The Prophet's scribes copied out the entire Gospel of Luke as part of the work of translation. It seems the Prophet, reading aloud, but making additions, deletions, and whatnot to and from the King James Version, dictated the text just as he wished it to read. And it's likely the scribes would not even have noticed minor variations from the Authorized Version.
Consider the sycamine tree that even mustard-seed faith can uproot and plant in the sea (Luke 17:6). The Prophet's scribes leave no trace of it; instead we find: "syc[k, struck out]amore tree," or "sycamore tree." Did the Prophet misspeak or his scribes mishear? It's possible, though I wonder. The business of translating under inspiration was a serious matter.
Let's suppose oversight. Given the nature of the Prophet's critics, such a claim to the ordinary accidents of our nature will never get him off the hook. Brother Joseph wasn't afraid of human error; the critics insist on inerrancy for prophets. And the botanists are raging: the sycamine is the Egyptian mulberry! It is not a sycamore! although related. Plus, say the textual scholars, Luke names both trees: sycamore (Luke 19) and sycamine (Luke 17). He knew what was up.
Whisking through Professor Joseph Fitzmeyer's Anchor Bible Commentary on Luke, vol. 2, 1143 n.6, we find a little peace from the supposed teapot tempestuousness that encompasseth our Prophet:
To this mulberry tree. "The Greek n. sykaminos occurs in the LXX (1 Kgs 10:27; 1 Chr 27:28; 2 Chr 1:15; 9:27, etc.) as the translation of Hebrew shiqmah, which is really the 'sycamore tree.' See Luke 19:4, sykomorea ["which occurs only here in the NT and never in the LXX, 1223 n.4"]. Luke may not have differentiated them."
Luke has a bigger problem than sycamines anyhow. For "what would have prompted Luke to change [St. Matthew's uprooted] 'mountain' into 'mulberry tree'?," 1142. Call in the geologists, call in the botanists, call the eye doctors.
Saturday, September 18, 2010
Joseph Smith Translation Luke 3: Treasury, Tolls, and Taxes
Treasury, Tolls, and Taxes in the Lost Verses of Luke
Part 1
We speak of lost books but there are also "lost verses." The Joseph Smith Translation of the Holy Bible restores many such lost verses and, in so doing, opens broad areas of discovery for books we thought we knew.
Consider Luke 3:12-13:
12 Then came also publicans to be baptized, and said unto him, Master, what shall we do?
13 And he said unto them, Exact no more than that which is appointed you.
Crystal clear, as we suppose, but now consider what follows in the New Translation and then consider how things would appear should we put the words of that New Translation back into Lucan Greek. Would it have a genuine ring to it?
Joseph Smith Translation Luke 3: 19-20
(New Testament Manuscript 2, Folio 3 = Joseph Smith's New Translation of the Bible: Original Manuscripts, ed., Scott H. Faulring, Kent P. Jackson, Robert J. Matthews [Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 2004]):
19 For it is well known unto you, Theophilus [misspelled "Theophelus" in NT Ms 2], that after the manner [ethos/nomima] of the Jews, and according to the custom of their law [kata to ethos tou nomou tou, or kata to nomos tou] in receiving [apolambanein] money [xalkon/argurion] in [LDS Bible: "into"] the treasury [eis ton gazophulakion], that out of the abundance [ek tou perisseuontos] which was received, was appointed unto the poor [diatetagmenou ptoxois], every man his portion [meros sou];
20 And after this manner [houtos] did the publicans [telonai] also, wherefore John said unto them, Exact no more than that which is appointed [diatetagmenou] you.
What we have here is an aside about the institution of toll-collecting or the like in Roman Palestine, a matter we know little about. Because Luke also holds forth on the institution of the Temple Treasury, things get confusing.
Yet the key to interpretation lies in the comparison: "And after this manner did the telonai, or publicans also." That means the institution of toll-collecting compares in kind to that of the Temple Treasury and distribution to the poor--quite a leap!
To make sense of things, we have to toss aside those manuals from schooldays and glimpse something of what a publican (the Latin word for telonos) is and what he is not. (The true ordo publicani is set forth by Ernst Badian, Publicans and Sinners: Private Enterprise in the Service of the Roman Republic.) And summing matters up in the Anchor Bible edition of Luke, Professor Joseph Fitzmeyer notes: "Neither 'publican' nor 'tax-collector' [nor 'tax-farmer'] is an accurate translation of the Greek term [telonos], which technically designates 'toll-collectors,' i.e. those engaged in the collection of indirect taxes (tolls, tariffs, imposts, and customs)" (Joseph Fitzmeyer, "Luke 10-24," Anchor Bible, ed. William Foxwell Albright and David Noel Freedman [Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1965], Luke 2.469 n 12). While, in a broad sense, the telenai could include tax-farmers, Professor Donahue insists we are to see them in the New Testament as the "minor functionaries" at the toll booth, where they work under a supervisor (like Zacchaeus): "The telonai with whom Jesus associates in the Gospels are most likely toll collectors," 338 (John R. Donuhue, "Taxation in the New Testament," in Anchor Bible Dictionary, ed. David Noel Freedman [New York: Doubleday, 1992], 6.337-8).
What we have here, Professor Werner Stenger further informs us, is the institution of the Portorium or, speaking of the duties, the portoria (from Latin for door or gate, and harbour). Matthew sits at the toll-station, Portorium, or telonion, "the receipt of custom." And I admire the Prophet Joseph Smith's plain definition of "receipt of custom" in JST Luke 5:27 as "the place where they received custom." Such stations typically were found at the borders (gates) between both provinces, or political borders, and economically and geographical distinct regions (Werner Stenger, "Gebt dem Kaiser, was des Kaisers ist...!": Eine sozialgeschichtliche Untersuchung zur Besteuerung Palastinas in neutestamentlicher Zeit [Frankfurt: Athenaum], 30; Hugh Nibley, "Tenting, Toll, and Taxing," in The Ancient State: The Rulers and the Ruled = CWHN 10 [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1991], 33-98, unfolds the ageless tale of tolls and taxing; for the origin of the toll, or "tent-money," see p. 58f).
For Palestine, Professor Stenger notes "eine Zollstation in Jericho" (Luke 19:1), which marked the border of the Jordan River that divided the Tetrachy of Herod Antipas and Roman Judea. Another example is the toll-station at Capernaum (Mark 2:14), Matthew Levi's post (Stenger, 30).
Whoever passed through these stations had to declare (the practice of professio) and pay customs on, well, everything (Verzollt wurde fast alles, was eine Zollgrenze passierte): yokes, wagons, draft animals, wheat, oil, garden foods, cattle, pearls, and items of jewelry and clothing (Stenger, 31).
Should the wayfarer make a false professio (most foolish because soldiers often stood at guard), the duty was doubled. But ordinarily all went well, and the traveller went on his or her way with a document bearing the official stamp of the toll station (Stenger, 32).
Back to Luke (in my own words):
"Theophilus, being, as you are, a Greek proselyte to Judaism, you have traveled to Jerusalem at Passover and cast freewill offerings into the Chamber of Secrets in the Temple Treasury. You know well how these freewill offerings are then quietly distributed to the poor of good family, and you certainly understand the need for a surplus of such offerings if all the worthy poor are to be helped (Mishnah, Shekalim, 2,5; 5,6).
"Now it's the same principle of distribution, more or less, that one finds with our telonai, or toll-collectors--a matter which would be unfamiliar to you as a man of Athens. From the surplus or abundance of money collected at these stations, each telonos receives his due percentage. So, you see, most noble Theophilus, while a clumsy comparison--Temple and Tollbooth indeed!--it's as simple as all that.
"And you can see John's point: the system lies wide-open to abuse. Toll-collectors, conspiring together, would, as a matter of course, exact more from travelers than duly required (often by false accusation doubling their duty) in order to grow the abundance and thus increase the portion of every man. Such like abuse, O Theophilus, you never see back home in Athens!"
Note how the simplistic, or overly precise explanation--and Luke as physician loves the detail--awaits summary removal from the final cut by no-nonsense scribes. Yet the restored verses truthfully reflect an institution in the Roman Empire but poorly known today, despite all its administrative niceties.
In one deft stroke the Prophet Joseph Smith tells us something about who mysterious Theophilus was and also touches briefly on the economic workings of the day, including the Temple Treasury as a charitable institution (including perforce district treasuries, as set forth in the Mishnah, Shekalim 2,1), and shows us how publicans sometimes cheated the poor. And note the irony of an otherwise cold comparison: the Temple Treasury, as sacred institution, exemplifies the proper, consecrated use of money "for the intent to do good." While identical in function, in a broad sense--for Luke somewhat forces the comparison between tollhouse and temple--how utterly opposite in outcome and intent!
A hidden homily, ironically poised, underlies these restored words of the Gospel of Luke.
NOTES
Publicans: "The publicans of the New Testament were not real Roman publicani at all, but merely their local employees," Ernst Badian, Publicans and Sinners: Private Enterprise in the Service of the Roman Republic (Blackwell: Oxford/Cornell University Press, 1972), 11; "The very appellation of the publicani is due to the fact that they dealt with the public property (publica) of the Roman People," 15, i.e., public companies as contractors, mine owners, weapons dealers, and sometimes tax-farmers, and similar.
Out of the abundance: Since abundance means surplus, one wonders whether Luke might have been talking about the Surplus Collection (from the Shekel tax), the sheyarei ha-lishkah. Indeed the distribution of the sheyarei ha-lishkah (care of altars, sanctuaries, courts, Jerusalem's water system, towers) has been partly contested in Midrash (Ket.106b v Shek 4:2). In JST Luke 3:19-20, however, "abundance" likely refers to those "special chambers for freewill offerings" of which, "One was the chamber of anonymous gifts for those who wished to give charity anonymously: 'sin-fearing persons used to insert their gifts therein secretly, and the poor of good family would be supported therefrom secretly' (Shek 5:6)," Encyclopaedia Judaica, ed. Cecil Roth and Geoffrey Wigoder (New York: Macmillan, 1971-2), 15:981.
For Athenian probity in tax collection, see A. H. M. Jones (ed. P. A. Brunt), The Roman Economy: Studies in Ancient Economic and Administrative History (Oxford: Blackwell, 1974), 152ff., and 154: "It seems unlikely that at Athens, where they could be sued before the people's courts, contractors often exacted more than their due."
I have not been able to find any Latter-day Saint commentary on JST Luke 3:19-20 other than brief notices that such an addition exists. Robert J. Matthews very briefly notices the additional verses in JST Luke 3:19-20 on ps. 238-9 of his "A Plainer Translation": Joseph Smith's Translation of the Bible; as do Daniel H. Ludlow, A Companion to Your Study of the New Testament, 273; Robert L. Millet, "The Joseph Smith Translation and the Synoptic Gospels: Literary Style," in The Joseph Smith Translation: The Restoration of Plain and Precious Things, (ed. Monte S. Nyman, Robert L. Millet), 157; and D. Kelly Ogden and Andrew Skinner, Verse by Verse:The Four Gospels, 84.
Part Two
of Treasury, Toll, and Taxes in the New Translation of Luke
The New Translation reworks the wording of "receipt of custom" (the tollbooth) in three different ways, a reworking which reflects the study of the Prophet as he tried to express things clearly and accurately. The action of inspired translation, we are told in revelation, requires enormous mental effort, including trial and error, to be followed by prayer and confirmation (Doctrine and Covenants, Section 9).
Consider, then, the following clarifications for "receipt of custom":
1) JST Matthew 9:9: The original manuscript, New Testament Manuscript 1, shows no change: He saw a man named Matthew sitting at the receipt of custom.
2) JST Mark 2:14, New Testament Ms 2, Folio 2: He saw Levi, the son of Alpheus, sitting at the [receipt of custom, phrase written and then crossed out] place where they receive [present tense] tribute, as was customary in those days.
3) JST Matthew 9:9, New Testament Ms 2, Folio 1, with pinned on note, penned by Sidney Rigdon: "sitting at the [receipt of customs, phrase written and struck out--and note the plural!] place [where they received tributes as, all struck out] [pinned note begins] where they received [past tense] tribute, as was customary in those days.
4) And now, JST Luke 5:27, the end of the chain: the place where they received custom.
The question that arises is what the strange phrase, the place where they received tribute, as was customary in those days, is all about? Did the Prophet, at first, not understand what "custom" (or "customs") in "receipt of custom" meant? Possibly. More likely, a pun occurred to the mind (the Prophet Joseph was wild about punning, according to friend, Benjamin Johnson): "custom" (taxes) thus becomes "custom" (practice). And such a pun surely takes a jocular stab at the ubiquity of taxes. In fact, it's all quite funny: as was the custom in those days, as opposed to these happy times in 1831 when all taxes have been abolished. . .
Now, while the statement about the institution of collecting taxes, tolls, or tribute stands true (it indeed "was customary in those days"), and perchance reflects a lost shard of text, the translation is not the best of all possible worlds. And note how the words for tolls and tribute are interchangeable in the New Testament, as Fitzmeyer observes. The observation is only logical, since a toll, according to Hugh Nibley, is a token payment exacted for "permission to pass somewhere," and duly "given in recognition of sovereignty or lordship," i.e., tribute money (the New Testament word, phoros), 58.
The mental struggle for clarity was long, but by Luke 5:27 the Prophet found both apt phrasing and confirmation: "custom" is a better choice than "tribute"--and no puns allowed.
The result stands true in plain American prose:
Telonion, or receipt of custom: the place where they received custom.
Part 1
We speak of lost books but there are also "lost verses." The Joseph Smith Translation of the Holy Bible restores many such lost verses and, in so doing, opens broad areas of discovery for books we thought we knew.
Consider Luke 3:12-13:
12 Then came also publicans to be baptized, and said unto him, Master, what shall we do?
13 And he said unto them, Exact no more than that which is appointed you.
Crystal clear, as we suppose, but now consider what follows in the New Translation and then consider how things would appear should we put the words of that New Translation back into Lucan Greek. Would it have a genuine ring to it?
Joseph Smith Translation Luke 3: 19-20
(New Testament Manuscript 2, Folio 3 = Joseph Smith's New Translation of the Bible: Original Manuscripts, ed., Scott H. Faulring, Kent P. Jackson, Robert J. Matthews [Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 2004]):
19 For it is well known unto you, Theophilus [misspelled "Theophelus" in NT Ms 2], that after the manner [ethos/nomima] of the Jews, and according to the custom of their law [kata to ethos tou nomou tou, or kata to nomos tou] in receiving [apolambanein] money [xalkon/argurion] in [LDS Bible: "into"] the treasury [eis ton gazophulakion], that out of the abundance [ek tou perisseuontos] which was received, was appointed unto the poor [diatetagmenou ptoxois], every man his portion [meros sou];
20 And after this manner [houtos] did the publicans [telonai] also, wherefore John said unto them, Exact no more than that which is appointed [diatetagmenou] you.
What we have here is an aside about the institution of toll-collecting or the like in Roman Palestine, a matter we know little about. Because Luke also holds forth on the institution of the Temple Treasury, things get confusing.
Yet the key to interpretation lies in the comparison: "And after this manner did the telonai, or publicans also." That means the institution of toll-collecting compares in kind to that of the Temple Treasury and distribution to the poor--quite a leap!
To make sense of things, we have to toss aside those manuals from schooldays and glimpse something of what a publican (the Latin word for telonos) is and what he is not. (The true ordo publicani is set forth by Ernst Badian, Publicans and Sinners: Private Enterprise in the Service of the Roman Republic.) And summing matters up in the Anchor Bible edition of Luke, Professor Joseph Fitzmeyer notes: "Neither 'publican' nor 'tax-collector' [nor 'tax-farmer'] is an accurate translation of the Greek term [telonos], which technically designates 'toll-collectors,' i.e. those engaged in the collection of indirect taxes (tolls, tariffs, imposts, and customs)" (Joseph Fitzmeyer, "Luke 10-24," Anchor Bible, ed. William Foxwell Albright and David Noel Freedman [Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1965], Luke 2.469 n 12). While, in a broad sense, the telenai could include tax-farmers, Professor Donahue insists we are to see them in the New Testament as the "minor functionaries" at the toll booth, where they work under a supervisor (like Zacchaeus): "The telonai with whom Jesus associates in the Gospels are most likely toll collectors," 338 (John R. Donuhue, "Taxation in the New Testament," in Anchor Bible Dictionary, ed. David Noel Freedman [New York: Doubleday, 1992], 6.337-8).
What we have here, Professor Werner Stenger further informs us, is the institution of the Portorium or, speaking of the duties, the portoria (from Latin for door or gate, and harbour). Matthew sits at the toll-station, Portorium, or telonion, "the receipt of custom." And I admire the Prophet Joseph Smith's plain definition of "receipt of custom" in JST Luke 5:27 as "the place where they received custom." Such stations typically were found at the borders (gates) between both provinces, or political borders, and economically and geographical distinct regions (Werner Stenger, "Gebt dem Kaiser, was des Kaisers ist...!": Eine sozialgeschichtliche Untersuchung zur Besteuerung Palastinas in neutestamentlicher Zeit [Frankfurt: Athenaum], 30; Hugh Nibley, "Tenting, Toll, and Taxing," in The Ancient State: The Rulers and the Ruled = CWHN 10 [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1991], 33-98, unfolds the ageless tale of tolls and taxing; for the origin of the toll, or "tent-money," see p. 58f).
For Palestine, Professor Stenger notes "eine Zollstation in Jericho" (Luke 19:1), which marked the border of the Jordan River that divided the Tetrachy of Herod Antipas and Roman Judea. Another example is the toll-station at Capernaum (Mark 2:14), Matthew Levi's post (Stenger, 30).
Whoever passed through these stations had to declare (the practice of professio) and pay customs on, well, everything (Verzollt wurde fast alles, was eine Zollgrenze passierte): yokes, wagons, draft animals, wheat, oil, garden foods, cattle, pearls, and items of jewelry and clothing (Stenger, 31).
Should the wayfarer make a false professio (most foolish because soldiers often stood at guard), the duty was doubled. But ordinarily all went well, and the traveller went on his or her way with a document bearing the official stamp of the toll station (Stenger, 32).
Back to Luke (in my own words):
"Theophilus, being, as you are, a Greek proselyte to Judaism, you have traveled to Jerusalem at Passover and cast freewill offerings into the Chamber of Secrets in the Temple Treasury. You know well how these freewill offerings are then quietly distributed to the poor of good family, and you certainly understand the need for a surplus of such offerings if all the worthy poor are to be helped (Mishnah, Shekalim, 2,5; 5,6).
"Now it's the same principle of distribution, more or less, that one finds with our telonai, or toll-collectors--a matter which would be unfamiliar to you as a man of Athens. From the surplus or abundance of money collected at these stations, each telonos receives his due percentage. So, you see, most noble Theophilus, while a clumsy comparison--Temple and Tollbooth indeed!--it's as simple as all that.
"And you can see John's point: the system lies wide-open to abuse. Toll-collectors, conspiring together, would, as a matter of course, exact more from travelers than duly required (often by false accusation doubling their duty) in order to grow the abundance and thus increase the portion of every man. Such like abuse, O Theophilus, you never see back home in Athens!"
Note how the simplistic, or overly precise explanation--and Luke as physician loves the detail--awaits summary removal from the final cut by no-nonsense scribes. Yet the restored verses truthfully reflect an institution in the Roman Empire but poorly known today, despite all its administrative niceties.
In one deft stroke the Prophet Joseph Smith tells us something about who mysterious Theophilus was and also touches briefly on the economic workings of the day, including the Temple Treasury as a charitable institution (including perforce district treasuries, as set forth in the Mishnah, Shekalim 2,1), and shows us how publicans sometimes cheated the poor. And note the irony of an otherwise cold comparison: the Temple Treasury, as sacred institution, exemplifies the proper, consecrated use of money "for the intent to do good." While identical in function, in a broad sense--for Luke somewhat forces the comparison between tollhouse and temple--how utterly opposite in outcome and intent!
A hidden homily, ironically poised, underlies these restored words of the Gospel of Luke.
NOTES
Publicans: "The publicans of the New Testament were not real Roman publicani at all, but merely their local employees," Ernst Badian, Publicans and Sinners: Private Enterprise in the Service of the Roman Republic (Blackwell: Oxford/Cornell University Press, 1972), 11; "The very appellation of the publicani is due to the fact that they dealt with the public property (publica) of the Roman People," 15, i.e., public companies as contractors, mine owners, weapons dealers, and sometimes tax-farmers, and similar.
Out of the abundance: Since abundance means surplus, one wonders whether Luke might have been talking about the Surplus Collection (from the Shekel tax), the sheyarei ha-lishkah. Indeed the distribution of the sheyarei ha-lishkah (care of altars, sanctuaries, courts, Jerusalem's water system, towers) has been partly contested in Midrash (Ket.106b v Shek 4:2). In JST Luke 3:19-20, however, "abundance" likely refers to those "special chambers for freewill offerings" of which, "One was the chamber of anonymous gifts for those who wished to give charity anonymously: 'sin-fearing persons used to insert their gifts therein secretly, and the poor of good family would be supported therefrom secretly' (Shek 5:6)," Encyclopaedia Judaica, ed. Cecil Roth and Geoffrey Wigoder (New York: Macmillan, 1971-2), 15:981.
For Athenian probity in tax collection, see A. H. M. Jones (ed. P. A. Brunt), The Roman Economy: Studies in Ancient Economic and Administrative History (Oxford: Blackwell, 1974), 152ff., and 154: "It seems unlikely that at Athens, where they could be sued before the people's courts, contractors often exacted more than their due."
I have not been able to find any Latter-day Saint commentary on JST Luke 3:19-20 other than brief notices that such an addition exists. Robert J. Matthews very briefly notices the additional verses in JST Luke 3:19-20 on ps. 238-9 of his "A Plainer Translation": Joseph Smith's Translation of the Bible; as do Daniel H. Ludlow, A Companion to Your Study of the New Testament, 273; Robert L. Millet, "The Joseph Smith Translation and the Synoptic Gospels: Literary Style," in The Joseph Smith Translation: The Restoration of Plain and Precious Things, (ed. Monte S. Nyman, Robert L. Millet), 157; and D. Kelly Ogden and Andrew Skinner, Verse by Verse:The Four Gospels, 84.
Part Two
of Treasury, Toll, and Taxes in the New Translation of Luke
The New Translation reworks the wording of "receipt of custom" (the tollbooth) in three different ways, a reworking which reflects the study of the Prophet as he tried to express things clearly and accurately. The action of inspired translation, we are told in revelation, requires enormous mental effort, including trial and error, to be followed by prayer and confirmation (Doctrine and Covenants, Section 9).
Consider, then, the following clarifications for "receipt of custom":
1) JST Matthew 9:9: The original manuscript, New Testament Manuscript 1, shows no change: He saw a man named Matthew sitting at the receipt of custom.
2) JST Mark 2:14, New Testament Ms 2, Folio 2: He saw Levi, the son of Alpheus, sitting at the [receipt of custom, phrase written and then crossed out] place where they receive [present tense] tribute, as was customary in those days.
3) JST Matthew 9:9, New Testament Ms 2, Folio 1, with pinned on note, penned by Sidney Rigdon: "sitting at the [receipt of customs, phrase written and struck out--and note the plural!] place [where they received tributes as, all struck out] [pinned note begins] where they received [past tense] tribute, as was customary in those days.
4) And now, JST Luke 5:27, the end of the chain: the place where they received custom.
The question that arises is what the strange phrase, the place where they received tribute, as was customary in those days, is all about? Did the Prophet, at first, not understand what "custom" (or "customs") in "receipt of custom" meant? Possibly. More likely, a pun occurred to the mind (the Prophet Joseph was wild about punning, according to friend, Benjamin Johnson): "custom" (taxes) thus becomes "custom" (practice). And such a pun surely takes a jocular stab at the ubiquity of taxes. In fact, it's all quite funny: as was the custom in those days, as opposed to these happy times in 1831 when all taxes have been abolished. . .
Now, while the statement about the institution of collecting taxes, tolls, or tribute stands true (it indeed "was customary in those days"), and perchance reflects a lost shard of text, the translation is not the best of all possible worlds. And note how the words for tolls and tribute are interchangeable in the New Testament, as Fitzmeyer observes. The observation is only logical, since a toll, according to Hugh Nibley, is a token payment exacted for "permission to pass somewhere," and duly "given in recognition of sovereignty or lordship," i.e., tribute money (the New Testament word, phoros), 58.
The mental struggle for clarity was long, but by Luke 5:27 the Prophet found both apt phrasing and confirmation: "custom" is a better choice than "tribute"--and no puns allowed.
The result stands true in plain American prose:
Telonion, or receipt of custom: the place where they received custom.
Thursday, September 16, 2010
The Tower of Sherrizah and Book of Mormon Toponyms
The Late New Kingdom Wilbour Papyrus (Ramesses V) sheds light on settlement toponyms in the Ancient Near Eastern Kulturkreis, a Kulturkreis that encompasses the Book of Mormon as well.
"About 416 settlement names are given [in the Wilbour Papyrus]. . .The nature of the place names is very much like that of modern Egypt. Some are 'proper' names, but a large number are compounds in which the first element is descriptive. In modern Egypt the commonest are Kom (mound), Bet (house), Ezbet (originally a settlement for a landowner's peasants), Naga (properly an originally Arab Bedouin settlement), Zawiyet (a hamlet), and Deir (a Coptic Christian monastery)" (Barry Kemp, Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilization, 311-312).
As for the New Kingdom scene: "Wilbour gives us Iat (mound), At (house), Wehit (hamlet), Bekhen (an official's villa), and Sega (tower). Altogether there are 141 of these places, subdivided as follows: 51 mounds, 37 houses, 29 hamlets, 17 villas, and 7 towers," Ibid., 312.
Again: " 'Houses' tend to be more numerous in zones where there were fewer larger towns, whilst 'villas' and 'towers' cluster in zones marked by larger towns," 312. Further (312): "The place names just discussed have as their second element a personal name, 'The villa of so-and-so' "--a feature also noted for the Nephites in Alma 8:7:
Now it was the custom of the people of Nephi, to call their lands, and their cities, and their villages, yea, even all their small villages, after the name of him who first possessed them; and thus it was with the land of Ammonihah.
How well do the various types of Book of Mormon toponyms, cities, villages, small villages, even houses, match those of Egypt's New Kingdom or the broader Ancient Near East?
The Book of Mormon gives evidence for many a mound or hill, many of which bear names. Are any of these places of settlement a Iat? The nature of Egyptian topography and consequent settlement patterns would little resemble the Book of Mormon lands. The Sons of Mosiah, we are told, taught the Lamanites in their houses and streets, and "upon their hills" (Alma 26:29). Ammon and his party of explorers tented on a hill boasting one of Noah's royal towers (Mosiah 7:5: 11:13). The same hill had indeed once served as "a resort for the children of Nephi at the time they fled out of the land" (11:13).
The absence of the particular type of mound, the ruin mound (Eg. Iat, Heb. tel, Arabic tall, English tell)--a common Ancient Near Eastern toponym--at first holds forth against the Book of Mormon! But why would the Nephites, pioneers of a new civilization, call the fresh places they founded and settled tells or mounds? The tell belongs to the archaic milieu, and like Jericho, eldest of all, the Ancient Near East is a layer cake built upon millennia of settlement.
Even so, the Nephites did renew ruined cities: Zeniff renews the ancestral capital of Nephi-Lehi; after the great earthquake, "the Nephites "did build [1830 edition, fill] cities again where there had been cities burned" (4 Ne v.7).
Whether they themselves used the toponym or not, the Nephites did know what a tell consisted of. Far to the north of Nephite lands, archaic Americans had "cast up mighty heaps of earth" (Ether 10:23); after "great destruction, "their bones [became] as heaps of earth upon the face of the land" (11:6). When the Nephites first explored the far North, they found a land "covered with ruins of buildings [tells] of every kind" (Mosiah 8:8). The Nephites were, thereafter, quick learners. After the Nephite city, Ammonihah, was utterly destroyed in a dramatic raid: "their dead bodies were heaped up upon the face of the earth, and they were covered with a shallow covering. . . and it was called Desolation of Nehors" (Alma 16:11). Ammonihah was later rebuilt, essentially a new city built on the previous destruction level.
We should not pass lightly over any cultural data the Book of Mormon may provide. Consider again 4 Nephi 7: after the great earthquake and fires, "the Nephites did build [1830 edition "fill"] cities again where there had been cities burned." Filling in a city on a burn site would be tell-making par excellence--but so would be building "cities again." We recall the earthquake layers at Hazor. To fill a city evokes the Ancient Near Eastern cultural pattern! Yet thanks to Professor Royal Skousen's wonderful detective work with both the original manuscripts and printed editions of the Book of Mormon, we learn that "The printer's manuscript has build rather than the 1830 edition's fill," Analysis of Textual Variants of the Book of Mormon, 6.3563. Either verb works; besides, Zarahemla likely had several previous layers, both Mulekite and Nephite.
How about the toponym house, which does not appear--at least not to the casual reader--in Nephite America? Father Lehi "left his house, and the land of his inheritance" (1 Nephi 2:4), his Beit Lehi. We read that the house (if indeed the same "house") was "his own house at Jerusalem" (1 Ne 1:7). Yet to get to Lehi's house from Laban's house at Jerusalem, the sons of Lehi had to "go down to the land of our father's inheritance" 1 Ne 3:16, 22), and then go "up again to the house of Laban." So we do clearly have a sort of "Beit Lehi" (cf. 1 Ne 7:4, "the house of Ishmael").
Alma tells us that either the palace-estate or court (or both) of the Ismaelite-Lamanite kings was known as "the king and his house," an authentic touch recalling the Egyptian pr (house) as palace complex (Alma 19:19). We do find a further hint of the "house toponym" among the Lamanite commoners: thus Ammon and his brothers went from "house to house and village to village," which may signify a different thing entirely from "their houses" and "their streets" in which they were taught. (That is, one reference to "house" might represent a toponym, the other, a residence.)
Why is house absent among the Nephites? The Nephites lived in "cities," "villages," and "small villages" and, in their Late Period, in "towns and villages," rather than on retired estates or little pockets of houses. Yet in those times in which the Nephites spread abroad in newly opened northern lands, desolate lands without timber, "they did build houses of cement" against the time new timber should suffice "to build their houses, yea, their cities, and their temples, and their synagogues, and their sanctuaries" (Helaman 3:7, 9). The statement suggests Beit as place name, though Helaman gives no examples.
The Wilbour Papyrus yields many a merry hamlet or village (and everybody knows Egypt also had its great cities). As just mentioned, the Nephites spoke of "cities," "villages," and "small villages" (Alma 8:7); or as they are listed centuries later: "towns, and villages, and cities" (Mormon 5:5). Nephites loved city life. They crushed together (cf. 3 Ne 4), packed in "from one city to another" in an urban chain stretching from north to south (Helaman 5:14-16)--from Brigham City to Payson. The Egyptians, although boasting fewer cities (were the Nephites so insecure in a new world, that nearly every named toponym had to be a city?) likewise packed themselves in up along the Nile, as did Sumerians and Babylonians down the Euphrates.
We turn last to tower as toponym: Tower of So-and-So makes up a place name in New Kingdom Egypt as well as Ancient Israel. While the Book of Mormon is lousy with towers--watchtowers, fortress towers, ensign towers, garden towers, propaganda towers, and temple towers dot the landscape--the heavily edited Book of Mormon omits the associated toponyms.
However, in the next to the last chapter of the Book of Mormon (Moroni 9:7), we learn from an unedited letter, hurriedly added at the last minute, that the Nephites did employ tower + Personal Name as toponym:
Behold, the Lamanites have many prisoners, which they took from the tower of Sherrizah [or Tower Sherrizah; Tower of Sherrizah]; and there were men, women, and children. And the husbands and fathers of those women and children they have slain; and they feed the women upon the flesh of their husbands, and the children upon the flesh of their fathers; and no water, save a little, do they give unto them (9:7). . . And again, my son, there are many widows and their daughters, who remain in Sherrizah; and that part of the provisions which the Lamanites did not carry away, behold, the army of Zenephi has carried away, and left them to wander whithersoever they can for food; and many old women do faint by the way and die (9:16). And the army which is with me is weak, and the armies of the Lamanites are betwixt Sherrizah and me (9:17).
The Tower of Refuge (cf. Arabic sharada) has become the Tower of Terror, of the Raid (Arabic, gaza). Sherrizah: the very name suggests Terror to the English ear. "Sherrizah" shout the headlines of every daily.
For the tower toponym there serve two Semitic words of widespread use, including Egypt, Phoenicia, Anatolia, and everywhere else: migdol (place of great size, tower; Mary Magdalene came from such a tower city in Galilee) and segor (enclosed placed, tower, castle, fortress).
Magdala, borrowed from Hebrew, names Egyptian towers down to Coptic times. Professor James Hoch observes: "In Medinet Habu 42 the word occurs in a caption over the depiction of a tower with high doors, upper-storey window, and crenellated parapet with narrow crenals and rounded merlons. The caption reads: Mgdr n R'mssw Hq3-Iwn 'Magdal of Ramses, Ruler of On,'" Semitic Words in Egyptian Texts of the New Kingdom and Third Intermediate Period, #224. Some places in the Ancient Near East were simply called Tower or Tower City, or even Twin Towers (#224). For Tower + Personal or Place Name, the Bible has both the following long-established names (echte Ortsnamen): Migdol-El, Migdol-Gad, Migdol Eder, and Migdol-Shechem, and also the newer "given names" (benannte Tuerme): Migdol Penuel, Migdol David, etc. (Koehler-Baumgartner Lexicon). A migdol is often associated with a city, be its name what it may: Gideon "beat down the tower of Penuel and slew the men of the city" (Judges 8:17); "But there was a strong tower within the city [Thebez], and thither fled all" (Judges 9:51). Was the tower also called Thebez?
Now for Sigara, defined by Professor Hoch as Secured Building 'Fort' or 'Magazine'; 'Gate(?)'. How telling for the Book of Mormon is the following observation (Semitic Words in Egyptian Texts, #385; and cf #555, sikara = Tower Gate): "The word [sigara] occurs in a model letter from a captain concerning runaway slaves." Could anything be closer to the letter of Captain Mormon, with its streams of Tower of Sherrizah refugees? "The captain says," continues Hoch, "that he reached the sgr n Tkw 'sgr of Tjeku,' presumably a military installation. The word has been identified with BH sgor 'enclosure," and usually translated 'fortress,' or sim[ilar]." Interestingly: "The word occurs in the context of military or other stations including a migdal and a xtm," #385. The several words clearly are interchangeable, although various types of towers do appear.
The widespread use of the word sigara goes all the way back to Sumer; it is a Sumerian loan word (SI.GAR or KAK.SI.GAR = bolt of a sigar) into Semitic (Hoch, #385) and signifies "bolt" or "bar" of a gate, even--by synecdoche--sometimes "gate" or "tower gate" (Chicago Assyrian Dictionary, Shin, Part 2, cv sigaru).
In the Book of Mormon (where some form of magdal was likely used, since segor doesn't occur in place names in the Hebrew Bible), we find all the varieties of towers these several terms describe, including, finally, tower as toponym. Alma further notes many forts and strongholds, which all fit into the picture.
Let's list two examples:
1) the two towers built by King Noah (Mosiah 40: 12-13: "a very high tower, even so high. . .") near the temple, and "a great tower [that he caused] to be built on the hill north of the land Shilom, which had been a resort [place of refuge; fort, Zuflucht] for the children of Nephi, at the time they fled out of the land." Here are two magdala(s) like that of Ramesses: the Magdala of Ramesses, Ruler of Heliopolis (the centerplace) matching the Magdala of Noah, Ruler of Lehi-Nephi. Magdala of Ramesses need not be a toponym, although it could be, being descriptive of the builder, e.g., the tower built by David, Penuel, or whomever.
2) the Tower of (Personal Name) Sherrizah mentioned in Mormon's letter toponymically matches those dotting the Wilbour Papyrus and elsewhere. Again, these refer especially to military installations, and Sherrizah is so described. It was a target of the Lamanite army, being a place of provisions sacked by both Lamanite and Nephite(!) armies, as well as a city having a moderate to large (refugee?) population. Mormon explains that the military objective in raiding Tower Sherrizah was to plunder its store of provisions. And to get all its store, Sherrizah has, in fact, to be sacked twice. Here we have a sigara or sogar, even though it is likely rendered as Magdala Sherrizah (Migdol Sherrizah).
We must be detectives. Evidence for the Book of Mormon, says Hugh Nibley, ought to be both peculiar and specific to the ancient linguistic usage and to the cultural milieu of the Ancient Near East. So, with that in mind, we return to Professor Skousen's analysis of the Book of Mormon text to round things off:
"In the printer's manuscript, Oliver Cowdery initially wrote 'the tower Sherrizah.' Later, probably while proofing against the original manuscript," opines Skousen, "he supralinearly inserted the preposition of." Again: "Sherrizah is apparently the name of a place (probably a city, but also possibly a land--or perhaps both, a characteristic of Nephite naming [after founder's personal names]," 6.3939.
"In other words, Mormon is referring here in verse 7 to the tower in the city or land of Sherrizah rather than to a tower named Sherrizah. The of helps facilitate this reading," 6.3939. The logic is flawless; the grammatical reading inerrant; the conclusion out of step with the Ancient Near Eastern evidence.
The conclusion? "Sherrizah is not the name of the tower, but the place where it is located," 6.3939. That may be true, we find "tower and city" together, etc., but also note the peculiar and specific way in which the "Tower Sherrizah" or "Tower of Sherrizah" matches the Ancient Near Eastern evidence, including both the Wilbour Papyrus and the military missive about the Tower of (with genitive morpheme, nj) the Tjenu (note how Egyptian both uses the genitive marker and omits it at will--just as in the Book of Mormon toponyms).
Now if we only could figure out what Sherrizah means--what a puzzler! The name occurs only in Mormon 9, a good thousand years after Lehi left Jerusalem. The match with Semitic roots need not be perfect, given the expected linguistic shifts, only approximate. Let's try a couple out, while trying (just for fun) to match meaning with the content of Mormon 9.
A first guess leads us to the Moabite Personal Name Sh'rjh = *Sha're-ha (Ihre Tore = Her Gates), a good name for a fortress (Koehler-Baumgartner Lexicon cv sh'r, gates). Ugaritic has an "unknown mythological character," named shrgzz, which could possibly mean "Prince of heroes or warriors" (A Dictionary of the Ugaritic Language, Del Olmo Lete and Sanmartin, vol 1). Shrgzz matches our Sherrizah rather well. Still searching, we turn to another loan word from Semitic into Egyptian: s=-r-ta. Professor Hoch, though with hesitation, transcribes the word as tsallatu; I might further suggest shallatu. The word seems to refer to prisoners of war. Now that fits the context of Mormon 9. Even better is a consideration of the r's and z's in Sherrizah as the object of metathesis, a turn of events that yields Shezirrah, an outcome most reminiscent of sigara/SI.GAR/sogar, and the like: The Tower of a Military Installation.
Sherrizah also much recalls a Samaritan place name, Tsaridda (Heb Tseredah), the home of Jeroboam I (Koehler-Baumgartner, III, 1983). Here's another try: Hebrew has a root sh-r-r, which speaks to soundness, integrity, health, and thus impregnability, or even opposition or enmity (cf. ts-r-r). Sharar is the father of a Davidic hero. For this root, we have the nominal form *sherirut, which the Koehler-Baumgartner lexicon renders as Wahrheit, Verhaertung, Verstocktheit (as in hardness of heart), and the like. Now note an Aramaic (Syriac) form: sharriruta (Festigkeit): Ein Feste Burg ist unser Gott. Sharriruta makes a perfect bull's-eye for Sherrizah.
"About 416 settlement names are given [in the Wilbour Papyrus]. . .The nature of the place names is very much like that of modern Egypt. Some are 'proper' names, but a large number are compounds in which the first element is descriptive. In modern Egypt the commonest are Kom (mound), Bet (house), Ezbet (originally a settlement for a landowner's peasants), Naga (properly an originally Arab Bedouin settlement), Zawiyet (a hamlet), and Deir (a Coptic Christian monastery)" (Barry Kemp, Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilization, 311-312).
As for the New Kingdom scene: "Wilbour gives us Iat (mound), At (house), Wehit (hamlet), Bekhen (an official's villa), and Sega (tower). Altogether there are 141 of these places, subdivided as follows: 51 mounds, 37 houses, 29 hamlets, 17 villas, and 7 towers," Ibid., 312.
Again: " 'Houses' tend to be more numerous in zones where there were fewer larger towns, whilst 'villas' and 'towers' cluster in zones marked by larger towns," 312. Further (312): "The place names just discussed have as their second element a personal name, 'The villa of so-and-so' "--a feature also noted for the Nephites in Alma 8:7:
Now it was the custom of the people of Nephi, to call their lands, and their cities, and their villages, yea, even all their small villages, after the name of him who first possessed them; and thus it was with the land of Ammonihah.
How well do the various types of Book of Mormon toponyms, cities, villages, small villages, even houses, match those of Egypt's New Kingdom or the broader Ancient Near East?
The Book of Mormon gives evidence for many a mound or hill, many of which bear names. Are any of these places of settlement a Iat? The nature of Egyptian topography and consequent settlement patterns would little resemble the Book of Mormon lands. The Sons of Mosiah, we are told, taught the Lamanites in their houses and streets, and "upon their hills" (Alma 26:29). Ammon and his party of explorers tented on a hill boasting one of Noah's royal towers (Mosiah 7:5: 11:13). The same hill had indeed once served as "a resort for the children of Nephi at the time they fled out of the land" (11:13).
The absence of the particular type of mound, the ruin mound (Eg. Iat, Heb. tel, Arabic tall, English tell)--a common Ancient Near Eastern toponym--at first holds forth against the Book of Mormon! But why would the Nephites, pioneers of a new civilization, call the fresh places they founded and settled tells or mounds? The tell belongs to the archaic milieu, and like Jericho, eldest of all, the Ancient Near East is a layer cake built upon millennia of settlement.
Even so, the Nephites did renew ruined cities: Zeniff renews the ancestral capital of Nephi-Lehi; after the great earthquake, "the Nephites "did build [1830 edition, fill] cities again where there had been cities burned" (4 Ne v.7).
Whether they themselves used the toponym or not, the Nephites did know what a tell consisted of. Far to the north of Nephite lands, archaic Americans had "cast up mighty heaps of earth" (Ether 10:23); after "great destruction, "their bones [became] as heaps of earth upon the face of the land" (11:6). When the Nephites first explored the far North, they found a land "covered with ruins of buildings [tells] of every kind" (Mosiah 8:8). The Nephites were, thereafter, quick learners. After the Nephite city, Ammonihah, was utterly destroyed in a dramatic raid: "their dead bodies were heaped up upon the face of the earth, and they were covered with a shallow covering. . . and it was called Desolation of Nehors" (Alma 16:11). Ammonihah was later rebuilt, essentially a new city built on the previous destruction level.
We should not pass lightly over any cultural data the Book of Mormon may provide. Consider again 4 Nephi 7: after the great earthquake and fires, "the Nephites did build [1830 edition "fill"] cities again where there had been cities burned." Filling in a city on a burn site would be tell-making par excellence--but so would be building "cities again." We recall the earthquake layers at Hazor. To fill a city evokes the Ancient Near Eastern cultural pattern! Yet thanks to Professor Royal Skousen's wonderful detective work with both the original manuscripts and printed editions of the Book of Mormon, we learn that "The printer's manuscript has build rather than the 1830 edition's fill," Analysis of Textual Variants of the Book of Mormon, 6.3563. Either verb works; besides, Zarahemla likely had several previous layers, both Mulekite and Nephite.
How about the toponym house, which does not appear--at least not to the casual reader--in Nephite America? Father Lehi "left his house, and the land of his inheritance" (1 Nephi 2:4), his Beit Lehi. We read that the house (if indeed the same "house") was "his own house at Jerusalem" (1 Ne 1:7). Yet to get to Lehi's house from Laban's house at Jerusalem, the sons of Lehi had to "go down to the land of our father's inheritance" 1 Ne 3:16, 22), and then go "up again to the house of Laban." So we do clearly have a sort of "Beit Lehi" (cf. 1 Ne 7:4, "the house of Ishmael").
Alma tells us that either the palace-estate or court (or both) of the Ismaelite-Lamanite kings was known as "the king and his house," an authentic touch recalling the Egyptian pr (house) as palace complex (Alma 19:19). We do find a further hint of the "house toponym" among the Lamanite commoners: thus Ammon and his brothers went from "house to house and village to village," which may signify a different thing entirely from "their houses" and "their streets" in which they were taught. (That is, one reference to "house" might represent a toponym, the other, a residence.)
Why is house absent among the Nephites? The Nephites lived in "cities," "villages," and "small villages" and, in their Late Period, in "towns and villages," rather than on retired estates or little pockets of houses. Yet in those times in which the Nephites spread abroad in newly opened northern lands, desolate lands without timber, "they did build houses of cement" against the time new timber should suffice "to build their houses, yea, their cities, and their temples, and their synagogues, and their sanctuaries" (Helaman 3:7, 9). The statement suggests Beit as place name, though Helaman gives no examples.
The Wilbour Papyrus yields many a merry hamlet or village (and everybody knows Egypt also had its great cities). As just mentioned, the Nephites spoke of "cities," "villages," and "small villages" (Alma 8:7); or as they are listed centuries later: "towns, and villages, and cities" (Mormon 5:5). Nephites loved city life. They crushed together (cf. 3 Ne 4), packed in "from one city to another" in an urban chain stretching from north to south (Helaman 5:14-16)--from Brigham City to Payson. The Egyptians, although boasting fewer cities (were the Nephites so insecure in a new world, that nearly every named toponym had to be a city?) likewise packed themselves in up along the Nile, as did Sumerians and Babylonians down the Euphrates.
We turn last to tower as toponym: Tower of So-and-So makes up a place name in New Kingdom Egypt as well as Ancient Israel. While the Book of Mormon is lousy with towers--watchtowers, fortress towers, ensign towers, garden towers, propaganda towers, and temple towers dot the landscape--the heavily edited Book of Mormon omits the associated toponyms.
However, in the next to the last chapter of the Book of Mormon (Moroni 9:7), we learn from an unedited letter, hurriedly added at the last minute, that the Nephites did employ tower + Personal Name as toponym:
Behold, the Lamanites have many prisoners, which they took from the tower of Sherrizah [or Tower Sherrizah; Tower of Sherrizah]; and there were men, women, and children. And the husbands and fathers of those women and children they have slain; and they feed the women upon the flesh of their husbands, and the children upon the flesh of their fathers; and no water, save a little, do they give unto them (9:7). . . And again, my son, there are many widows and their daughters, who remain in Sherrizah; and that part of the provisions which the Lamanites did not carry away, behold, the army of Zenephi has carried away, and left them to wander whithersoever they can for food; and many old women do faint by the way and die (9:16). And the army which is with me is weak, and the armies of the Lamanites are betwixt Sherrizah and me (9:17).
The Tower of Refuge (cf. Arabic sharada) has become the Tower of Terror, of the Raid (Arabic, gaza). Sherrizah: the very name suggests Terror to the English ear. "Sherrizah" shout the headlines of every daily.
For the tower toponym there serve two Semitic words of widespread use, including Egypt, Phoenicia, Anatolia, and everywhere else: migdol (place of great size, tower; Mary Magdalene came from such a tower city in Galilee) and segor (enclosed placed, tower, castle, fortress).
Magdala, borrowed from Hebrew, names Egyptian towers down to Coptic times. Professor James Hoch observes: "In Medinet Habu 42 the word occurs in a caption over the depiction of a tower with high doors, upper-storey window, and crenellated parapet with narrow crenals and rounded merlons. The caption reads: Mgdr n R'mssw Hq3-Iwn 'Magdal of Ramses, Ruler of On,'" Semitic Words in Egyptian Texts of the New Kingdom and Third Intermediate Period, #224. Some places in the Ancient Near East were simply called Tower or Tower City, or even Twin Towers (#224). For Tower + Personal or Place Name, the Bible has both the following long-established names (echte Ortsnamen): Migdol-El, Migdol-Gad, Migdol Eder, and Migdol-Shechem, and also the newer "given names" (benannte Tuerme): Migdol Penuel, Migdol David, etc. (Koehler-Baumgartner Lexicon). A migdol is often associated with a city, be its name what it may: Gideon "beat down the tower of Penuel and slew the men of the city" (Judges 8:17); "But there was a strong tower within the city [Thebez], and thither fled all" (Judges 9:51). Was the tower also called Thebez?
Now for Sigara, defined by Professor Hoch as Secured Building 'Fort' or 'Magazine'; 'Gate(?)'. How telling for the Book of Mormon is the following observation (Semitic Words in Egyptian Texts, #385; and cf #555, sikara = Tower Gate): "The word [sigara] occurs in a model letter from a captain concerning runaway slaves." Could anything be closer to the letter of Captain Mormon, with its streams of Tower of Sherrizah refugees? "The captain says," continues Hoch, "that he reached the sgr n Tkw 'sgr of Tjeku,' presumably a military installation. The word has been identified with BH sgor 'enclosure," and usually translated 'fortress,' or sim[ilar]." Interestingly: "The word occurs in the context of military or other stations including a migdal and a xtm," #385. The several words clearly are interchangeable, although various types of towers do appear.
The widespread use of the word sigara goes all the way back to Sumer; it is a Sumerian loan word (SI.GAR or KAK.SI.GAR = bolt of a sigar) into Semitic (Hoch, #385) and signifies "bolt" or "bar" of a gate, even--by synecdoche--sometimes "gate" or "tower gate" (Chicago Assyrian Dictionary, Shin, Part 2, cv sigaru).
In the Book of Mormon (where some form of magdal was likely used, since segor doesn't occur in place names in the Hebrew Bible), we find all the varieties of towers these several terms describe, including, finally, tower as toponym. Alma further notes many forts and strongholds, which all fit into the picture.
Let's list two examples:
1) the two towers built by King Noah (Mosiah 40: 12-13: "a very high tower, even so high. . .") near the temple, and "a great tower [that he caused] to be built on the hill north of the land Shilom, which had been a resort [place of refuge; fort, Zuflucht] for the children of Nephi, at the time they fled out of the land." Here are two magdala(s) like that of Ramesses: the Magdala of Ramesses, Ruler of Heliopolis (the centerplace) matching the Magdala of Noah, Ruler of Lehi-Nephi. Magdala of Ramesses need not be a toponym, although it could be, being descriptive of the builder, e.g., the tower built by David, Penuel, or whomever.
2) the Tower of (Personal Name) Sherrizah mentioned in Mormon's letter toponymically matches those dotting the Wilbour Papyrus and elsewhere. Again, these refer especially to military installations, and Sherrizah is so described. It was a target of the Lamanite army, being a place of provisions sacked by both Lamanite and Nephite(!) armies, as well as a city having a moderate to large (refugee?) population. Mormon explains that the military objective in raiding Tower Sherrizah was to plunder its store of provisions. And to get all its store, Sherrizah has, in fact, to be sacked twice. Here we have a sigara or sogar, even though it is likely rendered as Magdala Sherrizah (Migdol Sherrizah).
We must be detectives. Evidence for the Book of Mormon, says Hugh Nibley, ought to be both peculiar and specific to the ancient linguistic usage and to the cultural milieu of the Ancient Near East. So, with that in mind, we return to Professor Skousen's analysis of the Book of Mormon text to round things off:
"In the printer's manuscript, Oliver Cowdery initially wrote 'the tower Sherrizah.' Later, probably while proofing against the original manuscript," opines Skousen, "he supralinearly inserted the preposition of." Again: "Sherrizah is apparently the name of a place (probably a city, but also possibly a land--or perhaps both, a characteristic of Nephite naming [after founder's personal names]," 6.3939.
"In other words, Mormon is referring here in verse 7 to the tower in the city or land of Sherrizah rather than to a tower named Sherrizah. The of helps facilitate this reading," 6.3939. The logic is flawless; the grammatical reading inerrant; the conclusion out of step with the Ancient Near Eastern evidence.
The conclusion? "Sherrizah is not the name of the tower, but the place where it is located," 6.3939. That may be true, we find "tower and city" together, etc., but also note the peculiar and specific way in which the "Tower Sherrizah" or "Tower of Sherrizah" matches the Ancient Near Eastern evidence, including both the Wilbour Papyrus and the military missive about the Tower of (with genitive morpheme, nj) the Tjenu (note how Egyptian both uses the genitive marker and omits it at will--just as in the Book of Mormon toponyms).
Now if we only could figure out what Sherrizah means--what a puzzler! The name occurs only in Mormon 9, a good thousand years after Lehi left Jerusalem. The match with Semitic roots need not be perfect, given the expected linguistic shifts, only approximate. Let's try a couple out, while trying (just for fun) to match meaning with the content of Mormon 9.
A first guess leads us to the Moabite Personal Name Sh'rjh = *Sha're-ha (Ihre Tore = Her Gates), a good name for a fortress (Koehler-Baumgartner Lexicon cv sh'r, gates). Ugaritic has an "unknown mythological character," named shrgzz, which could possibly mean "Prince of heroes or warriors" (A Dictionary of the Ugaritic Language, Del Olmo Lete and Sanmartin, vol 1). Shrgzz matches our Sherrizah rather well. Still searching, we turn to another loan word from Semitic into Egyptian: s=-r-ta. Professor Hoch, though with hesitation, transcribes the word as tsallatu; I might further suggest shallatu. The word seems to refer to prisoners of war. Now that fits the context of Mormon 9. Even better is a consideration of the r's and z's in Sherrizah as the object of metathesis, a turn of events that yields Shezirrah, an outcome most reminiscent of sigara/SI.GAR/sogar, and the like: The Tower of a Military Installation.
Sherrizah also much recalls a Samaritan place name, Tsaridda (Heb Tseredah), the home of Jeroboam I (Koehler-Baumgartner, III, 1983). Here's another try: Hebrew has a root sh-r-r, which speaks to soundness, integrity, health, and thus impregnability, or even opposition or enmity (cf. ts-r-r). Sharar is the father of a Davidic hero. For this root, we have the nominal form *sherirut, which the Koehler-Baumgartner lexicon renders as Wahrheit, Verhaertung, Verstocktheit (as in hardness of heart), and the like. Now note an Aramaic (Syriac) form: sharriruta (Festigkeit): Ein Feste Burg ist unser Gott. Sharriruta makes a perfect bull's-eye for Sherrizah.
Friday, September 10, 2010
Joseph Smith Translation Psalm 104:1--Power and Majesty
Bless the Lord, O my soul.
O Lord my God, thou art very great;
thou art clothed with honour and majesty.
Who covereth thyself with light as a garment:
who stretcheth out the heavens like a curtain.
It would be difficult to surpass the beauty of these lines in any new translation of the Old Testament; the Authorized Version of the Holy Bible remains unsurpassed, and as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I am grateful for its official status as the true "Mormon Bible."
While the Prophet Joseph's New Translation of the Holy Bible does not replace the Authorized Version, it can clear up tangled patches. Often the Prophet deftly rephrases, with fewer words, and so improves the literary quality. The style of the New Translation is that of William Bradford: American plain style. One can quibble, for the New Translation in its quest for clarity, like any other modern version, in places mars the timeless beauty, however ambiguous, of the Authorized Version. Brother Joseph, Yankee Prophet, eschews tangling ambiguity.
The phrase "thou art clothed with honour and majesty" is certainly not injured, and is likely improved, by the Prophet's rendering "thou art clothed with power and majesty." And say what one will about Brother Joseph, what pious reader of Scripture can resist ascribing more power to God? Somehow honour graces not enough for the inspired translator: kings may have honor; God stands clothed in power.
Think of the old hymn, "Glory to God on High": "To him ascribed be/Honor and majesty/Thru all eternity:/Worthy the Lamb!" Change but a word, and "praise ye his name" shines all the brighter: "To him ascribed be/Power and majesty" (James Allen, 1734-1804).
But does power for honour reflect the Hebrew? Brother Joseph, in 1832-33, had not yet purchased his Hebrew Bible and Lexicon or engaged his Hebrew teacher. The original Hebrew phrase reads as a lovely and intensifying alliteration, hod ve hadar. According to the Koehler-Baumgartner lexicon, the word hod approximates the English words weight, power, glory, and the like, with power taking second place in the list. As with the Hebrew word kavod, usually rendered as the glory of God, the principal idea expressed by hod may be that of weight, of a center of gravity or gravitas. Hadar is said to represent "the soul in its highest manifestation of power," although the word literally refers to ornament, attire, splendor: the clothing of God in majesty. Hod ve hadar, with the accent falling on the second part of the phrase in good Semitic fashion, thus bespeaks "power and highest power."
Although not so changed elsewhere in the Prophet's New Translation, power would also better render hod in many other places. Thus God's thundering is to be recognized in the hod of his qol, in the reverberating "power of his voice." In this place (AV Isaiah 30:30) "his glorious voice" makes no sense at all.
O Lord my God, thou art very great;
thou art clothed with honour and majesty.
Who covereth thyself with light as a garment:
who stretcheth out the heavens like a curtain.
It would be difficult to surpass the beauty of these lines in any new translation of the Old Testament; the Authorized Version of the Holy Bible remains unsurpassed, and as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I am grateful for its official status as the true "Mormon Bible."
While the Prophet Joseph's New Translation of the Holy Bible does not replace the Authorized Version, it can clear up tangled patches. Often the Prophet deftly rephrases, with fewer words, and so improves the literary quality. The style of the New Translation is that of William Bradford: American plain style. One can quibble, for the New Translation in its quest for clarity, like any other modern version, in places mars the timeless beauty, however ambiguous, of the Authorized Version. Brother Joseph, Yankee Prophet, eschews tangling ambiguity.
The phrase "thou art clothed with honour and majesty" is certainly not injured, and is likely improved, by the Prophet's rendering "thou art clothed with power and majesty." And say what one will about Brother Joseph, what pious reader of Scripture can resist ascribing more power to God? Somehow honour graces not enough for the inspired translator: kings may have honor; God stands clothed in power.
Think of the old hymn, "Glory to God on High": "To him ascribed be/Honor and majesty/Thru all eternity:/Worthy the Lamb!" Change but a word, and "praise ye his name" shines all the brighter: "To him ascribed be/Power and majesty" (James Allen, 1734-1804).
But does power for honour reflect the Hebrew? Brother Joseph, in 1832-33, had not yet purchased his Hebrew Bible and Lexicon or engaged his Hebrew teacher. The original Hebrew phrase reads as a lovely and intensifying alliteration, hod ve hadar. According to the Koehler-Baumgartner lexicon, the word hod approximates the English words weight, power, glory, and the like, with power taking second place in the list. As with the Hebrew word kavod, usually rendered as the glory of God, the principal idea expressed by hod may be that of weight, of a center of gravity or gravitas. Hadar is said to represent "the soul in its highest manifestation of power," although the word literally refers to ornament, attire, splendor: the clothing of God in majesty. Hod ve hadar, with the accent falling on the second part of the phrase in good Semitic fashion, thus bespeaks "power and highest power."
Although not so changed elsewhere in the Prophet's New Translation, power would also better render hod in many other places. Thus God's thundering is to be recognized in the hod of his qol, in the reverberating "power of his voice." In this place (AV Isaiah 30:30) "his glorious voice" makes no sense at all.
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Joseph Smith Translation 1 Sam. 28: The Words of Samuel in the Story of Saul and the Witch of Endor
In his New Translation of the dramatic story of King Saul's night journey to the Witch of Endor, the Prophet Joseph Smith adds telling detail that includes insight into the cleverness of the witch, the deftness of her questions, and her neurological state--a mind all but out of control--drama indeed! The taut dialogue between Saul and the witch, punctuated by a sharp scream, is worthy of Sophocles.
After cleverly denying her practice until Saul promises his protection (a detail missing in our Bibles but present in the New Translation), the witch asks Saul whose "words" (The words of whom? she asks in her routine way) she is to bring up, and Saul specifically demands the words of Samuel. The phrase words of, in the New Translation, fits the notion of the witch as oracle or mouthpiece: here is a divination by means of words. The idea of divining by words, of being mouthpiece for a spirit, is clearly set forth in the supernal masterwork of Johannes Pedersen, Israel: Its Life and Culture (1926).
Let's begin with the Prophet's New Translation of 1 Samuel 28: 9-15, as found in Old Testament Manuscript 2 (additions to the text of the King James Version appear in italics): And the woman said unto him, Behold, thou knowest what Saul hath done, how he hath cut off those that have familiar spirits, and the wizards, out of the land: wherefore then layest thou a snare for my life, to cause me to die also, who hath not a familiar spirit?
And Saul sware unto her by the Lord, saying, As the Lord liveth, there [the JST in the LDS Bible has then, possibly a misreading of there by modern transcribers of Manuscript 2] shall no punishment happen to thee for this thing.
Then said the woman, The words of whom shall I bring up unto thee? And he said, Bring me up the words of Samuel.
And when the woman saw the words of Samuel, she cried with a loud voice; and the woman spake to Saul, saying, Why hast thou deceived me? for thou art Saul.
And the king said unto her, Be not afraid: for what sawest thou?
And the woman said unto Saul, I saw the words of Samuel [omit KJV gods, Hebrew elohim] ascending out of the earth. And she said, I saw Samuel also.
And he said unto her, What form is he of? And she said, I saw an old man coming [omit: cometh] up; [omit: and he is] covered with a mantle. And Saul perceived that it was Samuel, and he stooped [omit: with] his face to the ground, and bowed himself.
And these are the words of Samuel unto Saul [And Samuel said to Saul], Why hast thou disquieted me, to bring me up? And Saul answered, I am sore distressed.
The Prophet's changes to the story, strikingly odd, startle the reader.
But compare the wording of the New Translation to the comments of Johannes Pedersen on divination practices in Ancient Israel, based on his close reading of the Hebrew Bible.
"Saul," says Pedersen, "was left without counsel and in distress, being without a word from God, he went as a last resort" to Endor, Israel, 4.481.
Again: "We continually meet with the two terms 'obh and yidh'oni in conjunction (Lev. 19, 31; 20,6.27; 2 Kngs 21,6; 23, 24 et al.). They denote departed souls who speak to the living. Their whispered voices can be heard from the ground (Isa. 29:4) [a Book of Mormon prophecy here], but most frequently they speak through a man or woman who understands how to make them active. This spirit is said to be in the man or woman in question (Lev. 20:27). that means that it enters the soul and unites with it. Therefore the person through whose mouth the departed speaks can also be called 'obh and yidh'oni (II Kings 23:24)," words used too about all dealings with the dead," Johannes Pedersen, Israel, 4.482, cited by P. Kyle McCarter (ed), 1 Samuel, Anchor Bible 8 (1980), 420 (bold added). Professor McCarter leaves off quoting Pedersen here, but note what more is to be found in that encyclopaedic work:
"People 'enquire of' or 'consult' the departed spirits in the same way as they consult Yahweh in the oracle (Lev. 19, 31; Deut. 18, 11). The behaviour of those who bring up the dead is very like that of the prophets; a divine voice speaks in the souls, only it is not that of Yahweh," Israel, 4.482.
After all, does not Isaiah say that spirits "whisper and mutter"? and "peep," 4.483?
Even more striking about the story, as found in the New Translation, is the statement of the witch: "I saw the words of Samuel ascending from the earth." What is that all about? How can heard words be seen? But this expression of the witch is the most authentic touch of all. The mixing or blending of sensory perception, often called synaesthesia, rightly belongs to the mantic world. Just as some musicians "see" colors unfold in musical note and phrase, so does the witch in her trance see what properly belongs to hearing. The state of trance is colored in the synaesthetic mode of experience: "Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,/Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone" (Keats).
The whole story is despairingly unearthly, punctuated, as it is, by screams and the fourfold repetition of the question Why? But in the end--while Why? hangs in the darkness--no magic persists. Fighting against time, the witch bustles a hasty meal for Saul and his companions: "they ate, rose up, went," the very antithesis of Caesar's veni, vidi, vici: I came; I saw; I conquered. Spent Saul goes out into the darkness, not raging, but as lifeless automaton into night's abandon. And the witch qua witch vanishes in swift night with only Saul's pledge to cling to--all her magic come to term--abandoned without pay and minus her fatted calf. Her ultimate in art reflects no technique of magic, but the mere details, ironically elaborated, of domestic ritual. Mistress of Spirits no longer, she is transformed into a cook.
What happened? The Egyptians have a word for it: pn', a word written with the hieroglyph of the capsized boat. Pn' hk3w thus signifies to "counter" or to "capsize magic," and that's what we find in 1 Samuel 28. Capsized Saul and the Mistress of Spirits devolve, deflated, into cringing objects of fear, the flotsam of a fleeting pretence.
NOTES
The phrase the words of highlight the fact that she is an oracle, a medium, which fits the Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern context, cf. J. P. Brown (1981), "The Mediterranean Seer and Shamanism," ZAW 93: 374-400.
Interpretation: The best words on the convoluted doctrinal Nachleben (afterlife--a pun) of the story, as found in Jewish commentary, can be found in the Soncino Bible edition of Samuel, note 12. when the woman saw Samuel., S. Goldman (ed) Samuel, 1951.
Latter-day Saint commentary on 1 Samuel 28 includes: President Charles W. Penrose, "The Witch of Endor," Improvement Era 1898; Elders' Journal 4:225-9 (1902); LDS Bible Dictionary, "Samuel"; and footnote 14a for 1 Sam. 28 in the Latter-day Saint edition of the Holy Bible. President Penrose took a firm stand against any truth behind the story; the footnotes of the LDS Bible follow his lead; while the LDS Bible Dictionary considers the possibility that if Samuel appeared, the appearance was of his own volition, that is, "despite and not because of" the conjuring. The Latter-day Saint edition of the Bible does not, however, speak to the changes in the New Translation. These have been noted briefly in print only by BYU Professor Monte S. Nyman.
After cleverly denying her practice until Saul promises his protection (a detail missing in our Bibles but present in the New Translation), the witch asks Saul whose "words" (The words of whom? she asks in her routine way) she is to bring up, and Saul specifically demands the words of Samuel. The phrase words of, in the New Translation, fits the notion of the witch as oracle or mouthpiece: here is a divination by means of words. The idea of divining by words, of being mouthpiece for a spirit, is clearly set forth in the supernal masterwork of Johannes Pedersen, Israel: Its Life and Culture (1926).
Let's begin with the Prophet's New Translation of 1 Samuel 28: 9-15, as found in Old Testament Manuscript 2 (additions to the text of the King James Version appear in italics): And the woman said unto him, Behold, thou knowest what Saul hath done, how he hath cut off those that have familiar spirits, and the wizards, out of the land: wherefore then layest thou a snare for my life, to cause me to die also, who hath not a familiar spirit?
And Saul sware unto her by the Lord, saying, As the Lord liveth, there [the JST in the LDS Bible has then, possibly a misreading of there by modern transcribers of Manuscript 2] shall no punishment happen to thee for this thing.
Then said the woman, The words of whom shall I bring up unto thee? And he said, Bring me up the words of Samuel.
And when the woman saw the words of Samuel, she cried with a loud voice; and the woman spake to Saul, saying, Why hast thou deceived me? for thou art Saul.
And the king said unto her, Be not afraid: for what sawest thou?
And the woman said unto Saul, I saw the words of Samuel [omit KJV gods, Hebrew elohim] ascending out of the earth. And she said, I saw Samuel also.
And he said unto her, What form is he of? And she said, I saw an old man coming [omit: cometh] up; [omit: and he is] covered with a mantle. And Saul perceived that it was Samuel, and he stooped [omit: with] his face to the ground, and bowed himself.
And these are the words of Samuel unto Saul [And Samuel said to Saul], Why hast thou disquieted me, to bring me up? And Saul answered, I am sore distressed.
The Prophet's changes to the story, strikingly odd, startle the reader.
But compare the wording of the New Translation to the comments of Johannes Pedersen on divination practices in Ancient Israel, based on his close reading of the Hebrew Bible.
"Saul," says Pedersen, "was left without counsel and in distress, being without a word from God, he went as a last resort" to Endor, Israel, 4.481.
Again: "We continually meet with the two terms 'obh and yidh'oni in conjunction (Lev. 19, 31; 20,6.27; 2 Kngs 21,6; 23, 24 et al.). They denote departed souls who speak to the living. Their whispered voices can be heard from the ground (Isa. 29:4) [a Book of Mormon prophecy here], but most frequently they speak through a man or woman who understands how to make them active. This spirit is said to be in the man or woman in question (Lev. 20:27). that means that it enters the soul and unites with it. Therefore the person through whose mouth the departed speaks can also be called 'obh and yidh'oni (II Kings 23:24)," words used too about all dealings with the dead," Johannes Pedersen, Israel, 4.482, cited by P. Kyle McCarter (ed), 1 Samuel, Anchor Bible 8 (1980), 420 (bold added). Professor McCarter leaves off quoting Pedersen here, but note what more is to be found in that encyclopaedic work:
"People 'enquire of' or 'consult' the departed spirits in the same way as they consult Yahweh in the oracle (Lev. 19, 31; Deut. 18, 11). The behaviour of those who bring up the dead is very like that of the prophets; a divine voice speaks in the souls, only it is not that of Yahweh," Israel, 4.482.
After all, does not Isaiah say that spirits "whisper and mutter"? and "peep," 4.483?
Even more striking about the story, as found in the New Translation, is the statement of the witch: "I saw the words of Samuel ascending from the earth." What is that all about? How can heard words be seen? But this expression of the witch is the most authentic touch of all. The mixing or blending of sensory perception, often called synaesthesia, rightly belongs to the mantic world. Just as some musicians "see" colors unfold in musical note and phrase, so does the witch in her trance see what properly belongs to hearing. The state of trance is colored in the synaesthetic mode of experience: "Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,/Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone" (Keats).
The whole story is despairingly unearthly, punctuated, as it is, by screams and the fourfold repetition of the question Why? But in the end--while Why? hangs in the darkness--no magic persists. Fighting against time, the witch bustles a hasty meal for Saul and his companions: "they ate, rose up, went," the very antithesis of Caesar's veni, vidi, vici: I came; I saw; I conquered. Spent Saul goes out into the darkness, not raging, but as lifeless automaton into night's abandon. And the witch qua witch vanishes in swift night with only Saul's pledge to cling to--all her magic come to term--abandoned without pay and minus her fatted calf. Her ultimate in art reflects no technique of magic, but the mere details, ironically elaborated, of domestic ritual. Mistress of Spirits no longer, she is transformed into a cook.
What happened? The Egyptians have a word for it: pn', a word written with the hieroglyph of the capsized boat. Pn' hk3w thus signifies to "counter" or to "capsize magic," and that's what we find in 1 Samuel 28. Capsized Saul and the Mistress of Spirits devolve, deflated, into cringing objects of fear, the flotsam of a fleeting pretence.
NOTES
The phrase the words of highlight the fact that she is an oracle, a medium, which fits the Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern context, cf. J. P. Brown (1981), "The Mediterranean Seer and Shamanism," ZAW 93: 374-400.
Interpretation: The best words on the convoluted doctrinal Nachleben (afterlife--a pun) of the story, as found in Jewish commentary, can be found in the Soncino Bible edition of Samuel, note 12. when the woman saw Samuel., S. Goldman (ed) Samuel, 1951.
Latter-day Saint commentary on 1 Samuel 28 includes: President Charles W. Penrose, "The Witch of Endor," Improvement Era 1898; Elders' Journal 4:225-9 (1902); LDS Bible Dictionary, "Samuel"; and footnote 14a for 1 Sam. 28 in the Latter-day Saint edition of the Holy Bible. President Penrose took a firm stand against any truth behind the story; the footnotes of the LDS Bible follow his lead; while the LDS Bible Dictionary considers the possibility that if Samuel appeared, the appearance was of his own volition, that is, "despite and not because of" the conjuring. The Latter-day Saint edition of the Bible does not, however, speak to the changes in the New Translation. These have been noted briefly in print only by BYU Professor Monte S. Nyman.
Monday, August 9, 2010
"And it pleased the Lord": The Joseph Smith Translation, the Asherah, and the Kings of Judah
The Prophet Joseph Smith's New Translation of the Holy Bible shows us just how Latter-day Saints--as modern Israel--are to understand that sacred record.
Consider the notions forwarded by some over-zealous students about the religious practices of Ancient Israel, and especially those which concern the worship of the Asherah, or tree goddess, by several kings of Israel and Judah. According to the Holy Bible, it was the wicked kings who worshipped such goddesses and their symbols; the righteous kings destroyed them. Yet some contest the narrative and seek to turn the biblical condemnation of idolatry on its head: good becomes evil; evil, good. It's like making the witch in C.S. Lewis's classic, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, the good guy. Proud Jadis, in The Magician's Nephew, now becomes the nurturing mother of Israel--quite a change from Mother of Abominations! What would Nephi say? Or C.S. Lewis?
Given the subtleties of scholarship, how grateful we ought to be for any light given us on the matter by the Prophet Joseph Smith. And there is light!
But first a word on how the Joseph Smith Translation lights that candle of Gospel understanding.
While we don't know everything about how the New Translation of the Holy Bible was effected, we are to see the Prophet and his scribes seated at a table and reading aloud, by turns, the entire Bible, book by book (or nearly so). As they read the Scriptures aloud, pure intelligence would flow.
And what is the New Translation of the Bible? It is not only the inspired additions to and corrections of the Bible which make up the New Translation; we also find the oft-repeated inspired affirmation that the remainder of the Authorised Version, itself translated from the Hebrew Masoretic Text and the Greek Received Text, as it stands, is Scripture. That Masoretic Text, a gift from the Jews, is the well-spring of all modern Bibles. In the original manuscripts of the New Translation, the Prophet records not only textual expansions and corrections, he also notes the correctness of much of the biblical text as received.
Even so, there remains room-and-to-spare for adjustments and expansion, including the expectation of new Books of John the Baptist and Enoch, and the full version of events on the Mount of Transfiguration, all of which the Doctrine and Covenants promises. And belief in, and confirmation of, the Bible, "as far as it is translated correctly," still gave the Prophet plenty of scope for additional translating, or elucidation through re-wording, as reflected in his Nauvoo letters and sermons and in the Book of Abraham. The Prophet even came to acknowledge the superiority of Luther's translations, as he also pressed on in his study of both Hebrew and Greek. And he prized his Hutter Polyglot. On the other hand, would-be translators and interpreters are not free to move the pieces around in any manner they may choose: the Prophet, in and through the New Translation, has set some bounds and limits to speculation. All of which, however, does not imply full understanding on anyone's part. How utterly changed our view of the world of the Bible or the Book of Mormon would be, could we but view the events in vision! Even so, the doctrinal and narrative framework set out by the Prophet Joseph in his vision--in his New Translation and in the Book of Mormon and Book of Abraham--would yet hold.
Taken together, it is the both the changes in and approval of the Authorised English Version of both the Masoretic Text and the Received Text that alike constitute the miracle of the Prophet's New Translation. Recall how after lamenting the loss of plain and precious doctrines from the future Bible in the days of the gentiles, Nephi rounds off his prophecy about that Book with resounding praise for the Masoretic Text: "They shall have a Bible; and it shall proceed forth from the Jews, mine ancient covenant people. And what thank they the Jews for the Bible which they receive [note it well] from them?" (2 Nephi 29:4). While the Greek Septuagint, the Samaritan Pentateuch, a few of the biblical scrolls from the Dead Sea, and the Book of Mormon do indeed, here and there, show added text or variant readings that surely sometimes reflect a better text; it is the Masoretic Text that yet stands as the most complete and correct biblical record of the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings. I thank the Jews for this. While Latter-day Saints invite any correction to, or even inspired expansion of, Masoretic phraseology, the word of the Lord stands true: it is the Bible "which they receive from [the Jews]," in compass with the plain and precious insights of the Isaiah portions of the Book of Mormon and the Prophet's New Translation, that gets the present stamp of approval as God's word.
With that in mind, let us turn to 1 Kings 15:11-12 and begin with an inspired change or two (noted in italics):
And Asa did right in the eyes of the Lord, as he commanded David his father. And he took away the sodomites out of the land, and removed all the idols that his father had made, and it pleased the Lord.
We would do well to study with care what "pleased the Lord" then, and to recognize also that what pleased Him then yet pleases Him now, for the Lord, without ever changing, "delights" in purity of heart and purity of worship, and in our zeal to sustain both.
And now, to that which the Prophet, by the same spirit of revelation, left without prophetic change, [although some bracketed explanations might prove helpful]:
1 Kings 15:13
And also Maachah his mother, even her he removed from being queen [and "high priestess"], because she had made an idol in a grove [Heb. the Asherah tree or post]; and Asa destroyed her idol, and burnt it by the brook Kidron.
And--say we in accordance with the divine word--it pleased the Lord.
As did Asa, so Joash, Hezekiah, and Josiah, the more righteous of the kings of Judah. Each cleansed and repaired the holy Temple; each destroyed the idols placed in the House of the Lord by apostate fathers and apostate mothers; each destroyed that Isabel, Mother of Abominations and Mystery of Iniquity, planted by apostates in the Temple of God, as if it was God: "Who opposeth and exalteth [her]self above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that [s]he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing [her]self that [s]he is God" (2 Thessalonians 2:4).
We turn next to Chronicles. 2 Chronicles 34:16, in the New Translation, shows an inspired change in idiom only, though the change reflects Ancient Near Eastern conceptions about the king and his "word" as an all but concrete sacred object to be held inviolate, that is, not to be tampered with but fulfilled to the letter. The verse further evidences, by what remains unchanged, that the Prophet authoritatively confirms the biblical account about Josiah's cleansing of the Temple, discovery of the sacred Book of the Law, and destruction of the Asherah: again, that sacrilegious tree or post placed in God's sanctuary as symbol of the Mother of Abominations--the Great and Abominable Church of the devil, as Nephi would say.
King Josiah has commissioned three officials to preside over the repairs of the House:
Now in the eighteenth year of his reign, when he had purged the land, and the house, he sent Shaphan the son of Azaliah, and Maaseiah, the governor of the city, and Joah the son of Joahaz the recorder, to repair the house of the LORD his God (KJV 2 Chronicles 34:8).
During the repairs, Hilkiah, the priest, discovers "a book of the law of the Lord, given by Moses" and commits it to Shaphan:
And Shaphan carried the book to the king, and brought the word of the king back again, saying, All that was committed to thy servants, they do (JST 2 Chronicles 34:16).
And--we repeat the inspired affirmation--it pleased the Lord. The wording in the New Translation resounds with cultural depth and gives an understanding of royal commissions, the royal word of command. We see the difference in cultural nuance, when we compare the New Translation with the Authorized Version:
And Shaphan carried the book to the king, and brought the king word back again, saying, All that was committed to thy servants, they do it (KJV 2 Chronicles 34:16).
The Prophet Joseph brought the word of the Scriptures, the word of righteous kings and prophets and judges, even the word of the Lord, back again--and we also sing of how he "brought the Priesthood back again."
And in light of the New Translation--or, for that matter, any translation of the holy writ--I would question the wisdom of following the lead of modern, agenda-striped students on the theme of the Asherah.
For example, consider the implications of associating the symbolism of Asherah and her tree, as some students eagerly do (though intending no harm), with Nephi's vision of the Tree of Life as symbolic of God's eternal love manifest in blessed Mary and her Child.
That the motif of lady-and-tree belongs to the Ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean Kulturkreis has never been in dispute. And given the biological and metaphorical likenesses between woman and tree--the slender willow, the delicately flowering cherry, the perfumed orange--the whole matter must be sufficiently rooted in the human psyche to blossom into correspondences everywhere. A look at the work of Mircea Eliade or Stith Thompson would set things straight (Motif-index of folk-literature).
The idea that the language of Nephi, a lad steeped in the story of Eve and Eden, refers back to apostate Asherah rather than being a reflection of his own cultivated awareness of deeply rooted literary themes, as in the Proverbs and the Song of Songs, is both counter-intuitive and the stuff on which Robert Graves's "white goddess" is made.
Now to the Holy Bible.
To misread the Bible on the worship of the Asherah or of the Queen of Heaven (in Jeremiah 44) is both to misconceive and to misconstrue the Book's very storyline and plot. Whether we choose to accept Scripture, the Bible has its own assumptions about itself. Among these is that Deuteronomy 16:21 (KJV and JST), though penned long before the monarchy came into being, defines just what an Asherah then was and just what an Asherah will be throughout Israelite history--and the plot never varies: "Thou shalt not plant thee a grove of trees [Heb. an Asherah] near unto the altar [Temple] of the Lord thy God, which thou shalt make thee." King Josiah, in a scene foreshadowing King Messiah's cleansing of the Temple--the role of all righteous kings--"brought out the grove [Asherah] from the house of the Lord, without Jerusalem, to the brook Kidron, and burned it at the brook Kidron, and stamped it small to powder, and cast the powder thereof upon the graves of the children of the people [the former adherents of apostate worship]" (2 Kings 23:6, KJV and JST).
One can argue against the Bible's self-assumptions, including the Mosaic authorship of Deuteronomy, but to do so is to engage in higher criticism, or to follow faddish agenda and archaeological sensationalism, or to rewrite its hard drive (take your pick).
Some will doubtless say we exaggerate concerns; they will say that by espousing sensationalist scholarship, they do not contemplate a merger, only a dalliance. But what of those poor souls who draw back from intellectual dalliance, as a child shrinks from the fire? Being but children, though we reach for the truth, we mistrust the stranger. However goddesses go or sophisticates parade, "always, always, we'll walk in the light."
Yes, Saints continue to reach for the truth of all things. We read and we ponder; we raid library shelves to learn what we can from the best books; we may even study Scripture in Dutch or Hebrew or French or English; but we never lay aside our childlike confidence in the words of the prophets and kings. We trust the keenness of their vision. "Who hath believed our report?" We believe their report.
How abundantly we thank God for a Prophet who, while restoring lost words and threads of biblical text and teachings, also gives us the Bible anew, even the Masoretic Text--including blessed Deuteronomy!--as a true record of Ancient Israel. And thank the Jews for it, for their great role "in bringing forth salvation unto the Gentiles" (2 Nephi 29:4; see also 1 Nephi 5:11; 19:23; Moses 1:41).
Consider the notions forwarded by some over-zealous students about the religious practices of Ancient Israel, and especially those which concern the worship of the Asherah, or tree goddess, by several kings of Israel and Judah. According to the Holy Bible, it was the wicked kings who worshipped such goddesses and their symbols; the righteous kings destroyed them. Yet some contest the narrative and seek to turn the biblical condemnation of idolatry on its head: good becomes evil; evil, good. It's like making the witch in C.S. Lewis's classic, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, the good guy. Proud Jadis, in The Magician's Nephew, now becomes the nurturing mother of Israel--quite a change from Mother of Abominations! What would Nephi say? Or C.S. Lewis?
Given the subtleties of scholarship, how grateful we ought to be for any light given us on the matter by the Prophet Joseph Smith. And there is light!
But first a word on how the Joseph Smith Translation lights that candle of Gospel understanding.
While we don't know everything about how the New Translation of the Holy Bible was effected, we are to see the Prophet and his scribes seated at a table and reading aloud, by turns, the entire Bible, book by book (or nearly so). As they read the Scriptures aloud, pure intelligence would flow.
And what is the New Translation of the Bible? It is not only the inspired additions to and corrections of the Bible which make up the New Translation; we also find the oft-repeated inspired affirmation that the remainder of the Authorised Version, itself translated from the Hebrew Masoretic Text and the Greek Received Text, as it stands, is Scripture. That Masoretic Text, a gift from the Jews, is the well-spring of all modern Bibles. In the original manuscripts of the New Translation, the Prophet records not only textual expansions and corrections, he also notes the correctness of much of the biblical text as received.
Even so, there remains room-and-to-spare for adjustments and expansion, including the expectation of new Books of John the Baptist and Enoch, and the full version of events on the Mount of Transfiguration, all of which the Doctrine and Covenants promises. And belief in, and confirmation of, the Bible, "as far as it is translated correctly," still gave the Prophet plenty of scope for additional translating, or elucidation through re-wording, as reflected in his Nauvoo letters and sermons and in the Book of Abraham. The Prophet even came to acknowledge the superiority of Luther's translations, as he also pressed on in his study of both Hebrew and Greek. And he prized his Hutter Polyglot. On the other hand, would-be translators and interpreters are not free to move the pieces around in any manner they may choose: the Prophet, in and through the New Translation, has set some bounds and limits to speculation. All of which, however, does not imply full understanding on anyone's part. How utterly changed our view of the world of the Bible or the Book of Mormon would be, could we but view the events in vision! Even so, the doctrinal and narrative framework set out by the Prophet Joseph in his vision--in his New Translation and in the Book of Mormon and Book of Abraham--would yet hold.
Taken together, it is the both the changes in and approval of the Authorised English Version of both the Masoretic Text and the Received Text that alike constitute the miracle of the Prophet's New Translation. Recall how after lamenting the loss of plain and precious doctrines from the future Bible in the days of the gentiles, Nephi rounds off his prophecy about that Book with resounding praise for the Masoretic Text: "They shall have a Bible; and it shall proceed forth from the Jews, mine ancient covenant people. And what thank they the Jews for the Bible which they receive [note it well] from them?" (2 Nephi 29:4). While the Greek Septuagint, the Samaritan Pentateuch, a few of the biblical scrolls from the Dead Sea, and the Book of Mormon do indeed, here and there, show added text or variant readings that surely sometimes reflect a better text; it is the Masoretic Text that yet stands as the most complete and correct biblical record of the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings. I thank the Jews for this. While Latter-day Saints invite any correction to, or even inspired expansion of, Masoretic phraseology, the word of the Lord stands true: it is the Bible "which they receive from [the Jews]," in compass with the plain and precious insights of the Isaiah portions of the Book of Mormon and the Prophet's New Translation, that gets the present stamp of approval as God's word.
With that in mind, let us turn to 1 Kings 15:11-12 and begin with an inspired change or two (noted in italics):
And Asa did right in the eyes of the Lord, as he commanded David his father. And he took away the sodomites out of the land, and removed all the idols that his father had made, and it pleased the Lord.
We would do well to study with care what "pleased the Lord" then, and to recognize also that what pleased Him then yet pleases Him now, for the Lord, without ever changing, "delights" in purity of heart and purity of worship, and in our zeal to sustain both.
And now, to that which the Prophet, by the same spirit of revelation, left without prophetic change, [although some bracketed explanations might prove helpful]:
1 Kings 15:13
And also Maachah his mother, even her he removed from being queen [and "high priestess"], because she had made an idol in a grove [Heb. the Asherah tree or post]; and Asa destroyed her idol, and burnt it by the brook Kidron.
And--say we in accordance with the divine word--it pleased the Lord.
As did Asa, so Joash, Hezekiah, and Josiah, the more righteous of the kings of Judah. Each cleansed and repaired the holy Temple; each destroyed the idols placed in the House of the Lord by apostate fathers and apostate mothers; each destroyed that Isabel, Mother of Abominations and Mystery of Iniquity, planted by apostates in the Temple of God, as if it was God: "Who opposeth and exalteth [her]self above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that [s]he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing [her]self that [s]he is God" (2 Thessalonians 2:4).
We turn next to Chronicles. 2 Chronicles 34:16, in the New Translation, shows an inspired change in idiom only, though the change reflects Ancient Near Eastern conceptions about the king and his "word" as an all but concrete sacred object to be held inviolate, that is, not to be tampered with but fulfilled to the letter. The verse further evidences, by what remains unchanged, that the Prophet authoritatively confirms the biblical account about Josiah's cleansing of the Temple, discovery of the sacred Book of the Law, and destruction of the Asherah: again, that sacrilegious tree or post placed in God's sanctuary as symbol of the Mother of Abominations--the Great and Abominable Church of the devil, as Nephi would say.
King Josiah has commissioned three officials to preside over the repairs of the House:
Now in the eighteenth year of his reign, when he had purged the land, and the house, he sent Shaphan the son of Azaliah, and Maaseiah, the governor of the city, and Joah the son of Joahaz the recorder, to repair the house of the LORD his God (KJV 2 Chronicles 34:8).
During the repairs, Hilkiah, the priest, discovers "a book of the law of the Lord, given by Moses" and commits it to Shaphan:
And Shaphan carried the book to the king, and brought the word of the king back again, saying, All that was committed to thy servants, they do (JST 2 Chronicles 34:16).
And--we repeat the inspired affirmation--it pleased the Lord. The wording in the New Translation resounds with cultural depth and gives an understanding of royal commissions, the royal word of command. We see the difference in cultural nuance, when we compare the New Translation with the Authorized Version:
And Shaphan carried the book to the king, and brought the king word back again, saying, All that was committed to thy servants, they do it (KJV 2 Chronicles 34:16).
The Prophet Joseph brought the word of the Scriptures, the word of righteous kings and prophets and judges, even the word of the Lord, back again--and we also sing of how he "brought the Priesthood back again."
And in light of the New Translation--or, for that matter, any translation of the holy writ--I would question the wisdom of following the lead of modern, agenda-striped students on the theme of the Asherah.
For example, consider the implications of associating the symbolism of Asherah and her tree, as some students eagerly do (though intending no harm), with Nephi's vision of the Tree of Life as symbolic of God's eternal love manifest in blessed Mary and her Child.
That the motif of lady-and-tree belongs to the Ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean Kulturkreis has never been in dispute. And given the biological and metaphorical likenesses between woman and tree--the slender willow, the delicately flowering cherry, the perfumed orange--the whole matter must be sufficiently rooted in the human psyche to blossom into correspondences everywhere. A look at the work of Mircea Eliade or Stith Thompson would set things straight (Motif-index of folk-literature).
The idea that the language of Nephi, a lad steeped in the story of Eve and Eden, refers back to apostate Asherah rather than being a reflection of his own cultivated awareness of deeply rooted literary themes, as in the Proverbs and the Song of Songs, is both counter-intuitive and the stuff on which Robert Graves's "white goddess" is made.
Now to the Holy Bible.
To misread the Bible on the worship of the Asherah or of the Queen of Heaven (in Jeremiah 44) is both to misconceive and to misconstrue the Book's very storyline and plot. Whether we choose to accept Scripture, the Bible has its own assumptions about itself. Among these is that Deuteronomy 16:21 (KJV and JST), though penned long before the monarchy came into being, defines just what an Asherah then was and just what an Asherah will be throughout Israelite history--and the plot never varies: "Thou shalt not plant thee a grove of trees [Heb. an Asherah] near unto the altar [Temple] of the Lord thy God, which thou shalt make thee." King Josiah, in a scene foreshadowing King Messiah's cleansing of the Temple--the role of all righteous kings--"brought out the grove [Asherah] from the house of the Lord, without Jerusalem, to the brook Kidron, and burned it at the brook Kidron, and stamped it small to powder, and cast the powder thereof upon the graves of the children of the people [the former adherents of apostate worship]" (2 Kings 23:6, KJV and JST).
One can argue against the Bible's self-assumptions, including the Mosaic authorship of Deuteronomy, but to do so is to engage in higher criticism, or to follow faddish agenda and archaeological sensationalism, or to rewrite its hard drive (take your pick).
Some will doubtless say we exaggerate concerns; they will say that by espousing sensationalist scholarship, they do not contemplate a merger, only a dalliance. But what of those poor souls who draw back from intellectual dalliance, as a child shrinks from the fire? Being but children, though we reach for the truth, we mistrust the stranger. However goddesses go or sophisticates parade, "always, always, we'll walk in the light."
Yes, Saints continue to reach for the truth of all things. We read and we ponder; we raid library shelves to learn what we can from the best books; we may even study Scripture in Dutch or Hebrew or French or English; but we never lay aside our childlike confidence in the words of the prophets and kings. We trust the keenness of their vision. "Who hath believed our report?" We believe their report.
How abundantly we thank God for a Prophet who, while restoring lost words and threads of biblical text and teachings, also gives us the Bible anew, even the Masoretic Text--including blessed Deuteronomy!--as a true record of Ancient Israel. And thank the Jews for it, for their great role "in bringing forth salvation unto the Gentiles" (2 Nephi 29:4; see also 1 Nephi 5:11; 19:23; Moses 1:41).
Saturday, August 7, 2010
My servant Gazelem (Egyptian Dj-s-r, Semitic g-z-r, the name Gazariya, and the Nazirites)
The Book of Alma, in a gem-like passage, affords us the seeric title of Gazelem:
And the Lord said:
I will prepare unto my servant Gazelem,
a stone,
which shall shine forth in darkness unto light,
that I may discover unto my people who serve me,
that I may discover unto them
the works of their brethren,
yea, their secret works,
their works of darkness,
and their wickedness and abominations.
And now, my son, these interpreters were prepared that the word of God might be fulfilled (Alma 37: 23-4,
http://www.lds.org/scriptures/bofm/alma/37?lang=eng).
Here is an instance of true oracular poetry--a touch of the archaic in the Book of Mormon. In 2 Nephi ancient Joseph intones poetic phrases about the Choice Seer of the latter-days; in Alma, a nameless Jaredite oracle from a far-distant past lisps prophecies of Gazelem.
Alma 37 twice uses the verb prepare in connection with Gazelem. By preparing a stone, we are to understand that the Lord has designed and set apart an object for the particular use of a specially prepared and foreordained seer.
Here is one matter on which debate, though commonplace, becomes pointless. While Gazelem clearly names the seer himself, the name, by default and also by aptness, perforce also describes the character of the special stone. Why? Because the one calls for the other. Could you have Gazelem without his stone? Both stone and seer are set apart for the Lord's work.
The verb to discover also appears twice in the oracular poem. The verb invokes other like moments of discovery in the Book of Mormon, including the dark moments in which discovery darkly reflects impending doom: Mosiah discovering, with joy, the people of Zarahemla, a distant kinfolk, in a lone and strange land; Noah discovering the Lamanites on the verge of attack--the moment of destruction of his compromised kingdom; the desperate attempt to re-discover Zarahemla, as an ally in time of need; the discovery of 24 plates left behind by the annihilated Jaredites--a warning to all who in time to come will possess the land.
Gazelem thus also connotes the seeric discoverer of America. And to discover is to warn.
What is the etymological significance of the seeric name Gazelem?
Professor Antonio Loprieno finds in the Egyptian verb Dsr (pronounced jezer or chezer: to clear a path, make separate, set apart; make pure, make sacred) an indisputable cognate to the Semitic verb gzr (to cut, cut off; to separate, decide). Back to Egypt in a moment, but to unlock Gazelem we should begin with what we already know about the familiar, but tricky, Semitic root gzr.
Hugh Nibley long ago pointed at the Aramaic realizations of the Semitic root gzr as helpful in explaining both Gazelem and the special stone, and it's clear that he had been examining Jastrow's famed Aramaic lexicon, with something of Drower's Mandaic Dictionary tossed into the mix. (Mandaic, a dialect of Aramaic, attests gzl.) (See Hugh Nibley, Teachings of the Book of Mormon, volume 2.)
For instance, Daniel 2:27 speaks of the skills of the Babylonian gazrin, an Aramaic word (see "Gazelem" in The Book of Mormon Onomasticon, Maxwell Institute, BYU for the gazrin and several other occurrences of gzr in the Bible). And it is in Daniel where we read: "that a stone ('even) was cut out (gzr: hithgezeret 'even) without hands."
The Semitic root gzr signifies the action of cutting, naturally including the cutting of stones, and with that in mind, we leaf through Jastrow's Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature. In one apt entry we find reference to the cut sapphires that make up the foundation stones of the future Temple. Jastrow is a house of treasures, a treasury of connotation--often more encyclopaedia than dictionary--and Book of Mormon Gazelem certainly reflects the various Aramaic words referencing cut sapphire, a secluded place or setting, and so forth. (Compare Hugh Nibley's chapter "Jewel of Discernment" in One Eternal Round, and esp. ps. 448-9.)
After ransacking Jastrow and activating the search engines on the Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon, or CAL, database, the student ought to read Edward Lipinski's short but comprehensive article, "The root GZR in Semitic" (Aula Orientalis 17/18, 1999-2000, ps. 493-497). Lipinski notes the prevalence of gzr in Hebrew, Ethiopian, and Arabic, while also observing that Aramaic holds "the richest repository of connotations." These include gzr (to cut) as connoting the actions of slaughter, circumcision, cutting treaties (that is, covenants), being "cut off" by an untimely death, ocular divination with sacrificed animals, the demarcation (or "cutting off") of lands by the sweeping flood waters, and the making of decisions. We further note the Phoenician cognate, gzl. A 5th century Phoenician king laments that his fleeting life has been untimely "cut off."
And anyone tuning into satellite TV knows about Al-Jazeera. Al-Jazeera, ultimately a borrowing into Arabic from Aramaic, references the Holy Island of peninsular Arabia, a land doubly "cut off" from the rest of creation, a real so well as metaphorical geology. Another place on the map, Al-Jazira, marks out all of Northern Mesopotamia as a wasteland, "cut off" from the inhabitable world, and thus both forbidding and untrodden (cf. Grk. a-batos, un-trodden). Algeria carries the same meaning.
In Hebrew gezerah marks land set aside, or fenced off, for pasturage; in ritual practice, it marks the rugged wasteland to which the scapegoat is sent, "a land which is cut off" (eretz gezerah, Leviticus 16:22). All of this powerfully evokes the Jaredite passage, from Mesopotamia "northward," "into the wilderness, yea, into that quarter where there never had man been," and through which only continuous divine direction could trace a path through the untrodden "empty quarter" (Ether 2:5). Here is one instance in which the Book of Mormon geography is crystal clear. Another instance is that of Lehi in Arabia.
Place names like Gezer and Ba'al Gezer likely reflect rugged geographic features, cut away from ordinary travel in the form of a natural rampart--what the ancients called a Cumorah. (For Jazirat, Leviticus, and Gezer, again see Lipinski, "The root GZR in Semitic.") Just so, the sacral geography of Ancient Egypt affords us both the demarcated t3 Dsr, the holy land reserved as necropolis, and the Abaton, an island (Philae) set apart for ceremonies of purification (see Hugh Nibley, Abraham in Egypt). I doubt anyone has yet ventured to compare the notionality of the Egyptian t3 Dsr and the Hebrew eretz gezerah.
Thus on to Ancient Egypt, where Antonio Loprieno surprisingly posits the vital Egyptian verb D-s-r or dj-s-r or dj-z-r/l as cognate with Semitic g-z-r, (La pensee et l'ecriture: Pour une analyse semiotique de la culture egyptienne (Paris, 2001), 15. And Gazelem? The lateral in Egyptian D-s-r, which we arbitrarily transcribe -r, likely had a phonetic realization /l/. To make sacred in Egyptian, as in Indo-European languages (and Hebrew), is an act of dedication by separating or fencing off. Objects, places, and persons are thus cut off, dedicated, prepared (by sweeping or clearing paths), purified, or set apart for sacred purposes. Such objects, persons, and places (including roads) become barred, forbidden, "off-limits" to the common and thus restricted to the designated few--one's own private road. Only after the purposeful removal of physical element from the everyday sphere, and for a specific task, may we speak of a sacred stone or of a holy man of God. (Hugh Nibley often notes how sacer, hagios, qdsh all convey the idea of a fence).
For examples of Dsr as a verb of separating, we find Horus separated from the rebel Seth (and the Sethian): for you are separated (Dsr) from him in your name of Ta Djeser, the Holy Land (Dsr.t(j) jr=f m rn=k n(j) t3 Dsr). We also see Atum in action of separating (Dsr) heaven from earth and the primeval waters (Dsr pt jr t3 nnw). The hieroglyph that writes Dsr shows an outstretched arm holding a baton in act of separation (see Loprieno, 14-15).
So which idea lies at the heart of verbal meaning for Dsr, the clearing of the road? or that of abstract separation? To get at the root of the thing, I picture a horse (or car) happening upon a herd of sheep. The sheep don't scatter before the horse; they divide. It's a clean cut. Here comes the king in procession; at the sight of the royal rod or baton the crowds part, as once the waters of the Red Sea, "hither and thither," in clean cut (See Helaman 8:11). One previously proposed Semitic cognate, drsh (to drive off, and therefore, supposedly, to clear, purify, etc.), does not match the picture half so well as does gzr.
For Loprieno, the arm with baton signifies a near universal idea. Spatial separation appears throughout many religious systems, notably in the idea of the temple, a word deriving from the Indo-European root -tem (the Greek temenos), which, again, means to cut (ibid., 15; cf. Morenz). Dsr thus bespeaks an ordering of the universe into its several constituent parts, including not only the initial work (or divisions) of creation but also the culminating creation of the temple, the accomplished and permanent setting apart of the sacred from the profane. In conjunction with the semantic constellation of (s)st3 (be inaccessible, secret, mysterious) and w'b (to be pure, clean), Dsr signals separation for the related purposes of purity, sacrality, and inaccessibility. To explain these interlocking and semiotic meanings for moderns, Professor Loprieno suggests comparison with the theology of ritual purity in the contemporary Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (ibid., 19; cf. the Hebrew root qdsh). Besides, only "purer eyes" can gaze into the spiritual realm (Doctrine and Covenants 131:7-8; for St, John's white stone, the Urim and Thummim, and the sanctified earth "made like unto crystal" see Doctrine and Covenants 130).
While parallels invite a second look at the Book of Mormon, a reader may wonder whether the intent behind pointing out such matters of correspondence and etymology is to convince the non-believing or to defend the cause against detractors. Not so. Spiritual truth is, ultimately, set apart for those seeking such truth.
Can D-s-r be a personal name? Recall Lehi in the Desert! Hugh Nibley, with reference to Djoser, the first king to build a pyramid, derives Book of Mormon names Zeezrom and Seezoram from Egyptian D-s-r. And Zeezrom and Gazelem, when we drop the archaic mimetic ending (-m), do share a similar consonantal root base: z-z-r/g-z-l ~ D-s-r/g-z-r. Alma gets Gazelem from an archaic (Jaredite?) oracle; Zeezrom may reflect a current Nephite take on the same verb: it's a matter of cognates.
We're getting somewhere now. In his study of West Semitic names, Professor Herbert Bardwell Huffmon lists both Gazariya (ga-zr-ri-ya) and Gzry as derivatives of g-z-r (entscheiden, schneiden; to divide up, cut up), Amorite Personal Names in the Mari Texts: A Structural and Lexical Study (Baltimore, Maryland, 1965), 130. Has anyone ever linked archaic King Djoser to West Semitic Gazariya? I doubt it, but both names come from the very same root. Gzry, or Gazariya, the CAL database reveals, means a "man from Gezer," a Gezerite.
"My servant Gazelem" (Alma 37:23; Doctrine and Covenants, Sections 78; 82; 104 = Gazelam) may thus signify, as title: one cut off, separated, dedicated, or made consecrate. Gazelem is the consecrated servant of the Lord, a Nazirite indeed, one set apart or consecrated to discover or reveal secrets through the instrumentality of a cut jewel or stone.
I further see in the Hebrew verb n-z-r (to set apart, make a Nazirite) a semantic correlate of g-z-r or D-s-r. The first element of the root, n, perhaps represents the lexicalization of what was originally a niphal passive or reflexive verbal stem; the D or g has perhaps, then, been swallowed up by the second consonant, z. The verb n-tz-r, to vow, must then likewise derive from, or share a common origin with, g-z-r. (See The Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, vol. 9. For another look at these verbs, see also hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/56/14/22/PDF/Hebrew.pdf.) The Hebrew lexicon gives a like definition of apartness and consecration for nzr, and the symbolic connotations all line up: diadems and crowns of precious stones. Ammon, in the Book of Mosiah, calls the gift of seership held by King Mosiah "this high gift."
While Joseph Smith, who was given "sight and power to translate the Book of Mormon," is the Gazelem or Choice Seer of the latter-days (as Joseph of old expresses it in another of the book's archaic places), the name applies not to Brother Joseph alone but to seers of all times and places who work by means of the Interpreters, or Urim and Thummim. It is the consecrated priesthood of the latter-days, with authority to use the Urim and Thummim, who, according to the Isaiah pesher for Isaiah 54 (a chapter which the Resurrected Lord enjoined the Nephites to study diligently), make up the number of sapphire foundation stones for the Temple community, a community set apart from the world (Hugh Nibley and Michael Rhodes, One Eternal Round, 448-9, following research by Yigael Yadin). Gazelem thus also reveals the assembled society of saints, the panegyris, even the royal priesthood and a peculiar people--the chosen people of the Stone of Israel.
Notes:
1) The latest update (2015) to "Gazelem" in the online Book of Mormon Onomasticon reads: "An etymology based on North-west Semitic gzl, gṣl, ǵzl or ǵṣl would be the most likely, with a dual ending -êm." But simply noting a correspondence between Gazelem and the obvious Northwest Semitic suspects only opens the game. We can continue the game by searching the various Afroasiatic languages for cognates. Some matters will always remain difficult. For instance, the idea of a "dual ending" -em, given the endless debates over the endings -m or -em or -aim, would be impossible to establish. For now we observe that the instrument known as the Urim and Thummim shares with Gazelem, the chosen seer in possession of like instruments, the archaic nominal mimation.
2) I update this piece from time to time for clarity and completeness. For example, the material from Edward Lipinski was not found in earlier versions. I have also expanded on Jastrow and on Loprieno's semiotic treatment of ritual purity and holiness in Egyptian religious texts. Further bibliography may yet be recommended.
A thorough rereading of James Hoffmeier's detailed study of Dsr in light of Loprieno's proposed etymology may prove beneficial to any student (Sacred in the Vocabulary of Ancient Egypt: the term DSR, with special reference to Dynasties I-XX). Why was gzr not previously proposed as a cognate to Dsr? The question of whether clearing the road or separation represents the primary meaning of Dsr, or how the two ideas might notionally correspond, the sometime perceived semantic correspondence with Semitic grsh (to drive away), all these stir round and round and have perhaps obscured the link. Besides, the notionality of cutting in gzr seems, at first blush, a far cry from the idea of separation often expressed by Dsr. It takes a linguist equally attuned to both Semitics and Egyptian to make the link.
4) As has been noted by Royal Skousen, Helaman 8:11 originally read: the waters "departed" "hither and thither." There is a connotative use of gzr, found in both Hebrew and Aramaic, of the ebb and flow of waters. In place of ebb, though, we often find the translation: "swept away," which something recalls the iconography of the baton departing the crowds and restricting the road for the sole use of the king (see discussion in Edward Lipinsky). The menacing rod that clears the roads and vertically separates earth from sky, may also depart the waters.
5) A reference to Gazelem [written Gazelum] appears in the Funeral Sermon for Joseph and Hyrum Smith. William W. Phelps, who delivered the eulogy in 1844, wrote it from memory in 1855. For that reason, it is not possible to know how much the written sermon reflects the original.
"Surely, as one of the holy ones commissioned by his father among the royal seventy, when the high council of heaven set them apart [d-s-r] to come down. . . he was the 'last,' and who knows but the 'greatest,' for he declared--we--knew not who he was! I may say, as the last is to be the first and the first last, in eternal rotation, that Joseph Smith, who was Gazelum, in the spirit world, was, and is, and will be in the endless progress of Eternity:--the Prince of Light."
How are we to read that last sentence? I would suggest: "Joseph Smith (who was Gazelem), in the spirit [i.e., spiritual] world was, and is, and will be in the endless progress of Eternity, the Prince of Light [meaning, the Prince or First among the chosen revelators of light and truth]. Another possibility would be: "Joseph Smith (who was Gazelem in the spirit world), etc." Either reading satisfies me. Though I don't know exactly how Brother Phelps saw things, the second reading doesn't, perhaps, fit the Book of Mormon designation of Gazelem as a mortal man given sight and power to reveal the hidden mysteries of the Lord's economy in earlier ages of the world.
The manuscript copy may be examined in the Church History Library; I've also looked at the typescript publication of it in Richard Van Wagoner and Steven C. Walker, "The Joseph/Hyrum Smith Funeral Sermon," BYU Studies 23:1 (1983), 3-18 [see esp. page 8]. (Some of the wording of the sermon much recalls a sermon said to have been delivered by Joseph Smith and written by memory by George Laub after the death of the Prophet.) Pace Van Wagoner and Walker, Phelps's recovered sermon (recovered from memory, that is) has both pathos and beauty and ought to be better known.
And the Lord said:
I will prepare unto my servant Gazelem,
a stone,
which shall shine forth in darkness unto light,
that I may discover unto my people who serve me,
that I may discover unto them
the works of their brethren,
yea, their secret works,
their works of darkness,
and their wickedness and abominations.
And now, my son, these interpreters were prepared that the word of God might be fulfilled (Alma 37: 23-4,
http://www.lds.org/scriptures/bofm/alma/37?lang=eng).
Here is an instance of true oracular poetry--a touch of the archaic in the Book of Mormon. In 2 Nephi ancient Joseph intones poetic phrases about the Choice Seer of the latter-days; in Alma, a nameless Jaredite oracle from a far-distant past lisps prophecies of Gazelem.
Alma 37 twice uses the verb prepare in connection with Gazelem. By preparing a stone, we are to understand that the Lord has designed and set apart an object for the particular use of a specially prepared and foreordained seer.
Here is one matter on which debate, though commonplace, becomes pointless. While Gazelem clearly names the seer himself, the name, by default and also by aptness, perforce also describes the character of the special stone. Why? Because the one calls for the other. Could you have Gazelem without his stone? Both stone and seer are set apart for the Lord's work.
The verb to discover also appears twice in the oracular poem. The verb invokes other like moments of discovery in the Book of Mormon, including the dark moments in which discovery darkly reflects impending doom: Mosiah discovering, with joy, the people of Zarahemla, a distant kinfolk, in a lone and strange land; Noah discovering the Lamanites on the verge of attack--the moment of destruction of his compromised kingdom; the desperate attempt to re-discover Zarahemla, as an ally in time of need; the discovery of 24 plates left behind by the annihilated Jaredites--a warning to all who in time to come will possess the land.
Gazelem thus also connotes the seeric discoverer of America. And to discover is to warn.
What is the etymological significance of the seeric name Gazelem?
Professor Antonio Loprieno finds in the Egyptian verb Dsr (pronounced jezer or chezer: to clear a path, make separate, set apart; make pure, make sacred) an indisputable cognate to the Semitic verb gzr (to cut, cut off; to separate, decide). Back to Egypt in a moment, but to unlock Gazelem we should begin with what we already know about the familiar, but tricky, Semitic root gzr.
Hugh Nibley long ago pointed at the Aramaic realizations of the Semitic root gzr as helpful in explaining both Gazelem and the special stone, and it's clear that he had been examining Jastrow's famed Aramaic lexicon, with something of Drower's Mandaic Dictionary tossed into the mix. (Mandaic, a dialect of Aramaic, attests gzl.) (See Hugh Nibley, Teachings of the Book of Mormon, volume 2.)
For instance, Daniel 2:27 speaks of the skills of the Babylonian gazrin, an Aramaic word (see "Gazelem" in The Book of Mormon Onomasticon, Maxwell Institute, BYU for the gazrin and several other occurrences of gzr in the Bible). And it is in Daniel where we read: "that a stone ('even) was cut out (gzr: hithgezeret 'even) without hands."
The Semitic root gzr signifies the action of cutting, naturally including the cutting of stones, and with that in mind, we leaf through Jastrow's Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature. In one apt entry we find reference to the cut sapphires that make up the foundation stones of the future Temple. Jastrow is a house of treasures, a treasury of connotation--often more encyclopaedia than dictionary--and Book of Mormon Gazelem certainly reflects the various Aramaic words referencing cut sapphire, a secluded place or setting, and so forth. (Compare Hugh Nibley's chapter "Jewel of Discernment" in One Eternal Round, and esp. ps. 448-9.)
After ransacking Jastrow and activating the search engines on the Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon, or CAL, database, the student ought to read Edward Lipinski's short but comprehensive article, "The root GZR in Semitic" (Aula Orientalis 17/18, 1999-2000, ps. 493-497). Lipinski notes the prevalence of gzr in Hebrew, Ethiopian, and Arabic, while also observing that Aramaic holds "the richest repository of connotations." These include gzr (to cut) as connoting the actions of slaughter, circumcision, cutting treaties (that is, covenants), being "cut off" by an untimely death, ocular divination with sacrificed animals, the demarcation (or "cutting off") of lands by the sweeping flood waters, and the making of decisions. We further note the Phoenician cognate, gzl. A 5th century Phoenician king laments that his fleeting life has been untimely "cut off."
And anyone tuning into satellite TV knows about Al-Jazeera. Al-Jazeera, ultimately a borrowing into Arabic from Aramaic, references the Holy Island of peninsular Arabia, a land doubly "cut off" from the rest of creation, a real so well as metaphorical geology. Another place on the map, Al-Jazira, marks out all of Northern Mesopotamia as a wasteland, "cut off" from the inhabitable world, and thus both forbidding and untrodden (cf. Grk. a-batos, un-trodden). Algeria carries the same meaning.
In Hebrew gezerah marks land set aside, or fenced off, for pasturage; in ritual practice, it marks the rugged wasteland to which the scapegoat is sent, "a land which is cut off" (eretz gezerah, Leviticus 16:22). All of this powerfully evokes the Jaredite passage, from Mesopotamia "northward," "into the wilderness, yea, into that quarter where there never had man been," and through which only continuous divine direction could trace a path through the untrodden "empty quarter" (Ether 2:5). Here is one instance in which the Book of Mormon geography is crystal clear. Another instance is that of Lehi in Arabia.
Place names like Gezer and Ba'al Gezer likely reflect rugged geographic features, cut away from ordinary travel in the form of a natural rampart--what the ancients called a Cumorah. (For Jazirat, Leviticus, and Gezer, again see Lipinski, "The root GZR in Semitic.") Just so, the sacral geography of Ancient Egypt affords us both the demarcated t3 Dsr, the holy land reserved as necropolis, and the Abaton, an island (Philae) set apart for ceremonies of purification (see Hugh Nibley, Abraham in Egypt). I doubt anyone has yet ventured to compare the notionality of the Egyptian t3 Dsr and the Hebrew eretz gezerah.
Thus on to Ancient Egypt, where Antonio Loprieno surprisingly posits the vital Egyptian verb D-s-r or dj-s-r or dj-z-r/l as cognate with Semitic g-z-r, (La pensee et l'ecriture: Pour une analyse semiotique de la culture egyptienne (Paris, 2001), 15. And Gazelem? The lateral in Egyptian D-s-r, which we arbitrarily transcribe -r, likely had a phonetic realization /l/. To make sacred in Egyptian, as in Indo-European languages (and Hebrew), is an act of dedication by separating or fencing off. Objects, places, and persons are thus cut off, dedicated, prepared (by sweeping or clearing paths), purified, or set apart for sacred purposes. Such objects, persons, and places (including roads) become barred, forbidden, "off-limits" to the common and thus restricted to the designated few--one's own private road. Only after the purposeful removal of physical element from the everyday sphere, and for a specific task, may we speak of a sacred stone or of a holy man of God. (Hugh Nibley often notes how sacer, hagios, qdsh all convey the idea of a fence).
For examples of Dsr as a verb of separating, we find Horus separated from the rebel Seth (and the Sethian): for you are separated (Dsr) from him in your name of Ta Djeser, the Holy Land (Dsr.t(j) jr=f m rn=k n(j) t3 Dsr). We also see Atum in action of separating (Dsr) heaven from earth and the primeval waters (Dsr pt jr t3 nnw). The hieroglyph that writes Dsr shows an outstretched arm holding a baton in act of separation (see Loprieno, 14-15).
So which idea lies at the heart of verbal meaning for Dsr, the clearing of the road? or that of abstract separation? To get at the root of the thing, I picture a horse (or car) happening upon a herd of sheep. The sheep don't scatter before the horse; they divide. It's a clean cut. Here comes the king in procession; at the sight of the royal rod or baton the crowds part, as once the waters of the Red Sea, "hither and thither," in clean cut (See Helaman 8:11). One previously proposed Semitic cognate, drsh (to drive off, and therefore, supposedly, to clear, purify, etc.), does not match the picture half so well as does gzr.
For Loprieno, the arm with baton signifies a near universal idea. Spatial separation appears throughout many religious systems, notably in the idea of the temple, a word deriving from the Indo-European root -tem (the Greek temenos), which, again, means to cut (ibid., 15; cf. Morenz). Dsr thus bespeaks an ordering of the universe into its several constituent parts, including not only the initial work (or divisions) of creation but also the culminating creation of the temple, the accomplished and permanent setting apart of the sacred from the profane. In conjunction with the semantic constellation of (s)st3 (be inaccessible, secret, mysterious) and w'b (to be pure, clean), Dsr signals separation for the related purposes of purity, sacrality, and inaccessibility. To explain these interlocking and semiotic meanings for moderns, Professor Loprieno suggests comparison with the theology of ritual purity in the contemporary Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (ibid., 19; cf. the Hebrew root qdsh). Besides, only "purer eyes" can gaze into the spiritual realm (Doctrine and Covenants 131:7-8; for St, John's white stone, the Urim and Thummim, and the sanctified earth "made like unto crystal" see Doctrine and Covenants 130).
While parallels invite a second look at the Book of Mormon, a reader may wonder whether the intent behind pointing out such matters of correspondence and etymology is to convince the non-believing or to defend the cause against detractors. Not so. Spiritual truth is, ultimately, set apart for those seeking such truth.
Can D-s-r be a personal name? Recall Lehi in the Desert! Hugh Nibley, with reference to Djoser, the first king to build a pyramid, derives Book of Mormon names Zeezrom and Seezoram from Egyptian D-s-r. And Zeezrom and Gazelem, when we drop the archaic mimetic ending (-m), do share a similar consonantal root base: z-z-r/g-z-l ~ D-s-r/g-z-r. Alma gets Gazelem from an archaic (Jaredite?) oracle; Zeezrom may reflect a current Nephite take on the same verb: it's a matter of cognates.
We're getting somewhere now. In his study of West Semitic names, Professor Herbert Bardwell Huffmon lists both Gazariya (ga-zr-ri-ya) and Gzry as derivatives of g-z-r (entscheiden, schneiden; to divide up, cut up), Amorite Personal Names in the Mari Texts: A Structural and Lexical Study (Baltimore, Maryland, 1965), 130. Has anyone ever linked archaic King Djoser to West Semitic Gazariya? I doubt it, but both names come from the very same root. Gzry, or Gazariya, the CAL database reveals, means a "man from Gezer," a Gezerite.
"My servant Gazelem" (Alma 37:23; Doctrine and Covenants, Sections 78; 82; 104 = Gazelam) may thus signify, as title: one cut off, separated, dedicated, or made consecrate. Gazelem is the consecrated servant of the Lord, a Nazirite indeed, one set apart or consecrated to discover or reveal secrets through the instrumentality of a cut jewel or stone.
I further see in the Hebrew verb n-z-r (to set apart, make a Nazirite) a semantic correlate of g-z-r or D-s-r. The first element of the root, n, perhaps represents the lexicalization of what was originally a niphal passive or reflexive verbal stem; the D or g has perhaps, then, been swallowed up by the second consonant, z. The verb n-tz-r, to vow, must then likewise derive from, or share a common origin with, g-z-r. (See The Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, vol. 9. For another look at these verbs, see also hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/56/14/22/PDF/Hebrew.pdf.) The Hebrew lexicon gives a like definition of apartness and consecration for nzr, and the symbolic connotations all line up: diadems and crowns of precious stones. Ammon, in the Book of Mosiah, calls the gift of seership held by King Mosiah "this high gift."
While Joseph Smith, who was given "sight and power to translate the Book of Mormon," is the Gazelem or Choice Seer of the latter-days (as Joseph of old expresses it in another of the book's archaic places), the name applies not to Brother Joseph alone but to seers of all times and places who work by means of the Interpreters, or Urim and Thummim. It is the consecrated priesthood of the latter-days, with authority to use the Urim and Thummim, who, according to the Isaiah pesher for Isaiah 54 (a chapter which the Resurrected Lord enjoined the Nephites to study diligently), make up the number of sapphire foundation stones for the Temple community, a community set apart from the world (Hugh Nibley and Michael Rhodes, One Eternal Round, 448-9, following research by Yigael Yadin). Gazelem thus also reveals the assembled society of saints, the panegyris, even the royal priesthood and a peculiar people--the chosen people of the Stone of Israel.
Notes:
1) The latest update (2015) to "Gazelem" in the online Book of Mormon Onomasticon reads: "An etymology based on North-west Semitic gzl, gṣl, ǵzl or ǵṣl would be the most likely, with a dual ending -êm." But simply noting a correspondence between Gazelem and the obvious Northwest Semitic suspects only opens the game. We can continue the game by searching the various Afroasiatic languages for cognates. Some matters will always remain difficult. For instance, the idea of a "dual ending" -em, given the endless debates over the endings -m or -em or -aim, would be impossible to establish. For now we observe that the instrument known as the Urim and Thummim shares with Gazelem, the chosen seer in possession of like instruments, the archaic nominal mimation.
2) I update this piece from time to time for clarity and completeness. For example, the material from Edward Lipinski was not found in earlier versions. I have also expanded on Jastrow and on Loprieno's semiotic treatment of ritual purity and holiness in Egyptian religious texts. Further bibliography may yet be recommended.
A thorough rereading of James Hoffmeier's detailed study of Dsr in light of Loprieno's proposed etymology may prove beneficial to any student (Sacred in the Vocabulary of Ancient Egypt: the term DSR, with special reference to Dynasties I-XX). Why was gzr not previously proposed as a cognate to Dsr? The question of whether clearing the road or separation represents the primary meaning of Dsr, or how the two ideas might notionally correspond, the sometime perceived semantic correspondence with Semitic grsh (to drive away), all these stir round and round and have perhaps obscured the link. Besides, the notionality of cutting in gzr seems, at first blush, a far cry from the idea of separation often expressed by Dsr. It takes a linguist equally attuned to both Semitics and Egyptian to make the link.
4) As has been noted by Royal Skousen, Helaman 8:11 originally read: the waters "departed" "hither and thither." There is a connotative use of gzr, found in both Hebrew and Aramaic, of the ebb and flow of waters. In place of ebb, though, we often find the translation: "swept away," which something recalls the iconography of the baton departing the crowds and restricting the road for the sole use of the king (see discussion in Edward Lipinsky). The menacing rod that clears the roads and vertically separates earth from sky, may also depart the waters.
5) A reference to Gazelem [written Gazelum] appears in the Funeral Sermon for Joseph and Hyrum Smith. William W. Phelps, who delivered the eulogy in 1844, wrote it from memory in 1855. For that reason, it is not possible to know how much the written sermon reflects the original.
"Surely, as one of the holy ones commissioned by his father among the royal seventy, when the high council of heaven set them apart [d-s-r] to come down. . . he was the 'last,' and who knows but the 'greatest,' for he declared--we--knew not who he was! I may say, as the last is to be the first and the first last, in eternal rotation, that Joseph Smith, who was Gazelum, in the spirit world, was, and is, and will be in the endless progress of Eternity:--the Prince of Light."
How are we to read that last sentence? I would suggest: "Joseph Smith (who was Gazelem), in the spirit [i.e., spiritual] world was, and is, and will be in the endless progress of Eternity, the Prince of Light [meaning, the Prince or First among the chosen revelators of light and truth]. Another possibility would be: "Joseph Smith (who was Gazelem in the spirit world), etc." Either reading satisfies me. Though I don't know exactly how Brother Phelps saw things, the second reading doesn't, perhaps, fit the Book of Mormon designation of Gazelem as a mortal man given sight and power to reveal the hidden mysteries of the Lord's economy in earlier ages of the world.
The manuscript copy may be examined in the Church History Library; I've also looked at the typescript publication of it in Richard Van Wagoner and Steven C. Walker, "The Joseph/Hyrum Smith Funeral Sermon," BYU Studies 23:1 (1983), 3-18 [see esp. page 8]. (Some of the wording of the sermon much recalls a sermon said to have been delivered by Joseph Smith and written by memory by George Laub after the death of the Prophet.) Pace Van Wagoner and Walker, Phelps's recovered sermon (recovered from memory, that is) has both pathos and beauty and ought to be better known.
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