Joseph Smith Translation Ezekiel 20:30

I

The Prophet Joseph Smith changed but ten verses in the Book of Ezekiel. None of the changes, except that made to the very last verse in the book, touch upon any of Ezekiel's better known or more challenging places. For instance, Why would the Prophet skip the enigmatic visions of the opening chapters to bother with Ezekiel 20:30? And why that particular verse in Chapter 20, and no other?

The change is a small one--he shifts the interrogative mode to the indicative in the first two opening clauses of the sentence--and the preponderance of Bible translations do not support it. No matter. Joseph Smith finds himself in the best of company: St. Jerome (and thus Wycliffe), Luther, and the Jewish Publication Society Tanakh.

We start with the Authorized Version and then consider the Joseph Smith Translation:

30 Wherefore say unto the house of Israel, Thus saith the Lord God; Are ye polluted after the manner of your fathers? and commit ye whoredom after their abominations?

31 For when ye offer your gifts, when ye make your sons to pass through the fire, ye pollute yourselves with all your idols, even unto this day: and shall I be inquired of by you, O house of Israel? As I live, saith the Lord God, I will not be inquired of by you.

Joseph Smith recasts the two opening rhetorical questions as flat indictments:

Ye are polluted after the manner of your fathers and ye commit whoredom after their abominations.

Faulring, Jackson, Matthews (eds), Joseph Smith's New Translation of the Bible: Original Manuscripts (2004)

The change startles because it suggests an error in the original Hebrew. But several other translators, and let's now add Breuer, Zitterli, and Greenberg to the company, sensitive to the nuances of grammar and of rhetoric, translate in the same way that Brother Joseph does--and no emendation of the Hebrew.

The question that lies at the heart of the complicated sentence is "And will I be inquired of by you, O house of Israel?" All prior clauses, says Rabbi Solomon Fisch, become antecedents going before judgment: "This verse and the first half of the next verse are antecedents to the clause shall I then be inquired of by you?" (S. Fisch, Soncino Bible: Ezekiel, 127). We recall how the elders of the people approached Ezekiel and requested an oracle. The delegation approaches Ezekiel because they know he's the real thing; Israel enjoys the prophetic gifts--and they know it. Yet their hearts simultaneously burst with the plea: Why can't we be just like everyone else (see v. 33)? Israel wants Jerusalem and Idumea all in one breath, and the Divine rebuke of such duplicity is a rhetorical marvel that cuts to the heart.

Rhetorical marvel? There are places in the Hebrew Bible, Gesenius' Grammar tell us, "in which the use of the interrogative is altogether different from our idiom, since it serves merely to express the conviction that the contents of the statement are well known to the hearer, and are unconditionally admitted by him" (Gesenius, Kautzsch, Cowley, Gesenius' Hebrew Grammar, 473). Such usage therefore supplies us with a rhetoric well suited to Divine decree or decisions at law. Gesenius illustrates the principle with a few one liners. To get to the root of the matter in Ezekiel 20:30-31, we must dig deeper. 

"A widespread phenomenon in Biblical Hebrew," says Christian Stadel, "is the use of an interrogative clause for the expression of an assertion. Such interrogatives are commonly known as 'rhetorical questions'" (Christian Stadel, "Interrogative: Biblical Hebrew," in Encyclopedia of Hebrew Language and Linguistics 2:306-316; 309). Rhetorical questions here labels a technical term Hebraists use to describe a very particular kind of declarative idiom. As is the case with other non-pronominal interrogatives, rhetorical questions begin with a "sentence-initial particle," the clitic-h. 

Such a rhetorical device, especially in a sentence consisting of two or more clauses, serves "to express a premise or a conclusion in a logical argument. When expressing a premise, the rhetorical question establishes a consensus, or common ground between the speaker and addressee, which is then used to advance the argument;" rhetorical questions thus "have a strengthening function, expressing the implied assertion in a more forceful way then a simple declarative would have done," ibid., 310. 

Usage suggests a clitic-h preceding each rhetorical question in the succession of clauses (or independent sentences). In Ezekiel 20:30-31 only the first clause shows the particle: hbdrk (ha + prep. b "in" + derek "way"). Had Ezekiel intended a series of independent rhetorical questions, he likely would have put the particle at the head of each of them. And would not such stand-alone questions--each to be paused over, as it enters the stage in logical and brilliant arrangement--have made for a stronger declaration? Surely so--yet perhaps not: in Ezekiel 20:30-31 the antecedents fly swiftly on to the final judgment that rings down the curtain on the play.

As we now consider the following translations of Ezekiel 20:30-31, the question to ask is: Which, if any of them, best captures the complicated sentence structure and its sweeping rhetorical force?

It might be best to start with a plain reading (my own), along with simple notes about semantics and grammar:


Therefore say to House of Israel: 

So says my Lord Jehovah--

Ha-in the way of your fathers you make yourselves tameh;
after their shiqqutzim you play the faithless wife;
and in lifting your gifts (to heaven, at the altar),
in making your sons to pass through in the fire, 
you make yourselves tameh in dedicated service to all your ridiculous idols until today:

And I shall be sought of by you for an oracle, House of Israel?

Live I--statement of my Lord Jehovah--
if I shall be sought of by you for an oracle!


The initial interrogative marker is the sole such marker in the sentence; the final question is only implied. And note how the third and fourth clauses show the preposition be (in, in acting), not ke (when, as). To "be sought of by you" (with preposition le, for) signifies to be sought of for a revelation. Tameh signifies to "become (cultically) unclean: it is for the once faithful bride to play the prostitute by following after the detestable (cultic) practices and silly idols of Canaan (William L. Holliday, A Concise Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament). 

What it all means is beyond us, though the lexicographers' insistence on cultic pollution can miss the point: by adopting cultic practices, Israel perforce adopts all cultural practices as well. The first thus nicely serves as metaphor for the second. One wonders whether the verb for crossing ('br), in "passing through the fire," is intended to stir the memory of another crossing, the ancestral crossing which qualified Abraham an 'ever (Hebrew)? By causing their own sons to cross through fire--whatever that meant literally or symbolically to Ezekiel--do these faithless sons of Abraham reverse the pilgrimage of Father Abraham and unmake his sons Hebrews? Do Ezekiel's auditors maintain, or do they break, the generational chain of covenant?

As Ezekiel's contemporary, Nephi, says, "the manner of prophesying among the Jews" can be "hard to understand" without careful instruction. It is enough to know, he says with a shudder, that "their works were works of darkness, and their doings were doings of abominations" (2 Nephi 25: 1-2). Given that works and doings signal technical terminology for cultic activity, Nephi's careful choice of words show how tellingly cultic works and doings reflect the general societal and cultural darkness.


The Soncino Bible: Ezekiel (Rabbi Solomon Fisch)

Wherefore say unto the house of Israel: Thus saith the Lord God:
When ye pollute yourselves after the manner of your fathers, and go astray after their abomination, and when, in offering your gifts, in making your son to pass through the fire, ye pollute yourselves with all your idols, unto this day; shall I then be inquired of by you?


JPS Tanakh 1917 (see Bible Hub.com) 

Wherefore say unto the house of Israel: Thus saith the Lord GOD: When ye pollute yourselves after the manner of your fathers, and go after their abominations, and when, in offering your gifts, in making your sons to pass through the fire, ye pollute yourselves with all your idols, unto this day; shall I then be inquired of by you, O house of Israel? As I live, saith the Lord GOD, I will not be inquired of by you;"



Rav Dr. Joseph Breuer, The Book of Yechezkel, 172 


Rav Dr. Joseph Breuer likewise translates the rhetorical questions in the opening clauses as positive indictments, though also he nods to the interrogative particle, ha, which opens the sentence:

Therefore say to the House of Israel: Thus has my Lord spoken, God, Who envelops His loving kindness in justice: What? You defile yourselves upon the path your fathers trod, and you are faithless in that you seek after their horrors; And by lifting up your offerings, leading your children through the fire, defiling yourselves through your idolatries to this day--and I should let Myself be sought of you, house of Israel?"

Rav Breuer, as truthful translator, does well to remind us how God, though everlastingly loving, cannot "rob justice": "God, Who envelops His loving kindness in justice" (see Alma 42:25: "What, can ye suppose that mercy can rob justice?")

The Douay-Rheims translation (as does Wycliffe) attests the Vulgate of St. Jerome:

Wherefore say to the house of Israel: Thus saith the Lord God: Verily [certe], you are defiled in the way of your fathers, and you commit fornication with their abominations. And you defile yourselves with all your idols unto this day, in the offering of your gifts, when you make your children pass through the fire: and shall I answer you, O house of Israel? As I live, saith the Lord God, I will not answer you.

Moshe Greenberg, The Anchor Bible: Ezekiel, 362

Say, then, to the house of Israel: Thus said Lord YHWH: You defile yourselves in the manner of your fathers, you go whoring after their loathsome things; you defile yourselves by the offer of your gifts and by delivering up your sons to the fire--your idolatries of all sorts--to this day; shall I then respond to your inquiry, house of Israel? By my life, declared Lord YHWH, I will not respond to your inquiry!


Walther Zimmerli, Ezekiel. A Commentary on the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel, Chapters 1-24, I: 402

Thus has [the Lord] Yahweh said: You are making yourselves unclean with the behavior of your fathers. In following their abominations you are committing their immorality. And in offering your gifts [in making your sons pass through the fire] you are making yourselves unclean for all your idols right up to the present day. Shall I then let myself be questioned by you, house of Israel? As I live, says [the Lord] Yahweh, I will not let myself be questioned by you."


Of these, I favor the translations of Rav Joseph Breuer and the JPS Tanakh. The JPS Tanakh insists on an artificial and impeding when-then construction for the sentence, with non-finite when clauses, but the translation yet delivers a powerful rhetorical punch. (We can now see how turning opening clauses into interrogatives, breaking one sentence into several, would slow things to an unbearable pace.) Rav Breuer may add poetic refrains to the text and drop the familiar English technical ritual expression to inquire of in favor of a literal reading of the Hebrew drsh (seek); he nevertheless conveys--and clearly--in a single sweeping sentence, something of the rough, near staccato oracular idiom of a desert tribe. And are these various readings not rhetorically superior to the clumsy literalism, if that, of the Authorized Version?




II

One may ask: Do you propose to show the inspiration of Joseph Smith, when you claim his translation has such substantial support?

I take that inspiration as a given. To range at will through the pages of scripture revealed through the Prophet Joseph is to see "all things appear divinely new." One need not be a partisan nor a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to see the "marvelous work and a wonder" that is the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, the New Translation of the Holy Bible, and the Pearl of Great Price. Neither does the Divine Treasury of Restoration Scripture remain the exclusive property of Latter-day Saints--it belongs to you and it belongs to me, for it rightfully belongs to God.

Joseph Smith belongs to the world. Then let the world consider him, read him, write of him and ponder, debate, and sort out his revelations and translations and papers how and when and where it wishes. As for Latter-day Saints, we need to stop popping out of our seats anytime someone belonging to another faith or another community writes a thoughtful essay or book about Brother Joseph's prophetic and scriptural contribution. 

Joseph Smith deserves more of the members of the Church of Jesus Christ than a knee-jerk reaction. Nor need we tend him or his message, as if some fragile thing.

Sometimes we "pop" in wild-eyed naivete; other times we "pop" in haste to criticize or to discredit. We can promote truth, correct misinformation and obvious error, and even and ever defend the Prophet's good name, but we should also let others think, write, "call on the Lord, and ponder. . .in their hearts. . . for a little season." In other words, we can afford others the room to breathe and to discover the good news of the Restoration for themselves in their own way and in their own time. Such allowance to others, at least "for a little season," becomes another special way, among so many other marvelous ways, by which the divine promise comes to fruition: "I will hasten my work in its time" (Doctrine and Covenants 88: 71-73).

III

Speaking solely for myself, I wonder whether the best question to ask about JST Ezekiel 20:30 would be Why did the Prophet Joseph choose to turn our attention at all to Ezekiel Chapter 20? 

The subject of divine indictment is not a pleasant one. Haunting is the Lord's refusal by the mouth of Ezekiel to the hapless elders of the people: And will I be inquired of by you? Ezekiel 20, with its long and careful recital of covenants broken and opportunities lost, as generation succeeds generation throughout the entire course of Israel's history, makes up one of the most stunning moments in all scripture: 

Here we are, O Lord. 

No, I will not hear you. Look over the record of your past. The day of your probation has ended.

To avoid the tragic outcome of losing the privileges of revelation, and the nurturing daily guidance and comfort flowing therefrom, we should compare ourselves with the people whom Ezekiel served. In refusing to show His divine favor, the Lord indicts the people for polluting both themselves and even their hapless children. Did they not love their own children sufficiently to teach them the ways of righteousness, freedom, and happiness? "Such 'pollution,'" Rabbi Fisch teaches us, "creates a barrier between them and God which makes impossible the achievement of their desire, viz. enlightenment from Him on what the immediate future holds in store," 128. For instance, to "greatly pollute" God's sabbaths not only bars enlightenment, it even prevents the holy offering of the sign of the covenant, the bond of fellowship between God and His people. 

We might ask ourselves, turning the indictment back into a question: Are we polluting ourselves after the manner of the world? Is that the road (derekh) we walk? Do pollutions, idols, and abominations "create a barrier" between us and God? And how is it with the rising generation? Are their feet set on a proven course? or, bearing no moral compass to guide, do they pass through the fire of untested, untried, and strange roads--roads of anger, roads of hatred, roads of sloth and self-indulgence, branching tri-vial roads, roads of immorality? In fine, are we sufficiently clean and pure to inquire of the Lord, to offer up the sign of the covenant, that is, "offer up thy sacraments upon my holy day," or to hear the words of his living prophet, Thomas S. Monson? (See Doctrine and Covenants 59:9).

What Ezekiel was not permitted to say to his insincere inquirers, his oracular contemporary, Jacob, was commanded to reveal to a straying, though yet more righteous branch of Israel. His message (2 Nephi 9) might have once brought hope, enlightenment, and deliverance to the elders of Israel. It can still cleanse us today--making us "clean thereby."

Significantly, the closing talk of the last General Conference of the Church also refers to Ezekiel Chapter 20. Elder Russell M. Nelson cites Ezekiel's teaching of an eternal covenant between God and His people to hallow the Sabbath Day (20:12, 20). As we keep the Sabbath, we may "more fully keep" ourselves as well, including keeping ourselves and our families "unspotted from the [pollutions of] the world" (Doctrine and Covenants 59:9). God is, thankfully, not slow to hear our prayers. Here is counsel from a living apostle for you and for me ("The Sabbath is a Delight," Conference Report, April 2015). 

Ezekiel Chapter 20 suddenly takes on relevance and urgency.

Joseph Smith Translation Ezekiel 19:10: The Living Prophet Renews Scripture

The Prophet Joseph Smith changed many verses in Isaiah and Jeremiah; Ezekiel received a light touch. He pronounces Ezekiel's first 13 chapters "all correct." Starting with Chapter 14, he, here and there, updates the usage (sith becomes since; that that becomes that which; turn yourselves and live ye is now turn ye and live); he even attends to what appears to be a typo in his Bible (Arvan should be Arvad). (JST Ezekiel 35:6; 36:36; 18:32; 27:11)

See Faulring, Jackson, Matthews (eds.), Joseph Smith's New Translation of the Bible: Original Manuscripts.

Of the ten changes to Ezekiel, only six stand out as being, in any way, substantial. By substantial, I mean a change in the English of such a nature that we can ask a) whether the received Hebrew text may be in error or incomplete or b) whether the meaning of the Hebrew text has been long misunderstood and, perforce, also lost in translation. Because changes in Ezekiel 23:17, 22, and 28 apparently serve to iron out such a misunderstanding of a presumably correct underlying Hebrew idiom and text, we are left with but five small changes to a book of 48 chapters. Of these, then, a mere four require a reexamination of the Masoretic text. Yet while one of the four suggests that a rhetorical question should be recast in the indicative: Ye are . . . and ye commit (20:30), the shift does not require adjustment in the original Hebrew. Indeed some translators, sensitive to the complicated sentence structure and the intent of the Hebrew, also recast the "question" as accusation. Because these few make for good company: St. Jerome, Luther, Wycliffe, and the JPS Tanakh, Ezekiel 20:30 is a bull's-eye for Joseph Smith. Three remain.

So what prompted the prophetic mind to zoom in on a particular verse?


I

Consider Ezekiel 19:10, where a very strange phrase is crossed out:

Thy mother is like a vine in thy blood, planted by the waters: she was fruitful and full of branches by reason of many waters.

Like a vine in thy blood--that's about as faithful to the Hebrew as it's possible to get, and just about as odd an idiom as can be.

Entire chapters of Ezekiel jar modern sensibilities and baffle understanding, so why this verse? Was Joseph Smith merely searching, now and again, for a bit of clarity in a scroll of obscurity?

We picture Joseph and his associates reading Ezekiel aloud chapter by chapter, marking changes along the way. Did he read aloud the first fourteen chapters and then state "all correct?" Or did he so pronounce, without the need of reading? We can imagine the furrowing of the brow when 19:10 was read, but, if we study changes elsewhere made in the Biblical text, there were several choices available to him. He might choose to ignore the strange reading, add to the text so as to clarify meaning, rearrange words or even sentences in a meaningful way, or consider the marginal notes found in his own Bible. The Prophet solves the difficulty by simply deleting the phrase--a single word in Hebrew: bdmk--"in thy blood." Was he so prompted? Latter-day Saints believe he translated under the spirit of inspiration.

The Joseph Smith Translation of Ezekiel 19:10 accordingly reads:

The mother is like a vine planted by the waters: she was fruitful and full of branches by reason of many waters.

Who is to say the change is insignificant? According to Professor Zimmerli, the prophecy embraces the destiny of the "entire Davidic royal house" of whom the "mother" is symbolic (Walther Zimmerli, A Commentary on the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel. Chapters 1-24, 397).


II

We start where all students must, with text critical editions of the Hebrew Bible, e.g., the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (BHS) and the Hebrew University Bible.

Two Hebrew manuscripts show, not bdmk (in your blood), but krmk (in your kerem, an orchard or vineyard). To understand the underlying scribal tradition for these manuscripts, we must recall how b/k and d/r make up two pair of consonantal confusables. A little adjustment to the bifocals, and you could see "like a vine in your kerem"--just where a vine ought to be.

These textual apparatus now take up the Greek Septuagint, the ancient translation of the Bible into Greek.

The Septuagint, however, yields no orchard but a single vine and a single tree: hos ampelos kai hos anthos en hroa (like a vine and like a flower on a pomegranate tree). Did an "original" Hebrew be-rimmon prompt the Greek translation of en hroa, on a pomegranate? (See notes in Hebrew University Bible: Ezekiel.) Or might the notionality of blood have been confused with the redness of the pomegranate flower?

The BHS further suggests the possible emendation bakerem (in the vineyard). What about "your"?


We turn now to the Great Rabbinic Bible, Rashi's commentary on Ezekiel, and other commentators. The popular Soncino Bible, for instance, follows the rabbinic interpretation:

Thy mother was like a vine, in thy likeness, planted by the waters
Rabbi Solomon Fisch, Ezekiel.

Why "in thy likeness"? Because the Hebrew verb damah (to be like, resemble; n., dimyon, dmy, likeness) much resembles dam (blood). Yet "in thy likeness" but poorly echoes the Hebrew construction and nuance. Rav Joseph Breuer tells us the particular verbal form represented by bdmk is a qal infinitive (a verbal noun), dmyt, with preposition, be. He translates: "But your mother was (also) like a vine--you were like (it)" (Breuer, The Book of Yechezkel, 159).

And how can a vine be in thy likeness, when thy mother is also like that vine? It's a matter of likeness, of riddling, of bloodline--and of Hebrew poetry packing it in.

Jacob 5, quoting an ancient Hebrew prophet, evinces comparably dense doubling: "I will liken thee, O house of Israel, like unto a tame olive-tree, which a man took and nourished in his vineyard" (5:3; cf. Doctrine and Covenants 88:61: "Therefore, unto this parable I will liken all these kingdoms"). It's all here: to liken thee like unto; the tame olive-tree ("in thy quietness" for "in thy blood," Heb. dami, quiet, rest); took and nourished (Eichrodt: "transplanted by the water").

Yet Rabbi Fisch also notes that "in thy blood" suggests in "thy natural vigour," the vigor of both vine and bloodline; as far as that goes, bkrm would place the vine in its "natural setting." Marginal notes in Brother Joseph's own Bible prompted: "or, in thy quietness, or, in thy likeness." And divines of the day held to the reading "in thy blood" or "in thy quietness" and interpreted accordingly, creatively, and variously (cf. the examples found in the online Bible Hub, including KJV Translator's Notes).

Addressing "the puzzle of bdmk," Moshe Greenberg concludes: "The word remains a crux," (Ezekiel 1-20, The Anchor Bible, v. 22, 1983), 353.


Walther Eichrodt, as does BHS, prefers emending the text to bkrm, which could signify either bakerem or bekerem (in the vineyard or in a vineyard):

"Your mother was like a vine [in a vineyard], transplanted by the water."

Eichrodt yet concludes of bkrm: "A completely uncertain emendation of the unintelligible 'in your blood,' in the text," Ezekiel: A Commentary, 250 note J.

The toy parade of the scholars marches true to form:

"The reading of MS ken 356 krmk, which is graphically close, creates difficulties due to its suffix. Toy, Holscher, Hesekiel, Bertholet, Fohrer would read kbrm [how richly ironic: a typo in Zimmerli for bkrm!], whilst Cornill, Ehrlich, Randglossen, following MS ken 399, 421, would simply delete bkrm," Walther Zimmerli, A Commentary on Ezekiel, 397.

I poke fun at the scholars, but their words and their ways remain

Things beyond my ken. Before we can get in step with Cornill, Ehrlich, Fohrer, Toy, we're going to have to track down ken 356, 399, 421, we're going to have to tilt at Kennicott's Vetus Testamentum Hebraicum cum Variis Lectionibus. . . How easy it would be at this juncture to shrug shoulders and to say: We have Joseph Smith's translation of the verse, why bother with the manuscripts?

Zimmerli never yields the game. His own tentative conclusion? "Masoretic 'in thy blood' is certainly not original." "Already Rashi and Kimhi favor a derivation from dmh [to be like], which is probable," but only after further adjustments: "Should we then read a participle ndmh or a perfect ndmth, which has been written incorrectly as in [Ezekiel] 27:32?" (Zimmerli, 390).

Without Zimmerli's "probable," "unintelligible" and "certainly not original" would remain the latest words on the "puzzle of bdmk." After Zimmerli's emendations we arrive at: "Thy mother is like a vine ndmh planted by the waters," which signifies "Thy mother like a vine (who) is likened (being made like unto, comparable) planted by the waters." I marvel at the poetic complexity of the thing--but how to translate into plain English? Zimmerli's adoption and adaptation of the rabbinic reading only brings us back to Joseph Smith:


Thy mother is likened to a vine planted by the waters,

or simply,

Thy mother is like a vine planted by the waters.

I will liken thee, O house of Israel, like unto a tame olive tree.


Given such a baffling word in an otherwise clear text, and chary of erudition, some modern translators simply ignore bdmk. Scribes might have lost sight of some infinitive or participle attached to the mother-vine long ago; yet we lose nothing in our understanding of the poem thereby.



III

Some lessons may be drawn from such prophetic correction--or cancellation. (And I'm speaking solely for myself, and to myself, here.)

We learn a vital lesson about prophetic authority and guidance: the living prophet, who holds the keys of the kingdom, can change scripture. He can add, expand, delete, and interpret as a living oracle, a living fountain of Scripture. The Prophet may even authoritatively modify, as did Joseph Smith, his own translations and revelations. Consider the versions of the visions of Moses and of Enoch in Old Testament Manuscript One and compare these to what appears, some months later, in Old Testament Manuscript Two. The reader of the Pearl of Great Price, which follows OT 1, will be startled to see familiar, even beloved, words and phrases crossed out and recast. Startled is not strong enough a word, it shocks.

How could the Prophet do such a thing to this or that poetic expression? But he can and he does--and we're here to learn. Here is new scripture, if you will. I had never seen these changes before 2015 or thereabouts (I had noticed, yes, but just couldn't handle them a year or so ago. . .)

Just so, Brother Joseph's contemporaries responded startled, shocked, thrilled, scandalized--you name it--to what they saw in 1830 and thereafter. Imagine the shock of the Creation account in the Book of Moses (1831); an even greater jolt comes with Abraham's take on Creation, or rather, "Organization" (1842).

The living prophet, who struggles to make truth "plain and pure, and most precious and easy to the understanding of all men," not only restores "many plain and precious parts" of scripture (1 Nephi 14:23; 1 Nephi 12:34), he also takes away the unplain and the unprecious--even down to the detail. The deletions require as much inspired attention as do the expansions or the changed word. Each new day breathes new light into a living prophet of God. Will we keep up?

The change in Ezekiel 19:10 prompts a few final insights.

Who is to say the wee change is insignificant? The mother, after all, represents "the entire Davidic royal house." The promised "taking away of [our] stumbling-blocks" of scriptural error, enables us to consider the allegory anew (1 Nephi 14:1).

After passing through the Prophet's hands, new life is breathed into an ancient prophecy, and we receive a pressing invitation: "when [Ezekiel's] record I unfold, all things appear divinely new." Any attention paid by the prophets of our day to Ezekiel, including and especially the focus on Ezekiel 37 and the Book of Mormon, urges us to "Come, let us anew our journey pursue" through this ancient book of prophecy.





Notes

There are Hebraists a-plenty among the Latter-day Saints, and doubtless many have mulled over the text history of Ezekiel 19:10 in light of Brother Joseph's changes to the text. At the same time, it's fascinating how such wee changes in the JST never figure in articles or books. Many Latter-day Saints cut our teeth on Joseph Smith's "New Translation" of the Bible (Herald Publishing, 1970), which sets everything in parallel columns. Ezekiel 19:10 is nowhere to be seen in either that volume nor in the official LDS Bible. The latter notes that "in your blood" should be understood, in light of the Hebrew, as "in your likeness." This is to rely on the KJV Translator's Notes: "or, in thy quietness, or, in thy likeness" (see Bible Hub online) or on Rashi. The recent publication of all the manuscripts of the Joseph Smith Translation heralds a new day. 


Copyrighted by Val H. Sederholm, June 2015

Enforcing Priestcraft in London: Anjem Choudary and the Book of Alma

I have sworn upon the Altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man (Thomas Jefferson)

And thus they were prepared (Alma 2:12)


The Book of Mormon sounds the warning. Alma Chapters One and Two have the answers.

Alma, in his secular role as Chief Judge of the Nephites, a free people, pronounces the following judgment upon Nehor, a religious extremist who silences anyone who gets in his way:


"And behold, thou art not only guilty of priestcraft, but hast endeavored to enforce it by the sword; and were priestcraft to be enforced among this people it would prove their entire destruction" (Alma 1:12).

"Therefore thou art condemned to die, according to the law. . . acknowledged by this people" (v. 14).
https://www.lds.org/scriptures/bofm/alma/1?lang=eng

A decade or so ago we would have strained to "liken this scripture unto ourselves."


Alma 1 in east London?


"Producer Randall Joyce. . . tells 60 Minutes Overtime that seeing extremists on the streets of London, trying to impose Sharia law on total strangers, was 'a very strange experience. You keep kind of looking around to remind yourself where you really are'" (60 Minutes Overtime, "Recruiting for ISIS," http://www.cbsnews.com/news/recruiting-for-isis-60-minutes-2/).

You no longer know where you are. You are not in fact any longer anywhere you know.

A proselyte to extremism from Hinduism--we will not say a convert to Islam, which is a religion of peace--a certain Abu Rumaysah, together with "his associates" "have set up so called 'Sharia patrols' to go out and discourage behavior that they deem un-Islamic." Rumaysah soldiers east London armed to the teeth with "hard speeches," even against non-Muslims (see Doctrine and Covenants 124:116). Two youths, lazing by their bikes and drinking a beer, politely nod, as they manage to mumble a submissive: "Okay, okay." A young woman, subjected to his seething anger, as he shouts and afflicts her "with all manner of words" (Alma 1:20), bristles: "It's Great Britain! We must have rights." "It's not Great Britain!" he shouts back. Abu Rumaysah has big plans for the UK, though today he lives in Islamic State controlled Syria. There Sharia patrols enforce by the sword.


"Walking through London with Rumaysah you experience an alternate reality where there is no compromise and all conversations are one sided." "Okay, okay." Assertiveness--"great boldness"--was Nehor's trademark: it's what garnered all the attention, popularity, and cash. He was a large man, "noted for his much strength" and for bold, sweeping theological declarations about universal salvation and the rejoicing and freedom which that good news surely must bring--a certainty for which he stood ready to kill (v.2). He could charm or intimidate on a moment's notice: "bearing down against the Church" or against anybody else holding to a different view about the nature of liberty or that lacked poise, status, or money (v.3).

Strolling to his church to preach had the feel of a Rumaysah patrol. The moment Nehor chanced upon Gideon, pathetically "stricken with many years," though yet famous for his defiance of a royal despot, "he began to contend with him sharply" just to draw an audience. When Gideon, as a member of a free society, expressed his own views about the "words of God," Nehor, moving from sharp words to sharp sword, cut him down at once (v. 7-9). He justified the act, pleading "for himself with much boldness" (v.11). Others, obviously, were to blame for insisting on holding to their own ideas about religion in his presence. Gideon represented the old-fashioned norms of morality and valour. How foolish of them--bigots and sinners all--not to change their ideas in the face of Rights, Rightness, and Righteousness.

Within five brief years, the burgeoning followers of martyr Nehor had become sufficiently powerful and organized to attempt control of the government. When they failed, through intense persuasion, to a) win the "voice of the people," they naturally b) turned to the sword. The "Order of Nehor" lost the gamble, but many died on both sides (Alma Chapter 2).

Alma knows the "awful arithmetic" of freedom: "In one year" "thousands and tens of thousands" perished; "the slain were not numbered, because of the greatness of their number;" "Now many women and children had been slain" (3:2, 3, 26). Just so, "in one year," the "Order of ISIS" has swept through the Middle East and North Africa.


Abu Rumaysah, speaking to CBS reporter Clarissa Ward in October 2014, tells us five times what he wants to see, that is, what he wants to see in your future and in mine.

"Rumaysah: Ultimately, I want to see every single woman in this country covered from head to toe. I want to see the hand of the thief cut. I want to see adulterers stoned to death. I want to see Sharia law in Europe. And I want to see it in America as well. I believe that our patrols are a means to an end" ("Recruiting for ISIS," CBS News 60 Minutes).

This is "to contend sharply." The manner of speech, "verbal jihad," is best exemplified by Anjem Choudary, the leader of the east London extremists. Choudary, following a pattern common to many extremists--Osama Bin Laden is the foremost exemplar--pursued a dissolute life before converting the entire world to an unendurable legal straitjacket (see Graeme Wood, "What ISIS Really Wants," The Atlantic Monthly, March 2015). The sinner, cloaked now in piety, from head to toe, but never able to shake the past or atone for his own sins, strikes out at millions in a fruitless attempt to suppress the irrepressible. If you mean to stop a Nehor, that's where you need to strike--his Achilles' heel is guilt. And what is yours? Guilt is also the card he so studiously plays against you.

But enough of the human condition. Ms Ward wishes to interview Choudary for CBS 60 Minutes, but Choudary will not be put to the question. He accuses Ms Ward of lying and of inciting murder overseas. "You have blood on your neck," he oddly declares. No argument is necessary and he summons no evidence. That's laughably passe. His gushing words--"afflicting them with all manner of words"--constitute neither conversation nor debate. And, sadly, his steamrolling works best on those who play fair and thus "are not proud in their own eyes" (Alma 1:20).

Of course, such verbal dicing works best when the slicer notes how very low the would-be interlocutor measures-up on the scale of violent arrogance, where one cheats to win. To argue with him at all, says Ward, would be at once to lose the game. She is right, according to all tenets of civilized behavior--and she is stunningly wrong. A pose of fairness and a show of restraint--biting the lip--only readies Choudary for an endless "verbal jihad," as he himself labels his studied rhetorical technique. "Verbal jihad" best describes Choudary's open disregard for the religious and civil rights of others, including most Muslims, and his triumphant crowing about how even the winds and the seas play on his side. Here is no journalistic encounter. Any encounter with Nehor leaves either both dead or one exasperated, and thus on the borders of conversion. Alma shows a deft psychological touch in these telling verses.

To so afflict "with all manner of words," says Alma, is cruel and unrelenting religious "persecution" (Alma 1:20). If indeed persecution, then does it not ultimately amount to an injurious and illegal violation of others' religious and civil rights? So it is--consider the wording of the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen--but even Alma says it must be borne with patience, for "a strict law among the people of the Church" forbids any member to "arise and persecute" anyone (v.21). The humble followers of God's words and ways, though never silenced, must bear all. We "share our personal witness with conviction and love" and do not contend (Elder Robert D. Hales, "Preserving Agency, Protecting Religious Freedom," Conference Report, April 2015). Such restraint in the face of provocation proved impossible for many hardfisted Church members in Alma's day, but the leaven of sober steadiness inevitably promotes civil discourse everywhere. Should he find you by the way, Nehor has the right to say what he will. Heroic Gideon "admonished" him "with the words of God" (v.7)--and what else could one say in the teeth of such biting winds?--and the admonition proved prophetic, that is, after Gideon's own sudden death.

As for every "proud" soul else, to "contend warmly," then "to smite one another with their fists" and, ultimately, with swords, will be the inevitable result anyhow (Alma 1:22). This is what Choudary would "like to see." This is what ISIS really wants. Should you find yourself among the many "proud," seething with righteous indignation, Uncle Choudary wants you! Come and fight with us. Such all-encompassing recruitment embraces all, partisans and unbelievers alike. By means of the media interview, Choudary inexorably recruits us all. There is no escape for the red-blooded soul, and Choudary knows it, and he knows it triumphantly. When we cannot "withstand" him--and we cannot--we must then stand with him. We stand and fight with him, for him, by him--the semantic niceties matter not at all. Meaningfulness is suspended in the world of apocalyptic extremism (see Graeme Wood, "What ISIS really wants," The Atlantic Monthly, March 2015, http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/what-isis-really-wants/384980/).

Choudary grants interviews neither to explain himself nor to debate but as an occasion to dominate. He condemns no act of persecution no matter how cruel or unusual. The word games seem churlish and childish, but the will to dominate seeks out a weakening individuality. Ward describes his fast-talking manner as an attempt to dominate her from the beginning. Just so with Abu Rumsiyah who demanded, in violation of Ward's own rights and values, that Ward "cover up!" Ward "withstood" Abu Rumaysah, after a fashion: "That's absurd!"; but there is no withstanding Choudary, a past master of verbal shaming--never mind who he addresses and never mind his inadequate English. Choudary puts blood on your "neck" with stunning equality of opportunity.

Should the United Kingdom allow Sharia patrols or like public and ritualistic verbal domination and shaming? Should such be broadcast on television or, worse, on the Internet? Where will it lead? Just how large has Choudary's audience become? (Or, in hopes of radicalizing children and teens, how small?) Is not his every word an act of recruitment for multitudes of enforcers? And what are his financial resources? Forget al-Baghdadi, Choudary, safe in free London, is the face of religious persecution today, afflicting by word and promising the sword. Should you find yourself a humble believer in God, pure in heart and committed to serve your fellowman, that sword is first meant for you.


We cower easily of late. Choudary's move "to take the law into his own hands is deeply frightening to most British people." We have forgotten Jefferson: "I have sworn upon the Altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man." We should swear a spot of eternal hostility today. If not to protect the mind from tyranny, from trampling and from patrolling, of what value remains law? Where is our moral courage?

Alma promises but one outcome to allowance of a domineering and inevitably enforced priestcraft: the tension and agony so generated will, one way or another, "prove [the] entire destruction" of any free people. Entire leaves little room for imagination. Alma's answer? Priestcraft is neither shari'a nor din (religion). Choudary incites enforcement of priestcraft by word, by blow, by sword. He entices to violent crime at home and abroad. His path leads to the Wasteland not to the Well.

Authorities detained Anjem Choudary soon after the Clarissa Ward interview "on suspicion of being a member of a proscribed or banned organization. . .and encouraging terrorism" ("Recruiting for ISIS"), but he walks free today. Law must stop Choudary now.

We move on to Alma Chapter 2.

Like the Nephites, we must be "aware of the intent" of those who wish to "deprive" us of our "rights and privileges" today (Alma 2). Then we will be "prepared to meet them." Like the Nephites, we can reaffirm our laws and rights "by the voice of the people," "every man according to his mind" (see Elder Hales, Conference Report, April 2015). Alma, ever the realist, knows such assemblies and voting perforce bring out "much dispute and wonderful contentions one with another." Such have their due place in a free land: even "wonderful contentions" in organized assemblies and polling, held by the lawful voice and will of people "throughout all the land," trump the private battles of fists he so roundly denounces.

So determined in unity, with "every man" knowing his rights and "his mind," "throughout all the land," we will then "be prepared to meet" whatever else those with "intent to destroy" may offer, whether babblings, or riot, or terror, or war. We will have leaders, awake, "aware," and "prepared," "to lead [us] to war." The scriptural promise is: "they began to flee before them."

Joseph Smith Translation Proverbs 16:29

The Prophet Joseph Smith in his New Translation of the Bible at times makes the thinnest of changes. Attentive readers may appreciate such changes, but the same readers will be hard pressed to find mention of them in books or articles. 

For instance, Old Testament Manuscript 2 yields but three small corrections to Proverbs. Of these, Proverbs 16:29 shows a net change of just one word: the becomes a. A significant change? I'll leave that to the proverbial experts. One thing's for sure: the Prophet justifiably corrects "the way" to "a way," for the Hebrew reads veholikho bederekh lo-tov not baderekh lo-tov ("and directs him onto a path that is not good" not "the path that is not good"). The date of the change, 1833, predates Joseph Smith's study of Hebrew by nearly three years, yet the prophetic footing is sure.

In the KJV we read: "A violent man enticeth his neighbour, and leadeth him into the way that is not good." With the JST, we have "and leadeth him into a way that is not good" (or, dropping the crossed-out words in italics--a preliminary editorial sorting running throughout much of the Prophet's Bible--"into a way not good"). It's likely easier to entice your neighbor to join you in crime than anybody else; he sees the visible evidence of profit from ill-gotten gain. He sees that new car you're driving; he sees it trundling up the driveway every single day. The sense of the Proverb is: A man of violent will easily dupes a carefree and thoughtless buddy into going along with his schemes and thus quickly leads the fool down a bad and dangerous path. He dangles promises, while foregoing warnings of consequences.

In this case the translators slipped up (or went down the wrong path): baderekh not bederekh signals the demonstrative the. Does it matter either way in English? I don't know, but the preponderance of modern translations into English follow the Hebrew and translate "a path" or "a way" or "a bad path." 

There are many proverbs. So why Proverbs 16:29? Something caught his eye. Erlebnis. Nights spent running through woods or vaulting carriages down lonely roads leads one to wondering Just who in their right mind chases people down at night and all night over preachment and baptisms? (Or anything else?) Brother Joseph shakes his head. What tomfool of a fellow breathless runs with a mob? And where snores the plotter who put him up to it?

Something New Under The Old Sun: Joseph Smith Translation Ecclesiastes and the Song of Songs

Sandwiched between Joseph Smith's three small corrections to the Proverbs and his numerous changes to Isaiah comes the statement: "The Songs of Solomon are not Inspired writings." Nothing beside remains: we await Ecclesiastes as permanent fixture under the sun and find emptiness instead. And why the plural: the Songs of Solomon, are, inspired writings? Well, there are any number of 'em. Love's like that: Lieder not Lied. 

(See also valsederholm.blogspot.com, 13 July 2010: "Joseph Smith's New Translation and the Rejection of the Song of Solomon as "Inspired Writings.")

Robert J. Matthews addressed the curious matter of Ecclesiastican neglect in a question-and-answer session about the Joseph Smith Translation:

"I have heard that the book of Ecclesiastes was omitted from the JST. Why was it not included?

"Response: It is not Ecclesiastes but the Song of Solomon that was omitted. The JST Old Testament manuscript (page 97) states that 'The Songs of Solomon are not inspired writings.' However, what you may also have heard is that in the JST Old Testament manuscript there is no mention of the book of Ecclesiastes, one way or another, with no comment. This is probably an oversight. The printed JST has Ecclesiastes precisely as contained in the King James Version," in Robert Millett and Robert J. Matthews (eds), Plain and Precious Things, 183-184.

Brother Matthews's answer calls for clarification. First, let's be fair: The questioner did not confuse the statement about the Song of Solomon with what he or she had heard about Ecclesiastes. Second, "the printed JST" refers to the Inspired Version published by the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and thus sheds no light on an uncorrected, unmodified Ecclesiastes in Old Testament Manuscript 2. Third, when John M. Bernhisel copied the New Translation manuscript in Emma Smith's keeping, he added words not found in the manuscript itself: "Ecclesiastes Correct." That was all generations of Latter-day Saints, eager to get the latest on Ecclesiastes, would ever see (Reed C. Durham dissertation, "A History of Joseph Smith's Revision of the Bible," 162). Fourth, with the possible exception of the Song of Solomon, Latter-day Saints accept and study the entire Bible as canonical scripture. The Doctrine and Covenants no less than three times quotes the Song of Songs to describe the Restored Church adorned as a bride. Joseph Smith himself, here and there, borrows phrases from both Ecclesiastes and the Songs to illustrate his teachings (see indexes in Scriptural Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith and The Words of Joseph Smith). And lest there be any doubt about the continuing status of Ecclesiastes in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, consider the magnificent way in which Elder David A. Bednar, speaking on 4 April 2015 (today) in General Conference, summarized his own theme by letting us "hear the conclusion of the whole matter": "Fear God. . .For God shall bring every work into judgment" (12:13-14).

With these four points out of the way, we can now see the substance of Matthews's answer to what should have been taken as an apt question: "The omission of Ecclesiastes from the manuscript was probably an oversight." Matthews qualifies his answer with "probably" because he has no definite answer to give. That he doesn't, however, find the omission purposeful can be seen by the follow-up: "The printed JST has Ecclesiastes precisely as contained in the King James Version." The Prophet Joseph did make changes in Proverbs; Proverbs and Ecclesiastes partly overlap; therefore, Ecclesiastes must be scripture and, accordingly, its omission must (let's qualify it with "probably") be an oversight.

Matthews makes a case, but the omission of a book does not fit the Prophet's pattern.

Ruth escapes change. The record boldly states: "The Book of Ruth is all correct" (OT Manuscript 2, 711). The same annotation attends the Lamentations of Jeremiah and six minor prophets. For both Ezra and Esther, following each Roman number, the chapters are, one by one, marked "correct." No surprise here: Ezra was the great scribe of Israel: no tidying up necessary. As for Ruth and Esther, these are the only books in all scripture bearing the names of women. Enough said. Correct.

The Lamentations of Jeremiah also passes unscathed. How could anyone's lamentation invite correction? That would hardly be fair. The Book of Mormon includes some lamentations of its own. Consider Nephi lamenting from the tower. A lamentation can carry scriptural authority.

The most economical answer to the question Why was Ecclesiastes not included in the Joseph Smith Translation? must be because the Prophet Joseph Smith felt that some of the "writings" attributed to Solomon were "not inspired writings." Was "Songs" of Solomon intended as a catch-all? did it include the Preacher's wisdom? Not necessarily. Even so: "The Songs of Solomon are not inspired writings" does, by default, include Ecclesiastes.

H. Michael Marquardt, in a review of Faulring-Jackson-Matthews, Joseph Smith's 'New Translation of the Bible: Original Manuscripts, says that editing in the Prophet's "Marked Bible" shows intent to change wording in Ecclesiastes (Journal of Mormon History 31:3, 2005, 274-281; page 277). A review of the pages shows nothing to invite comment, however. The scribal hand makes a quick go-over of Ecclesiastes by striking out many, perhaps most, of the italicized words and phrases. A very few words inseparably bound in meaning to the italicized are likewise struck through. The strikeouts point at an intent to read Ecclesiastes in a new light by omitting any words presumably not reflecting original Hebrew text, but signal nothing more.

Marquardt does discover a real puzzler. The manuscript stops tracking changes in Proverbs after chapter 22 (in fact, after v. 12). He again notes changes in the "Marked Bible," but once again, these "proposed changes" are simply a first tracking of the italics. The Prophet likely decided by chapter 23 (or 22:13) that the Proverbs, or at least the last nine-and-a-half chapters, was of little moment, perhaps of none at all--not even sufficient to mark "correct." The manuscript shows but three small corrections to Proverbs anyhow. For instance, Joseph justifiably corrects "the way" to "a way" in Proverbs 16:29: the Hebrew, after all, reads bederekh lo-tov not baderekh lo-tov. From Proverbs 24 to Isaiah 1, a unique prophetic stillness falls upon the Bible. Pass. Ecclesiastes and the Song of Songs get lost in the wake of that decision or realization (Marquardt, "Review," 277).

Wisdom yet "uttereth her voice" in Scripture (Proverbs 1:20). The Book of Mormon evokes Lady Wisdom 58 times. Lehi speaks of bringing up a child in the way he should go (2 Nephi 4:5; Proverbs 22:6: "train up"). Does that show Lehi read the same collection of proverbs we do? It simply means Lehi went to school and became an "instructed scribe." There might even be a touch of Kohelet in Alma 40:11 (and cf. 2 Nephi 9), but we should not view Alma as quoting that book. The New England translator of Alma may indeed echo the Preacher, but any original similarity in wording signals not dependence but Kulturkreis, a broadly shared cultural theme: at death the spirit of life returns to the Giver.

We can lose our focus on the central truths of eternity in the interminable parade of proverbs. Joseph Smith was impatient to get on with "the translation of the prophets" (Doctrine and Covenants 90:13). "Remember," he tells the whimsical Josiah Quincy, "I am a prophet": "for the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy," that is to say, "the spirit of all the prophets" (Revelation 19:10).

The Lord taught the Prophet more about some books than others, and there are effulgent expansions so well as splendid changes. If He taught nothing at all about darksome Ecclesiastes, so be it. The Joseph Smith Translation guides us to those Biblical places which yield the greenest pastures of covenant, the stillest waters of promise, and the deepest wells of salvation. There Lady Wisdom also walks, and "the children of men," "wild flock" though they be, go there to "seek Wisdom" that "she should rule over them" (Mosiah 9:20-21; see also Helaman 12).


Joseph Smith--Kohelet-like--tried his hand at a few maxims of his own, but he never put them out as scripture. Sometime let's all get together and read from the Maxims, the Songs, and Kohelet to the strumming of harps. You come too.

Mark 1:41: Anger or Compassion? What Can We See? What Does Hope Show?

I

In Mark 1:40 "there came a leper" to Jesus, saying "If thou wilt, thou canst make me clean." According to most manuscripts, Jesus, "moved with compassion" (splanchnistheis), heals the leper (v. 41). Why does Codex Bezae say that Jesus was "moved with anger" or "angered" (orgistheis)? A few manuscripts simply leave out either splanchnistheis or orgistheis.

Charles C. Torrey long ago posited separate oral traditions, in Aramaic, for the story. That is to say, one Aramaic word or phrase conveyed "anger," the other, "compassion." Frederick C. Grant, writing in 1943, economically suggests for both manuscript traditions a single underlying Aramaic word, perhaps ragaz. Ragaz signifies anger but can also express other powerful emotions (Frederick C. Grant, The Earliest Gospel, Chapter 5: "Was Mark Written in Aramaic?"; see also Nestle's An Introduction to the Textual Criticism of the Greek New Testament (1901), 264-65. Bruce D. Metzger notes a Syriac confusable (ethraham and ethra'em, mercy and anger) as another explanation for the divergent Greek tradition--a simple misunderstanding underlay the "anger."

Bart Ehrman will have none of that. He finds "completely mystifying" any explanation that posits an Aramaic Vorlage. Metzger's confusables become "merely accidental." Nobody knows whether the Gospels had an Aramaic Vorlage or whether Mark or his first copyists were themselves bilingual in Aramaic and Greek; yet to assert, as Ehrman does, that the Gospels belong to a wholly Greek scribal tradition is to sidestep a lot of philology.

Professor Ehrman goes on to make a case for the priority of orgistheis. The reading, he argues, fits Mark's portrayal of a Messiah whose personality and emotions transcend even Messianic expectations. The Jesus of Mark shows Himself paradoxical, unpredictable, iconoclastic. Never was a Prophet more startling to any generation. Putting the conundrum of Mark 1:41 to one side, I do see merit in what Ehrman says of Mark's larger message. It matches what C.S. Lewis says of his own first encounter with the Jesus of the Gospels. Who are we to expect a Messiah that we readily comprehend? a King tailor-made? Elijah eludes us; Messiah must escape us. It will take effort to cast tradition away and come to "The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God."        

As might be expected in our fragile generation (we "fly to pieces like glass" at anything new, says Joseph Smith), debate over Ehrman's assertions and arguments both flourishes and rages. The textual questions that linger about Mark 1:41 have now become a matter of common knowledge. The Internet sags under the critical load.

The Prophet Joseph prepared us for such startling views of a Jesus at once both emotionally charged and down-to-earth friendly. People misunderstand meekness, he taught, so I "will personify Jesus for a moment to illustrate the principle." Joseph then "cried out with a loud voice, Woe unto you, ye doctors, woe unto you, ye lawyers, woe unto you, ye scribes, Pharisees, and hypocrites, etc." After the Jeremiad Joseph again "personifies" Jesus as saying "But you cannot find the place where I ever went that I found fault with their food, their drink, their house, their lodgings; no never"  (History of the Church 5:18).

The questions about the divine personality do not end with Mark 1:41, but the emotions of Jesus, as portrayed throughout Mark and the other Gospels, cleanly escape our mortal imaginations--as our watery translations attest. Speaking of Mark 1:43, in which the narrative tension still runs high, C.S. Mann notes: "The rare verb embrimaomai is a strong word, for which there is no satisfactory English equivalent." Reymond E. Brown, speaking of John 11:33, 38 and following Matthew Black and M.-E. Boismard, notes of embrimaomai (to sigh deeply within, to anger, to scold) and of tarassein (to shudder) "that these two Greek expressions are variant translations of the one original Aramaic expression which means 'to be strongly moved'" (Anchor Bible: John I: 426). The supposed Aramaic original of be "strongly moved"--and perhaps several like Aramaisms are in play in both John and Mark--may or may not be expressive of anger. The idea is a surge of sudden emotional energy the exact focus of which may not be discernible.

There clearly are several Aramaic words and phrases that may shed light on the strange Greek verbs expressive of emotional intensity in the Gospels. I see another such instance in the rare Hebrew idiom nikhmar raxamim, which I will discuss below. Yet given the absence of any surviving Aramaic or Hebrew manuscripts, as well as the difficulty of reconstructing an "original" Semitic diction and grammar for the individual units composing Mark, deciding which of the several possible idiomatic choices, if any, underlies either the divergent Greek reading of Mark 1:41 or any like places remains an open question.

Authorship of Mark's Gospel perforce required some act of cultural if not linguistic translation; whether more than one hand helped effect that translation we cannot tell. Neither do we have any means to date a supposed later scribal softening of "anger" into "compassion." In view of our ignorance, text criticism of Mark 1:41 cannot go much beyond the sort of thing that Nestle, Grant, or Metzger suggest. Should we brush aside the evidence from Aramaic and grant priority to "anger" in the textual tradition, we can ponder the implications without going into scholarly overdrive or asserting a righteous indignation.

And let's be very clear. Whether orgistheis or not, what Mark shows us of Jesus is no bland "righteous indignation," rather an emotion so dreadfully divine that the mountains melt at His presence. Mark himself is less than sure about the implications of the revelation: he believes he sees divine compassion, then "he" also claims to see anger (at least one early scribe so saw). Mark gives us but glimpses of the Divine; Jesus escapes us still.


The true question facing the reader of Mark 1:41 should not be whether Mark consistently represents Jesus as quick to anger, but why Jesus was so painfully responsive to, even emotionally overwhelmed at, hope? I would say at suffering--but it was the suffering hopeful to whom the Lord responded. The responsiveness that Jesus brought to bear on the hope that met Him easily overthrows any other man. Emotion at root cannot be so evenly parceled out between anger, compassion, love. One man hears the divine voice; another stops his ears at thunder. Whether orgistheis or splanchnistheis, what we meet in the Gospels is an emotional response that can only be characterized as Divine--the soul of the Son of God. No Greek participle suffices--we come to the edge of the ineffable. In other words, the anger of the Son of God both is and is not your anger; His compassion both is and is not--and never can be--your compassion. His silence is not your silence.


II

Emotion untranslatable to moderns often surges from Scripture. At times it overwhelms. Perhaps such scriptural outpourings come closest to reflecting the Divine.

Consider two familiar places in the Old Testament.

Genesis 43: 29 And he lifted up his eyes, and saw his brother Benjamin, his mother's son, and said, Is this your younger brother, of whom ye spake unto me? And he said, God be gracious unto thee, my son. 30 And Joseph made haste; for his bowels did yearn upon his brother: and he sought where to weep; and he entered into his chamber, and wept there.


1 Kings 3:24 And the king said, Bring me a sword. And they brought a sword before the king. 25 And the king said, Divide the living child in two, and give half to the one, and half to the other. 26 Then spake the woman whose the living child was unto the king, for her bowels yearned upon her son, and she said, O my lord, give her the living child, and in no wise slay it. But the other said, Let it be neither mine nor thine, but divide it. 27 Then the king answered and said, Give her the living child, and in no wise slay it: she is the mother thereof.


Each story pivots about a moment of extreme emotional intensity: "for his bowels did yearn upon his brother" (ki-nikhmeru raxamahav al axhiv); "for her bowels yearned upon her son" (ki-nikhmeru raxamehah al benah). Each story reminds us of the pure love of Jesus.


The idiom combines a rare and difficult verb k-m-r (to become black, to become hot, thus to burn black) with the noun rxm (womb, innards, bowels; raxamim, bowels, compassion). Genesis 43:30 thus tells us how Joseph's bowels blackened with intense heat, his bowels did burn. Nahum Sarna reads: "his mercies were heated up" (JPS: Commentary on Genesis); for E.A. Speiser, the literal meaning is: "to boil over with emotion" (Anchor Bible: Genesis). The Targum and Peshitta versions (both Aramaic) of Gen. 43:30 and 1 Kings 3:26 yield plenty of material paralleling the supposed Aramaic antecedent of splanchnisthies/orgistheis. The Septuagint, though also poignant, shows less color. In the Peshitta the true mother's emotions spin topsy-turvy (hpk gwl); the Septuagint speaks of a yearning in her metra. (The LXX tellingly uses a different noun in the Joseph story: ta egkata, innards.)

In both Genesis and 1 Kings the black heat within can only answer to pained yet positive emotions of deep yearning; anger doesn't fit the story line. Facing the same or similar idiom in a more complicated narrative a baffled translator might mistake a black-hot burning or a topsy-turvy emotion for an expression of anger rather than pity. But that is besides the point. Every reading becomes both riddling and translation. What the reader of Mark 1:40-45, and the like, anxiously seeks is the cultural understanding, and Genesis 43:30 and 1 Kings 3:24 do convey the constellation of emotion at its scriptural best.


Let's return to Mark's narrative.


Mark 1:40 And there came a leper to him, beseeching him, and kneeling down to him, and saying unto him, If thou wilt, thou canst make me clean.

41 And Jesus, moved with compassion (or with anger), put forth his hand, and touched him, and saith unto him, I will; be thou clean.


There are reasons for preferring orgistheis. Commonly held rules of interpretation favor the difficult reading. Ehrman, despite the sole occurrence in the Greek textual tradition (along with some attestations in the Old Latin), is fond of pointing out that the gentling of anger into compassion meets psychological expectations; compassion heightened into anger would require unwonted energies. Besides, two verses later comes a verb expressing an intensity of emotion that defies translation: embrimesamenos from embrimaomai (groan, roar, snort within, brimo, be angry). We then meet exebalen (He threw or drove him out).

Yet an angry reaction at the petition for mercy has never satisfied anyone. Ehrman is clear on this point: Mark means not to satisfy but to shock. His purpose is to reveal "God manifest in the flesh," not to explain or to justify Him. We emerge from Mark's transforming Gospel reading and speaking "with a new tongue" (see 2 Nephi 31:14). Jesus is, as Paul says, "manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels" (1 Timothy 3:16, the italic added).


And Jesus, his bowels yearning, or his bowels burning black with intense emotion, put forth his hand, and touched him, and saith unto him, I will; be thou clean.


A countenance more in sorrow or in anger? For Ehrman, a single word triggers Jesus's response: "if." "If thou art willing." To question the Lord's willingness to save, not the sight of advanced leprosy, is what provokes the Healer. Might the idea find reflection in the words of Zenock?

Thou art angry, O Lord, with this people, because they will not understand thy mercies which thou hast bestowed upon them because of thy Son (Alma 33:16).

Bart Ehrman's view of a hotly jealous Lord strikes most readers as extreme. That's the idea but: Questioning mercy in the very request? Who can tell whether the seeker was cutting it close? I wouldn't wish to "be cut off while in the thought" (Moroni 8:14). We mustn't lose sight of the leper for the doubter or the cynic. Above all things, we long to "understand the mercies."

Jesus, groaning within, or sighing deeply, orders the blessed leper to "tell no man" but repair to the priest to fulfill the requirements of the law. He then drives him away. Given this burst of emotive verbs and solemn imperatives, the possibility for mistaking a Semitic idiom about burning within, even boiling over, for an expression of anger fits. It's all one--forget textual priority. While the Hebrew expression in Genesis 43:30 certainly is not the Vorlage of any of the verbs found in Mark 1:40-45, it does form part of the cultural understanding a discerning student ought to bring to the text. Without such informed and in-gathered cultural understanding, no translation can meet its purpose. It is the compelling verbal energy rushing to meet the reader, not the particular choice of words or even translation, that matters. At the leper's approach, meek Jesus becomes the Word of God "manifest in the flesh."


III

Why does Jesus drive the man away? The human reaction would have been to drive a leper away, and the Law of Moses so requires it; Jesus drives away a man cleansed. In the paradox we see the humility and perfection of Jesus. He seeks no adulation, no praise from the cleansed leper; nor does He seek the fame that attends the working of wonders. As he groans within, deeply sighing, and chases the blessed away, just so does Jesus anger at adulation and praise. He drives fame and honor far from His face.

Mark catches the suddenness of the thing. The leper appears out of nowhere and vehemently pleads. Jesus, overwhelmed with a surging emotion, fervently echoes the plea--"I will"--and burning with the divine energy catches hold of the untouchable slave to disease. But the energy of mercy, the energy that then moves out to heal, cannot end with the cleansing: it tumbles into the world with a charge and a command. "See thou tell no man"; "Go." Should he tarry, the man would certainly wither in the continuing discharge. As the Targum of Genesis 43:30 shows, that energy is tightly rolled; its expression, the unfurling of waves. The Hand of Mercy also holds the sword of divine justice, turning every way. The moment of healing for this man also marks the moment of peril.

The man "full of leprosy," and therefore met by Jesus with emotional shock, was covered with compassion. Compassion, just as did Jesus' hand, "caught hold" and held him in a powerful grasp. Divine mercy also knows a letting go. Cleansed, the whole man may now face squarely the further tests of life. Just so with all mankind: released in love "from a more exalted sphere," "Thou hast placed us here on earth." Even in glorious premortality we met strivings and drivings. Release came, but the wrestle of choice continues. "I will; Be." The mask of leprosy removed, the natural man, however loved, however blessed, stood revealed before Jesus. Mercy had been fulfilled--and that was enough. There was not a moment to lose--"Dawn goes down to day"; "To day, if ye will hear his voice." When Adam and Eve were driven out of the Garden of Eden, and the flaming sword fixed, the power to choose--"free forever"--determined the pathway.

The natural man chooses praise, adulation, fame--emotion run amok. He chooses to "publish" and to "blaze." Jesus set the man free to pursue what men pursue.


IV

Jesus' most overpowering emotional expression is silence. Jesus cherished conversation yet He always returns to stillness. Paradoxically, it is Jesus' silence that best helps us understand His raging compassion. Why is this so? Because that silence, often countering ferocity, best exemplifies His powers of control. But all who know Jesus also see how such discipline is not reserved for the trials before worldly rulers nor solely for the scourge or the cross. No. A like discipline undergirded all His tears. It undergirded His anger; it knew His compassion.

Jesus stands separate.

Art may serve where translation escapes us. Mihaly Munkacsy's Christ Before Pilate portrays Jesus on trial before assembled humanity. The debate rages on, the Divinity of Jesus Christ the "Great Question" on all minds (see Alma 34:5). Though at the center of the painting, as of the debate, Jesus stands increasingly unnoticed. Captivated by argument, germane or no, few now turn their gaze toward Him; certainly none penetrates the calm divinity of His mind. None disturb His silence. Pilate absorbed, attuned only to his own inner debate, looks on Jesus with a scowl. He doesn't really see Jesus. No one does. All are distracted or abstracted. At that very moment, stands Mankind Before Jesus.






Notes (Under Construction)

"So dawn goes down to day"--Robert Frost, "Nothing Gold Can Stay."

I enjoy reading Bart Ehrman's commentary on Mark 1:41, as now published in many places. Ehrman has introduced a whole generation to this particular textual variant and to an inkling of its Nachleben, and for this he deserves our gratitude. My own training in the principles of text criticism focused on the Hebrew Bible and Ancient Egyptian texts--not the Testament. What, then, to say?

I sense an earnestness in Ehrman's treatment of variants where detachment may be more instructive. His insistent, rarefied logic will not adduce the best reading(s) for Mark 1:41. Neither do Ehrman's broad conclusions about the Jesus of Mark logically counter or linguistically contradict notions of an Aramaic Vorlage for the Greek texts. Let's continue to ponder the studies of Metzger, Brown, and company.

The paper I'm using in preparing the present essay, also found online, is "A Leper is the Hands of an Angry Jesus."

Proctor, M.A. (dissertation), "The 'Western' Text of Mark 1:41: A Case for the Angry Jesus."

Biblical Archaeology Review [Bible History Daily],  Does the Gospel of Mark Reveal Jesus' Anger or His Compassion?"

Cate, Jeff, "The Unemotional Jesus in Manuscript 1358," The Folio, Fall 2011, ABMC, Claremont.
Cate now shows that Codex Bezae, alone of Greek manuscripts, has the variant reading. What to make of the few corresponding Latin manuscripts?

Metzger


Mann, C.S. The Anchor Bible: Mark (1986), 219:

"The more difficult reading of 'indignation' can easily be understood as being changed to 'compassion,' but it would be very difficult to imagine a change from 'compassion' to 'indignation.' Mann, as have others, sees the indignation as likely expressive of "an indignation at the Satanic disorder in God's creation."

Such anger may be of-a-piece with divine compassion--thus either translation serves to make a point about Jesus' saving love and mercy.

"43 sent him away: Literally, 'drove him away.' The emotion demonstrated here perhaps arises from exhaustion after a period of healing, or perhaps (and more likely in view of Jesus' words) from a desire on Jesus' part to protect himself from a reputation as a wonder-worker.

stern warning: The rare verb embrimaomai is a strong word, for which there is no satisfactory English equivalent."


See also 3 Nephi 17:14:

And it came to pass that when they had knelt upon the ground, Jesus groaned within himself, and said: Father, I am troubled because of the wickedness of the people of the house of Israel.

The Nephite language traces back to Hebrew; at any rate, following John 11:33, 38, we can guess how the phrase "groaned within himself" best reflects the Greek. Again, "troubled" echoes John 11:33: terassein (to shudder). And consider how "I am troubled," given the context, is the sort of reading which could be mistaken by a scribe for "I am angry": "I am angry because of the wickedness of the house of Israel." Anger, trouble, and compassion often flow together.



Elder James E. Talmage, in Jesus the Christ, views the haste of dispatch as mirroring the gathering storm. Should the man not quickly--and quietly--repair to the priests, rumors of disregard for the Law might fuel the hearts of Jesus' determined opponents. Such a view of Mark 1:40-45 not only resonates with Latter-day Saint history, with its legacy of persecution, but reflects Elder Talmage's own experiences. He knew whereof he spoke.