untranslated. The Hebrew reads: 'And Jeremiah dwelt there many days.'" Further: "...The LXX omits 'Jeremiah,' which could be more haplography (homoeoarcton y. . .y)." Jack R. Lundbom Jeremiah 37-52 (The Anchor Bible; NY, 2004).
It's surprising that Joseph Smith should follow the old manuscript Hebrew mise-en-page, rather than the KJV. The Prophet had not yet studied Hebrew, and the KJV lay open before him as he worked. But what's the surprise? Joseph Smith is a Prophet--like Jeremiah. And like Jeremiah, Joseph was often detained, tried, and imprisoned (he calls Liberty Jail a "dungeon") on charges of blasphemy and treason. Yet despite the constant persecution, Brother Joseph was given sight and power to reveal the fullness of the scriptures, including changes both substantial and seemingly insubstantial to the Book of Jeremiah. The whole thing is marvelous; thus we shouldn't be surprised when the Prophet, going beyond paragraphing, changes the Geneva Bible (and the KJV) yet a bit more by dropping the verse's second, and thus superfluous, Jeremiah. Professor McKane, after all, reads: "Jeremiah was taken to dungeons under the house and there he was held for a long period" (922). That lopping makes for smoother translation into English; it would have made for a better text in the original Hebrew as well (the Septuagint, after all, drops a Jeremiah or two in verses 16 and 17).
Here's how verses 16-17 read in Sir Lancelot C. L. Brenton's translation (The English Translation of the Greek Septuagint Bible as found on http://ecmarsh.com/):
LXX (Greek Septuagint) Chapter 44:15
And the princes were very angry with Jeremias, and smote him, and sent him into the house of Jonathan the scribe: for they had made this a prison.
(A new paragraph follows in Sir Lancelot's translation of the LXX! something which we should not find in the original Greek):
16 So Jeremias came into the dungeon, and into the cells, and he remained there many days. 17 Then Sedekias sent, and called him; and the king asked him secretly, saying, Is there a word from the Lord? and he said, There is: thou shalt be delivered into the hands of the king of Babylon.
Now for the Prophet Joseph Smith, another type and witness of Christ, for whom the following verse from his New Translation prefigures both the tortured months in the dungeon of Liberty, Missouri and the bloodstained moments of witness in Carthage Jail, Illinois:
And Jeremiah was entered into the dungeon, and into the cabins, and he remained there many days.
End of Paragraph.
p
Notes:
Though I claim no priority in pointing out how the Joseph Smith Translation of Jeremiah 37:16 matches the ancient mise-en-page of the text, and thus avoids the linguistic trap into which the Geneva translators fell, I have not found any published studies of JST Jeremiah 37:16. Still, there are many Latter-day Saint students of the Hebrew Bible and the Septuagint. . .p
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
"He will kill Jeremiah too!": Joseph Smith Translation Jeremiah 26:17-23
Among the Bible's most vivid episodes is that of Jeremiah prophesying in the court of the Temple, whereupon an angry assemblage of priests, prophets, princes, and people try him for his life on the spot, that is, at the New Gate of the Temple, where "trials involving sacral law were regularly heard."
Sources: William McKane, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Jeremiah, Edinburgh, 1996, 678; on the supposed legal model for the narrative see McKane, ps. 676-681; see also John W. Welch, "The Trial of Jeremiah: A Legal Legacy from Lehi's Jerusalem," in David R. Seely, JoAnn Seely, and J. Welch (eds), Glimpses of Lehi's Jerusalem (Provo, 2004), which shows parallels with legal procedure in the Book of Mormon narrative but does not mention JST Jeremiah 26:17-23; cf. also David R. Seely, "The Ministry of Jeremiah," in Kent Jackson (ed), Studies in Scripture 4.
In his New Translation of Jeremiah 26 the Prophet Joseph Smith makes several changes, though none carries more dramatic power than the line added to verse 20, at the very moment the wavering people stand ready to spare: "But there was a man among the priests, rose up and said." While the "man among the priests," who seeks to turn any wavering, merciful souls against Jeremiah, does not appear in any other textual tradition, what follows is the speech about Urijah, a prophet cut down by sword's edge and cast into a common grave for prophesying the very same things Jeremiah now sets forth. David Kimchi, paragon of commentators, sums up the point about comparing Jeremiah to Urijah with the following verdict: gm yrmyhw yhrg: You wish to acquit him but, as you now see, "[Jehoiakim] will kill Jeremiah too" (see W. McKane, Jeremiah, 670). The Prophet must die.
In order to grasp the power, and balance, these new words add to the narrative--raising its dramatic tension to fever pitch--we must first consider Jeremiah's most dangerous mission as set forth in the Authorized Version of the Bible:
1 In the beginning of the reign of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah king of Judah came this word from the Lord, saying,
2 Thus saith the Lord; Stand in the court of the Lord’s house, and speak unto all the cities of Judah, which come to worship in the Lord’s house, all the words that I command thee to speak unto them; diminish not a word:
3 If so be they will hearken, and turn every man from his evil way, that I may repent me of the evil, which I purpose to do unto them because of the evil of their doings.
4 And thou shalt say unto them, Thus saith the Lord; If ye will not hearken to me, to walk in my law, which I have set before you,
5 To hearken to the words of my servants the prophets, whom I sent unto you both rising up early, and sending them, but ye have not hearkened;
6 Then will I make this house like Shiloh, and will make this city a curse to all the nations of the earth.
The reaction of the audience was to detain Jeremiah as one worthy of death:
8 ¶Now it came to pass, when Jeremiah had made an end of speaking all that the Lord had commanded him to speak unto all the people, that the priests and the prophets and all the people took him, saying, Thou shalt surely die.
Verse 9 further records: And all the people were gathered against Jeremiah in the house of the Lord.
Representatives of the king, the sarim or princes, now join the Assembly of the People as its presiding secular officers, and Jeremiah contests his life at Newgate. The religious leaders or officers, the priests and the prophets, prosecute the case before the Assembly:
10 ¶When the princes of Judah heard these things, then they came up from the king’s house unto the house of the Lord, and sat down in the entry of the new gate of the Lord’s house.
11Then spake the priests and the prophets unto the princes and to all the people, saying, This man is worthy to die; for he hath prophesied against this city, as ye have heard with your ears.
Jeremiah is next permitted to defend himself before the Assembly and its presiding officers:
12 ¶Then spake Jeremiah unto all the princes and to all the people, saying, The Lord sent me to prophesy against this house and against this city all the words that ye have heard.
13 Therefore now amend your ways and your doings, and obey the voice of the Lord your God; and the Lord will repent him of the evil that he hath pronounced against you.
14 As for me, behold, I am in your hand: do with me as seemeth good and meet unto you.
15 But know ye for certain, that if ye put me to death, ye shall surely bring innocent blood upon yourselves, and upon this city, and upon the inhabitants thereof: for of a truth the Lord hath sent me unto you to speak all these words in your ears.
The sarim and the Assembly then make their decision, a first, or secular decision (Jack W. Welch, "The Trial of Jeremiah," cites 2 Chronicles 19:8, 11 as evidence for a clear division of secular and sacral judges under King Jehoshaphat; he notes "jurisdictional lines were not always sharply divided" in antiquity):
16¶Then said the princes and all the people unto the priests and to the prophets; This man is not worthy to die: for he hath spoken to us in the name of the Lord our God.
17 Then rose up certain of the elders of the land, and spake to all the assembly of the people, saying,
18 Micah the Morasthite prophesied in the days of Hezekiah king of Judah, and spake to all the people of Judah, saying, Thus saith the Lord of hosts; Zion shall be plowed like a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places of a forest.
19 Did Hezekiah king of Judah and all Judah put him at all to death? did he not fear the Lord, and besought the Lord, and the Lord repented him of the evil which he had pronounced against them? Thus might we procure great evil against our souls [Joseph Smith Translation: Thus by putting Jeremiah to death we might procure great evil against our souls].
20 And there was also a man that prophesied in the name of the Lord, Urijah the son of Shemaiah of Kirjath-jearim, who prophesied against this city and against this land according to all the words of Jeremiah.
21 And when Jehoiakim the king, with all his mighty men, and all the princes, heard his words, the king sought to put him to death: but when Urijah heard it, he was afraid, and fled, and went into Egypt;
22 And Jehoiakim the king sent men into Egypt, namely, Elnathan the son of Achbor, and certain men with him into Egypt.
23 And they fetched forth Urijah out of Egypt, and brought him unto Jehoiakim the king; who slew him with the sword, and cast his dead body into the graves of the common people [Vulgate: in sepulchris vulgi ignobilis; Targum: lqbry gly', "graves of the heaps," "common graves" = W. McKane, 664].
Nevertheless!
24 Nevertheless the hand of Ahikam the son of Shaphan was with Jeremiah, that they should not give him into the hand of the people to put him to death.
So runs the narrative, but at the juncture between verses 19 and 20 the Joseph Smith Translation breaks with the Masoretic Text by adding the previously unknown character of "a man among the priests" who rises to speak of Urijah and his doom. And whether we are thinking of the Prophet Joseph or of David Kimchi: "The sense of v.24 is then that this [same] outcome is blocked only by Ahikam's shielding of Jeremiah. In connection with Kimchi's hypothesis we may ask about the identity of those who are alleged [by Kimchi] to say gm yrmyhw yhrg. . . So we need a new constituency which the narrative does not supply" (McKane, 671).
Both Rashi and Kimchi, our greatest medieval commentators, draw on the midrashic tradition and, in particular, the Sifrei to Numbers (88):
R. "Up to this point the statement is what the righteous people said. As to the wicked, what did they say? "there was another man who prophesied in the name of the Lord, Uriah," etc.
S. So the wicked said, 'Just as Uriah was put to death, so Jeremiah is liable to be put to death.'"
Sifre to Numbers: An American Translation and Explanation, ed. Jacob Neusner (Atlanta, 1986), vol. 2, 88-9.
The contrast between the righteous elders of the people, who argue for Jeremiah, and the wicked, who convict him as worthy of death, also appears in the Tosefta-Tractate, Sotah 9:5 (note the prepositional phrase among them): (A) "So said the proper ones among them." (B) "The evil ones among them said, 'There was another man,'" etc. (C) "They said, 'Just as Uriah prophesied and was killed, so Jeremiah is subject to the death penalty.'" (D) "This entire pericope is a mixture of the words of different parties, so that one who said one thing did not say the other," Jacob Neusner (ed), Jeremiah in Talmud and Midrash (University Press of America, 2006), 9.
Or as Professor Neusner summarizes: "Several distinct voices make up Jeremiah's statement. The righteous defended the prophet, the wicked introduced a negative precedent. The context involves a number of such constructions," Jeremiah in Talmud and Midrash, 18.
"Several voices" rise but no specifically identified speakers, an ambiguity reflected in Rashi: "The one who said one thing did not say the other. Until now we have the words of the elders, but the wicked people who were there rose up and said: 'There was also a man who prophesied,' etc." The commentary Mitzudat David (Fortress of David) later attempts to close the gap on specificity: "These are the words of the priests and the prophets" (see the Rabbinic Bible, Miqra'ot Gedalot: Jeremiah.)
New England divines, as readers of Calvin's Commentaries on Jeremiah, would have been familiar with the difficulties found in Jeremiah Chapter 26: 17-23 (Revd. John Owen, ed., Commentaries on the Book of Jeremiah and the Lamentations, vol. 3, 1852, 2nd ed 1959, Grand Rapids, Michigan).
Calvin, who presents both sides well, is also simply wild in double mindedness (nearly so much as the people before whom Jeremiah stands): "Some explain the whole in the same manner, as though the elders designed to shew that the wicked can gain nothing by resisting God's prophets, except that by contending they make themselves more and more guilty. But others think that this part was brought forward by the opposite party. . . and this opinion seems to be confirmed by what follows in the last verse the chapter, Nevertheless the hand of Ahikam," 339.
"I dare not yet reject wholly the idea," cries Calvin, 341.
This is what the Prophet, if he knew his Calvin, would have had to deal with:
"It hence appears that this view can without absurdity be defended, that is, that the enemies of Jeremiah endeavoured to aggravate his case by referring to the punishment the king inflicted on Uriah, whose case was not dissimilar; and I do not reject this view. If any approve of the other, that this part was spoken by the advocates of Jeremiah, I readily allow it; but I dare not yet reject wholly the idea, that Jeremiah was loaded with prejudice by having the case of Uriah brought forward" (341).
"I dare not yet reject wholly the idea," cries Calvin--and I'd love to see the Latin for that mouthful. By way of contrast the New England Prophet decides and never wavers; as we all know, Brother Joseph was a James 1:5-6 sort of man.
The Prophet Joseph is not the only 19th century reader to add words to the text. Calvin's editor, the Rev. John Owen, taking the hint from 18th century commentator Hermann Venema, both transposes verses and also adds text. Venema "considers that the 17th verse has been removed from its place between the 19th and the 20th, and that the 'princes' mentioned the case of Micah in favour of Jeremiah, and that 'the elders of the land' adduced the case of Uriah against him" (341 n.1).
Dr. Owen suggests for verses 16, 18, and 19:
"Then said the princes and all the people to the priests and to the prophets, 'Against this man there is no judgment of death, for in the name of Jehovah hath he spoken to (or against) us. Micah the Morasthite was a prophet in the days of Hezekiah,' etc. 'But we are doing a great evil against our own souls.' "
Transposed Verse 17: "Then rose up men from the elders of the land and spoke to the whole assembly of the people, saying, (verse 20) 'But there was also a man, who prophesied in the name of Jehovah, Uriah,'" etc.
For the learned Vicar of Thrussington: "This arrangement makes the whole narrative plain, regular, and consistent. The conclusion comes in naturally, that notwithstanding the adverse speech of the 'elders' Jeremiah was saved by the influence of Ahikam, one of the princes" (341 n.1).
The arrangement astonishes as an attempt to correct the Bible--in 1852 England the Bible is not necessarily inerrant--yet there is nothing consistent or logical in what Rev. Owen corrects. Elders do remember long-forgotten prophets known to their fathers--they chant the ancient oracles. They do not see the latest news from court in vivid color. The events of chapter 26 are placed "in the beginning of the reign of Jehoiakim," and yet the doom of Urijah has already been played out within the framework of that new reign. Why then would it fall to the Elders to cite the story? And how would they know the details behind the execution of the prophet? Such facts would be the province of the king, his princes, or his priesthood.
Modern students neither follow the rabbinic reading nor do they attempt to transpose verses but consider verses 20-23 to have been added by the narrator (Jack R. Lundbom, Jeremiah, vol. 2, 300 in the Anchor Bible vol.21B): "It is not to be taken as a part of the argument in Jeremiah's defense (vss 16-19), which it would tend to contradict, nor is it presented as an argument of the accused." The verses on Urijah were "inserted at this place merely as an illustration of what might well have happened to Jeremiah, had not the princes had the courage to intervene"[!], John Bright, Jeremiah (Anchor Bible 21), 172.
Indeed: "There are a number of strange features in vv. 17-19. The direct citation of another speaker's work [Micah] and its use as an argument are unique in prophetic tradition," with verses 20-23 having "nothing to do with the structured confrontation of vv. 7-16," being merely a "response to v. 19," Robert P. Carroll, Jeremiah: A Commentary (London, 1986), 518-9.
"The passage," protests Professor Feinberg, "can scarcely be the words of Jeremiah's opponents because there is no introductory formula" (Charles L. Feinberg, Jeremiah: A Commentary, Grand Rapids, Michigin, 1982), 186.
Dr. Owens tried his best to produce just such a formula and failed. How does Joseph Smith fare?
Joseph Smith Translation OT Manuscript 2 (page 835): "But there was a man among the priests, rose up and said, that, Urijah the son of Shemaiah of Kirjath-jearim, prophesied in the name of the Lord, who also prophesied against this city and against this land according to all the words of Jeremiah."
The very fact of such a clarifying addition to the much-disputed text stands worthy of remark (and Brother Joseph may well have had some awareness of the textual controversies), but a surprise or two remains to be unfolded. While the Septuagint (Greek Translation of the Hebrew) drops the phrase "and against this city," the Prophet emphasizes the same phrase by adding gam, or also: "who also prophesied against this city and against the land" (see W. McKane, 660, 673). By shifting the also from a general reference to prophecy made in the name of the Lord ("And there was also a man that prophesied in the name of the Lord") to instead specify prophecies uttered against the city, the Prophet tightens the rhetorical point being scored by the "man among the priests" as he attempts to overthrow the argument of the Elders. Also, while specifically turning the mind back to the precedent of Micah speaking against the temple and the city, ironically anticipates a verdict of condemnation: in light of the ignominious fate of Urijah, which the speaker is about to unfold, the precedent of Micah can certify no justification for Jeremiah's prophecies against the temple.
Here's another surprise. What happens if we translate the added words of the New Translation back into idiomatic Biblical Hebrew? The following attempt represents the only possible solution in light of Hebrew grammar and syntax:
vayyaqum ish mehakohanim (or bakohanim) vayyomar (ki) "hayah mitnabbeh uriyah".
The sentence deserves close analysis:
vayyaqum (va = a contrastive use of waw as also a conversive waw (that is, a grammatical marker that converts the tense or aspect of the verb from imperfective to perfective) = but; vayyaqum = he will rise up = with waw conversive = he rose up)
ish (man, a man)
me + hakohanim = from or from among the priests (e.g., Ezra 3:12); or bakohanim (ba or be + ha = in, among + the; kohanim = priests)
vayyomar (va = and; vayyomar = and he will speak = and he said")
And, perhaps, ki (that = introduces direct discourse, although not necessary for sentence grammar here).
No other solution for the phrase "But there was a man among the priests, rose up and said" matches the Hebrew syntax. (To show a difference, the formula vayhi ish, as in 1 Samuel 1:1, carries existential meaning and implies no contrast: "And there was a man.") Besides, consider the perfect economy of the Hebrew--four words: vayyaqum ish mikohanim vayyomar--not to mention the subtle ambiguity of the whole thing: just who is this "man among the priests"? is he a priest himself? or a spokesman for the priests? The wording in Hebrew, while often denoting a member of a larger group, just as often suggests an actor among, but not necessarily of, said group, or an actor possessing such characteristics as would make him stand out from the crowd.
Professor Robert Alter often notes how Hebrew packs it in. And these four words tell us more than we might think at first glance. We learn arrangement. Just as the princes sat down at the entry of the New Gate, so the priests sat apart from the rest of the Assembly during the trial. Each constituent element of the court had its place. And what of procedure? From the text we deduce the following order: the defendant speaks first, followed by the secular authorities, then, according to Joseph Smith, the sacral authorities speak last; the Assembly of the People weigh things as they go. Who gets the last word? The Elders of the Land, however respectable, do not carry the power to silence the priests beyond possibility of response. So the last word belongs to the solemn or sullen priesthood, separated from the other attendees at the Assembly, and the priestly spokesman's response is a rhetorical volcano of denunciation and fury meant to scorch the Assembly to fever pitch: "And they threw his body into a common grave." Jeremiah hardly escaped the razor-rhetoric of this "man among the priests."
Yet another surprise comes packed into the Prophet's addition; to see it, we need, once again, to translate his English back into the Hebrew of Jeremiah. Let us compare the Hebrew sentence that opens the entire pericope about Micah and Urijah side-by-side with what the Prophet Joseph adds (to be a Joseph in Hebrew is literally to be one who adds):
vayyaqumu anashim mizaqqaney ha-eretz vayyomru
(lit. and there rose up men from/from among the elders of the land and they said)
(KJV: Then rose up certain of the elders of the land, and spake)
vayyaqum ish mekohanim vayyomar
(lit. but there rose up a man from among the priests and he said)
(JST: But there was a man among the priests, rose up and said).
We also note:
vayymdw rsh'im shayu shm vayyamru
(Rashi: but there stood up wicked people who were there and they said)
Such a perfect balance in the two introductory formulas--really the same formula--achieves what Jeremiah 26:17-23 has always deserved and what the commentators have been calling for from the commencement of rabbinical midrash and the derivative doctoral homily (cf. Jeremiah 19:1). The phrase in English, "But there was a man among the priests, rose up and said," matches the phrase in verse 17 when translated into Hebrew--and yet the translated English structures of these sentences are anything but alike! (That would be too easy.) All changes in the New Translation that reflect Hebrew syntax and narrative structure, or in this case a narrative frame, notably come years before the Prophet's acquisition of a Hebrew Bible and his formal study of the language under Joshua Seixas.
And once again we see telling evidence for the Prophet Joseph as Restorer of original Biblical text. The New Translation of the Holy Bible, as it unfolds before the prophetic sight, may come to be many things: seeric expansion, which includes restoration of the historical and doctrinal context of the original writers (that is, moving beyond text), restoration of intent, a broad task that also embraces grammatical fixing and idiomatic smoothing of the Authorized Version (and even plays on words) for a latter-day readership--but above and beyond all the New Translation comes to us as a Restoration of sealed, lost or, corrupted Text.
Thus we have the case of the spokesman for the priesthood at New Gate. Now if the story of Urijah indeed represents the words of a spokesman for the prosecution in contrast to the powerful affirmative statement of the Elders (But there was a man among the priests, rose up, that is, a spokesman who rose up in anger, then his startling summation of the case of Urijah serves as purpose to foment renewed anger in the Assembly. "Don't believe that line," he cries, "about some prophet speaking in the name of the Lord. There was another who so claimed and then fled for his life in terrific fear. Pharaoh, the friend who put our own Jehoiakim on the throne, turned over this fugitive and this your own king had him summarily dispatched with a sword and threw his body into a common grave."
Here is rhetoric at fever pitch, rhetoric designed to sway with instantaneity an Assembly vulnerable to such emotional appeal--And threw his body into a common grave! So do also to this new deceiver!
Nevertheless!
In Hebrew the word akh is a powerful affirmative--a word of power--that rings out, without further ado, the stunning conclusion of a dramatic moment. Thus we read: akh yad Ahikam ben Shaphan: Yet it was so, that the Hand of Ahikam ben Shaphan, the Power of Ahikam--a powerful elder who lends his support to Jeremiah at the very moment of fever crisis--even this Hand of Ahikam ben Shaphan was with Jeremiah, that they should not give him into the hands of the people (Hand versus hands) to put him to death.
Sources: William McKane, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Jeremiah, Edinburgh, 1996, 678; on the supposed legal model for the narrative see McKane, ps. 676-681; see also John W. Welch, "The Trial of Jeremiah: A Legal Legacy from Lehi's Jerusalem," in David R. Seely, JoAnn Seely, and J. Welch (eds), Glimpses of Lehi's Jerusalem (Provo, 2004), which shows parallels with legal procedure in the Book of Mormon narrative but does not mention JST Jeremiah 26:17-23; cf. also David R. Seely, "The Ministry of Jeremiah," in Kent Jackson (ed), Studies in Scripture 4.
In his New Translation of Jeremiah 26 the Prophet Joseph Smith makes several changes, though none carries more dramatic power than the line added to verse 20, at the very moment the wavering people stand ready to spare: "But there was a man among the priests, rose up and said." While the "man among the priests," who seeks to turn any wavering, merciful souls against Jeremiah, does not appear in any other textual tradition, what follows is the speech about Urijah, a prophet cut down by sword's edge and cast into a common grave for prophesying the very same things Jeremiah now sets forth. David Kimchi, paragon of commentators, sums up the point about comparing Jeremiah to Urijah with the following verdict: gm yrmyhw yhrg: You wish to acquit him but, as you now see, "[Jehoiakim] will kill Jeremiah too" (see W. McKane, Jeremiah, 670). The Prophet must die.
In order to grasp the power, and balance, these new words add to the narrative--raising its dramatic tension to fever pitch--we must first consider Jeremiah's most dangerous mission as set forth in the Authorized Version of the Bible:
1 In the beginning of the reign of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah king of Judah came this word from the Lord, saying,
2 Thus saith the Lord; Stand in the court of the Lord’s house, and speak unto all the cities of Judah, which come to worship in the Lord’s house, all the words that I command thee to speak unto them; diminish not a word:
3 If so be they will hearken, and turn every man from his evil way, that I may repent me of the evil, which I purpose to do unto them because of the evil of their doings.
4 And thou shalt say unto them, Thus saith the Lord; If ye will not hearken to me, to walk in my law, which I have set before you,
5 To hearken to the words of my servants the prophets, whom I sent unto you both rising up early, and sending them, but ye have not hearkened;
6 Then will I make this house like Shiloh, and will make this city a curse to all the nations of the earth.
The reaction of the audience was to detain Jeremiah as one worthy of death:
8 ¶Now it came to pass, when Jeremiah had made an end of speaking all that the Lord had commanded him to speak unto all the people, that the priests and the prophets and all the people took him, saying, Thou shalt surely die.
Verse 9 further records: And all the people were gathered against Jeremiah in the house of the Lord.
Representatives of the king, the sarim or princes, now join the Assembly of the People as its presiding secular officers, and Jeremiah contests his life at Newgate. The religious leaders or officers, the priests and the prophets, prosecute the case before the Assembly:
10 ¶When the princes of Judah heard these things, then they came up from the king’s house unto the house of the Lord, and sat down in the entry of the new gate of the Lord’s house.
11Then spake the priests and the prophets unto the princes and to all the people, saying, This man is worthy to die; for he hath prophesied against this city, as ye have heard with your ears.
Jeremiah is next permitted to defend himself before the Assembly and its presiding officers:
12 ¶Then spake Jeremiah unto all the princes and to all the people, saying, The Lord sent me to prophesy against this house and against this city all the words that ye have heard.
13 Therefore now amend your ways and your doings, and obey the voice of the Lord your God; and the Lord will repent him of the evil that he hath pronounced against you.
14 As for me, behold, I am in your hand: do with me as seemeth good and meet unto you.
15 But know ye for certain, that if ye put me to death, ye shall surely bring innocent blood upon yourselves, and upon this city, and upon the inhabitants thereof: for of a truth the Lord hath sent me unto you to speak all these words in your ears.
The sarim and the Assembly then make their decision, a first, or secular decision (Jack W. Welch, "The Trial of Jeremiah," cites 2 Chronicles 19:8, 11 as evidence for a clear division of secular and sacral judges under King Jehoshaphat; he notes "jurisdictional lines were not always sharply divided" in antiquity):
16¶Then said the princes and all the people unto the priests and to the prophets; This man is not worthy to die: for he hath spoken to us in the name of the Lord our God.
17 Then rose up certain of the elders of the land, and spake to all the assembly of the people, saying,
18 Micah the Morasthite prophesied in the days of Hezekiah king of Judah, and spake to all the people of Judah, saying, Thus saith the Lord of hosts; Zion shall be plowed like a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places of a forest.
19 Did Hezekiah king of Judah and all Judah put him at all to death? did he not fear the Lord, and besought the Lord, and the Lord repented him of the evil which he had pronounced against them? Thus might we procure great evil against our souls [Joseph Smith Translation: Thus by putting Jeremiah to death we might procure great evil against our souls].
20 And there was also a man that prophesied in the name of the Lord, Urijah the son of Shemaiah of Kirjath-jearim, who prophesied against this city and against this land according to all the words of Jeremiah.
21 And when Jehoiakim the king, with all his mighty men, and all the princes, heard his words, the king sought to put him to death: but when Urijah heard it, he was afraid, and fled, and went into Egypt;
22 And Jehoiakim the king sent men into Egypt, namely, Elnathan the son of Achbor, and certain men with him into Egypt.
23 And they fetched forth Urijah out of Egypt, and brought him unto Jehoiakim the king; who slew him with the sword, and cast his dead body into the graves of the common people [Vulgate: in sepulchris vulgi ignobilis; Targum: lqbry gly', "graves of the heaps," "common graves" = W. McKane, 664].
Nevertheless!
24 Nevertheless the hand of Ahikam the son of Shaphan was with Jeremiah, that they should not give him into the hand of the people to put him to death.
So runs the narrative, but at the juncture between verses 19 and 20 the Joseph Smith Translation breaks with the Masoretic Text by adding the previously unknown character of "a man among the priests" who rises to speak of Urijah and his doom. And whether we are thinking of the Prophet Joseph or of David Kimchi: "The sense of v.24 is then that this [same] outcome is blocked only by Ahikam's shielding of Jeremiah. In connection with Kimchi's hypothesis we may ask about the identity of those who are alleged [by Kimchi] to say gm yrmyhw yhrg. . . So we need a new constituency which the narrative does not supply" (McKane, 671).
Both Rashi and Kimchi, our greatest medieval commentators, draw on the midrashic tradition and, in particular, the Sifrei to Numbers (88):
R. "Up to this point the statement is what the righteous people said. As to the wicked, what did they say? "there was another man who prophesied in the name of the Lord, Uriah," etc.
S. So the wicked said, 'Just as Uriah was put to death, so Jeremiah is liable to be put to death.'"
Sifre to Numbers: An American Translation and Explanation, ed. Jacob Neusner (Atlanta, 1986), vol. 2, 88-9.
The contrast between the righteous elders of the people, who argue for Jeremiah, and the wicked, who convict him as worthy of death, also appears in the Tosefta-Tractate, Sotah 9:5 (note the prepositional phrase among them): (A) "So said the proper ones among them." (B) "The evil ones among them said, 'There was another man,'" etc. (C) "They said, 'Just as Uriah prophesied and was killed, so Jeremiah is subject to the death penalty.'" (D) "This entire pericope is a mixture of the words of different parties, so that one who said one thing did not say the other," Jacob Neusner (ed), Jeremiah in Talmud and Midrash (University Press of America, 2006), 9.
Or as Professor Neusner summarizes: "Several distinct voices make up Jeremiah's statement. The righteous defended the prophet, the wicked introduced a negative precedent. The context involves a number of such constructions," Jeremiah in Talmud and Midrash, 18.
"Several voices" rise but no specifically identified speakers, an ambiguity reflected in Rashi: "The one who said one thing did not say the other. Until now we have the words of the elders, but the wicked people who were there rose up and said: 'There was also a man who prophesied,' etc." The commentary Mitzudat David (Fortress of David) later attempts to close the gap on specificity: "These are the words of the priests and the prophets" (see the Rabbinic Bible, Miqra'ot Gedalot: Jeremiah.)
New England divines, as readers of Calvin's Commentaries on Jeremiah, would have been familiar with the difficulties found in Jeremiah Chapter 26: 17-23 (Revd. John Owen, ed., Commentaries on the Book of Jeremiah and the Lamentations, vol. 3, 1852, 2nd ed 1959, Grand Rapids, Michigan).
Calvin, who presents both sides well, is also simply wild in double mindedness (nearly so much as the people before whom Jeremiah stands): "Some explain the whole in the same manner, as though the elders designed to shew that the wicked can gain nothing by resisting God's prophets, except that by contending they make themselves more and more guilty. But others think that this part was brought forward by the opposite party. . . and this opinion seems to be confirmed by what follows in the last verse the chapter, Nevertheless the hand of Ahikam," 339.
"I dare not yet reject wholly the idea," cries Calvin, 341.
This is what the Prophet, if he knew his Calvin, would have had to deal with:
"It hence appears that this view can without absurdity be defended, that is, that the enemies of Jeremiah endeavoured to aggravate his case by referring to the punishment the king inflicted on Uriah, whose case was not dissimilar; and I do not reject this view. If any approve of the other, that this part was spoken by the advocates of Jeremiah, I readily allow it; but I dare not yet reject wholly the idea, that Jeremiah was loaded with prejudice by having the case of Uriah brought forward" (341).
"I dare not yet reject wholly the idea," cries Calvin--and I'd love to see the Latin for that mouthful. By way of contrast the New England Prophet decides and never wavers; as we all know, Brother Joseph was a James 1:5-6 sort of man.
The Prophet Joseph is not the only 19th century reader to add words to the text. Calvin's editor, the Rev. John Owen, taking the hint from 18th century commentator Hermann Venema, both transposes verses and also adds text. Venema "considers that the 17th verse has been removed from its place between the 19th and the 20th, and that the 'princes' mentioned the case of Micah in favour of Jeremiah, and that 'the elders of the land' adduced the case of Uriah against him" (341 n.1).
Dr. Owen suggests for verses 16, 18, and 19:
"Then said the princes and all the people to the priests and to the prophets, 'Against this man there is no judgment of death, for in the name of Jehovah hath he spoken to (or against) us. Micah the Morasthite was a prophet in the days of Hezekiah,' etc. 'But we are doing a great evil against our own souls.' "
Transposed Verse 17: "Then rose up men from the elders of the land and spoke to the whole assembly of the people, saying, (verse 20) 'But there was also a man, who prophesied in the name of Jehovah, Uriah,'" etc.
For the learned Vicar of Thrussington: "This arrangement makes the whole narrative plain, regular, and consistent. The conclusion comes in naturally, that notwithstanding the adverse speech of the 'elders' Jeremiah was saved by the influence of Ahikam, one of the princes" (341 n.1).
The arrangement astonishes as an attempt to correct the Bible--in 1852 England the Bible is not necessarily inerrant--yet there is nothing consistent or logical in what Rev. Owen corrects. Elders do remember long-forgotten prophets known to their fathers--they chant the ancient oracles. They do not see the latest news from court in vivid color. The events of chapter 26 are placed "in the beginning of the reign of Jehoiakim," and yet the doom of Urijah has already been played out within the framework of that new reign. Why then would it fall to the Elders to cite the story? And how would they know the details behind the execution of the prophet? Such facts would be the province of the king, his princes, or his priesthood.
Modern students neither follow the rabbinic reading nor do they attempt to transpose verses but consider verses 20-23 to have been added by the narrator (Jack R. Lundbom, Jeremiah, vol. 2, 300 in the Anchor Bible vol.21B): "It is not to be taken as a part of the argument in Jeremiah's defense (vss 16-19), which it would tend to contradict, nor is it presented as an argument of the accused." The verses on Urijah were "inserted at this place merely as an illustration of what might well have happened to Jeremiah, had not the princes had the courage to intervene"[!], John Bright, Jeremiah (Anchor Bible 21), 172.
Indeed: "There are a number of strange features in vv. 17-19. The direct citation of another speaker's work [Micah] and its use as an argument are unique in prophetic tradition," with verses 20-23 having "nothing to do with the structured confrontation of vv. 7-16," being merely a "response to v. 19," Robert P. Carroll, Jeremiah: A Commentary (London, 1986), 518-9.
"The passage," protests Professor Feinberg, "can scarcely be the words of Jeremiah's opponents because there is no introductory formula" (Charles L. Feinberg, Jeremiah: A Commentary, Grand Rapids, Michigin, 1982), 186.
Dr. Owens tried his best to produce just such a formula and failed. How does Joseph Smith fare?
Joseph Smith Translation OT Manuscript 2 (page 835): "But there was a man among the priests, rose up and said, that, Urijah the son of Shemaiah of Kirjath-jearim, prophesied in the name of the Lord, who also prophesied against this city and against this land according to all the words of Jeremiah."
The very fact of such a clarifying addition to the much-disputed text stands worthy of remark (and Brother Joseph may well have had some awareness of the textual controversies), but a surprise or two remains to be unfolded. While the Septuagint (Greek Translation of the Hebrew) drops the phrase "and against this city," the Prophet emphasizes the same phrase by adding gam, or also: "who also prophesied against this city and against the land" (see W. McKane, 660, 673). By shifting the also from a general reference to prophecy made in the name of the Lord ("And there was also a man that prophesied in the name of the Lord") to instead specify prophecies uttered against the city, the Prophet tightens the rhetorical point being scored by the "man among the priests" as he attempts to overthrow the argument of the Elders. Also, while specifically turning the mind back to the precedent of Micah speaking against the temple and the city, ironically anticipates a verdict of condemnation: in light of the ignominious fate of Urijah, which the speaker is about to unfold, the precedent of Micah can certify no justification for Jeremiah's prophecies against the temple.
Here's another surprise. What happens if we translate the added words of the New Translation back into idiomatic Biblical Hebrew? The following attempt represents the only possible solution in light of Hebrew grammar and syntax:
vayyaqum ish mehakohanim (or bakohanim) vayyomar (ki) "hayah mitnabbeh uriyah".
The sentence deserves close analysis:
vayyaqum (va = a contrastive use of waw as also a conversive waw (that is, a grammatical marker that converts the tense or aspect of the verb from imperfective to perfective) = but; vayyaqum = he will rise up = with waw conversive = he rose up)
ish (man, a man)
me + hakohanim = from or from among the priests (e.g., Ezra 3:12); or bakohanim (ba or be + ha = in, among + the; kohanim = priests)
vayyomar (va = and; vayyomar = and he will speak = and he said")
And, perhaps, ki (that = introduces direct discourse, although not necessary for sentence grammar here).
No other solution for the phrase "But there was a man among the priests, rose up and said" matches the Hebrew syntax. (To show a difference, the formula vayhi ish, as in 1 Samuel 1:1, carries existential meaning and implies no contrast: "And there was a man.") Besides, consider the perfect economy of the Hebrew--four words: vayyaqum ish mikohanim vayyomar--not to mention the subtle ambiguity of the whole thing: just who is this "man among the priests"? is he a priest himself? or a spokesman for the priests? The wording in Hebrew, while often denoting a member of a larger group, just as often suggests an actor among, but not necessarily of, said group, or an actor possessing such characteristics as would make him stand out from the crowd.
Professor Robert Alter often notes how Hebrew packs it in. And these four words tell us more than we might think at first glance. We learn arrangement. Just as the princes sat down at the entry of the New Gate, so the priests sat apart from the rest of the Assembly during the trial. Each constituent element of the court had its place. And what of procedure? From the text we deduce the following order: the defendant speaks first, followed by the secular authorities, then, according to Joseph Smith, the sacral authorities speak last; the Assembly of the People weigh things as they go. Who gets the last word? The Elders of the Land, however respectable, do not carry the power to silence the priests beyond possibility of response. So the last word belongs to the solemn or sullen priesthood, separated from the other attendees at the Assembly, and the priestly spokesman's response is a rhetorical volcano of denunciation and fury meant to scorch the Assembly to fever pitch: "And they threw his body into a common grave." Jeremiah hardly escaped the razor-rhetoric of this "man among the priests."
Yet another surprise comes packed into the Prophet's addition; to see it, we need, once again, to translate his English back into the Hebrew of Jeremiah. Let us compare the Hebrew sentence that opens the entire pericope about Micah and Urijah side-by-side with what the Prophet Joseph adds (to be a Joseph in Hebrew is literally to be one who adds):
vayyaqumu anashim mizaqqaney ha-eretz vayyomru
(lit. and there rose up men from/from among the elders of the land and they said)
(KJV: Then rose up certain of the elders of the land, and spake)
vayyaqum ish mekohanim vayyomar
(lit. but there rose up a man from among the priests and he said)
(JST: But there was a man among the priests, rose up and said).
We also note:
vayymdw rsh'im shayu shm vayyamru
(Rashi: but there stood up wicked people who were there and they said)
Such a perfect balance in the two introductory formulas--really the same formula--achieves what Jeremiah 26:17-23 has always deserved and what the commentators have been calling for from the commencement of rabbinical midrash and the derivative doctoral homily (cf. Jeremiah 19:1). The phrase in English, "But there was a man among the priests, rose up and said," matches the phrase in verse 17 when translated into Hebrew--and yet the translated English structures of these sentences are anything but alike! (That would be too easy.) All changes in the New Translation that reflect Hebrew syntax and narrative structure, or in this case a narrative frame, notably come years before the Prophet's acquisition of a Hebrew Bible and his formal study of the language under Joshua Seixas.
And once again we see telling evidence for the Prophet Joseph as Restorer of original Biblical text. The New Translation of the Holy Bible, as it unfolds before the prophetic sight, may come to be many things: seeric expansion, which includes restoration of the historical and doctrinal context of the original writers (that is, moving beyond text), restoration of intent, a broad task that also embraces grammatical fixing and idiomatic smoothing of the Authorized Version (and even plays on words) for a latter-day readership--but above and beyond all the New Translation comes to us as a Restoration of sealed, lost or, corrupted Text.
Thus we have the case of the spokesman for the priesthood at New Gate. Now if the story of Urijah indeed represents the words of a spokesman for the prosecution in contrast to the powerful affirmative statement of the Elders (But there was a man among the priests, rose up, that is, a spokesman who rose up in anger, then his startling summation of the case of Urijah serves as purpose to foment renewed anger in the Assembly. "Don't believe that line," he cries, "about some prophet speaking in the name of the Lord. There was another who so claimed and then fled for his life in terrific fear. Pharaoh, the friend who put our own Jehoiakim on the throne, turned over this fugitive and this your own king had him summarily dispatched with a sword and threw his body into a common grave."
Here is rhetoric at fever pitch, rhetoric designed to sway with instantaneity an Assembly vulnerable to such emotional appeal--And threw his body into a common grave! So do also to this new deceiver!
Nevertheless!
In Hebrew the word akh is a powerful affirmative--a word of power--that rings out, without further ado, the stunning conclusion of a dramatic moment. Thus we read: akh yad Ahikam ben Shaphan: Yet it was so, that the Hand of Ahikam ben Shaphan, the Power of Ahikam--a powerful elder who lends his support to Jeremiah at the very moment of fever crisis--even this Hand of Ahikam ben Shaphan was with Jeremiah, that they should not give him into the hands of the people (Hand versus hands) to put him to death.
The priestly spokesman rises up to condemn the prophet, but now we meet Ah-i-kam, or "My Brother has Risen Up."
A stunning power of veto stands proud against the hand of "a man among the priests."
It is the Joseph Smith Translation of Jeremiah 26:20 that, without rival, effortlessly lends the story a coherent formulaic balance and which also, in high drama, attains that rhetorical pitch intended by Baruch, Jeremiah's scribe and our original Hebrew writer.
Copyright 2011 by Val H. Sederholm
A stunning power of veto stands proud against the hand of "a man among the priests."
It is the Joseph Smith Translation of Jeremiah 26:20 that, without rival, effortlessly lends the story a coherent formulaic balance and which also, in high drama, attains that rhetorical pitch intended by Baruch, Jeremiah's scribe and our original Hebrew writer.
Copyright 2011 by Val H. Sederholm
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