"He will kill Jeremiah too!": Joseph Smith Translation Jeremiah 26:17-23

Among the Bible's most vivid episodes is that of Jeremiah prophesying in the court of the Temple, whereupon an angry assemblage of priests, prophets, princes, and people try him for his life on the spot, that is, at the New Gate of the Temple, where "trials involving sacral law were regularly heard."

Sources: William McKane, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Jeremiah, Edinburgh, 1996, 678; on the supposed legal model for the narrative see McKane, ps. 676-681; see also John W. Welch, "The Trial of Jeremiah: A Legal Legacy from Lehi's Jerusalem," in David R. Seely, JoAnn Seely, and J. Welch (eds), Glimpses of Lehi's Jerusalem (Provo, 2004), which shows parallels with legal procedure in the Book of Mormon narrative but does not mention JST Jeremiah 26:17-23; cf. also David R. Seely, "The Ministry of Jeremiah," in Kent Jackson (ed), Studies in Scripture 4.

In his New Translation of Jeremiah 26 the Prophet Joseph Smith makes several changes, though none carries more dramatic power than the line added to verse 20, at the very moment the wavering people stand ready to spare: "But there was a man among the priests, rose up and said." While the "man among the priests," who seeks to turn any wavering, merciful souls against Jeremiah, does not appear in any other textual tradition, what follows is the speech about Urijah, a prophet cut down by sword's edge and cast into a common grave for prophesying the very same things Jeremiah now sets forth. David Kimchi, paragon of commentators, sums up the point about comparing Jeremiah to Urijah with the following verdict: gm yrmyhw yhrg: You wish to acquit him but, as you now see, "[Jehoiakim] will kill Jeremiah too" (see W. McKane, Jeremiah, 670). The Prophet must die.

In order to grasp the power, and balance, these new words add to the narrative--raising its dramatic tension to fever pitch--we must first consider Jeremiah's most dangerous mission as set forth in the Authorized Version of the Bible:

1 In the beginning of the reign of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah king of Judah came this word from the Lord, saying,
2 Thus saith the Lord; Stand in the court of the Lord’s house, and speak unto all the cities of Judah, which come to worship in the Lord’s house, all the words that I command thee to speak unto them; diminish not a word:
3 If so be they will hearken, and turn every man from his evil way, that I may repent me of the evil, which I purpose to do unto them because of the evil of their doings.
4 And thou shalt say unto them, Thus saith the Lord; If ye will not hearken to me, to walk in my law, which I have set before you,
5 To hearken to the words of my servants the prophets, whom I sent unto you both rising up early, and sending them, but ye have not hearkened;
6 Then will I make this house like Shiloh, and will make this city a curse to all the nations of the earth.

The reaction of the audience was to detain Jeremiah as one worthy of death:

8 ¶Now it came to pass, when Jeremiah had made an end of speaking all that the Lord had commanded him to speak unto all the people, that the priests and the prophets and all the people took him, saying, Thou shalt surely die.

Verse 9 further records: And all the people were gathered against Jeremiah in the house of the Lord.

Representatives of the king, the sarim or princes, now join the Assembly of the People as its presiding secular officers, and Jeremiah contests his life at Newgate. The religious leaders or officers, the priests and the prophets, prosecute the case before the Assembly:

10 ¶When the princes of Judah heard these things, then they came up from the king’s house unto the house of the Lord, and sat down in the entry of the new gate of the Lord’s house.
11Then spake the priests and the prophets unto the princes and to all the people, saying, This man is worthy to die; for he hath prophesied against this city, as ye have heard with your ears.

Jeremiah is next permitted to defend himself before the Assembly and its presiding officers:

12 ¶Then spake Jeremiah unto all the princes and to all the people, saying, The Lord sent me to prophesy against this house and against this city all the words that ye have heard.
13 Therefore now amend your ways and your doings, and obey the voice of the Lord your God; and the Lord will repent him of the evil that he hath pronounced against you.
14 As for me, behold, I am in your hand: do with me as seemeth good and meet unto you.
15 But know ye for certain, that if ye put me to death, ye shall surely bring innocent blood upon yourselves, and upon this city, and upon the inhabitants thereof: for of a truth the Lord hath sent me unto you to speak all these words in your ears.

The sarim and the Assembly then make their decision, a first, or secular decision (Jack W. Welch, "The Trial of Jeremiah," cites 2 Chronicles 19:8, 11 as evidence for a clear division of secular and sacral judges under King Jehoshaphat; he notes "jurisdictional lines were not always sharply divided" in antiquity):

16¶Then said the princes and all the people unto the priests and to the prophets; This man is not worthy to die: for he hath spoken to us in the name of the Lord our God.
17 Then rose up certain of the elders of the land, and spake to all the assembly of the people, saying,
18 Micah the Morasthite prophesied in the days of Hezekiah king of Judah, and spake to all the people of Judah, saying, Thus saith the Lord of hosts; Zion shall be plowed like a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places of a forest.
19 Did Hezekiah king of Judah and all Judah put him at all to death? did he not fear the Lord, and besought the Lord, and the Lord repented him of the evil which he had pronounced against them? Thus might we procure great evil against our souls [Joseph Smith Translation: Thus by putting Jeremiah to death we might procure great evil against our souls].

20 And there was also a man that prophesied in the name of the Lord, Urijah the son of Shemaiah of Kirjath-jearim, who prophesied against this city and against this land according to all the words of Jeremiah.
21 And when Jehoiakim the king, with all his mighty men, and all the princes, heard his words, the king sought to put him to death: but when Urijah heard it, he was afraid, and fled, and went into Egypt;
22 And Jehoiakim the king sent men into Egypt, namely, Elnathan the son of Achbor, and certain men with him into Egypt.
23 And they fetched forth Urijah out of Egypt, and brought him unto Jehoiakim the king; who slew him with the sword, and cast his dead body into the graves of the common people [Vulgate: in sepulchris vulgi ignobilis; Targum: lqbry gly', "graves of the heaps," "common graves" = W. McKane, 664].

Nevertheless!

24 Nevertheless the hand of Ahikam the son of Shaphan was with Jeremiah, that they should not give him into the hand of the people to put him to death.

So runs the narrative, but at the juncture between verses 19 and 20 the Joseph Smith Translation breaks with the Masoretic Text by adding the previously unknown character of "a man among the priests" who rises to speak of Urijah and his doom. And whether we are thinking of the Prophet Joseph or of David Kimchi: "The sense of v.24 is then that this [same] outcome is blocked only by Ahikam's shielding of Jeremiah. In connection with Kimchi's hypothesis we may ask about the identity of those who are alleged [by Kimchi] to say gm yrmyhw yhrg. . . So we need a new constituency which the narrative does not supply" (McKane, 671).

Both Rashi and Kimchi, our greatest medieval commentators, draw on the midrashic tradition and, in particular, the Sifrei to Numbers (88):

R. "Up to this point the statement is what the righteous people said. As to the wicked, what did they say? "there was another man who prophesied in the name of the Lord, Uriah," etc.
S. So the wicked said, 'Just as Uriah was put to death, so Jeremiah is liable to be put to death.'"
Sifre to Numbers: An American Translation and Explanation, ed. Jacob Neusner (Atlanta, 1986), vol. 2, 88-9.

The contrast between the righteous elders of the people, who argue for Jeremiah, and the wicked, who convict him as worthy of death, also appears in the Tosefta-Tractate, Sotah 9:5 (note the prepositional phrase among them): (A) "So said the proper ones among them." (B) "The evil ones among them said, 'There was another man,'" etc. (C) "They said, 'Just as Uriah prophesied and was killed, so Jeremiah is subject to the death penalty.'" (D) "This entire pericope is a mixture of the words of different parties, so that one who said one thing did not say the other," Jacob Neusner (ed), Jeremiah in Talmud and Midrash (University Press of America, 2006), 9.

Or as Professor Neusner summarizes: "Several distinct voices make up Jeremiah's statement. The righteous defended the prophet, the wicked introduced a negative precedent. The context involves a number of such constructions," Jeremiah in Talmud and Midrash, 18.

"Several voices" rise but no specifically identified speakers, an ambiguity reflected in Rashi: "The one who said one thing did not say the other. Until now we have the words of the elders, but the wicked people who were there rose up and said: 'There was also a man who prophesied,' etc." The commentary Mitzudat David (Fortress of David) later attempts to close the gap on specificity: "These are the words of the priests and the prophets" (see the Rabbinic Bible, Miqra'ot Gedalot: Jeremiah.)

New England divines, as readers of Calvin's Commentaries on Jeremiah, would have been familiar with the difficulties found in Jeremiah Chapter 26: 17-23 (Revd. John Owen, ed., Commentaries on the Book of Jeremiah and the Lamentations, vol. 3, 1852, 2nd ed 1959, Grand Rapids, Michigan).

Calvin, who presents both sides well, is also simply wild in double mindedness (nearly so much as the people before whom Jeremiah stands): "Some explain the whole in the same manner, as though the elders designed to shew that the wicked can gain nothing by resisting God's prophets, except that by contending they make themselves more and more guilty. But others think that this part was brought forward by the opposite party. . . and this opinion seems to be confirmed by what follows in the last verse the chapter, Nevertheless the hand of Ahikam," 339.

"I dare not yet reject wholly the idea," cries Calvin, 341.

This is what the Prophet, if he knew his Calvin, would have had to deal with:

"It hence appears that this view can without absurdity be defended, that is, that the enemies of Jeremiah endeavoured to aggravate his case by referring to the punishment the king inflicted on Uriah, whose case was not dissimilar; and I do not reject this view. If any approve of the other, that this part was spoken by the advocates of Jeremiah, I readily allow it; but I dare not yet reject wholly the idea, that Jeremiah was loaded with prejudice by having the case of Uriah brought forward" (341).

"I dare not yet reject wholly the idea," cries Calvin--and I'd love to see the Latin for that mouthful. By way of contrast the New England Prophet decides and never wavers; as we all know, Brother Joseph was a James 1:5-6 sort of man.

The Prophet Joseph is not the only 19th century reader to add words to the text. Calvin's editor, the Rev. John Owen, taking the hint from 18th century commentator Hermann Venema, both transposes verses and also adds text. Venema "considers that the 17th verse has been removed from its place between the 19th and the 20th, and that the 'princes' mentioned the case of Micah in favour of Jeremiah, and that 'the elders of the land' adduced the case of Uriah against him" (341 n.1).

Dr. Owen suggests for verses 16, 18, and 19:

"Then said the princes and all the people to the priests and to the prophets, 'Against this man there is no judgment of death, for in the name of Jehovah hath he spoken to (or against) us. Micah the Morasthite was a prophet in the days of Hezekiah,' etc. 'But we are doing a great evil against our own souls.' "

Transposed Verse 17: "Then rose up men from the elders of the land and spoke to the whole assembly of the people, saying, (verse 20) 'But there was also a man, who prophesied in the name of Jehovah, Uriah,'" etc.

For the learned Vicar of Thrussington: "This arrangement makes the whole narrative plain, regular, and consistent. The conclusion comes in naturally, that notwithstanding the adverse speech of the 'elders' Jeremiah was saved by the influence of Ahikam, one of the princes" (341 n.1).

The arrangement astonishes as an attempt to correct the Bible--in 1852 England the Bible is not necessarily inerrant--yet there is nothing consistent or logical in what Rev. Owen corrects. Elders do remember long-forgotten prophets known to their fathers--they chant the ancient oracles. They do not see the latest news from court in vivid color. The events of chapter 26 are placed "in the beginning of the reign of Jehoiakim," and yet the doom of Urijah has already been played out within the framework of that new reign. Why then would it fall to the Elders to cite the story? And how would they know the details behind the execution of the prophet? Such facts would be the province of the king, his princes, or his priesthood.

Modern students neither follow the rabbinic reading nor do they attempt to transpose verses but consider verses 20-23 to have been added by the narrator (Jack R. Lundbom, Jeremiah, vol. 2, 300 in the Anchor Bible vol.21B): "It is not to be taken as a part of the argument in Jeremiah's defense (vss 16-19), which it would tend to contradict, nor is it presented as an argument of the accused." The verses on Urijah were "inserted at this place merely as an illustration of what might well have happened to Jeremiah, had not the princes had the courage to intervene"[!], John Bright, Jeremiah (Anchor Bible 21), 172.

Indeed: "There are a number of strange features in vv. 17-19. The direct citation of another speaker's work [Micah] and its use as an argument are unique in prophetic tradition," with verses 20-23 having "nothing to do with the structured confrontation of vv. 7-16," being merely a "response to v. 19," Robert P. Carroll, Jeremiah: A Commentary (London, 1986), 518-9.

"The passage," protests Professor Feinberg, "can scarcely be the words of Jeremiah's opponents because there is no introductory formula" (Charles L. Feinberg, Jeremiah: A Commentary, Grand Rapids, Michigin, 1982), 186.

Dr. Owens tried his best to produce just such a formula and failed. How does Joseph Smith fare?

Joseph Smith Translation OT Manuscript 2 (page 835): "But there was a man among the priests, rose up and said, that, Urijah the son of Shemaiah of Kirjath-jearim, prophesied in the name of the Lord, who also prophesied against this city and against this land according to all the words of Jeremiah."

The very fact of such a clarifying addition to the much-disputed text stands worthy of remark (and Brother Joseph may well have had some awareness of the textual controversies), but a surprise or two remains to be unfolded. While the Septuagint (Greek Translation of the Hebrew) drops the phrase "and against this city," the Prophet emphasizes the same phrase by adding gam, or also: "who also prophesied against this city and against the land" (see W. McKane, 660, 673). By shifting the also from a general reference to prophecy made in the name of the Lord ("And there was also a man that prophesied in the name of the Lord") to instead specify prophecies uttered against the city, the Prophet tightens the rhetorical point being scored by the "man among the priests" as he attempts to overthrow the argument of the Elders. Also, while specifically turning the mind back to the precedent of Micah speaking against the temple and the city, ironically anticipates a verdict of condemnation: in light of the ignominious fate of Urijah, which the speaker is about to unfold, the precedent of Micah can certify no justification for Jeremiah's prophecies against the temple.

Here's another surprise. What happens if we translate the added words of the New Translation back into idiomatic Biblical Hebrew? The following attempt represents the only possible solution in light of Hebrew grammar and syntax:

vayyaqum ish mehakohanim (or bakohanim) vayyomar (ki) "hayah mitnabbeh uriyah".

The sentence deserves close analysis:

vayyaqum (va = a contrastive use of waw as also a conversive waw (that is, a grammatical marker that converts the tense or aspect of the verb from imperfective to perfective) = but; vayyaqum = he will rise up = with waw conversive = he rose up)

ish (man, a man)

me + hakohanim = from or from among the priests (e.g., Ezra 3:12); or bakohanim (ba or be + ha = in, among + the; kohanim = priests)

vayyomar (va = and; vayyomar = and he will speak = and he said")

And, perhaps, ki (that = introduces direct discourse, although not necessary for sentence grammar here).

No other solution for the phrase "But there was a man among the priests, rose up and said" matches the Hebrew syntax. (To show a difference, the formula vayhi ish, as in 1 Samuel 1:1, carries existential meaning and implies no contrast: "And there was a man.") Besides, consider the perfect economy of the Hebrew--four words: vayyaqum ish mikohanim vayyomar--not to mention the subtle ambiguity of the whole thing: just who is this "man among the priests"? is he a priest himself? or a spokesman for the priests? The wording in Hebrew, while often denoting a member of a larger group, just as often suggests an actor among, but not necessarily of, said group, or an actor possessing such characteristics as would make him stand out from the crowd. 

Professor Robert Alter often notes how Hebrew packs it in. And these four words tell us more than we might think at first glance. We learn arrangement. Just as the princes sat down at the entry of the New Gate, so the priests sat apart from the rest of the Assembly during the trial. Each constituent element of the court had its place. And what of procedure? From the text we deduce the following order: the defendant speaks first, followed by the secular authorities, then, according to Joseph Smith, the sacral authorities speak last; the Assembly of the People weigh things as they go. Who gets the last word? The Elders of the Land, however respectable, do not carry the power to silence the priests beyond possibility of response. So the last word belongs to the solemn or sullen priesthood, separated from the other attendees at the Assembly, and the priestly spokesman's response is a rhetorical volcano of denunciation and fury meant to scorch the Assembly to fever pitch: "And they threw his body into a common grave." Jeremiah hardly escaped the razor-rhetoric of this "man among the priests."

Yet another surprise comes packed into the Prophet's addition; to see it, we need, once again, to translate his English back into the Hebrew of Jeremiah. Let us compare the Hebrew sentence that opens the entire pericope about Micah and Urijah side-by-side with what the Prophet Joseph adds (to be a Joseph in Hebrew is literally to be one who adds):

vayyaqumu anashim mizaqqaney ha-eretz vayyomru
(lit. and there rose up men from/from among the elders of the land and they said)
(KJV: Then rose up certain of the elders of the land, and spake)
vayyaqum ish mekohanim vayyomar
(lit. but there rose up a man from among the priests and he said)
(JST: But there was a man among the priests, rose up and said).

We also note:
vayymdw rsh'im shayu shm vayyamru
(Rashi: but there stood up wicked people who were there and they said)

Such a perfect balance in the two introductory formulas--really the same formula--achieves what Jeremiah 26:17-23 has always deserved and what the commentators have been calling for from the commencement of rabbinical midrash and the derivative doctoral homily (cf. Jeremiah 19:1). The phrase in English, "But there was a man among the priests, rose up and said," matches the phrase in verse 17 when translated into Hebrew--and yet the translated English structures of these sentences are anything but alike! (That would be too easy.) All changes in the New Translation that reflect Hebrew syntax and narrative structure, or in this case a narrative frame, notably come years before the Prophet's acquisition of a Hebrew Bible and his formal study of the language under Joshua Seixas.

And once again we see telling evidence for the Prophet Joseph as Restorer of original Biblical text. The New Translation of the Holy Bible, as it unfolds before the prophetic sight, may come to be many things: seeric expansion, which includes restoration of the historical and doctrinal context of the original writers (that is, moving beyond text), restoration of intent, a broad task that also embraces grammatical fixing and idiomatic smoothing of the Authorized Version (and even plays on words) for a latter-day readership--but above and beyond all the New Translation comes to us as a Restoration of sealed, lost or, corrupted Text.

Thus we have the case of the spokesman for the priesthood at New Gate. Now if the story of Urijah indeed represents the words of a spokesman for the prosecution in contrast to the powerful affirmative statement of the Elders (But there was a man among the priests, rose up, that is, a spokesman who rose up in anger, then his startling summation of the case of Urijah serves as purpose to foment renewed anger in the Assembly. "Don't believe that line," he cries, "about some prophet speaking in the name of the Lord. There was another who so claimed and then fled for his life in terrific fear. Pharaoh, the friend who put our own Jehoiakim on the throne, turned over this fugitive and this your own king had him summarily dispatched with a sword and threw his body into a common grave."

Here is rhetoric at fever pitch, rhetoric designed to sway with instantaneity an Assembly vulnerable to such emotional appeal--And threw his body into a common grave! So do also to this new deceiver!

Nevertheless!

In Hebrew the word akh is a powerful affirmative--a word of power--that rings out, without further ado, the stunning conclusion of a dramatic moment. Thus we read: akh yad Ahikam ben Shaphan: Yet it was so, that the Hand of Ahikam ben Shaphan, the Power of Ahikam--a powerful elder who lends his support to Jeremiah at the very moment of fever crisis--even this Hand of Ahikam ben Shaphan was with Jeremiah, that they should not give him into the hands of the people (Hand versus hands) to put him to death. 

The priestly spokesman rises up to condemn the prophet, but now we meet Ah-i-kam, or "My Brother has Risen Up."

A stunning power of veto stands proud against the hand of "a man among the priests."

It is the Joseph Smith Translation of Jeremiah 26:20 that, without rival, effortlessly lends the story a coherent formulaic balance and which also, in high drama, attains that rhetorical pitch intended by Baruch, Jeremiah's scribe and our original Hebrew writer.


Copyright 2011 by Val H. Sederholm

Joseph Smith Translation Psalm 125 and the Syriac Old Testament

An exceedingly simple but instructive instance of prophetic inspiration comes to light in the Joseph Smith Translation of Psalm 125:1, as comparison to the Authorised Version shows:

They that trust in the Lord shall be as mount Zion, which cannot be removed, but abideth for ever (KJV).

They that trust in the Lord in mount Zion, cannot be removed, but abide for ever (JST).

In the details lies the prophetic instance: thus we have "in mount Zion" rather than "as mount Zion," a single shift in preposition from k to b. 

Can we find any manuscript support for the reading? In my copy of Biblia Hebraica (Stuttgartensia), a famous Hebrew Bible for students, I see the following note attached to the lemma kehar-tsiyyon (as mount Zion): "Ps 125,1 (a) mlt Mss S bhr." The note tells us that many manuscripts of the Syriac Old Testament show preposition b (in) + the place name har-tsiyyon (mount Zion).

Bountiful Zion, Zomar, Zamar, Shamry, Shamrana--and the Kirtland Egyptian Papers

When Hugh Nibley says the Egyptian Grammar and Alphabet (1835-36), with its "many happy guesses," "is not all pure nonsense," he means what he says: it is mostly pure nonsense ("The Meaning of the Kirtland Egyptian Papers," Maxwell Institute, Provo, Utah).

And what is the Egyptian Grammar and Alphabet? It consists of a collaborative endeavor by Joseph Smith and his associates to grasp the principles of governance upon which the Ancient Egyptians organized their society and to take a wild stab at a locked language. It's a bit of boldness; yet no sooner begun, the project was closed, the notebook buried away. We see morning dew distilling, but no sustained downpour of knowledge from heaven. Thereafter, the brethren were put to school by Brother Joseph, studying Hebrew under the tutelage of a well-known teacher. As Hugh Nibley notes, serious mental labor at a known language would become the new prerequisite for further attempts to trace the ciphered past.

Grammar and Alphabet of the Egyptian Language makes for a promising title; it promises a complete and ordered view of the Egyptian mind: a library, a universe. After a day or two, the library shut its doors. By way of contrast with the ephemeral encyclopaedia, the Book of Abraham, published seven years later, glistens a radiant gem of expression and clarity. The Alphabet remains dark as clay; Abraham speaks with a poetic energy (see Richard L. Bushman, Joseph Smith, 290ff.).

Yet the Egyptian Grammar may have some light to shed on the ancient encyclopaedia. Consider the following statement, under the heading Beth, on page 23 of that document:

Beth  The place appointed of God for the residence of Adam; Adam ondi=Ahman. A fruit garden made to be fruitful, by blessing or promise; great valley or plain, given by promise, fitted with fruit trees and precious flowers, made for the healing of man. Good to the taste, pleasing to the eye; sweet and delightful to the smell; place of happiness, purity, holiness, and rest; even Zomar--Zion. [Note that the r in Zomar overwrites another letter; further traces show a dash written over an illegible word or words, followed by Zion.]

The words allude to the Revelation of Saint John and Doctrine and Covenants Section 58. Section 58 has as setting an observed Sabbath in the delightsome land of Zion. To the little band of saints, sabbath gathering, Jackson County, Missouri (once Eden) was now home. And, finally, the passage from the Alphabet and Grammar also has echoes of the Book of Abraham: "another place of residence," "happiness," "rest": home.

Adam-ondi-Ahman (Nibley reads "Adam in the Presence of God"), found in early Latter-day Saint writings and attributed to the Prophet Joseph, names the residence of Adam after his expulsion from the Garden of Eden. Spring Hill, overlooking the Grand River near Westport, Missouri, was, after the Fall, the home of Adam (Doctrine and Covenants 116:1). As for Zion, the Prophet Joseph had already published a revelation about the home of Enoch: "And it came to pass in his days, that he built a city that was called the City of Holiness, even ZION" (Moses 7:19). And Zomar? Nothing on heaven or on earth seems to help us with Zomar.

Did the description of the great valley orchard of Zomar also come from the prophetic mind? Or did it come from the minds of his associates, perhaps in consultation with the Prophet? I picture these brethren sitting, speaking, pondering together; then each making his own attempt to pull the threads together. What results is disparity, separation, difference. Ultimately it is the Prophet Joseph alone who enters history as the translator of ancient records. There is no peer.

If it is Joseph Smith who gives us Adam-ondi-Ahman and Enoch's Zion, then Zomar plausibly also comes from him. Zomar as Zion thus also appears in the anti-Mormon letters of apostate Ezra Booth. Again, in an imaginative piece by Elder Parley P. Pratt, the expression zo-ma-rah fancifully names the "Pure News" of a longed-for future day--a Deseret News or Zion Times, if you will ("One Hundred Years Hence: 1945," 141, Millennial Star 6:9, 15 Oct. 1845; for these references see Samuel M. Brown, "Joseph (Smith) in Egypt: Babel, Hieroglyphs, and the Pure Language of Eden," Church History 78:1, 2009, 26-65, esp. footnote 114). According to Samuel Brown, "imaginative associations" like those about gardens and Zomar abound in "American hieroglyphic culture" and "both illuminate and extend familiar concepts from antebellum culture"--which explains everything! Yet Zomar, however odd in heaven or earth, "is not all pure nonsense." In fact, it is not nonsense at all--and we shall return to the theme of Joseph in Egypt momentarily.

We need a homing device to find rest in Zomar--and such a means is indeed forthcoming in languages with which Joseph Smith had no familiarity whatsoever.

Consider the following entry in Professor F. Grondahl's study of Canaanite names from Ugarit, alongside further instances from Herbert Bardwell Huffmon, Lamia R. Shehadah, and Wolf Leslau:

tsmr [ts-m-r]  "fructbar sein" [to be fruitful] (Amorite, Syriac, Arabic)
(Semitic tzadei [tz or ts] often appears in transliteration as a z: Zomar ~ Tzomar.)
Frauke Grondahl, Die Personennamen der Texte aus Ugarit (Rome, 1967), 199

shmr *tsmr, "bear fruit" (Arabic, Old South Arabic)
Herbert Bardwell Huffmon, Amorite Personal Names in the Mari Texts: A Structural and Lexical Study (Baltimore, Maryland, 1965), 267

Proto Semitic s[#1]mr, "bear fruit," "fruit," Arabic tsamr "fruit," Ugaritic tsmr "be fruitful"
Lamia R. Shehadeh, "Some Observations on the Sibilants in the Second Millennium BC," in Working with No Data: Semitic and Egyptian Studies (D. M. Golomb, Susan T. Hollis, eds, 1987), 236

Ethiopic samra, flourish, be fruitful, abound in fruit, grow abundantly; Arabic thamara, bear fruit,
South Arabic, tmr, produce crops
Wolf Leslau, Comparative Dictionary of Ge'ez (Classical Ethiopic), 503.

How about Akkadian (East Semitic)? Zamar (fruit), we are told, is the Neo-Assyrian form of Akkadian azamru.
Chaim Cohen, Joseph Maran, Melissa Vetters, "An Ivory Rod with a Cuneiform Inscription," Archaeologischer Anzeiger 2010/2, 1-22 (see note 47)

We may further descry the root ts-m-r in the Egyptian lexicon (cf. Woerterbuch V 300.10, 307.1, 308.2-3). (Ancient Egyptian shares some morphology and many cognates with other Afroasiatic languages.) The word tm or tm3 describes a sacred tree, while tm3.t becomes an Egyptian synonym for mother (probably, the fruitful one), especially divine mothers like Hathor, the goddess often depicted as a cow. (The final literal in tm3, an aleph, was originally pronounced /R/ and thus corresponds to Semitic /r/.)

What the word means becomes clear from a text describing the taboo violations of the rebel Seth (Book of the Overthrow of Seth and his Gang, pLouvre 3129 C35-6, in Urk IV, ed. Siegfried Schott = Jan Assmann, The Mind of Egypt: History and Meaning in the Time of the Pharaohs, New York, 1996, 392):

He has let the milk of Sekhat-Hor dry away,
he has thrown down the htmt cow, the mother of god.
He has cut off supply on the lake of the Tm trees,
he let the lake of the htmt cow dry up.

The name of the cow, the htm.t, or provider, unlocks the meaning: milk, mother, supply, lake, these all bespeak Egypt's bounty (Woerterbuch III, c.v. htm.t; the word plays on Tm). Supply (or nourishment) answers to the Egyptian shb.w; for instance, a shb.t is a great melon rife with seeds. The lakes of the Tm trees and of the htm.t cow represent the source of all nourishment for Egypt, nourishment that begins with the food and drink offerings to the gods and the souls of the dead (Woerterbuch IV, 438: shb.t).

Another sacred tree, the Nebes, buds in continuance of abundance everywhere (Assmann, Mind of Egypt, 391):

He has neared Saft el-Henna, he has entered the walled quarter,
he has done sacrilege to the holy Nebes tree
--when it greens, the earth greens--
He has neared that sacred chamber of Iusas
with the acacia, which contains death and life.

All these trees and lakes make up Egypt's sacred gardens, small moments of paradise enclosed like memories behind the walls of temple estates. The Egyptian word for estate, pr, answers to Hebrew bayit and so recalls the heading Beth in the description of the fruitful paradise in the Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar. Beth as house signifies nothing; beth, or bayit, as enclosed orchard, what the Persians called a pairidaeza, speaks volumes. These Egyptian gardens, with their waters and trees of life, constitute the ceremonial centers "that keep the universe in motion": "when it greens, the earth greens." The sway of the Nebes Tree is therefore absolute: "as it greens, so greens the earth to the extent thereof" (Hr 3wj=f, Urk. Vi, 21 n. b; Roland Kent, Old Persian: Grammar, Texts, Lexicon [1950], 195; Assmann, Mind of Egypt, 392; cf. Alma 32. An interpretation of these temple and tomb gardens may be found in Jan Assmann, Death and Salvation in Ancient Egypt (Ithaca, New York, 2005), tr. by David Lorton of Tod und Jenseits im Alten Aegypten, Chapter 9.2b, "Visiting the Garden," 221ff.).

As Grondahl notes, some of that greening to the extent thereof also appears along the Levantine coastline. From the list of Semitic names coming under the heading of ts-m-r, we learn that Tsmry is also a Ugaritic place name (UT 19.2701). In West Semitic the name would have been pronounced something like Tsamra. How do we know? Because the cuneiform writing of the associated name, Tsmrn, yields sha-am-ra-na. Why sha-? In Akkadian the tzadei (-tz/ts) is often realized as a shin (-sh). (Tsamra pleasantly evokes the modern name for Ugarit: Ras Shamra, Fennel Hill.) 

Tsamra signifies the Fruitful Land, a land called Bountiful "because of its much fruit and also wild honey" (see 1 Nephi 17, verses 5 and 6), or "A garden made to be fruitful. . . fitted with fruit trees. . . good to the taste. . . place of happiness. . . and rest; even Zomar." And even Cumorah: Tsamar or Zomar makes a linguistic and conceptual match with Kumara or Kumar, perhaps the Black Land, as in the rich Cornucopia of Egypt (Kumat). In Syria we find the Gath Kumara, the fruitful Wine Press of Cumorah. Kumara denotes an earthern ramp or rampart; it may also suggest a casting up of deep, rich soil for the cultivation of vines and fruit-bearing trees. In The Book of Mormon, the lands called Bountiful and Cumorah respectively make up the fruitful southern and northern bookends of the Land Northward.

We turn from place names to people. The name *Amm (i)-yitstamar (a Gt imperfect verbal stem: 'mtstmr = Ammu will be fruitful) is not only attested at Mari but also "borne by two kings of Ugarit," Herbert Bardwell Huffmon, Amorite Personal Names in the Mari Texts: A Structural and Lexical Study (Baltimore, Maryland, 1965), 81-2. Ugarit also attests the personal name, 'iltstmr (My god will be fruitful), ibid., 81 n.135. Cyrus Gordon translates 'Ammistamar as "'Amm has been fruitful in bestowing the son who bears this personal name,'" R. Hetzron, ed., The Semitic Languages, C. Gordon, "Amorite and Eblaite," 104. Need we be shocked by the same god bearing the Cumorah name: 'Ammukumarra, "Ammu is a rampart," Michael Astour, "Semites and Hurrians in Northern Transtigris," Ernest R. Lacheman Festschrift, 26?

Lamia R. Shehadeh adds more names from Ugarit: Ben-Tsomar, bn-tsmr (son of fruitfulness), and blessed Shamrana (little fruitful one), "Some Observations on the Sibilants in the Second Millennium BC," 236. The people of Mari and Ugarit were of the children of Canaan, among whom, though not noted by Professor Huffmon, are to be found the Zemarites (Genesis 10:18; 1 Chronicles 1:16). The ruins of the Zemarite city Simyra, "at the western base of Lebanon," is known to this day under name of Sumra. (Gesenius, Hebrew Lexicon). The Egyptians spelled the name Dmrm (Helck, Beziehungen, 241 = Baumgarter, Stamm III). Sumra (also a personal name in Arabic) connotes a Bountiful ruined, a lost Zion, even "ZION IS FLED" (see Moses 7:69; chapter 7 also recounts the transformation of the vale of Shum into a wasteland: Shum something recalls Sumra).

Does the root ts-m-r appear in Biblical Hebrew? Not according to Grondahl--but how about these Zemarites "of the families of Canaan"? A like root, D-m-r/z-m-r, does appear in Hebrew and other Semitic languages and, according to the lexicon, signifies protection or strength, though its use in the Bible is limited to personal names and to the poetic line about God being "my strength and (my) song" (Exodus 15:2, Song of the Sea; Isaiah, Psalms), and to some words from Jacob to his sons about taking a gift to the Egyptian vizier "from the strength of the earth" (miz-zimrat ha-aretz, Genesis 43:11). It is a gift for Joseph--a most appropriate gift, as we shall see.

Before going forward, a philological, if not musical, note is in order. First, the expression "my strength and (my) song" is now understood as "my strength and my protection" (with 'zz and zmr as indissoluble yoke pair, see James E. Hoch, Semitic Words in Egyptian Texts of the New Kingdom and Third Intermediate Period, #582; Frank Moore Cross and David Noel Freedman, "The Song of Miriam," JNES 14 (1955), 243). Because I also see a cognate in Egyptian Tm3-' (strong of arm), I take the primary meaning of the root z-m-r to be strength, with protection as a derivative (cf. Koehler, Baumgarter Lexicon of Hebrew I). Another Egyptian expression, Tm3-r3 (strong of mouth), calls up the idea of singer or musician, and, here, I see a play on words with a homonymous Semitic root. An unrelated root, zmr, does mean song, and that's what led to the translators' confusion (and the Egyptian word play). And I can easily imagine the earliest translators from Hebrew into Greek confusing zmr and zmr: It's the sort of mischief that happens all the time and which also, as it happens, generates moments of poetry unknown to the ancient writer--"my strength and my song." I'm sorry to see the expression go, no matter how powerful the combination of Uz and Zimri, those mythical bookends of the created world (see Ezekiel).

But what has that happy confusion to do with Zomar? Lexicographers render Jacob's "strength of the earth" as "best produce of the land" (Koehler, Baumgartner, Lexicon of Hebrew and Aramaic). Might the nominal reading of the archaic root z-m-r as strength in Genesis 43:11 represent yet another error in translation? or, perchance, a play on words? (The ancient translators of the Hebrew Bible into Greek do render: apo ton karpon tes ges, "from the fruit of the ground.") Either way the translation stands: the strength of the earth produces the best fruits of the land.

Consider the entire verse from Genesis:

And their father Israel said unto them, If it must be so now, do this; take of the best fruits of the land in your vessels, and carry down the man a present, a little balm, and a little honey, spices, and myrrh, nuts, and almonds.

Even in times of famine, Israel dwells in a land of blessing and promise, strength and song:

A little balm, and a little honey,
spices, and myrrh,
nuts, and almonds.

The richly wrapped present ironically conveys a token of recognition and memory from a distant homeland and can be likened to the sweet smell lingering on the remnant of Joseph's coat. It is the lingering scent of Zion. (The book to read on the symbolism linking al-Thalabi, Lives of the Prophets, and Alma 46:24 is Hugh Nibley, An Approach to the Book of Mormon; cf. also Professor Erik Hornung's comments on the perfumed radiance that suffuses the divine in his Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt: The One and the Many).

And he came near, and kissed him: and he smelled the smell of his raiment, and blessed him, and said, See, the smell of my son is as the smell of a field which the Lord hath blessed (Genesis 27:27).

The children of Joseph found their own Tsmry in their various lands of promise:

And Abijah stood up upon mount Zemaraim, which is in mount Ephraim, and said, Hear me, thou Jeroboam, and all Israel (2 Chronicles 13:4; cf. Joshua 18:22, in Benjamin).

And [after the horrors of the Rub' al-Khali] we did come to the land which we called Bountiful, because of its much fruit and also wild honey (1 Nephi 17:5 and also verse 6, in which the expression "Bountiful, because of its much fruit" is meaningfully repeated).

Both Ephraim and Zemaraim in 2 Chronicles 13:4 connote a place doubly fruitful (the -aim-ending is often taken as the morpheme of duality). In Genesis 41:52 we read: "And the name of the second called he Ephraim: for God hath caused me to be fruitful in the land of my affliction." Thus for King Abijah (My Father is Jehovah) to stand "up upon mount Zemaraim, which is in mount Ephraim," and to preach the Davidic covenant of peace, is to redouble fruitfulness.

But I venture into midrash. . . After all, the Brown-Driver-Briggs Lexicon (like Gesenius) defines Zemaraim as "double fleece of wool," by association with a synonymous root, ts-m-r, "to be shaggy," or woolly (perhaps "to be luxiurant, abounding in fleece?"; for this woolly root, see also A. Murtonen, Hebrew in Its West Semitic Setting, 362: CMR "wool"; note also CMR II, Aramaic "to heat up"; Akkadian cemer, "be swollen," a root which easily falls under the semantic sphere of CMR = ts-m-r, "to be fruitful" or "to produce fruit"). Still, doesn't the doubly fruitful make more sense than the doubly woolly?

The gift of Joseph overflows in the promise of Ephraim, Joseph's fruitful son:

"And take double money in your hand. . . and arise, go again unto the man" (Genesis 43:12-13).

Another reading logically considers the Arabic word ts-m-r or ts-b-r (tsumr), which signifies "the upper part or the high point of an object" ("der obere Teil oder die Spitze einer Sache," W. Baumgartner, J.J. Stamm, Hebraische und Aramaisches Lexicon zum Alten Testament, III (Leiden, 1983), 970); although these same Hebrew lexicographers rather modify the definition of the word found in Lane's Arabic lexicon, which last reads: "The side of a thing: or a side rising above the rest of a thing: or its upper part, or top: or its edge. . . the m is said to be substituted for n" (Lane 1727). Baumgarter and Stamm accordingly render Zemaraim as "double peak" and tsemeret ha-'aroz, in Ezekiel 17:3, 22 (see also 31:3, 10), as "the highest branch of the cedar."

I'm not convinced. Lane's lexicon begins its treatment of the root ts-m-r by saying it expresses something niggardly, tenacious, reserved. This is so because ts-m-r denotes something that has collected into a low place, specifically the resting-place of waters in a valley--a collecting pool, no less. From there, we get the connotations of foul or sour smells (from the stagnant pool) and of tenaciousness or stinginess, as well as the idea of a day of still wind or the time or action of sunset. All this sour downward gravity has little in common with twin peaks. The collecting pools of stinginess hardly reflect Zion. It's clear that tsumr (or tsubr), which refers to things like the edges or uppermost parts of a cup, does not provide the best reading for Zemaraim. The Arabic root thamara (noun thamar: fruit, fruits; result, fruitage, yield, profit, benefit, gain) better answers to our Zemaraim (Wehr, Cowan, Arabic-English Dictionary).

Given the fruitful significance of the Semitic root ts-m-r, and its semantic correspondence to the name Ephraim (as understood by the Hebrews), the ancient scribe was certainly aware of the connotations of standing "up upon mount Zemaraim, which is in mount Ephraim." As for the "highest branch of the cedar," is it not the highest branch, after all, that is the most productive, the most bountiful? Ezekiel's eagle, in its work of plucking and transplanting branches, brings about the fruit of Zion: "In the mountain of the height of Israel will I plant it: and it shall bring forth boughs, and bear fruit" (17:23). Then all shall know that the God of Enoch, the Rock of Zion, has "made the dry tree to flourish" (17:24).

Ezra Booth, in his keenly biting, detail-laden anti-Mormon letters to the Ohio Star, gives us the idea. For the consecration of the temple site of the New Jerusalem in Independence, Jackson County, Missouri, the brethren transplanted a tree (a very silly thing for them to do, says Booth) and laid a cornerstone ("Mormonism, No. VI," Ohio Star, Ravenna, Ohio, 17 Nov. 1831, in Matthew R. Roper (ed), 19th-Century Publications about the Book of Mormon, BYU, 2010):

"A shrub oak, about ten inches in diameter at the butt, the best that could be obtained near at hand, was prostrated, trimmed, and cut-off at a suitable length; and twelve men answering to the twelve Apostles, by the means of handspikes conveyed it to the place. . . The stone being placed, one end of the shrub oak stick was laid upon it; and thus was laid down the first stone and stick, which are to form an essential part of the splendid City of Zion."

As for the curious: "They will be able to ascertain the spot, by the means of a sappling [sic], distinguished from others by the bark being taken off on the north and on the east side. On the south side of the sappling will be found the letter, T, which stands for Temple; and on the east side ZOM for Zomar; which Smith says is the original word for Zion. Near the foot of the sappling, they will find a small stone, covered over with bushes, which were cut for that purpose. This is the corner-stone for the Temple."

All this fuss seemed absurd to Booth, who, blind to the purposes of the symbolic, lamented the money lost by the Brethren to travel expenses: "more than one thousand dollars in cash."

But in a coming day "the dry tree" will flourish.

Good to the taste, pleasing to the eye, sweet and delightful to the smell.

Made for the healing of man.

From the bounty of the earth.

Home.


Copyright 2011 by Val H. Sederholm

"Weapons of Peace" in Alma 24:19 and in Ancient Egyptian Borrowings from Hebrew

Every reader of the Book of Mormon stumbles upon--and over--the following verse from Alma:

And thus we see that, when these Lamanites were brought to believe and to know the truth, they were firm, and would suffer even unto death rather than commit sin; and thus we see that they buried their weapons of peace, or they buried the weapons of war, for peace (Alma 24:19, italics added).

Editions of the Book of Mormon before 1849 read: And thus we see that they buried the weapons of peace, or they buried the weapons of war for peace. "The weapons of peace" differs significantly from "their weapons of peace"--it hints at a distinct idiom peculiar to the Book of Mormon, as we shall see.
(Royal Skousen, Analysis of Textual Variants in the Book of Mormon, Part Four, 2113-2114)
http://www.lds.org/scriptures/bofm/alma/24?lang=eng

"The weapons of peace"? The phrase stumps everyone. Clarity follows: "the weapons of peace" means "they buried the weapons of war, for peace." Ah, yes! Weapons of peace are weapons of war now laid to rest, and thus turned to peace.

Many Latter-day Saints doubtless see the corrective, explanatory clause as yet another indicant Joseph Smith translated from a language lost to memory. According to Emma, Joseph never paused for revision. Instead he struggled with an unfamiliar idea or idiom, sometimes grasping for words, until he got his "mind satisfied." Then he just moved on, leaving the knotty idiom as a trace of the pitfalls of translation (see Doctrine and Covenants, Section 9). A reader may light upon the unusual with joy and patience; a modern editor, agape at "weapons of peace" and intolerant of first drafts, lights on the author and demands: "and thus we see that they buried their weapons of war, for peace."

We see a tangled skein because Alma (or Mormon) first uses a synthetic idiom, and then gives a clearer, though parenthetical, reading. And we might wonder whether we are seeing a purposeful play on words or some special usage for rhetorical effect. Such a usage of "or" plus clarifying phrase, as many have noted, peppers much of the Book of Alma, especially the War Chapters, and certainly works to heighten rhetorical power, though the effect in English can fall flat.

Grasping for words to express an unfamiliar idiom? Anyone who struggles to put the hieroglyphs into a modern idiom will relate. Ancient Egyptian keeps many a surprise. Consider how Egyptian borrowed extensively from Hebrew and adapted the borrowed words in novel ways. The borrowing even included the best known of all Hebrew verbs, sh-l-m (to be at peace, to be whole). We all know what shalom means.

The Egyptians--had they only known it--did not need to borrow the Hebrew root sh-l-m. Their own language, from the beginning, already knew a word of health and greeting cognate to Hebrew shalom: s-n-b ~ sh-l-m. (The letters n and b often correspond to Hebrew l and m.) The Egyptian word for "Greetings"! "Health and Peace be unto you"! is snb.tj. Yet the Egyptians did indeed borrow "Shalom!" And once borrowed, they adapted the word to express things snb.tj never expressed. (James E. Hoch, Semitic Words in Egyptian Texts of the New Kingdom and Third Intermediate Period, #406, sha=ra=ma, as it appears in hieroglyphic "group writing" = *shalama? *shallema? "To Greet; Make Obeisance; Do Homage;" 283-284; #408, sha-ra-ma ~ shalama, "Peace; Greetings," 285-286).

New Kingdom Egyptian uses Hebrew sha=ra=ma (*shalama or *shallema) to express a nuanced idea of peace (Hoch, Semitic Words, #407, 285). For Professor Hoch, the word conveys two related actions: 1) "The word is used of putting away weapons," and 2) "The word is also used more generally with the sense of 'seeking peace.' " Hoch's definition of sha=ra=ma in Egyptian usage accordingly reads: "Vb. 'To Lay Down (Arms); Seek Peace.' " It is the first of these definitions that hits the reader of Alma 24:19 with a shock of recognition.

Consider the following three examples of sha=ra=ma (*shalama or *shallema) found in Egyptian texts:

"Their bows and their weapons [x'w.w] were laid to rest [sha=ra=ma] in their store-rooms" (P. Harris I 78,11 [Dynasty 20]).

"And their weapons [x'y] were laid to rest [sha=ra=ma]" (P. Boulaq 6, 3 [Dynasty 21]).

"Put down [Sh-r-ma] (your) bows; lay down [sfx: loosen, relax, release] (your) arrows" (Pi'ankhy 12 [Dynasty 25]). (Note how the Egyptian name Pi'ankhy finds its match in Book of Mormon Paanchi, as no less a student than William F. Albright pointed out long ago.)


Let's try another translation or two of Pi'ankhy 12:


Put at peace bows; unbind arrows.

Pacify bows; relax arrows.

Slacken bows to rest; loosen arrows.

The wording is beautiful and poetic. Could we read Alma in the original language, we might sense something of the same.


For the second definition, Hoch gives the following example:

Kupara came to seek peace [jw r sha=ra=ma = Heb. yrd lshalom, "come down to pay respects," II Kings 10:13, cf. Hoch, 284].


Semitic languages modify the verbal root (usually consisting of three root letters) by means of prefixes, infixes, doubling of letters, lengthened vowels, and so on, to express passive, factitive, causative, associative, and reflexive meaning. We call such modifications of the root morphological verbal stems. For instance, D-stems (Doppelstamm) double the middle consonant of the triliteral root and often express causative, distributive, intensive, factitive, or even denominative meaning, that is, they make nouns into verbs.

Several Semitic languages show variations on the verbal root sh-l-m in order to express the making of peace or even the concrete action of laying down arms. The Biblical Hebrew H-stem of sh-l-m (the hiphal, or causative, stem with prefixed h) signifies "to make peace"; in Talmudic Aramaic the causative A-stem signifies "to make peace; surrender"; the D-stem in Syriac, "to surrender; make peace"; the D-stem in Old South Arabic, "to sue for peace"; in Ethiopic (D-stem?), "to make peace"; and, finally, the D-stem in Arabic, which specifically marks actions referring to weapons: "to lay down (arms); surrender" (examples all from Hoch, 285, see also 284.)

Though Egyptian may, perhaps, borrow a Hebrew noun having the morphological properties of a verbal stem--*shallema, if that is the correct reading, suggests a verbal form derived from the Hebrew D-stem--Egyptian proper makes no use of like verbal stems (though some traces of archaic reflexive N-stems persist). "The form is possibly the D-stem, as in Arabic, but the Egyptians may have simply used the nominal form meaning 'peace' as if it were a verb" (Hoch, 285). Whether nominal *shalama or verbal *shallema, sha=ra=ma, when adopted (and adapted) by the Egyptians, expresses verbal meaning: "to greet, make obeisance, do homage, to lay down (arms), to seek peace."

What a word!

And it is only because such a borrowed, "frozen" form expresses verbal meaning, something peculiar to Egyptian among the Afro-Asiatic languages, that we can imagine a phrase weapons of peace, as a verbal phrase in the original record. I see the original Egyptian-cum-Hebrew wording for Alma's weapons of peace as x'w.w shalama. In attempting to render the verbal monstrosity weapons pacified into an acceptable English, the translator perforce nominalizes the phrase as a genitival construction: "weapons of peace"--two nouns glued together by genitive of into one happy phrase. And here he stumbles--only to make a stunning recovery: "weapons of war, for peace." The best way to view the original is as verbal phrase, though we could also imagine an appositive genitival phrase: "weapons in respect of peace"; "weapons in a state of peace" (really a verbal sense); or, literally enough, though awkwardly, "the weapons of peace" or "the peaceful weapons."

David Whitmer relates how Joseph would take breaks from translation, relax his mind, by skipping stones in a pond. If ever there was occasion for such a break--"a time to gather stones together" as a personal "weapon of peace"--it was Alma 24:19.

"Peace Weapons"? "Peaceful Weapons?" No wonder the Prophet Joseph Smith struggled with the phrase. Because shalama here functions as a verb, x'w.w shalama literally signifies "weapons laid down in an act of submission or peace," or "weapons put into a state of peace"--what we would call "deactivated." (Indeed anthropology has much to say about the ceremonial stilling of the arms of war.)

We search diligently for what Hugh Nibley calls "the peculiar and the specific." The specific lexical nuance found in the peculiar Egyptian usage of borrowed Hebrew sh-l-m resonates with Alma's odd phrase, "weapons of peace."

And their weapons were laid to rest (jw n3y.w x'y sha=ra=ma).
Or: And their weapons of peace/And their weapons in respect of, or in reference to, peace/in a state of peace/at peace.

And thus we see that they buried their weapons of peace, or they buried the weapons of war, for peace (Alma 24:19).


Notes

"Mind satisfied": a phrase the Prophet used to describe the intellectual and spiritual calm following his intense quest for spiritual truth and his First Vision of the Father and the Son in the Spring of 1820. The Prophet worked long to get his mind satisfied. Such work comprehends years of thought, reading, and observation, so well as the quickening moments of revelation in which the passage of time has but little to do with the celerity of the enlightened seeric mind. Hence William Clayton speaks of "prophets' time." Joseph Smith, in his task of translation, inhabits "prophets' time", a place or season beyond our comprehension.


Engraving Error? Daniel H. Ludlow, in A Companion to Your Study of the Book of Mormon, 210 (Deseret Book, 1977), puts forward the idea of an error in engraving for Alma 24:19. "Peace" was engraved on the gold plates by mistake; Mormon then corrected his error--would he have struck out the error first?--by writing, "what I meant to say was 'war.'" Logic works against the idea. Should the Prophet have encountered like errors in engraving--and there were such--why would he not have simply translated what the ancient prophet intended to write all along? In translation, mind meets mind. He wasn't trying to put out a "critical edition" of the Words of Mormon or a Mormon Plates Project.

Still, who can say?

In the view of this writer, it does not aid understanding to pinpoint the moment of error or confusion, or to ask whether it was Helaman, Ammoron, Mormon, or Joseph Smith who supplied correction or clarification to an original text. Answer: It was all of the above. Better to see transmission, including translation, as a continuum embracing Alma, Mormon, Joseph Smith, and the Modern Reader, all of whom make up an integral part in the on-going understanding of a place in Scripture. Alma-Mormon-Joseph-Reader make up one chain of both transmission and interaction: We shake hands with all the Prophets as we continue their work of understanding and applying God's word. Many wonder how Joseph Smith translated Alma or even the book of Abraham. The question to ask is How do you read it? If the Reader, in the continuing effort of transmission, struggles with a particular phrase; so, we must suppose, did Alma, Mormon, Joseph Smith.

Of course, the farther back we go in time and languages, the more muddled things may get. We have to get our bearings as readers of an English book before we wade into deeper waters and unfamiliar idiom. In other words, we must immediately come to grips with the matter of who bears responsibility for that English. One thing only that every reader knows, and knows with absolute certainty, he is not responsible for the English translation of the Book of Mormon. Joseph Smith bears that responsibility (not Alma, Mormon, nor Moroni)--the buck stops with Joseph Smith--hence we focus on the difficulties of his divinely assigned task of rendering Egyptian and Hebrew idiom into English. We need to rid our mind of supposition and theory. Hebraisms there may be, Elizabethan usage we may spot, yet where the English of the Book of Mormon is concerned, the buck stops with Joseph Smith. Who can deny it?

Egyptian or Hebrew? Answer: Both.

The language written on the gold plates was an amalgam of both Egyptian and Hebrew. People wonder, despite Nephi's clear statement about making his record in the language of the Egyptians, whether the Gold Plates proffers Egyptian or Hebrew, that is, Hebrew in some form of Egyptian script. When we understand that the Egyptian of Lehi's day, and for hundreds of years previous, had extensively borrowed from Hebrew and other Semitic cousins, the question instantly loses significance. Nephi wrote in the language of the Egyptians, of his day--and there's an end on't.

And with neas, and with sheum (Mosiah 9:9)

The Record of Zeniff serves up the following healthful diet:

And we began to till the ground, yea, even with all manner of seeds, with seeds of corn, and of wheat, and of barley, and with neas, and with sheum, and with seeds of all manner of fruits; and we did begin to multiply and prosper in the land (Mosiah 9: 9).

Corn, wheat, barley, neas, sheum, and seeds of all manner of fruits: these last words have prompted much searching. (And what is corn? what are all manner of fruits?) When the Prophet Joseph Smith translated the gold plates, he occasionally came across a word for which he was not able to give an English equivalent. In lieu of translation, he chose to transliterate and to leave it at that.

As long ago as 1973 students of the Book of Mormon sought to identify the grain sheum with what appears to be the very same word in Akkadian, the East Semitic language of Mesopotamia. What could be closer to Zeniff's sheum than sheum? (See Robert R. Bennett, "Barley and Wheat in the Book of Mormon," on the Website of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute, BYU.) According to Bennett, it was Robert F. Smith, in a talk given at Brigham Young University, who first compared Akkadian sheum to the sheum of Mosiah. The guess was good, but the understanding of ancient languages moves on and, as it moves on, waits for no man.

In his "Glossary of Akkadian Words," Professor John Huehnergard comments on the correct reading of the cuneiform signs that write the Akkadian word for barley or grain, um:

um
"Sum[erian]. lw.? always written with log[ogram] SHE, e.g., acc. SHE-am or SHE-a-am for am; also written either SHE.UM or SHE. IM, regardless of case) 'barley, grain'; note: until very recently this word was read in Akkadian as sheum, and appears as such in both dictionaries and all text publications up through 1990" (John Huehnergard, A Grammar of Akkadian, 1997, p. 528).

For any student, the matter is now crystal clear: there is no such word as sheum in Akkadian. The correct Akkadian word for barley, um, perforce takes as determinative (or classifier) the Sumerian logogram SHE (grain), which marks classes of grains. Such classifiers were neither intended to form part of the word nor ever to be pronounced. SHE um, of which the second element alone was ever part of the word, simply signifies the um-grain.

Two decades on, we can ask Why the initial--and long--misreading by the lexicographers? It's tricky because um, with its -m ending, first suggests the nominative case ending in Akkadian; -m thus can easily be taken for morpheme, rather than part of the semantic root. That um should sometimes modify for case, um, am, im or em (but not -um, -am, -im = umu(m), unam, unim) makes not a lick of difference.

Robert Smith's early suggestion was a bit sketchy anyhow. Akkadian final-m (the mimation as marker of nominative case) would by no means have survived as a borrowing into Hebrew and Nephite until the days of Zeniff; besides, if putative Akkadian sheum is barley, then barley it is and should be, not sheum. The latest version of the online Book of Mormon Onomasticon, though failing to note the reading um, also disavows an Akkadian reading for Book of Mormon sheum.


A better candidate for Zeniff's grain appears in an Egyptian term (shm') dating from Old Kingdom texts onward. The Woerterbuch defines the word as Upper Egyptian grain (used for making bread) and notes that it was called both it shm' (grain of Upper Egypt) and, simply, sm' ('Upper Egyptian' grain). That Lehi knew it shm' ought not to admit of any doubt.

What put me on track was the following entry from Professor Vladimir E. Orel's (and Olga V. Stolbova's) Hamito-Semitic Etymological Dictionary (a pioneering work published in 1995 and not without its errors):

#2235 [page 472] *si'uem- "cereal" [Note: there is an umlaut over the u]

Eg shm'y "barley" (OK)
Metathesis. Vocalic -y.

Then Professor Orel gives the following evidence for the word in Chadic and other Sahelian languages:

CCh *siHum- "seed", "millet", "corn": Mba siyom, Bata sume, Bud shimo.
Mba -y- < *-H-.
ECh *siHVm- "sorghum": Bid sima.
Contraction.

What we see here is the magic of a loanword from Egyptian into neighboring African languages. I'm not sure Professor Orel identifies the grain as a loanword though, which makes for a whopping error, since the grain takes its name from a specific region of Egypt. Upon entering the languages of the Sahel (and doubtless prior to that time), the word undergoes a metathesis, a not uncommon outcome for Egyptian words ending in ayin (a gutteral consonant). What that means is that the ayin and the mim trade places: shm' becomes sh'm. Taking a stab at the vowels, she'ym, sha'um, sha'ym, sha'um, she'um, shi'um, well reflect the metathesis at the heart of the word.

And that's how we get sheum.

Book of Mormon sheum is thus "Upper Egyptian"--grain, that is--grain serving as a "Brotkorn" (used for bread). No wonder the Prophet left it untranslated. How would you have liked to translate all that into English?


Is there any hope for the neas?

I turn again to Professor Orel:

#1849 [page 399]
*nawac- [the c with diacritic is an s] "wine, beer"

Sem [that is, Proto-Semitic] *na[w]as- "kind of beer": Akk nashu.
Eg wnsh.t "wine" (XIX).
Metathesis.


I always examine Brigham Young University's Book of Mormon Onomasticon prior to posting on Book of Mormon names. An update for neas in the Onomasticon, dated 2 June 2011--a month after my original 30 April 2011 posting--lists nashu beer (Late Babylonian: KASH nashu) and similar words under "highly questionable" etymologies. We further find in the updated entry for sheum (again, 2 June 2011), several "suggestions unlikely," among which newly appear "shm'.t, 'granary,' and shm', 'southern,' which is used to refer to a type of grain." The rejection of the word follows upon its "final weak nature." Alas! we catch a whiff of the dictionary, of dry-as-dust book grammar. "Southern"? A mere "type of grain"? A "final weak nature"? (Hint: that's why metathesis happens in the first place.)

I say the categories "etymologies," "questionable," and "highly questionable" all add up to the same thing. Besides, as we all know, when an idea is taken seriously enough to be put under such intense scrutiny--highly questioned--it often comes out with flying colors. Let us have no etymologies that are not "highly questionable!"

Still let's forget about Orel's proposed etymology for the Egyptian word wnsh.t (wine). I don't buy it. On the other hand, a Proto-Semitic noun *naas or *nawas something recalls Zeniff's neas. If sheum might have been the grain for Nephite bread (a world-famous Egyptian variety); neas could then be a wheat or barley used for healthful drinks.

Now I don't know if Zeniff actually drank the stuff, but if he did I'm sure it was a lot better for him than his son's grapes. I can see tough old Zeniff quaffing a healthful postum; Noah became a winebibber. That's how it goes. . .




Copyright 2011 by Val Sederholm
.

Cumorah's Wine Press

Note: For a revised take on the name and nature of Cumorah, now also see:
http://valsederholm.blogspot.com/2013/08/cumorahs-everywhere-significance-of.html



Cumorah's Wine Press


 Years ago someone published a book entitled, In Search of Cumorah.

On a wall of a Nubian temple in the forgotten village of Amarah West, hidden amid the parade of Syrian place names all written in the syllabic hieroglyphic "group writing" used to spell Semitic words, appears the following: Ginta Kumara, or Gath Kumara, the Wine Press of Cumorah (K. A. Kitchen, Ramesside Inscriptions II, 217, no. 98 [Dynasty 19] = James Hoch, Semitic Words in Egyptian Texts of the New Kingdom and Third Intermediate Period, #425).

It is Professor James Hoch who transcribes the reading of the place name as Ginta Kumara (Proto-Semitic *ginta, q=--n=ta). The first element, Ginta, says Hoch, appears variously in the Amarna Letters (royal Egyptian correspondence that documents many Syro-Palestinian place names) as Gimtu-, Ginti-, or Giti, which corresponds to Hebrew and Ugaritic, gt or gath, a winepress. As for Kumara, the "group writing" admits of no doubt: ku-ma-ra. Kumara or Cumorah, as a vineyard, perfectly matches the description of the terrain in Mormon Chapter 5: "a land of many waters, rivers, and fountains."

And where was Ginta Kumara? (Another old book cries out Cumorah--Where?)

A second Kumara--if not the very same place--lies in ancient Hurrian country, according to the Great North Syrian List of Thutmose III (and other lists): "k-m-r- (ka-m-r-w)," Michael C. Astour, "Place-Names from the Kingdom of Alalah in the North Syrian List of Thutmose III: A Study in Historical Topography," Journal of Near Eastern Studies (1963, 22:4), 230. The place, "still called Kimar," lies "in the Gebel Sim'an, east of the Afrin River," Michael C. Astour, "Semitic Elements in the Kumarbi Myth: An Onomastic Inquiry," Journal of Near Eastern Studies (1968 27:3), 173. As Professor Astour reminds us, the name of the Hurrian god Kumarbi means "(He) of Kumar." At the ancient Levantine city of Ugarit the name Kumarbi appears as follows: k-m-r-b/w (E. Laroche, in his Glossaire de la langue hourrite, transcribes ku(m)-mar-bi, which may also answer to *kum-wi-erbi, Lord of Kummi, see Arnauld Fournet, A Dictionary of the Hittite Language with Comparative and Etymological Indications [online: updated, August 2010], 25).

What does Kumara mean? Many students of the Book of Mormon have sought the etymology of Cumorah in Hebrew, Egyptian, and Akkadian lexicons. K-m-r in Hebrew can refer to a pagan priest, km in Arabic to a tell, which is a heap or city dump or ruin, a word also recalling the Akkadian verb kumaru, to "heap up," etc. (Paul Y. Hoskisson, "What's in a Name? The Name Cumorah," Journal of the Book of Mormon, 13:1, 158-160). Stephen D. Ricks and John A. Tvedtnes favor Cumorah as signifying priesthood; Joann Carlton Hackett sees in Cumorah a corruption of the Hebrew Gomorrah; Robert F. Smith, citing David Palmer, looks for the name in the prophetic words of Isaiah: Qumi! 'Ori! ki ba' 'orekh, Arise! Shine! For thy light has come! (see Stephen D. Ricks and John A. Tvedtnes, "The Hebrew Origin of Some Book of Mormon Place Names," Journal of the Book of Mormon, 6:2, 255-9 = Pressing Forward with the Book of Mormon (1999), 88-92).

The famous Brown, Driver, Briggs, Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament separates k-m-r into up to three separate roots: I. grow warm and tender, be or grow hot (a verb of ripening or even fermentation [modern Syriac kemr]; II. black, dark, gloomy, sad, be sad; III. overthrow, lay prostrate: a mikhmar or makhmar is a net, following the Akkadian verb kamaru and noun kamaru [also, net], 485. In Akkadian the verb kamaru, which Professor Paul Y. Hoskisson favors, means to heap up, pile up, to add (in mathematics), and is often "said of ruins, mounds, and corpses." A second root, kamaru, signifies to annihilate. The nominal form, with its long second a-vowel, refers to 1. "a trap with a snare" and 2. "defeat, annihilation"; without the long vowel kamara signifies "a (garden) wall, ramp, or similar earthen construction" (Chicago Assyrian Dictionary 8:111-114; see also Paul Hoskisson, "The Name Cumorah," note 18).

These roots are all too familiar to Professor Astour, who tells us: "The place name kumar/kumur is Semitic and goes back to the root KMR, Akk. kamaru, 'to heap up, pile up, throw down." By further associating the root with the word for priest (in Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew, and Akkadian), and with that for chamber (kummur), Astour speculates that k-m-r represents a "sacred precinct," which, he says, answers to the determinative sign house found for Kumar in the Egyptian hieroglyphs.

One thing is certain: Kumarbi, who procreates a stone at earth's beginning (stone = the earth itself), is the god associated with a place named Kumar. Might not Kumar then be the place of creation's beginning, the navel of the earth? In neighboring Egypt a sacred mound marks the First Place at the Beginning of Time, the place that emerges out of the flood waters of the Nile.

A telling suggestion, found in the Maxwell Institute's unpublished Book of Mormon Onomasticon and attributed to Robert F. Smith, compares Cumorah to an Egyptian designation for certain bodies of water and waterways, the Km-wr, the Great Black (Channels), or even the Km-wr-m3; the same student then observes how the Egyptian "Black Land" registers "the Delta region rich in black volcanic soil." Dr. Joann Carlton Hackett further notes how "The Hebrew root kmr occurs in words having to do with heat, ripening, fermentation, darkness, gloom," etc. (Now also see the newly published Book of Mormon Onomasticon.) All of these guesses--however fully articulated--lie at the heart of the matter, as we shall see.

Addressing another set of Egyptian hieroglyphs used in "group writing" to express the Semitic word for blindness: kmn or kaman (#459), Hoch considers the rare Semitic root kmr, which he thinks may well be "a by-form" of kmh (blind, obscure). Kmr suggests darkness or gloom. Syriac and Hebrew both attest the word, and Job speaks of a day that is kamirire yom, a day of darkness--even a day of terrifying darkness--that blots out, by the sheer terror of it all, the very day in which Job was born. Kamirire yom may refer to a day of solar eclipse, an exceedingly gloomy cloud cover, or "mist of darkness," or, perhaps, a sky choked with sand and dust. A search of the online Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon (CAL Website housed at Hebrew Union College, Cincinnati) reveals two separate verbal roots for k-m-r in Aramaic, including Syriac and Mandaean: 1. to pile on, do again, to cover, keep hot; 2. to be sad, be gloomy, Gt to be obscured, Dt Mandaean: to be blackened, scorched. A masculine noun, kmara, signifies sadness. In Biblical Hebrew (Lamentations 5:10) we read of skin whose quality takes on the appearance of an oven: k-m-r, which, as in Mandaean, signifies "to be blackened, scorched." Kumria, in Mandaean, signifies blackness (Driver's Mandaean Lexicon). All this recalls a veritable array of Arabic roots, including kamida (kamb-), which conveys sadness, grief, and a smutty, swarthy, dull, or dark appearance; gamma [the first letter a ghayn], a cover, veil, grief, or an overcast sky--as in Job (Wehr-Cowan, Arabic-English Dictionary). Combine the meaning of the Semitic root k-m-r and the Egyptian root km (kmm = kamam), which signifies black, further note that tells and heaps would appear as looming black spots on the horizon, and we're on to something.

Linguist Alexander Militarev indeed considers the proto-Semitic root *kVm to underlie like Egyptian, Aramaic, Rabbinic Hebrew, and Akkadian words. Yet he omits to notice the same word in Biblical Hebrew; neither does he note the vocalic similarity that obtains between the several languages: Kumat and Kumria, or Kamat and kamida, etc. The Akkadian evidence recalls a Book of Mormon motif: the mist of darkness (akamu 'cloud of dust, mist'). Cumorah is more than hill: Alfred Lambourne's dramatic painting, Hill Cumorah, bubbles over with murky akamu, and the enveloping gloom surely evokes in every observer both the battle at the hill and Lehi's inpenetrable mist. (Alexander Militarev, "A complete etymology-based hundred wordlist of Semitic updated: Items 1-34"). [This paragraph added on 12/03/2012]. [The Book of Mormon Onomasticon has now been updated and published online: 7/23/2013: https://onoma.lib.byu.edu/onoma/index.php/CUMORAH].

To the Ancient Egyptians, the Black Land, Kumat (note the vowels), refers to das Fruchtland, or Fertile Land, being that precious strip on either side the Nile which yields the breadbasket of the ancient world. And that's exactly what we find in Ginta Kumara, the Wine Press of Blackness, i.e., of fertile, heaped-up earth, a rich and productive spot, even "a spot of land, very choice" (Doctrine and Covenants 101:44). It's a good name for the Upper New York State drumlin country. Comparable is the Biblical place name, Gath Rimmon, Pomegranate Wine Press, the pomegranate with its abundant seeds being, like the fertile black humus, a symbol of fruitfulness par excellence. In the palace garden of Ashurnasirpal III pomegranates and vines richly intertwine (see E. Cook, AJA 108, 56).

When a would-be Book of Mormon king, likely of Mulekite descent, sought to found a rival nation in the land Northward, the first official act of his reign, after being granted the royal name Jacob, was to plant a new capital bearing the name Jacobugath = Jacob-wa-Gath, Jacob-and-Wine Press, Jacob-cum-Wine Press, or even Jacob's Cornucopia. The action follows the typical ceremony marking the foundation of a new reign, as duly noted in the unusual wording of the 1830 edition, which speaks of "the people of the king of Jacob," that is the people of the New Jacob in remembrance of the Ancestral Jacob. They "did gather themselves together, and did place at their head a man whom they did call Jacob; And they did call him their king" (3 Nephi 7:9-10). King Noah, who inaugurated a system vastly different from that of his father Zeniff, likewise planted vineyards and dug presses.

Again we recall Mormon's description of the many waters, rivers, and fountains to be found at Cumorah (and the Proto-Semitic root *rimm- [as in rimmon, pomegranate] does denote moist, humid soil, a place well-watered; see "Semitic Etymology," Militarev). Wine press much recalls vineyard (Heb. kerem), and, as we might expect, built into the name Gath Kumara are inherent possibilities for word play: the Gath Kumara is thus also the Gath Kerem, the Wine Press of the Hilltop Vineyard. A play on words indeed appears in Isaiah's Song of the Vineyard: the Kerem is planted in a Qeren (horn), even the Qeren ben Shamen, or "a very fruitful hill" (Isaiah 5:1). But Qeren ben Shamen, though often rendered as "a hillside rich in oil," that is, "fertile," first registers the "horn of rich olive oil," the cornucopia. Cumorah, the Fruitful Land, the Cornucopia, thus provides a nice bookend with the Land Bountiful (perhaps from the Semitic root ts-m-r, Tsumar), being respectively the north and south boundaries of the land Northward in the Book of Mormon, even Kumar and Tsumar (see F. Grondahl, Die Personennamen der Texte aus Ugarit, 199: ts-m-r, "fruchtbar sein"; the Prophet Joseph Smith is on record as naming fruitful Zion, Zomar).

The root kmr (Semitic gmr, gml) or km (in Egyptian) also tallies completion: black being the sum of all color. The energy of nations is drawn inward--the scriptural phrase says "gathered in"--to Cumorah. Cumorah, as Black Hole, becomes also the final census, the tally of nations. To take things a bit further, Cumorah also calls up that which is thrown down (= a net, makhmor) to catch the wicked (risha'im). But I drift into the nets of midrash (see Psalms 141:10). . .

Professor Astour explains the place name Kumar in light of Akkadian kumaru (to throw down and thus heap up, etc.). But the Sumerian lexeme answering to kumaru is GUR-GUR and again refers to the tallying up of a sum: you heap up and then you total the gain. Hurrian Kumar certainly shares semiotic, if not semantic correspondence, with Egypt's fertile Kumat, or Black Land. "Every spring," explains Professor Ronald J. Leprohon, "the Nile flood would subside and what first emerged from the water were triangular-shaped islands of rich black earth. These little mounds represented the promise of new life, which led to the notion that all creation must have begun exactly the same way" ("Egyptian Religious Texts," Egyptology Today (ed) R. H. Wilkinson, 231). Such ideas need not be exclusively Egyptian, and Kumarbi's Kimar may thus be another Black Land, another place of beginning where life stirs into being. Similar little mounds do indeed reappear in the Mesopotamian record, but here the theme is not "the promise of new life," but annihilation: "as if the flood had devastated them, I [Sargon] piled up (his cities) into ruin mounds [u-kam-mi]" (CAD 8:114). Taking in the entire cycle of birth, destruction, and rebirth, we can argue for Egypt and Kumar also being the place of fullness, the sum of the universe (cf. the idea of Egypt as Temple of the whole world).

But how about the sacred precincts and the komer-priesthood? The widespread word for a Semitic priesthood may have to do with the original home of the god of the Hurrians: komer-priests may thus be (originally) priests of Kumar, either the priesthood of Kumarbi or of the fertile Black Land (whether Kumar or Kummiya/Kumme, the city of Teshub), that is, an chthonic, fertility priesthood. In the Song of Kumarbi one generation of gods battles another for patriarchal supremacy: Alalu, Anu (Heaven), Kumarbi (the Semitic El or Dagan), Teshub (the Storm-god) (see Astour, "Kumurbi"). When Anu successfully rebels against Father Alalu, Alalu "fled before him and went down to the dark earth. Down he went to the dark earth." Here we recall how Kumubi impregnated a stone and brought forth a son in the form of a stone pillar. The Egyptian center place, the place of creation, Iunu (Heliopolis), takes its name from such a stone pillar. The Jaredite name for Cumorah, Moroni tells us, was Ramah, a marked High Place, as its name indicates (Ether 15:11). At Ramah the Jaredites gathered during a four-year span, then blindly met their own kamirire yom.

Fools! They had already had a taste of the end at the aptly named Hill Comron--Place of Darkness (root cmr + morpheme of place -on; close to Qumran). Comron mirrors Cumorah as through a glass darkly: climbing high, Coriantumr "did sound a trumpet unto the armies of Shiz to invite them forth to battle." They came, and came again--and yet a third time, they came. "And the battle became exceedingly sore" (Ether 14:28-9; the Printer's Manuscript of the Book of Mormon names the hill Comron, not, as in our editions, Comnor: Royal Skousen, Analysis of Textual Variants of The Book of Mormon, 6:3874; The Book of Mormon Onomasticon, q.v., "Cumorah," also suggests an etymological link between Cumorah and Comron, although no specific conclusion is reached).

The Prophets of Israel thunder against the komer-priesthood. The famous Hebrew lexicographer Gesenius long ago associated the Komer priests with the color black, and it may be significant that 2 Kings 23:5 distinguishes the offerings of the Komer priests (though broadcast from the high places in the cities throughout the land) with those made for Baal and the powers of the sky (to which compare the power struggle between chthonic Kumarbi and the storm god Teshub in the Hurrian myth cycle). As for kummu (chamber, cella), what we are to picture is a shadowy back room. The root kummi (Eg. qmj), found in Greek as kommi (and in our word gum and gummy bears), easily associates with the root k-m-r, given the color of saps and gums. The German word for kommi, Harz, again recalls the stones associated with Kumarbi, as the fundamentum or substance around which the world is then to be organized. It is the navel of the world, like the omphalos-stone at Delphi, the center place of the Greek universe (see Joseph E. Fontenrose, Python: a study of Delphic Mythology and Its Origins).

Black or darkness for k-m-r also best explains further associations of the root with agitation, heat, energy--even dancing. Black absorbs light and heat and thus connotes intense energy, the energy necessary for the germination of life. Again we recall the Egyptian imagery of the Black Mound emerging from the Waters of the Primeval Flood and the foundation stone of Kumarbi. Cumorah is also a special place, a vineyard apart, a hidden corner of the world (knm, Arabic kamana, to hide, see Hoch #459) from which life can emerge anew from the compost of nations: "Truth shall spring out of the earth" (Psalms 85:11). From the darkness of apostasy and destruction, the Book of Mormon springs from Cumorah's earth, Cumorah, both the Black and Fruitful Land and the Hiding-Place (or mikhman: Daniel 11:43) of the sacred record. 

Kmara may bespeak an unspeakable sadness, but the same sad burial place of two nations brings forth "Glad Tidings from Cumorah": "A voice of gladness! A voice of mercy from heaven; and a voice of truth out of the earth; glad tidings for the dead; a voice of gladness for the living and the dead; glad tidings of great joy" (Doctrine and Covenants 128:19-20).

And righteousness will I send down out of heaven; and truth will I send forth out of the earth, to bear testimony of mine Only Begotten; his resurrection from the dead; yea, and also the resurrection of all men (Moses 7:62).

But before resurrection comes corruptibility. The Egyptian Osiris, as the Km-Wrj, the Great Black One, must rot and rot, prior to rebirth (see Woerterbuch V, 126). After "the great and tremendous battle at Cumorah," Nephite "flesh, and bones, and blood" will "molder," "crumble," and "return to their mother earth," even "moldering in corruption," a compost heap deposited at Cumorah. "Rent with anguish," Mormon cries: "O ye fair ones!. . O ye fair ones!" (see Mormon 6). All this recalls the Mesopotamian record of annihilation: I [Tiglath-Pileser I] heaped up in mounds [lu-ke-mir] the corpses of their warriors like the smiter (i.e., Adad)," CAD 8:114; "(the goddess) whose people('s bodies) have been heaped up [ik-kam-ra] says, 'O my people,'" 8:114. Cumorah now becomes the very place of kemr (fermentation), in which the seed, "which is the record of a fallen people," is planted (see Doctrine and Covenants 20). Its germination requires some 1600 years! Meanwhile, another place, also bearing a fruitful Syrian name, Palmyra (or Tadmur, Palm Oasis), is also planted in the American forest, and a prophet grows up, imperceptibly, with the dawn.

"Let us take the Book of Mormon," says the Prophet Joseph Smith, "which a man took and hid in his field, securing it by his faith, to spring up in the last days, or in due time; let us behold it coming forth out of the ground, which is indeed accounted the least of all seeds, but behold it branching forth, yea, even towering with lofty branches and God-like majesty, until it, like the mustard seed, becomes the greatest of all herbs. And it is truth, and it has sprouted and come forth out of the earth, and righteousness begins to look down from heaven, and God is sending down His power, gifts and angels to lodge in the branches thereof" (Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Joseph Smith, 301).

All things return to Cumorah, it is both origin and completion--it is accountability. "Cumorah's lonely hill," best depicted in the somber painting of Alfred Lambourne, complete with cloud cover and lightning--and the coming light of dawn--is the "geodetic gnomon" or pillar of the Americas, the place of l'eternel retour, the eternal return.


Notes

Kumat: For the vocalization of Egyptian km.t (kumat, by late New Kingdom, kemet) and kmm (kamam), see Antonio Loprieno, Ancient Egyptian: A Linguistic Introduction, 42, 88. Egyptians referred to themselves as the Ramats ni Kumat (the people of Kumat), or even as the Kumut (the Blacks). Egypt was also dualistically termed: Kumat-Tushrit, Black-Red, Soil-Desert. For a possible-yet-impossible Indo-European connection, I note Greek khamai and Latin humus (or even Tokarian tkam, kem) as belonging to a, at least, similar-sounding root (d-g-m = earth), R. Beekes, Etymological Dictionary of Greek 2:1612-13; 1632-3). I also posit the black (seed) for Hebrew kamun or cumin. 
 
Jacobugath: The etymology for Jacobugath appears in I Know Thee by Name: Hebrew Roots of Lehi-ite Non-Biblical Names in the Book of Mormon, Independence, 1995; see also the headlong charge to discountenance this sound reading (and others, such as Chemish as Five, a favorite with Hugh Nibley) in John Tvedtnes, "What's in a Name? A Look at the Book of Mormon Onomasticon," Journal of the Book of Mormon 8:2, 34-42; Robert F. Smith, in the unpublished Book of Mormon Onomasticon, also reads "Jacob-and-(his)-Wine Press." George Reynolds, A Dictionary of the Book of Mormon (1891), is apparently among the first to notice how Jacobugath makes reference to Jacob's wine press, 301.

For the significant noun phrase "the people of the king of Jacob," which English Professor Royal Skousen, following a long line of editors, too hastily dismisses as reflecting a scribal accident made "during the dictation of the text," see Skousen, Analysis of Textual Variants of the Book of Mormon, 5:3331-2 [Provo, 2008]; for Jacobugath, which Skousen emends to Jacob-Ugath, see 3329ff. If necessary to so "emend" the name, Jacob-u-Gath would be preferred. (A paperback copy of the Book of Mormon, once in the possession of Hugh Nibley, shows the name separated as follows: Jacob/u/gath (BYU Ancient Studies Library, Hugh Nibley, BX 8622.1 A1 1963b [copy bearing date 7/5/78]. Brother Nibley's annotated Book of Mormon from 1978--one of many annotated copies--also reveals his thoughts on Cumorah: "Redoubt; Armageddon; Flanders," and another note tying together the idea of the redoubt and the land of many waters, rivers, and fountains: "spots"; "rock-pits."

Wine Presses: The article to read on wine presses is "New Insights from Old Wine Presses," Palestine Exploration Quarterly 130 (1998), Carey Walsh and J.R. Zorn. These authors point out that in the most literal sense gath signifies "treading floor," 155. See also Carey Walsh, The Fruit of the Vine: Viticulture in Ancient Israel (2000).

Cumorah as Geodetic Gnomon: For the "geodetic gnomon" and the Greek (and Egyptian) omphalos, see Peter Tompkins, Secrets of the Great Pyramid, 181. The pilgrim motifs on the Joseph Smith Papyrus (Book of the Dead of Tshemmin, newly edited by Michael Rhodes) have much light to shed on this matter of returning to the center and of taking the measure of the world. Tompkins further discusses Egyptian measurement rules that speak of the central importance of Pi-Hapy (the House of the Nile), and of Kher-aha, in calculating the measurement of Egypt. Kher-aha as the apex of the Delta (which lies just across from the center of Egyptian measurement, Pi-Hapy), to my mind, something recalls the phrase found on Facsimile 2 of the Book of Abraham: "the measurement of this earth, which is called by the Egyptians Jah-oh-heh." Kher-aha (when written in hieroglyphs) is not terribly far from Jah-oh-heh. Other (better) etymologies for Jah-oh-heh are to be found in Hugh Nibley, "The Three Facsimiles of the Book of Abraham," FARMS, 1980).

Misc.: Hurrian (and Indo-Aryan) names in the Book of Mormon (that is, esp. the Jaredite Book of Ether) may well include: Kumen, from *kumi(H)ni (Fournet) or kummeni (Laroche) and, perhaps, Morianton, Moriancumr, etc., which recalls *marjanni (chariot fighter, hero, knight, warrior), maryanni (Laroche) = mar-ya-an-ni, "from Indo-Aryan marya with a Hurrian suffix -nni," A. Fournet, A Dictionary of the Hurrian Language. The forms are very close: Ma-ri-ya-nni ~ Mo-ri-a-nni-tum, although the title dates only from the Mitanni Kingdom and is therefore too late a coinage for a Jaredite connection (although a bit of Proto Indo-European mixed with the Semitic elements is to be expected for the archaic Jaredites). The noun mar/mara is also found in Proto-Semitic, where it carries a like meaning. An even better fit may be the Semitic word mr/mrr (to be strong, sharp), W. A. Ward, "Comparative Studies in Egyptian and Ugaritic," JNES 20:1 (1961), 31-40; reference on page 36 n. 16). Moriancumer or Morianton as among the many "strong and mighty" men of the Book of Ether. Thus we also have Moron, the Jaredite royal residence, as the "place of strength," or "stronghold" (Moroni, as is well-known signifies "one of Moron"). (Kumen as a Hurrian name is also well-treated by Hugh Nibley, in Lehi in the Desert; I note that Robert F. Smith, of the Book of Mormon Onomasticon project, has previously suggested Ugaritic mryn as a possible match for the place name Moron.) In my view, the names Morianton and Corianton, Coriantumr, etc., form a name pair and both may be of Indo-Aryan origin. Cori- recalls the Indo-Aryan term: "beloved." Another possible derivation is from the IE root *gher, from whence our word grace derives. Sanskrit thus also yields caru (cAru): agreeable, esteemed, lovely, carus, approved, beloved, beautiful (Cologne Digital Sanskrit Lexicon). Coriantumr further recalls the Indo-Aryan name uccair (high, above), which becomes Hurrian Ushrianni (heir, prince), which also shows the Hurrian suffix -nni, Fourner, 42.  To Nibley, Morianton also recalls Egyptian Meriaten (Beloved of Aten), from the Egyptian root, mrj, to love, a root that does correspond chronologically as well as culturally to the Afroasiatic Jaredite origins. Corihor might thus yield: Prince of Horus or Beloved of Horus. Coriantumr also yields to an Ancient Egyptian analysis (and remember that the c--as opposed to the k = Kish, likely is a qof: q3j ~ qrj signifies to be tall, exalted, great, the enthroned king, etc., and is also a name of the Creator god, Atum, who stands on the primeval Hill (the q33).

As for -an/-antum, the form best recalls -an as a "particularizing participle" in Akkadian, a morpheme of adjectival significance expressing particular qualities; almost the same morpheme, -an, appears in Proto Indo-European as an adjectival expression of quality; -um/-tum shows the case ending with mimation. Various Semitic and Hurrian hypocoristic endings also recall the Jaredite endings -on/ant/antum. Professor Huffmon, Amorite Names at Mari, 137, lists the following hypocoristic ending(s) for Amorite names: -an from *anu(m) and *(i)yan. This last, (i)yan, combines the hypocoristic -yan "with a primary element ending in -i," to which compare Cor-i-yan. Another hypocoristic is given as *atan/*atanu(m). (Note that the letter -n is often dropped when followed by a -t.) Coriantumr/Corianton, etc., "the one characterized by the quality of *gher." That a single name recalls both Afroasiatic and Proto Indo-European roots is to be expected. "In more recent times, attention is being paid to the witnesses of prehistoric contact between Egyptian and Indo-European," says Professor Loprieno, who gives a short bibliography (Ancient Egyptian: A Linguistic Introduction, 251 n. 9).

To try a couple more: Jared's son Mahah recalls Semitic maHa'u (uncle)--something like Semitic 'ammu. Hearthom has a physiognomic reference (the nose). 

Copyright 2011 by Val Sederholm