According to the Book of Moses, the Lord sent Enoch to preach to the seven peoples who constituted the civilized, cultivated, educated world. (The name Enoch signifies "trained" or "educated," as we learn from Hugh Nibley's Enoch the Prophet.) Others lived on the margins of culture (the warlike Canaanites and Enoch's own peaceable Land of Canaan), but they are excluded from these Perfect Seven.
The names of the seven peoples arrest the attention by their resemblance to both Biblical and Book of Mormon names--they have an undeniable Semitic look to them:
Sharon
Enoch (or Hannoch)
Omner
Heni
Shum
Haner
Hannannihah.
And given that some three or four of these names seem to be built on the Semitic root hn or hnn, we start to sense what these people thought of themselves: favored, graced, cultivated. Here every Virginia goose is a swan (as John Adams would say), each a Rose of Sharon. The place name Sharon, by the way, signifies, as appellative noun, "flat country," an excellent place for pasturage. The people of Sharon are therefore shepherds of rich pasturage. These are all lands to "be longed for, craved for" (cf. the Arabic root hanna = Klein, Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language, 224-5; Sharon and Sharona: James Hoch, Semitic Words in New Kingdom and Third Intermediate Period Texts, 263).
But if the text demands Semitic names for these antediluvians, shall we not also take into consideration Egyptian, a fellow Afro-Asiatic language having many correspondences to Semitic.
Let us begin with Haner and Heni.
Haner fits the Egyptian mold perfectly; in fact, the mold is that of a fortified tower, or hnr.t (xnr.t) a Bollwerk or Festung, as the Egyptian Woerterbuch has it: a mighty bulwark. It doesn't take much imagination to recall all the Bergs and Burgs and Borgs at the root of European Civilization--or their bourgeoisie inhabitants that make up the root of all evil. My own Swedish ancestors dwelt for hundreds of years at what was once a pagan ritual center, later called Borg. The word hnr also describes the harem, the walled-in household of the king. Harem, by the way, comes from the Arabic root h-r-m that describes "that which is forbidden," or sacred, or is to be protected by walls.
Thus we see that the favored and graced inhabitants of the civilized world of Enoch's day had to resort to fortresses and castles in order to protect their way of life. It is the Bronze Age in world history, and indeed hnr also signifies weapons and instruments made of that metal. Sharon becomes Shiryon (a coat of mail).
On the opposite side of the road from the fortified castle stands the tent, the hn.t. The people of the tent, in Egyptian, are the hnj: the Heni. That the Heni should be, originally at least, the people of the tent chimes in perfectly with the wording of the Book of Moses about Enoch's preaching:
Chapter 7
5 And it came to pass that I beheld in the valley of Shum, and lo, a great people which dwelt in tents, which were the people of Shum.
6 And again the Lord said unto me: Look; and I looked towards the north, and I beheld the people of Canaan, which dwelt in tents. [When the Canaanites exterminate the hapless people of Shum, who did not pay attention to Enoch, there are now left only six civilized peoples on the earth.]
Chapter 6
37 And it came to pass that Enoch went forth in the land, among the people, standing upon the hills and the high places [bergs and burgs and borgs?], and cried with a loud voice, testifying against their works; and all men were offended because of him.
38 And they came forth to hear him, upon the high places, saying unto the tent-keepers: Tarry ye here and keep the tents, while we go yonder to behold the seer, for he prophesieth, and there is a strange thing in the land; a wild man hath come among us [a non-civilized, unsophisticated person, a tribal person].
But tents give way to palaces in Egypt. Thus a hnw becomes both a private and also a princely Wohnort or Residenz (as the Woerterbuch has it). The Pharaoh himself dwells in a hnw: a residence (but in the long ago a vasty tent). Recall the opening line of the Book of Abraham: "In the land of the Chaldeans, at the residence (hnw) of my fathers, I, Abraham, saw that it was needful for me to obtain another place of residence."
What could be more odd than the use of the word residence by Joseph Smith to describe Abraham? Or what could be more Egyptian then hnw as residence, as Hugh Nibley also noted? The choice of translation rings true. And here again comes telling evidence that the Prophet was reading real Egyptian words written in actual hieroglyphs off a physical, tangible papyrus roll. The idea that the papyri bought by the Prophet were just helps to his inspiration lacks explanatory force. Brother Joseph held the physical papyrus roll of Abraham in his own hands. Only a tangible object bearing words invites such exacting Egyptian readings as the translation reveals. And such a physical, concrete object alone can be a sign or earnest of the resurrection of the dead (another theme of the words of Enoch in the Book of Moses). That we should have the actual roll of hieroglyphics becomes a seal of Abraham's own love for us; he wrote his book "for the benefit of my posterity."
Indeed the phrase is not residence alone, that is, a tent (and Abraham often dwelt in tents), but the residence of my fathers and a place of residence, not only what the dictionary calls a Wohnort but also a Hauptort, eines Gaus [district], eines Landes, einer Stadt, etc. The residence of my fathers is the place of the Semitic people themselves, headed by the plain of Oli-shem [3wj-shm = expanse or place of Shem?], according to Abraham's own book. To find another place of residence is to dispossess oneself, to cut oneself off from the tribe, to become not Shem but Shum--destined for desolation.
But to return to Enoch, another outcast on a mission to save the world by preaching.
How perfectly the names combine: the land of Haner with its walled castles, prefiguring the awful wars about to descend on the world, and offset only by the towers of Zion: "Then the towers of Zion glittered/like the sun in yonder skies"--for Zi-on is literally the place of white hot, intense, glittering light. Haner, by way of contrast, is walled darkness, a prison world (something like our own, more and more). A person of hnr, in Egyptian, is also a robber, an evildoer, now locked in a vast prison. Next, then, come the folk of Heni, the dwellers in tents, who even have a professional caste of tent-keepers to keep things in strictest order when out on the hunt or at war--when anything could happen at home. A mere hour listening to the wild man, and all your goods are spoiled by robbers. Enoch is bad news for capitalism. And what of those of Hanannihah: In Egyptian hnn denotes chaos, rebellion (also hn, or xn, the works of Seth.
What happened to our choice, educated, graced, and favored people--our rosy people of Hannah and Samuel and Hannoch and Sharon and Shum? They now "are looking forth with fear, in torment, for the fiery indignation of the wrath of God to be poured out upon them" (7:1).
10 And the Lord said unto me: Go to this people, and say unto them—Repent, lest I come out and smite them with a curse, and they die.
A plea for mercy (hnn) remains: the mercy of the Lord.
Hannanihah.
Notes:
The Seven Peoples and their place: "What was the world like in Enoch's day? Joseph Smith places the action amidst pastoral nomads ranging the mountains and valleys--and so do the other sources. They show us the righteous and the wicked, sometimes designated as Sethians and Cainites, living respectively in the mountains and the lowlands," Hugh Nibley, Enoch the Prophet, 194. "The wicked gathered together in great valleys," 194; "the sinners in the plain [the Sharon]," 195. "Besides the people of Canaan. . .seven other exotic tribes are named in the Joseph Smith Enoch, suggesting the familiar seven-pattern of tribal organizations," 197, as with the Lehites.
Sharon in J. Simons, The Geographical and Topographical Texts of the Old Testament, ps. 83-4.
Monday, June 21, 2010
Mount Hanabal in the Joseph Smith Translation of Genesis 14
The Prophet Joseph left for the benefit of the Saints not one but two books of Abraham: that taken from a roll of papyrus, a physical, tangible roll of Egyptian hieroglyphs (and like the gold plates, a tangible earnest of the resurrection of the dead), now published as the Book of Abraham, and that of the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible. Together, these two offerings fill in the picture of Abraham's life with details, stories, and revelations not found in the Holy Bible and reveal the covenant of the Priesthood God made with the fathers.
Among the easily missed details added by Brother Joseph to the ancient story of Abraham is the place name Hanabal, which could refer to one or several of the Mountains of Moab, on the east of the Dead Sea, perhaps Jebel Sihan, with its high ruins and caves. The mountain towers out of nowhere in Joseph Smith Translation Genesis 14:9--a verse not found in the current LDS edition of the Holy Bible = KJV Genesis 14:10:
1 And it came to pass in the days of Amraphel king of Shinar, Arioch king of Ellasar, Chedorlaomer king of Elam, and Tidal king of nations;
2 That these made war with Bera king of Sodom, and with Birsha king of Gomorrah, Shinab king of Admah, and Shemeber king of Zeboiim, and the king of Bela, which is Zoar.
8 And there went out the king of Sodom, and the king of Gomorrah, and the king of Admah, and the king of Zeboiim, and the king of Bela (the same is Zoar;) and they joined battle with them in the vale of Siddim;
9 With Chedorlaomer the king of Elam, and with Tidal king of nations, and Amraphel king of Shinar, and Arioch king of Ellasar; four kings with five.
10 And the vale of Siddim was full of slimepits [JST OT Manuscript 1 has: was filled with slime pits]; and the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah fled, and fell there; and they that remained fled to the mountain.
To the last verse, the Prophet adds:
and they that remained fled to the mountain[s--crossed out] which is called Hanabal. (Old Testament Manuscript 2, p. 640),
or,
to the Mountain [note the capital letter] which was called [Hanable: crossed out] Hanabal (Old Testament Manuscript 1, p. 125).
Of the two manuscripts, Manuscript 2 is the more telling: Hanabal refers to a particular peak rather than a range (the plural mountains is amended to the singular), and we are told by the ancient Hebrew redactor that people in his day still call the mountain Hanabal. By telling us what the mountain is now called, rather than what it was called, also bespeaks an etiological origin of the name, that is, one fixed from a concrete historical event. The Prophet takes care that the name is correctly spelled: Hanabal not Hanable. The spelling with b rather than v, a softening following the vowel, reflects archaic Hebrew usage; the vocalization of the Masoretic Text, on the other hand, follows post-exilic pronunciation, which would yield Ha-naval.
Any understanding of the meaning of Hanabal, which likely represents either Ha + Nabal (The Nabal) or Har + Nabal (Mount Nabal), builds around the thematic opposition of two homonymous Semitic verbs: the Arabic n-b-l (to be noble, magnanimous, as in nabl; nabil; pl. nibal, nubala: "noble; lofty, exalted, sublime, august; magnificent, splendid, glorious": Wehr's Dictionary of Modern Arabic) and Hebrew n-b-l (the Qal intransitive form of the verb signifies it sank, dropped down--and thus to fade and wear away = Klein, Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language, 422). In Koehler-Baumgartner (p. 589), we find under n-b-l, which divides into the verbal pair navel (wither) and naval (be foolish), and its nominal derivatives the following meanings: wither, be contemptible, despise. Things n-b-l are "wretched things"--a lost and a fallen people--"senseless" and "foolish" both "intellectually and morally," even they who groan under a weight of "heavy sin." Related thematic roots are Arabic and Hebrew n-b-' (Arabic naba'a: "to be high, raised, elevated, protruding, projecting, prominent"; to tell, and even to prophesy = a prophet is a navi), and Hebrew n-p-l (to fall).
Akkadian n-b-l (from the verb abalu) yields the arid or dry land: in a time of war people flee the cities into the nabal, a place without water, the dry and thirsty land. Mount Dry-and-Thirsty. The place Bazu is "a forgotten place of dry land, saline ground [qaqqar tabti], a waterless place." And to think a mere moment ago, before the arrows and the brimstone fell, Lot, in Bethel, stood overlooking quite a different qaqqar or kikar: a watered plain, just like the Garden of Eden (Gen. 13:10). Another Akkadian word, nablu (nab = brilliance, shining splendor), describes flames and fierce lightning, which gods and heroes rain down on their enemies: "I fought with them, I rained fire on them." "Enlil [the prince of the powers of the air] whirls in the midst of the enemies, he keeps the flame(s) [nabla] smoking." Fury transforms flames into ball lightning: "rain down like shooting stars, strike continually like ball lightning" (Chicago Assyrian Dictionary, no. N). The stars in their courses fight Sisera. And fire from heaven will complete the downfall of the Cities of the Plain.
Perhaps the primary derivation of the name Hanabal (which, again, likely represents the article ha- plus the root n-b-l or even a shortened form of the word har, or mountain, plus n-b-l) best corresponds to the Arabic root n-b-l: Mount Noble, Mount Lofty, the Splendid, the August. Mighty Mount Nebo derives from the root n-b-': Mount Prominent, or even ultimately from n-b-l. The Enochic literature (Nibley, 30), speaks of a Mount Nebus near Salem, clearly an echo from Nebo; yet we are told this is the very place where Melchizedek met Abraham after the latter rescued Lot from the battling kings of Genesis 14. Curious is an unknown mountain from Jubilees: Lubar (= l/n -b-r/l(?). On the peak of Lubar, the ark rests; at her foot, Noah's sons first build cities (Jubilees 5:28; 6:1; 7:14-17; 10:15, in Charlesworth, OT Pseudepigrapha, vol.1; Genesis Apocryphon). As near to the mark is the Mountain of Gabla or Gebal, the Horite homeland, mentioned in the Targumic readings of Genesis 14:6, just four verses shy of our Hanabal. In the Targum Mount Gabla (g-b-l "border" or "mountain") replaces Mount Seir of Edom. So we now have n-b-', l-b-r or l-b-l, and g-b-l, an entire constellation of like mountain words or names featured in the accounts of Noah, Shem, and Abraham.
A perfect vocalic match for Hanabal appears in the Benjaminite town of Neballat (Neh. 11:34). In Arabic the place is Beit Nabala (the last two vowels are both long). The meaning of Neballat or Beit Nabala might accordingly be Noble City (one thinks of Jerusalem "beautiful for situation"; or Capernaum, the "exalted," the "city upon a hill"). If the hill is also a tell, or ruin, Neballat then also bespeaks the withering root of Hebrew n-b-l, an eroded wreck. Neballat also recalls the Arabic word for a paved or tiled floor (balats), which might really have been a prominent feature of the place and which also suggests the idea of steps upward from the tar pits into Mount Nabal's protective heights.
In another stab at Hanabal, the vowels don't match: The name of the Carthaginian general is Hanni-bal, (Baal favors him (with a son): hn/hnn: to favor, grace, pity), a name comparable to the Hebrew Hanniel (see Dictionary of the Bible by Sir William Smith, 1872). We likewise resist positing an unknown nominal form h-n-b-l (as bizarre as the Psalmic word for frost: hanamal).
On the other hand, Mount Nabal, following the Hebrew understanding of the same root nbl, might signify Mount Weathered, Mount Withered, Mount Anything-but-August-and-Splendid. In other words, the exact opposite of what the Arabic root conveys. But could both readings work together to give us a true picture of Hanabal?
A secondary, etiological derivation, which plays on the Hebrew root, might exist for Hanabal, one rooted in the storyline with its account of the downfall of the kings in the desperate Vale of Siddim (how ironic for the Targum to translate Siddim as Orchards), where the warriors sink into tar pits (like our own La Brea) and wither into oblivion. The survivors, roundly beaten, flee into a weathered and eroded hill that hangs above the bottomless pits. When we say that names are etiological in origin or function, we refer to such linguistic association (including word play) centering on a historical event. Such etiological derivation in no wise affects the validity of the primary, linguistic derivation from an verbal root, upon which it plays, or elaborates.
The article ha- ("the") with the triliteral root n-b-l may thus signify (The) Mount Ruin, Withered Top. (I'm thinking of Tolkien here: Orodruin, Weathertop.) There are all kinds of suggestive hints that evoke the Hebrew notion of a Mount Nabal. A quick Internet glimpse of the Mountains of Moab arrests the soul: extinct Tannur, Jebel Shihan (Geonames.org). And on the west of the Dead Sea we spot: "The cap rock and the pillars of salt that have fallen from the mountain top" (WysInfo Docuwebs: Life from the Dead Sea: Geological Structure). Or perhaps the mountain resembled a jar. Jar in Hebrew also derives from n-b-l, or perhaps it ultimately derives from another root as per Arabic b-l-ts, (ballats), a jar, being that which, like a eons-contorted mountain, is "wrung forcibly," pinched into shape. Sunk, withered, and geologically wrung out to dry: that is Jebel Usdum, Mount Sodom.
Given that the verbal root n-b-l signifies "to fall down, faint, lose strength" (so Gesenius), or to wither and fall, fall to ruin, wear out (so Koehler and Baumgartner), and thus also to folly and stupidity, the name works a bitter and terribly apt word play: "[they foolishly] fled, and [foolishly] fell [n-p-l] there: right into the tar pits; and they that remained fled to the mountain [or to the range: herah nasu]. In place of herah [har + directional -ah, "to the mountain or to the range"], the Samaritan Pentateuch significantly has the variant h-h-r-h, "to the mountain, to that particular mountain or range," all of which gives notice that something is off, something missing in the Received Text. We look for more: "To the mountain, or range," says the Prophet: "which was called Ha-nabal." Ha-nabal then becomes not only a place of ascent and escape but the place of falling--and the place of folly (nevalah)--the place of the rout--the place of the corpse (navlah).
Mankind flees upward, trudgingly, under a withering sun--and the gravity of heavy sin. Lightning seems to dance on the blushing peak; in the gulf below, the pits spew and bubble. The sophisticated city-dweller is left an eternal Nabutum (Akkadian: Fugitive) The name Ha-Nabal spells doom: the Fall of Kings. All is folly, vanity, and disgrace.
Nabal the glorious meets Nabal the Sunken, and the height of the mountain (Jebel Shihan rises over three thousand feet) only accentuates the depth of the fall in coincidentia oppositorum, the meeting of opposites: both tar pits and the Dead Sea seem bottomless. As Hamlet would say: "Oh what a falling-off was there!" A still greater fall awaits the Cities of the Plain!
Mount Nabal and Mount Lebanon (Lebanon being the Brilliant, White Mountain, even the Holy Temple) remarkably coincide in a sobering anagram (n-b-l ~ l-b-n): on the one side, curse; on the other, blessing (cf. Braude, The Midrash on Psalms, 1:148, 484). In like manner rise the mirroring mountains of curse and blessing, Ebal and Gerizim--"on the other side Jordan" (Deuteronomy 11:29-30). Choices must be made. Lot, from the giddy ladder of Bethel (the House of God), envisions a watered Eden below--but that is "no lasting city"; it is only "when a man comes up to the top of Mount Nebo, [that] he sees in the Sea of Tiberias a whirlpool, sieve-like, which is Miriam's Well," the very well of living waters first discovered by Abraham and promised his posterity (Midrash on Psalms, 1:341; Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews, 3: 50-4). From Holy Bethel Lot sights not Eden, but Nabal. Abraham, climbing to higher ground, "rejoiced to see my day: and he saw it, and was glad"; Moses glimpsed Galilee; Nephi, on the "exceedingly high mountain," saw Mary's well and its tree of life (John 8:56; 1 Nephi 11).
Here is irony indeed: and the more withering the more understated, in true Hebrew fashion.
Building on the ironic paronomasia in JST Genesis 14, we move to Job 14: 18 and discover "the mountain that lies prostrate" (har-nofel yibol), as some ranges seem to do, a phrase that also plays on the roots n-p-l and n-b-l. N-p-l is the primary root of falling in Hebrew, and really just amounts to n-b-l anyhow. Klein relates n-b-l (and note the reflexive n- prefix built onto all the various (n)-b-l roots) to the verbs b-l-h, b-l-l (the fall of the tower all over again), and n-p-l, verbs of fading, failing, falling, and confusion: Babel meets Sodom, and all is lost--witheringly so (Etymological Dictionary, 422). The generations of men fall like leaves, intones great Homer (cf. Jeremiah 8). Enoch on Mount Simeon, "high and lifted up"--and suspended in time--saw one generation pass after another (Moses 7).
The verse in Job speaks to a familiar, though archaic, name for weathered peaks or maybe even our own Hanabal. And here is a hint that our Ha-nabal might derive from Har-Nabal. A linguistic shift from Har-Nabal to Ha-Nabal is altogether likely, the final r dropping before the n, as perforce occurs in Arabic. Or perchance the scribal ear simply missed and misconstrued Brother Joseph's New England /r/: Ha[r]nabal, just as we find in the initial scribal mistakes for the following Book of Abraham names: Koash for Korash; Elkenah, not scribal Elkenner.
Job reads:
18 And surely the mountain falling cometh to nought, and the rock is removed out of his place.
19 The waters wear the stones: thou washest away the things which grow out of the dust of the earth; and thou destroyest the hope of man,
and certainly the hope of man meets destruction in Genesis 14.
Yet the translation, "the mountain falling cometh to nought (yibol)," but poorly renders the Hebrew, where we find the bound construction har-nofel, not har nofel. Thus--if we want to get picky--not any abstract mountain falls, but that abstraction which is called 'Mount Nofel'). Har-nofel distantly reflects a place name, or, more likely, it was a common designation for eroded peaks.
Again, "cometh to nought" amounts to a flawed attempt to read the verbal root n-b-l as an organic metaphor of withering. What we should read is "will sink down" or "erode": "Indeed [ulay] 'Mount Implodes' erodes to dust."
And, according to the Shoher Tov, this verse from Job does have to do with Abraham and the kingdom of Sodom. Reading Job "in the light of what Scripture says elsewhere": "The mountain falling crumbleth away refers to Sodom and its sister cities; And the rock is removed out of his place refers to Abraham, for he is the rock" (see Isaiah 51:1-2: Shoher Tov on Psalm 53: W. G. Braude, The Midrash on Psalms, 1: 486-7).
A midrashic reading of Scripture reflects literary intertextuality; yet, given the antique pulpit origin of such Psalmic homilies, the waves of midrash may also cast up historical and thematic pearls. That the rock should recall Abraham is no surprise (Isaiah 51:1-2), but neither can we read the mountain falling crumbleth without Jebel Usdum (Mount Sodom) looming before our eyes as the concrete example of all fallen kingdoms. Besides, that Psalm 53 should reveal Abraham should come as no surprise to Latter-day Saints in light of what the same psalm (which pairs with Psalm 14) says and conveys about the world of Joseph Smith at the time of his First Vision (see Braude, xvi).
Boasted History, as discipline, actually takes second seat to Midrash as interpreter of events. Students of Biblical geography remain hopelessly confused about the location of the Jordan-Pentapolis (of Genesis 14), giving us both a northern and a southern "hypothesis." The Cities of the Plain have vanished, together with their captains and kings. But one thing is certain: Latter-day Saints find the Biblical record of Abraham to be a faithful record of historical events (see Hugh Nibley, Abraham in Egypt, 171ff). Ancient Hanabal, wherever it is, comes to us both new and concrete, and the meaning of the name proposed here fits both a Semitic rootage descriptive of Nebos and noble heights and the literary themes of the etiological narrative.
The Prophet in his translations, like the faithful scribe, brings forth things both old and new. How beautiful are his feet upon the mountains, the feet that announce a gospel dispensation in which old things come to light anew.
How beautiful the mountain which is called Hanabal.
Notes: Based on notes taken from my 2001-2002 notebook. I haven't found anything else on Hanabal in books or articles about the Joseph Smith Translation.
The text, transcribed according to scholarly standards, is found in Joseph Smith's New Translation of the Bible: Original Manuscripts, Scott Faulring, Kent Jackson, Robert Matthews (eds). The introduction to the volume and the explanations of the various manuscripts of the JST are invaluable. See also the invaluable talk, "The Doctrinal Restoration," given by Elder Bruce R. McConkie in The Joseph Smith Translation, a collection of talks edited by Monte S. Nyman and Robert S. Millet.
Other useful editions of the JST include Joseph Smith's "New Translation" of the Bible (Independence, Missouri, 1970), which I studied as a young child and of which I'm fond, and The Bible Corrected by Joseph Smith, Kenneth and Lyndell Lutes (eds), which shows the changes with more clarity. Neither is a perfect edition and both perpetuate errors. Other editions are available, given that Latter-day Saints never tire of publishing the same things over and again.
Gabla: the so-called "high mountains of Gabla" that spring up in verse 6 of the Targumic account of this story: Targum Pseudo-Jonathan: Genesis, tr. Michael Maher: 56 n. 19, a place name found elsewhere in the Targumic record and also known to Josephus as being in Edom." See also Targum Neofiti 1: Genesis, M. McNamara, 91 n. 9.
Vocalization of the stops b,g,d,k,p,t in archaic Hebrew: Speiser, Genesis, Anchor Bible Commentary.
The Samaritan Pentateuch: Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (2nd ed): O. Eisfeldt (ed), Genesis.
Debate over the etymological tie between Heb. navel and naval: is summarized in the Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, IX, in which also find discussion on the "notable cluster of catchwords," n-p-l, k-sh-l, and n-b-l (fall, stumble, wither) found in Jeremiah 8, versus 12 and thirteen.
Arabic verbal roots: Hans Wehr, A Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic, J. Milton Cowan (ed).
Geography of the Pentapolis: J. Simons, The Geographical and Topographical Texts of the Old Testament, 222-229; Neballat: Simons, p. 390.
Of Jebel Shihan: it "overlooks the Wadi al-Mujib (the Arnon) and the Dead Sea. It rises to 965 meters above sea level, and its summit is occupied by ruins and caves [a place of refuge]," Online Article: "The Karak District in the Madaba Map," by Fawzi Zayadine, part of the study, Jordan: the Madaba Mosaic Map, on the Franciscan Cyberspot.
Akkadian roots with nab-: nabu: to shine, be brilliant as in the personal names Shamash-Ne-bi-' or Ne-bi = Shamash-Nebi, a name that recalls Nephi or Ne-ph-i.
Joseph Smith Translation Psalms 14: There is a fine and useful article by Joseph F. McConkie.
Among the easily missed details added by Brother Joseph to the ancient story of Abraham is the place name Hanabal, which could refer to one or several of the Mountains of Moab, on the east of the Dead Sea, perhaps Jebel Sihan, with its high ruins and caves. The mountain towers out of nowhere in Joseph Smith Translation Genesis 14:9--a verse not found in the current LDS edition of the Holy Bible = KJV Genesis 14:10:
1 And it came to pass in the days of Amraphel king of Shinar, Arioch king of Ellasar, Chedorlaomer king of Elam, and Tidal king of nations;
2 That these made war with Bera king of Sodom, and with Birsha king of Gomorrah, Shinab king of Admah, and Shemeber king of Zeboiim, and the king of Bela, which is Zoar.
8 And there went out the king of Sodom, and the king of Gomorrah, and the king of Admah, and the king of Zeboiim, and the king of Bela (the same is Zoar;) and they joined battle with them in the vale of Siddim;
9 With Chedorlaomer the king of Elam, and with Tidal king of nations, and Amraphel king of Shinar, and Arioch king of Ellasar; four kings with five.
10 And the vale of Siddim was full of slimepits [JST OT Manuscript 1 has: was filled with slime pits]; and the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah fled, and fell there; and they that remained fled to the mountain.
To the last verse, the Prophet adds:
and they that remained fled to the mountain[s--crossed out] which is called Hanabal. (Old Testament Manuscript 2, p. 640),
or,
to the Mountain [note the capital letter] which was called [Hanable: crossed out] Hanabal (Old Testament Manuscript 1, p. 125).
Of the two manuscripts, Manuscript 2 is the more telling: Hanabal refers to a particular peak rather than a range (the plural mountains is amended to the singular), and we are told by the ancient Hebrew redactor that people in his day still call the mountain Hanabal. By telling us what the mountain is now called, rather than what it was called, also bespeaks an etiological origin of the name, that is, one fixed from a concrete historical event. The Prophet takes care that the name is correctly spelled: Hanabal not Hanable. The spelling with b rather than v, a softening following the vowel, reflects archaic Hebrew usage; the vocalization of the Masoretic Text, on the other hand, follows post-exilic pronunciation, which would yield Ha-naval.
Any understanding of the meaning of Hanabal, which likely represents either Ha + Nabal (The Nabal) or Har + Nabal (Mount Nabal), builds around the thematic opposition of two homonymous Semitic verbs: the Arabic n-b-l (to be noble, magnanimous, as in nabl; nabil; pl. nibal, nubala: "noble; lofty, exalted, sublime, august; magnificent, splendid, glorious": Wehr's Dictionary of Modern Arabic) and Hebrew n-b-l (the Qal intransitive form of the verb signifies it sank, dropped down--and thus to fade and wear away = Klein, Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language, 422). In Koehler-Baumgartner (p. 589), we find under n-b-l, which divides into the verbal pair navel (wither) and naval (be foolish), and its nominal derivatives the following meanings: wither, be contemptible, despise. Things n-b-l are "wretched things"--a lost and a fallen people--"senseless" and "foolish" both "intellectually and morally," even they who groan under a weight of "heavy sin." Related thematic roots are Arabic and Hebrew n-b-' (Arabic naba'a: "to be high, raised, elevated, protruding, projecting, prominent"; to tell, and even to prophesy = a prophet is a navi), and Hebrew n-p-l (to fall).
Akkadian n-b-l (from the verb abalu) yields the arid or dry land: in a time of war people flee the cities into the nabal, a place without water, the dry and thirsty land. Mount Dry-and-Thirsty. The place Bazu is "a forgotten place of dry land, saline ground [qaqqar tabti], a waterless place." And to think a mere moment ago, before the arrows and the brimstone fell, Lot, in Bethel, stood overlooking quite a different qaqqar or kikar: a watered plain, just like the Garden of Eden (Gen. 13:10). Another Akkadian word, nablu (nab = brilliance, shining splendor), describes flames and fierce lightning, which gods and heroes rain down on their enemies: "I fought with them, I rained fire on them." "Enlil [the prince of the powers of the air] whirls in the midst of the enemies, he keeps the flame(s) [nabla] smoking." Fury transforms flames into ball lightning: "rain down like shooting stars, strike continually like ball lightning" (Chicago Assyrian Dictionary, no. N). The stars in their courses fight Sisera. And fire from heaven will complete the downfall of the Cities of the Plain.
Perhaps the primary derivation of the name Hanabal (which, again, likely represents the article ha- plus the root n-b-l or even a shortened form of the word har, or mountain, plus n-b-l) best corresponds to the Arabic root n-b-l: Mount Noble, Mount Lofty, the Splendid, the August. Mighty Mount Nebo derives from the root n-b-': Mount Prominent, or even ultimately from n-b-l. The Enochic literature (Nibley, 30), speaks of a Mount Nebus near Salem, clearly an echo from Nebo; yet we are told this is the very place where Melchizedek met Abraham after the latter rescued Lot from the battling kings of Genesis 14. Curious is an unknown mountain from Jubilees: Lubar (= l/n -b-r/l(?). On the peak of Lubar, the ark rests; at her foot, Noah's sons first build cities (Jubilees 5:28; 6:1; 7:14-17; 10:15, in Charlesworth, OT Pseudepigrapha, vol.1; Genesis Apocryphon). As near to the mark is the Mountain of Gabla or Gebal, the Horite homeland, mentioned in the Targumic readings of Genesis 14:6, just four verses shy of our Hanabal. In the Targum Mount Gabla (g-b-l "border" or "mountain") replaces Mount Seir of Edom. So we now have n-b-', l-b-r or l-b-l, and g-b-l, an entire constellation of like mountain words or names featured in the accounts of Noah, Shem, and Abraham.
A perfect vocalic match for Hanabal appears in the Benjaminite town of Neballat (Neh. 11:34). In Arabic the place is Beit Nabala (the last two vowels are both long). The meaning of Neballat or Beit Nabala might accordingly be Noble City (one thinks of Jerusalem "beautiful for situation"; or Capernaum, the "exalted," the "city upon a hill"). If the hill is also a tell, or ruin, Neballat then also bespeaks the withering root of Hebrew n-b-l, an eroded wreck. Neballat also recalls the Arabic word for a paved or tiled floor (balats), which might really have been a prominent feature of the place and which also suggests the idea of steps upward from the tar pits into Mount Nabal's protective heights.
In another stab at Hanabal, the vowels don't match: The name of the Carthaginian general is Hanni-bal, (Baal favors him (with a son): hn/hnn: to favor, grace, pity), a name comparable to the Hebrew Hanniel (see Dictionary of the Bible by Sir William Smith, 1872). We likewise resist positing an unknown nominal form h-n-b-l (as bizarre as the Psalmic word for frost: hanamal).
On the other hand, Mount Nabal, following the Hebrew understanding of the same root nbl, might signify Mount Weathered, Mount Withered, Mount Anything-but-August-and-Splendid. In other words, the exact opposite of what the Arabic root conveys. But could both readings work together to give us a true picture of Hanabal?
A secondary, etiological derivation, which plays on the Hebrew root, might exist for Hanabal, one rooted in the storyline with its account of the downfall of the kings in the desperate Vale of Siddim (how ironic for the Targum to translate Siddim as Orchards), where the warriors sink into tar pits (like our own La Brea) and wither into oblivion. The survivors, roundly beaten, flee into a weathered and eroded hill that hangs above the bottomless pits. When we say that names are etiological in origin or function, we refer to such linguistic association (including word play) centering on a historical event. Such etiological derivation in no wise affects the validity of the primary, linguistic derivation from an verbal root, upon which it plays, or elaborates.
The article ha- ("the") with the triliteral root n-b-l may thus signify (The) Mount Ruin, Withered Top. (I'm thinking of Tolkien here: Orodruin, Weathertop.) There are all kinds of suggestive hints that evoke the Hebrew notion of a Mount Nabal. A quick Internet glimpse of the Mountains of Moab arrests the soul: extinct Tannur, Jebel Shihan (Geonames.org). And on the west of the Dead Sea we spot: "The cap rock and the pillars of salt that have fallen from the mountain top" (WysInfo Docuwebs: Life from the Dead Sea: Geological Structure). Or perhaps the mountain resembled a jar. Jar in Hebrew also derives from n-b-l, or perhaps it ultimately derives from another root as per Arabic b-l-ts, (ballats), a jar, being that which, like a eons-contorted mountain, is "wrung forcibly," pinched into shape. Sunk, withered, and geologically wrung out to dry: that is Jebel Usdum, Mount Sodom.
Given that the verbal root n-b-l signifies "to fall down, faint, lose strength" (so Gesenius), or to wither and fall, fall to ruin, wear out (so Koehler and Baumgartner), and thus also to folly and stupidity, the name works a bitter and terribly apt word play: "[they foolishly] fled, and [foolishly] fell [n-p-l] there: right into the tar pits; and they that remained fled to the mountain [or to the range: herah nasu]. In place of herah [har + directional -ah, "to the mountain or to the range"], the Samaritan Pentateuch significantly has the variant h-h-r-h, "to the mountain, to that particular mountain or range," all of which gives notice that something is off, something missing in the Received Text. We look for more: "To the mountain, or range," says the Prophet: "which was called Ha-nabal." Ha-nabal then becomes not only a place of ascent and escape but the place of falling--and the place of folly (nevalah)--the place of the rout--the place of the corpse (navlah).
Mankind flees upward, trudgingly, under a withering sun--and the gravity of heavy sin. Lightning seems to dance on the blushing peak; in the gulf below, the pits spew and bubble. The sophisticated city-dweller is left an eternal Nabutum (Akkadian: Fugitive) The name Ha-Nabal spells doom: the Fall of Kings. All is folly, vanity, and disgrace.
Nabal the glorious meets Nabal the Sunken, and the height of the mountain (Jebel Shihan rises over three thousand feet) only accentuates the depth of the fall in coincidentia oppositorum, the meeting of opposites: both tar pits and the Dead Sea seem bottomless. As Hamlet would say: "Oh what a falling-off was there!" A still greater fall awaits the Cities of the Plain!
Mount Nabal and Mount Lebanon (Lebanon being the Brilliant, White Mountain, even the Holy Temple) remarkably coincide in a sobering anagram (n-b-l ~ l-b-n): on the one side, curse; on the other, blessing (cf. Braude, The Midrash on Psalms, 1:148, 484). In like manner rise the mirroring mountains of curse and blessing, Ebal and Gerizim--"on the other side Jordan" (Deuteronomy 11:29-30). Choices must be made. Lot, from the giddy ladder of Bethel (the House of God), envisions a watered Eden below--but that is "no lasting city"; it is only "when a man comes up to the top of Mount Nebo, [that] he sees in the Sea of Tiberias a whirlpool, sieve-like, which is Miriam's Well," the very well of living waters first discovered by Abraham and promised his posterity (Midrash on Psalms, 1:341; Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews, 3: 50-4). From Holy Bethel Lot sights not Eden, but Nabal. Abraham, climbing to higher ground, "rejoiced to see my day: and he saw it, and was glad"; Moses glimpsed Galilee; Nephi, on the "exceedingly high mountain," saw Mary's well and its tree of life (John 8:56; 1 Nephi 11).
Here is irony indeed: and the more withering the more understated, in true Hebrew fashion.
Building on the ironic paronomasia in JST Genesis 14, we move to Job 14: 18 and discover "the mountain that lies prostrate" (har-nofel yibol), as some ranges seem to do, a phrase that also plays on the roots n-p-l and n-b-l. N-p-l is the primary root of falling in Hebrew, and really just amounts to n-b-l anyhow. Klein relates n-b-l (and note the reflexive n- prefix built onto all the various (n)-b-l roots) to the verbs b-l-h, b-l-l (the fall of the tower all over again), and n-p-l, verbs of fading, failing, falling, and confusion: Babel meets Sodom, and all is lost--witheringly so (Etymological Dictionary, 422). The generations of men fall like leaves, intones great Homer (cf. Jeremiah 8). Enoch on Mount Simeon, "high and lifted up"--and suspended in time--saw one generation pass after another (Moses 7).
The verse in Job speaks to a familiar, though archaic, name for weathered peaks or maybe even our own Hanabal. And here is a hint that our Ha-nabal might derive from Har-Nabal. A linguistic shift from Har-Nabal to Ha-Nabal is altogether likely, the final r dropping before the n, as perforce occurs in Arabic. Or perchance the scribal ear simply missed and misconstrued Brother Joseph's New England /r/: Ha[r]nabal, just as we find in the initial scribal mistakes for the following Book of Abraham names: Koash for Korash; Elkenah, not scribal Elkenner.
Job reads:
18 And surely the mountain falling cometh to nought, and the rock is removed out of his place.
19 The waters wear the stones: thou washest away the things which grow out of the dust of the earth; and thou destroyest the hope of man,
and certainly the hope of man meets destruction in Genesis 14.
Yet the translation, "the mountain falling cometh to nought (yibol)," but poorly renders the Hebrew, where we find the bound construction har-nofel, not har nofel. Thus--if we want to get picky--not any abstract mountain falls, but that abstraction which is called 'Mount Nofel'). Har-nofel distantly reflects a place name, or, more likely, it was a common designation for eroded peaks.
Again, "cometh to nought" amounts to a flawed attempt to read the verbal root n-b-l as an organic metaphor of withering. What we should read is "will sink down" or "erode": "Indeed [ulay] 'Mount Implodes' erodes to dust."
And, according to the Shoher Tov, this verse from Job does have to do with Abraham and the kingdom of Sodom. Reading Job "in the light of what Scripture says elsewhere": "The mountain falling crumbleth away refers to Sodom and its sister cities; And the rock is removed out of his place refers to Abraham, for he is the rock" (see Isaiah 51:1-2: Shoher Tov on Psalm 53: W. G. Braude, The Midrash on Psalms, 1: 486-7).
A midrashic reading of Scripture reflects literary intertextuality; yet, given the antique pulpit origin of such Psalmic homilies, the waves of midrash may also cast up historical and thematic pearls. That the rock should recall Abraham is no surprise (Isaiah 51:1-2), but neither can we read the mountain falling crumbleth without Jebel Usdum (Mount Sodom) looming before our eyes as the concrete example of all fallen kingdoms. Besides, that Psalm 53 should reveal Abraham should come as no surprise to Latter-day Saints in light of what the same psalm (which pairs with Psalm 14) says and conveys about the world of Joseph Smith at the time of his First Vision (see Braude, xvi).
Boasted History, as discipline, actually takes second seat to Midrash as interpreter of events. Students of Biblical geography remain hopelessly confused about the location of the Jordan-Pentapolis (of Genesis 14), giving us both a northern and a southern "hypothesis." The Cities of the Plain have vanished, together with their captains and kings. But one thing is certain: Latter-day Saints find the Biblical record of Abraham to be a faithful record of historical events (see Hugh Nibley, Abraham in Egypt, 171ff). Ancient Hanabal, wherever it is, comes to us both new and concrete, and the meaning of the name proposed here fits both a Semitic rootage descriptive of Nebos and noble heights and the literary themes of the etiological narrative.
The Prophet in his translations, like the faithful scribe, brings forth things both old and new. How beautiful are his feet upon the mountains, the feet that announce a gospel dispensation in which old things come to light anew.
How beautiful the mountain which is called Hanabal.
Notes: Based on notes taken from my 2001-2002 notebook. I haven't found anything else on Hanabal in books or articles about the Joseph Smith Translation.
The text, transcribed according to scholarly standards, is found in Joseph Smith's New Translation of the Bible: Original Manuscripts, Scott Faulring, Kent Jackson, Robert Matthews (eds). The introduction to the volume and the explanations of the various manuscripts of the JST are invaluable. See also the invaluable talk, "The Doctrinal Restoration," given by Elder Bruce R. McConkie in The Joseph Smith Translation, a collection of talks edited by Monte S. Nyman and Robert S. Millet.
Other useful editions of the JST include Joseph Smith's "New Translation" of the Bible (Independence, Missouri, 1970), which I studied as a young child and of which I'm fond, and The Bible Corrected by Joseph Smith, Kenneth and Lyndell Lutes (eds), which shows the changes with more clarity. Neither is a perfect edition and both perpetuate errors. Other editions are available, given that Latter-day Saints never tire of publishing the same things over and again.
Gabla: the so-called "high mountains of Gabla" that spring up in verse 6 of the Targumic account of this story: Targum Pseudo-Jonathan: Genesis, tr. Michael Maher: 56 n. 19, a place name found elsewhere in the Targumic record and also known to Josephus as being in Edom." See also Targum Neofiti 1: Genesis, M. McNamara, 91 n. 9.
Vocalization of the stops b,g,d,k,p,t in archaic Hebrew: Speiser, Genesis, Anchor Bible Commentary.
The Samaritan Pentateuch: Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (2nd ed): O. Eisfeldt (ed), Genesis.
Debate over the etymological tie between Heb. navel and naval: is summarized in the Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, IX, in which also find discussion on the "notable cluster of catchwords," n-p-l, k-sh-l, and n-b-l (fall, stumble, wither) found in Jeremiah 8, versus 12 and thirteen.
Arabic verbal roots: Hans Wehr, A Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic, J. Milton Cowan (ed).
Geography of the Pentapolis: J. Simons, The Geographical and Topographical Texts of the Old Testament, 222-229; Neballat: Simons, p. 390.
Of Jebel Shihan: it "overlooks the Wadi al-Mujib (the Arnon) and the Dead Sea. It rises to 965 meters above sea level, and its summit is occupied by ruins and caves [a place of refuge]," Online Article: "The Karak District in the Madaba Map," by Fawzi Zayadine, part of the study, Jordan: the Madaba Mosaic Map, on the Franciscan Cyberspot.
Akkadian roots with nab-: nabu: to shine, be brilliant as in the personal names Shamash-Ne-bi-' or Ne-bi = Shamash-Nebi, a name that recalls Nephi or Ne-ph-i.
Joseph Smith Translation Psalms 14: There is a fine and useful article by Joseph F. McConkie.
Saturday, June 19, 2010
Labyrinth
Labyrinth
Daedalus in Knossos framed
a dancing-floor for Ariadne,
Above the threatening wave
She leapt and spun with outstretched arms,
Above the threatening wave
From Athens' shore a ship came leaping,
Above the threatening wave
And Theseus brave joined in the dance,
Above yon threatening wave
Daedalus in Knossos framed
a dancing-floor for Ariadne.
Daedalus in Knossos framed
a dancing-floor for Ariadne,
Above the threatening wave
She leapt and spun with outstretched arms,
Above the threatening wave
From Athens' shore a ship came leaping,
Above the threatening wave
And Theseus brave joined in the dance,
Above yon threatening wave
Daedalus in Knossos framed
a dancing-floor for Ariadne.
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Defining "msxr" in the Egyptian Dreambook: A New Dictionary Entry
The Egyptian Dreambook, the New Kingdom classic on dream interpretation, neatly divides dreams into good and evil. Among the evil we find (r.7.7):
"Dreaming about going into (or coming upon) a msxr
Evil Dream.
It means a secret plot will be hatched against him."
hr shm.t hr msxr
DW
xpr bs pw nj md.t r=f
What is a msxr? The word remains without definition in the Egyptian lexicon.
Lexicographer Rainer Hannig considers the unique word, or spelling, to be a mistake for msxn. And what is a msxn? M, prefixed to a noun, is the morpheme of place: msxn is, accordingly, a place of sxn, that is, a place of rest, ein Ruheplatz. The word often refers to the descent of the divine powers into statues of the gods housed in the temple.
Yet while Hannig is right on the money in identifying msxr as a nominal form marking place, I wonder why he disregarded (or rejected) the possibility of reading the word as m+sxr (place of sxr)?
Sxr is the verb of planning, of counsel, and m+sxr thus signifies place of counsel, meaning that secret court where plans are made. The Akkadian word mapras, by the way (a word familar to all students of Afroasiatic grammar), not only serves to name, for linguists, the construction marking place in that language; it literally signifies place of prs, or place of separations, i.e., decisions. Egyptian msxr also calls to mind Arabic majlis, the place of sitting, of counsel. Yet msxr need not refer to an official Rathaus; it might be anywhere the cunning meet to plot. It might refer to any corner.
The dreamer has thus gone into--did he stumble upon it?--the very place where secrets are discussed and plans laid, a precarious ground to walk upon in a groundless dreamworld. In Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, you will recall, dreams have no sure ground: the dreamer may even be suspended above the earth, as if on a crow's-nest.
Indeed the Egyptian Dreambook's interpretation of the dream all but insists on the reading of msxr as place of counsel, for we learn that a "secret word" will now work against him: the dreamer has, in fact, now activated (xpr) a secret plot against himself by entering into its own place, the secret council. The two noun phrases, msxr and bs nj md.t, coincide perfectly:
"Dreaming about stumbling upon a place of counsel.
Evil.
It means a secret plan will be hatched against him."
The wording in the Egyptian Dreambook also recalls an obscure place in the Doctrine and Covenants, a book which shows many parallels to Semitic and Egyptian usage:
And now I show unto you a mystery [bs], a thing [md.t = thing or word] which is had in secret chambers [msxr], to bring to pass [xpr] even your destruction in process of time, and ye knew it not: But now I tell it unto you, and ye are blessed (38:13-14).
Although the anxious reader is not told what Brother Joseph further saw or heard about the secret chambers and its mystery, the plotting, "in process of time," unfolds far differently than that which the Egyptian Dreambook portends. Joseph the Dreamer unravels the Egyptian dream unto favor: the plot against his life bursts with blessing on his head.
Notes
There are two editions of the Dreambook. Alan Gardiner prepared the first; an old school chum, Kasia Szpakowska, now Senior Lecturer in Egyptology at Swansea University, Wales, has recently published a new edition.
"Dreaming about going into (or coming upon) a msxr
Evil Dream.
It means a secret plot will be hatched against him."
hr shm.t hr msxr
DW
xpr bs pw nj md.t r=f
What is a msxr? The word remains without definition in the Egyptian lexicon.
Lexicographer Rainer Hannig considers the unique word, or spelling, to be a mistake for msxn. And what is a msxn? M, prefixed to a noun, is the morpheme of place: msxn is, accordingly, a place of sxn, that is, a place of rest, ein Ruheplatz. The word often refers to the descent of the divine powers into statues of the gods housed in the temple.
Yet while Hannig is right on the money in identifying msxr as a nominal form marking place, I wonder why he disregarded (or rejected) the possibility of reading the word as m+sxr (place of sxr)?
Sxr is the verb of planning, of counsel, and m+sxr thus signifies place of counsel, meaning that secret court where plans are made. The Akkadian word mapras, by the way (a word familar to all students of Afroasiatic grammar), not only serves to name, for linguists, the construction marking place in that language; it literally signifies place of prs, or place of separations, i.e., decisions. Egyptian msxr also calls to mind Arabic majlis, the place of sitting, of counsel. Yet msxr need not refer to an official Rathaus; it might be anywhere the cunning meet to plot. It might refer to any corner.
The dreamer has thus gone into--did he stumble upon it?--the very place where secrets are discussed and plans laid, a precarious ground to walk upon in a groundless dreamworld. In Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, you will recall, dreams have no sure ground: the dreamer may even be suspended above the earth, as if on a crow's-nest.
Indeed the Egyptian Dreambook's interpretation of the dream all but insists on the reading of msxr as place of counsel, for we learn that a "secret word" will now work against him: the dreamer has, in fact, now activated (xpr) a secret plot against himself by entering into its own place, the secret council. The two noun phrases, msxr and bs nj md.t, coincide perfectly:
"Dreaming about stumbling upon a place of counsel.
Evil.
It means a secret plan will be hatched against him."
The wording in the Egyptian Dreambook also recalls an obscure place in the Doctrine and Covenants, a book which shows many parallels to Semitic and Egyptian usage:
And now I show unto you a mystery [bs], a thing [md.t = thing or word] which is had in secret chambers [msxr], to bring to pass [xpr] even your destruction in process of time, and ye knew it not: But now I tell it unto you, and ye are blessed (38:13-14).
Although the anxious reader is not told what Brother Joseph further saw or heard about the secret chambers and its mystery, the plotting, "in process of time," unfolds far differently than that which the Egyptian Dreambook portends. Joseph the Dreamer unravels the Egyptian dream unto favor: the plot against his life bursts with blessing on his head.
Notes
There are two editions of the Dreambook. Alan Gardiner prepared the first; an old school chum, Kasia Szpakowska, now Senior Lecturer in Egyptology at Swansea University, Wales, has recently published a new edition.
The Land of Jerusalem and the Land of Heliopolis (and the Book of Mormon)
I wish to affix a note to what attentive Latter-day Saints have already wonderfully said about the Book of Mormon phrase the land of Jerusalem, a phrase not found in the Bible (Jacob 2:31-2; Alma 7:10, etc.).
I
It was Hugh Nibley, "with eagle eye," who first discovered "land(s) of Jerusalem" in the Amarna Tablets, an Egyptian archive of official correspondence, in cuneiform writing, to and from the rulers of Canaan; now Gordon Thomasson again discovers "land" in a fragment from the Dead Sea. The Pseudo-Jeremiah scroll (4Q385, Fr.1, Col. 1), in speaking of Lehi's contemporaries taken captive in Jerusalem, shows as plain as day, and in plain Hebrew, that they were taken me-eretz yerushalaim ("from the land of Jerusalem"). Daniel Peterson, Matthew Roper, and William J. Hamblin all duly note how the Dead Sea Scrolls also speak of "the land of Damascus," whatever that "land of Damascus" is supposed to embrace.
The line from the Pseudo-Jeremiah scroll, me-eretz yerushalaim, remarkably matches a sentence found in Jacob 2:32: "this people, which I have led out of the land of Jerusalem." And note the irony: the remnant of the wicked were taken from the land of Jerusalem; the righteous branch were led out. No wonder the Lord says "I will not suffer" the righteous branch to wallow in the moral filth of the wicked remnant.
Such findings establish that "land of such-and-such a city" is a proper Semitic phrase. Should the question arise whether Bethlehem and Jerusalem can belong, by any stretch of the imagination, to the same land of Jerusalem (Alma 7:10), attentive readers will recall how Bethlehem lies only 4.3496 miles from Jerusalem. The manger may have been even closer, say 4.249912 miles. . . Coast from the Utah State Capitol down to Liberty Park, and you've covered four miles. Pioneer Day paraders march, trot, wheel, caper, float a good mile more.
II
A parallel to the land of Jerusalem, which shows not only a linguistic but also a theological or cosmological likeness, appears in the "Erd"-Liste of the Egyptian onomasticon from Tebtynis. An onomasticon is a lexical list, or kind of encyclopedia made by the Egyptians themselves as a help in navigating their own universe.
In the list we find at least seven, and perhaps nine, lands, according to Professor Juergen Osing, which, properly speaking, are not lands at all, in any earthly sense of the word, but cities, temples, or otherworldly locales. Nothing approximates the temple-city of Jerusalem more than the Egyptian Heliopolis, a matter noted by many, even in antiquity--yet what uncommon surprise to see Heliopolis and its temples described as lands!
"The Land of Heliopolis" comes at the beginning of the list in the Tanis papyrus: t3 nj [jwnw], for Heliopolis, like Jerusalem, is the navel of the universe, the first land created. A second papyrus fragment begins with "the Land of the Great Temple" (t3 [nj?] hw.t '3.t), which signifies the same thing: Heliopolis, or the Temple with a capital T. A third list labels all the lands that fall within the compass of the House or Houses of Life, the Egyptian Temple as the construct of the universe itself (the holistic universal and, by necessity, also plural Heliopolis). And here we are specifically told that the Houses of Life consist of lands or plots of ground. The last idea calls to mind the plot made by the early brethren in Missouri showing the 24 designated "temples" planned for the Temple City of the New Jerusalem in Independence, Missouri.
Here are the plots of the House of Life Complex:
1. [t3] hw.t '3.t [Land of = Plot of] the Great Temple
2. t3 dw3.t Land of the Duat, or Netherworld (!)
3. t3 hw.t bnbn The Land of the Benben House (the very Center place of the Center Place--and the very theme found on the rim of our Book of Abraham Facsimile 2--what's going on here?),
and so on, including
7. t3 m3(?) qrj (or Old Coptic KHL), which the text identifies as jwnw, or Heliopolis, or which labels a shrine in Heliopolis. We again recall Facsimile 2, and the stars named Kli-flos-isis, for Hugh Nibley reads Kli- as chapel or shrine. The Egyptian qrj, to be pronounced, qlj, matches a transcription kli.
So what is the Land of the Benben Temple? It is both the center place on the earth and the whole storied cosmos itself. Jerusalem translates it well, as does Zion: all is Jerusalem and Jerusalem is all.
Telling are the words of 4 Ezra, chapter 14 (KJV Apocrypha), which give us yet another wide-ranging land of Jerusalem:
28: Hear these words, O Israel.
29: Our fathers at the beginning were strangers in Egypt, from whence they were delivered:
30: And received the law of life, which they kept not, which ye also have transgressed after them.
31: Then was the land, even the land of Sion, parted among you by lot: but your fathers, and ye yourselves, have done unrighteousness, and have not kept the ways which the Highest commanded you.
Notes
Hugh Nibley, An Approach to the Book of Mormon, 100-2.
For Heliopolis and Jerusalem, see Nibley, One Eternal Round.
Daniel Peterson, Matthew Roper, William J. Hamblin, "On Alma 7:10 and the Birthplace of Jesus Christ," on Transcripts page of Neal A. Maxwell Institute Web page.
Robert Eisenmann and Michael Wise, The Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered, 57-8, for 4Q385, cited in Peterson, et al.
Jurgen Osing, Hieratische Papyri aus Tebtunis I, vol. I, 146ff.
I
It was Hugh Nibley, "with eagle eye," who first discovered "land(s) of Jerusalem" in the Amarna Tablets, an Egyptian archive of official correspondence, in cuneiform writing, to and from the rulers of Canaan; now Gordon Thomasson again discovers "land" in a fragment from the Dead Sea. The Pseudo-Jeremiah scroll (4Q385, Fr.1, Col. 1), in speaking of Lehi's contemporaries taken captive in Jerusalem, shows as plain as day, and in plain Hebrew, that they were taken me-eretz yerushalaim ("from the land of Jerusalem"). Daniel Peterson, Matthew Roper, and William J. Hamblin all duly note how the Dead Sea Scrolls also speak of "the land of Damascus," whatever that "land of Damascus" is supposed to embrace.
The line from the Pseudo-Jeremiah scroll, me-eretz yerushalaim, remarkably matches a sentence found in Jacob 2:32: "this people, which I have led out of the land of Jerusalem." And note the irony: the remnant of the wicked were taken from the land of Jerusalem; the righteous branch were led out. No wonder the Lord says "I will not suffer" the righteous branch to wallow in the moral filth of the wicked remnant.
Such findings establish that "land of such-and-such a city" is a proper Semitic phrase. Should the question arise whether Bethlehem and Jerusalem can belong, by any stretch of the imagination, to the same land of Jerusalem (Alma 7:10), attentive readers will recall how Bethlehem lies only 4.3496 miles from Jerusalem. The manger may have been even closer, say 4.249912 miles. . . Coast from the Utah State Capitol down to Liberty Park, and you've covered four miles. Pioneer Day paraders march, trot, wheel, caper, float a good mile more.
II
A parallel to the land of Jerusalem, which shows not only a linguistic but also a theological or cosmological likeness, appears in the "Erd"-Liste of the Egyptian onomasticon from Tebtynis. An onomasticon is a lexical list, or kind of encyclopedia made by the Egyptians themselves as a help in navigating their own universe.
In the list we find at least seven, and perhaps nine, lands, according to Professor Juergen Osing, which, properly speaking, are not lands at all, in any earthly sense of the word, but cities, temples, or otherworldly locales. Nothing approximates the temple-city of Jerusalem more than the Egyptian Heliopolis, a matter noted by many, even in antiquity--yet what uncommon surprise to see Heliopolis and its temples described as lands!
"The Land of Heliopolis" comes at the beginning of the list in the Tanis papyrus: t3 nj [jwnw], for Heliopolis, like Jerusalem, is the navel of the universe, the first land created. A second papyrus fragment begins with "the Land of the Great Temple" (t3 [nj?] hw.t '3.t), which signifies the same thing: Heliopolis, or the Temple with a capital T. A third list labels all the lands that fall within the compass of the House or Houses of Life, the Egyptian Temple as the construct of the universe itself (the holistic universal and, by necessity, also plural Heliopolis). And here we are specifically told that the Houses of Life consist of lands or plots of ground. The last idea calls to mind the plot made by the early brethren in Missouri showing the 24 designated "temples" planned for the Temple City of the New Jerusalem in Independence, Missouri.
Here are the plots of the House of Life Complex:
1. [t3] hw.t '3.t [Land of = Plot of] the Great Temple
2. t3 dw3.t Land of the Duat, or Netherworld (!)
3. t3 hw.t bnbn The Land of the Benben House (the very Center place of the Center Place--and the very theme found on the rim of our Book of Abraham Facsimile 2--what's going on here?),
and so on, including
7. t3 m3(?) qrj (or Old Coptic KHL), which the text identifies as jwnw, or Heliopolis, or which labels a shrine in Heliopolis. We again recall Facsimile 2, and the stars named Kli-flos-isis, for Hugh Nibley reads Kli- as chapel or shrine. The Egyptian qrj, to be pronounced, qlj, matches a transcription kli.
So what is the Land of the Benben Temple? It is both the center place on the earth and the whole storied cosmos itself. Jerusalem translates it well, as does Zion: all is Jerusalem and Jerusalem is all.
Telling are the words of 4 Ezra, chapter 14 (KJV Apocrypha), which give us yet another wide-ranging land of Jerusalem:
28: Hear these words, O Israel.
29: Our fathers at the beginning were strangers in Egypt, from whence they were delivered:
30: And received the law of life, which they kept not, which ye also have transgressed after them.
31: Then was the land, even the land of Sion, parted among you by lot: but your fathers, and ye yourselves, have done unrighteousness, and have not kept the ways which the Highest commanded you.
Notes
Hugh Nibley, An Approach to the Book of Mormon, 100-2.
For Heliopolis and Jerusalem, see Nibley, One Eternal Round.
Daniel Peterson, Matthew Roper, William J. Hamblin, "On Alma 7:10 and the Birthplace of Jesus Christ," on Transcripts page of Neal A. Maxwell Institute Web page.
Robert Eisenmann and Michael Wise, The Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered, 57-8, for 4Q385, cited in Peterson, et al.
Jurgen Osing, Hieratische Papyri aus Tebtunis I, vol. I, 146ff.
Shoher Tov on Psalm 4:9, and Alma 33:4-11: Reflect in your heart
There is a time when the gates of prayer are open,
and there is also a time when the gates of prayer are shut--
but the gates of mercy are never shut
(Shoher Tov on Psalm 4: The Midrash on the Psalms, translated by William G. Braude [Providence, Rhode Island, Yale University Press, 1959], 67).
Few places in the Book of Mormon match the beauty of its prayers. Consider the prayer of the Brother of Jared, the prayers over the sacramental bread and wine, Alma's baptismal prayer at the Waters of Mormon, and the prayers of the Resurrected Christ. Among these gems glistens the multi-faceted Psalm of Zenos, "the prophet of old," a psalm which, at every turn, reflects the heart and soul and language of the pre-exilic Hebrews (Alma 33: 4-11). The psalm comes to us embedded in a sermon of the prophet Alma. Sermons in the Book of Mormon show yet another type of self-contained discourse, but can we find anything Hebraic matching Alma and Amulek's long-winded preaching to the Zoramites (Alma 32-34)?
As every reader of the Book of Mormon observes, the beauty of Zenos's psalm lies in the sense of a turning from one scene of prayer to another, a movement in time, space, and intensity of soul. Zenos turns from an expanse of wilderness to field, home, closet, followed by an apparent re-turn to multitudinous urban congregations; then, sadly, to exile's empty wilderness again. Yet in every place God may be found, when the devout pray to be heard of him, and not of men.
Thou art merciful, O God,
for thou hast heard my prayer,
even when I was in the wilderness;
yea, thou wast merciful when I prayed
concerning those who were mine enemies,
and thou didst turn them to me.
Yea, O God, and thou was merciful unto me
when I did cry unto thee in my field;
when I did cry unto thee in my prayer,
and thou didst hear me.
And, again, O God, when I did turn to my house
thou didst hear me in my prayer.
And when I did turn unto my closet, O Lord,
and prayed unto thee,
thou didst hear me.
Yea, thou art merciful unto thy children
when they cry unto thee,
to be heard of thee
and not of men,
and thou wilt hear them.
Yea, O God,
thou hast been merciful unto me,
and heard my cries in the midst of thy congregations.
Yea, and thou hast also heard me
when I have been cast out
and have been despised by mine enemies;
yea, thou didst hear my cries,
and wast angry with mine enemies,
and thou didst visit them in thine anger
with speedy destruction.
And thou didst hear me
because of mine afflictions
and my sincerity;
and it is because of thy Son that thou hast been thus merciful unto me,
therefore I will cry unto thee
in all mine afflictions,
for in thee is my joy;
for thou hast turned thy judgments away from me,
because of thy Son
(Alma 33:4-11, http://www.lds.org/scriptures/bofm/alma/33?lang=eng).
The unadorned beauty astonishes the reader: we sense no limit to what can be said about these words. To what may we, as seekers of beauty (shoherei tov, indeed!), compare all these things?
Consider the following midrash on Psalm 4:9 (verse 8 in the KJV), taken from the Shoher Tov (or Midrash Tehillim). Since that Midrash likely consists of material culled from old Jewish sermons, the homily on Psalms 4 duly reflects an original "full-length sermon" "concerning prayer or worship," exactly in the manner of Alma preaching to the Zoramites ("sermon," William G. Braude, The Midrash on Psalms, 1:xx; "concerning prayer," Alma 33:3).
The Holy One, blessed be He, said to the Jews:
I have said to you--
When you pray, pray in the synagogue in your city.
If you cannot pray in the synagogue, pray in your field.
If you cannot pray in your field, pray in your house.
And if you cannot pray on your bed, reflect in your heart (Braude, 1:73).
Amulek, whose poetic couplets are Zenos inspired, takes up Alma's burden:
and there is also a time when the gates of prayer are shut--
but the gates of mercy are never shut
(Shoher Tov on Psalm 4: The Midrash on the Psalms, translated by William G. Braude [Providence, Rhode Island, Yale University Press, 1959], 67).
Few places in the Book of Mormon match the beauty of its prayers. Consider the prayer of the Brother of Jared, the prayers over the sacramental bread and wine, Alma's baptismal prayer at the Waters of Mormon, and the prayers of the Resurrected Christ. Among these gems glistens the multi-faceted Psalm of Zenos, "the prophet of old," a psalm which, at every turn, reflects the heart and soul and language of the pre-exilic Hebrews (Alma 33: 4-11). The psalm comes to us embedded in a sermon of the prophet Alma. Sermons in the Book of Mormon show yet another type of self-contained discourse, but can we find anything Hebraic matching Alma and Amulek's long-winded preaching to the Zoramites (Alma 32-34)?
As every reader of the Book of Mormon observes, the beauty of Zenos's psalm lies in the sense of a turning from one scene of prayer to another, a movement in time, space, and intensity of soul. Zenos turns from an expanse of wilderness to field, home, closet, followed by an apparent re-turn to multitudinous urban congregations; then, sadly, to exile's empty wilderness again. Yet in every place God may be found, when the devout pray to be heard of him, and not of men.
Thou art merciful, O God,
for thou hast heard my prayer,
even when I was in the wilderness;
yea, thou wast merciful when I prayed
concerning those who were mine enemies,
and thou didst turn them to me.
Yea, O God, and thou was merciful unto me
when I did cry unto thee in my field;
when I did cry unto thee in my prayer,
and thou didst hear me.
And, again, O God, when I did turn to my house
thou didst hear me in my prayer.
And when I did turn unto my closet, O Lord,
and prayed unto thee,
thou didst hear me.
Yea, thou art merciful unto thy children
when they cry unto thee,
to be heard of thee
and not of men,
and thou wilt hear them.
Yea, O God,
thou hast been merciful unto me,
and heard my cries in the midst of thy congregations.
Yea, and thou hast also heard me
when I have been cast out
and have been despised by mine enemies;
yea, thou didst hear my cries,
and wast angry with mine enemies,
and thou didst visit them in thine anger
with speedy destruction.
And thou didst hear me
because of mine afflictions
and my sincerity;
and it is because of thy Son that thou hast been thus merciful unto me,
therefore I will cry unto thee
in all mine afflictions,
for in thee is my joy;
for thou hast turned thy judgments away from me,
because of thy Son
(Alma 33:4-11, http://www.lds.org/scriptures/bofm/alma/33?lang=eng).
The unadorned beauty astonishes the reader: we sense no limit to what can be said about these words. To what may we, as seekers of beauty (shoherei tov, indeed!), compare all these things?
Consider the following midrash on Psalm 4:9 (verse 8 in the KJV), taken from the Shoher Tov (or Midrash Tehillim). Since that Midrash likely consists of material culled from old Jewish sermons, the homily on Psalms 4 duly reflects an original "full-length sermon" "concerning prayer or worship," exactly in the manner of Alma preaching to the Zoramites ("sermon," William G. Braude, The Midrash on Psalms, 1:xx; "concerning prayer," Alma 33:3).
The Holy One, blessed be He, said to the Jews:
I have said to you--
When you pray, pray in the synagogue in your city.
If you cannot pray in the synagogue, pray in your field.
If you cannot pray in your field, pray in your house.
And if you cannot pray on your bed, reflect in your heart (Braude, 1:73).
Amulek, whose poetic couplets are Zenos inspired, takes up Alma's burden:
Yea, cry unto him for mercy; for he is mighty to save.
Yea, humble yourselves, and continue in prayer unto him.
Cry unto him when ye are in your fields, yea, over all your flocks.
Cry unto him in your houses, yea, over all your household, both morning, mid-day, and evening.
But this is not all; ye must pour out your souls in your closets, and your secret places, and in your wilderness.
Yea, and when you do not cry unto the Lord, let your hearts be full,
drawn out in prayer unto him continually.
(Alma 34:20-27).
All resolves into peace in the inner chamber of the heart:
Hear me when I call, O God of my righteousness: thou hast enlarged me when I was in distress; have mercy on me, and hear my prayer.
The Lord will hear when I call unto him.
Commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still.
Thou hast put gladness in my heart.
I will both lay me down in peace, and sleep:
for thou, Lord, only makest me dwell in safety.
(Selections from Psalm 4: 1, 3, 4, 7, 8, http://www.lds.org/scriptures/ot/ps/4?lang=eng)
Yea, cry unto him against the power of your enemies.
Yea, cry unto him against the devil, who is the enemy of all righteousness
Cry unto him over the crops of your fields, that ye may prosper in them.
Cry over the flocks of your fields, that they may increase.
But this is not all; ye must pour out your souls in your closets, and your secret places, and in your wilderness.
Yea, and when you do not cry unto the Lord, let your hearts be full,
drawn out in prayer unto him continually.
(Alma 34:20-27).
All resolves into peace in the inner chamber of the heart:
Hear me when I call, O God of my righteousness: thou hast enlarged me when I was in distress; have mercy on me, and hear my prayer.
The Lord will hear when I call unto him.
Commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still.
Thou hast put gladness in my heart.
I will both lay me down in peace, and sleep:
for thou, Lord, only makest me dwell in safety.
(Selections from Psalm 4: 1, 3, 4, 7, 8, http://www.lds.org/scriptures/ot/ps/4?lang=eng)
Monday, May 17, 2010
Marked with Red in their Foreheads: A Book of Mormon Custom Recalling Ancient Egyptian Practices
The Book of Mormon prophet Alma relates how the apostate Amlicites "had marked themselves with red in their foreheads after the manner of the Lamanites; nevertheless they had not shorn their heads like unto the Lamanites" (Alma 3:4). Though Alma does not say why the Lamanites so marked their foreheads, he does consider the mark as the sign of a (self-imposed) curse.
The Lamanites may have so marked themselves at birth as a mark of cultural identity, or they may have marked themselves as a sign of war: "white and red," says Professor E.V. Gordon, "were used as symbolic of peace and war among the Indians as among many other peoples. Later the Indians of the prairies are known to have carried small flags, one of white bison's hide and the other of reddened leather, for use in the same way that the red and white shields were used by the Norsemen," An Introduction to Old Norse, 217, 5.347. For the Amlicites, who were Nephite dissenters, marking with red clearly also served as a sign of both identification with the Lamanites and for recognition in battle. Again, the mark may also have served an amuletic purpose. None of these five purposes for the marking in red contradicts or excludes the others.
So why a mark of red as register for cursing in Alma's record? Alma does not call up such an idea from his inner consciousness; it is cultural. In the system of signs by which the Nephites order their universe, red connotes cursing. Though there would have been other connotations associated with the color, and other reasons for the marking, the people of Alma's day would not have missed the point: by marking themselves in or for war, the Amlicites had also taken upon themselves both a new identity as well as the cursing associated with that identity. Like the Lamanites, the rebellious Amlicites had cut themselves off, or separated themselves, from the presence of God, and thus also from the people of God--that is the curse.
I An Ancient Practice
That same semiotic tie between red and separation, that is, cursing, famously appears in Egyptian books and paintings. Red is the color of Seth, the god who confronts the civilized order of things, and red marks all that pertains to him, including the desert wastes. All that is evil, all that is cursed, that is fit to be burned, trampled, or destroyed takes on a taint of red. We also recall the dot of red ink sometimes placed in the amulet of the Wedjat-eye, and so at the forehead, in order to subsume, and thus ward off, evil. For the Amlicites, marching to battle, the mark surely had a like amuletic quality, a quality blending an element of the dangerous with a hope of impregnability. The Amlicites, whose cause was not just and whose amuletic dreams ran red, were setting up themselves for disaster: "For God knows the rebel, and God punishes with blood" (Jan Assmann, Mind of Egypt, 146 = Instructions of Merikare).
The Egyptian language knows several words for red and related shades of hot color, the two most common of which are dashrut or dushrit (dshr) and chimas (tms). The color word chimas or timas concretely derives from the substance of red ink. The names of the cursed, that is, the rebellious, are recorded in (lit. "cut into") a register of timasaw or tms.w, the book of damnation, the book of the "red ones." The action of recording, in such a case, thus corresponds to that of marking--by cutting or tattooing or painting--the forehead with red. Those so recorded ("those of tms.w") are consigned to slaughter by knife and fire (red flames) in the Netherworld. It is the very act of cutting or painting forehead or register of tms.w that activates or, in Alma's words, "fulfills" the curse: "I will set a mark upon him that fighteth against thee and thy seed" (v. 16). And for Alma the supreme irony is that "they set the mark upon themselves, yea, even a mark of red upon their foreheads" (v. 13). The Lord allows the mark but intervenes not at all. It's all self-applied, and judgment immediately works its due.
The idea is captured by the Egyptian hieroglyph of enemy, a sign which reveals the fate of the Sethian enemy of order and reason--an ax to the head. But note: the sign ironically shows the enemy putting the ax to his own head. Thus for Alma, as for the Egyptians, enmity and rebellion (even coming out "in open rebellion against God," v. 18) make up the essence of folly. Rebellion brings not victory but inevitable reversal. The curse follows forthwith: "therefore it was expedient that the curse should fall upon them," v. 18. The curse falls upon the Amlicites even as they fall in battle, only later to be identified and counted by their red marks. All this again recalls the Egyptian notion of tallying the record of timasaw (tms.w), a tally of accountability and the accounting of fate. The red mark makes the exact tally of the enemy dead, as noted in Alma, possible, except in the case of the final tally, too innumerable for any count. The mark of red ultimately points to corpse and burial.
The books of Alma and Helaman have much to say about the doctrine of restoration, that is to say, divine retribution (Helaman 14:29-31). The doctrine accords with the Egyptian writings that speak of the punishment of timasaw (Book of the Amduat; Book of Gates), as a coursing from "red things" (evil deeds) to "red things" (evil punishments). Alma sums things up with impeccable Egyptian logic (a logic found throughout the Book of Mormon): "Now I would that ye should see that they brought upon themselves the curse; and even so doth every man that is cursed bring upon himself his own condemnation" (v. 19). Like the Egyptians, Alma, as shown again and again in his long book, considers rebellion the worst of all possible crimes, and as suits the crime, punishment begins its work with inexorable immediacy. (Further treatment of the theme, with sources, appears in Val H. Sederholm, British Museum Papyrus 10808 and Its Cultural and Religious Setting.)
II Latter-day Applications (updated 10 November 2015--and since)
"Orbed in a Rainbow" (Hodie, Ralph Vaughan Williams = John Milton, "Ring Out, Ye Crystal Spheres")
We are "to liken" all Scripture unto ourselves. What modern practices might correspond to the action of the Amlicites in marking their foreheads? Modern prophets warn against the practice of marking the body with tattoos. Tattoos "defile" the temple of God, for the body is intended to be the dwelling-place of the Holy Ghost (1 Corinthians 3:17; 6:19). As disciples of Christ, we manifest a constant love for all; neither do we seek to judge anyone who marks their body. At the same time, we share the prophetic warning about sanctifying the temple of God in our bodies.
Another practice reminiscent of marking the forehead with red is the use of color in social media as a sign of allegiance, a sign of support for practices not in harmony with the will of God. To superimpose symbolic colors onto one's own photograph on Facebook or Twitter, as a sign of both allegiance and dissent--even if that is a quiet dissent--follows the practice of the Amlicites. As disciples of Christ, we manifest a constant love for all; neither do we seek to judge anyone who uses symbolism to promote contemporary social causes of every kind. At the same time, we share the prophetic warning about allegiances and idolatry--about loyalty.
All Saints hope to reconcile the Divine purpose and the weaknesses of men. Indeed Christ's grace is made perfect in weakness. But in seeking to grasp the Reconciliation of God and Man, we cannot lose sight of the character of Atoning Love. Atoning Love comes through submission to the will of God. Jesus, even from the foundation of the world, so submitted His will to that of His Father. And submission, an awakening from weakness, remains forever the price for receiving that Love. Atoning Love is found in repentance, and thus also in the preaching of repentance and of strict obedience to the law of God.
The substance that makes up discipleship is a thing of many days and, likely, even many jarrings. Every six months we come together in General Conference. We look for peace and comfort and love; we may find testing and warning and rebuke. Learning at the feet of prophets and apostles was never easy. A disciple may be jarred into painful outcry for a day, but what is a day? As we continue in the covenant path, we must "hold on [our] way" by often also holding our tongues and by striving, meanwhile, to tame our hearts. Loyalty, pure and undiluted, in both public and in private, should be the aim of every true disciple of Christ.
Following Christ, we love and serve without distinction of persons. Yet the loving response to any and every weakness is never acquiescence; nor is it manifest in a sharing of signposts and symbols. The prophetic call is for "courage to defy the consensus" (President Thomas S. Monson). The swiftly multiplying Amlicites doubtless had their reasons for dissent. And as followers of the popular preacher Nehor, they believed that God would "in the end" save all men--and what news could be brighter? Yet the moment they marked their foreheads, a fleeting, worldly, allegiance became the controlling power of their lives. Such allegiance can result from so very many different causes and take such a variety of forms!
The Scriptures draw for thirsting saints so much refreshment from "the wells of salvation." This living water also brims with semiotic reflections in living color. As Latter-day Saints we must ever remember how the Scriptures of the Restoration present the rainbow, with its comprehensive spectrum, as a symbol of God's eternal covenant with Enoch to bring again Zion. The Doctrine and Covenants defines the community of Zion as "THE PURE IN HEART" (97:21).
The bow signals for the faithful that promised moment in which latter-day Zion and the Zion of Enoch will unite in radiant beauty and peace, a moment glimpsed in Ralph Vaughan Williams's stunning rainbow scene in the Christmas cantata Hodie. In the hope of the rainbow, promised tomorrow will dawn Today:
Orbed in a rainbow, and, like glories wearing,
Mercy will sit between,
Throned in celestial sheen,
With radiant feet the tissued clouds down steering;
And heaven, as at some festival,
Will open wide the gates of her high palace hall.
The festival is the panegyris, the glorious celebration of Zion, gathered in "from all thy creations" (Moses 7:31), what our Scriptures call the "general assembly" (KJV Hebrews 12:23). The phrase appears again in the Joseph Smith Translation of Genesis 9. Hugh Nibley explores the theme of the panegyris throughout some 70 years of books, talks, and essays.
And the bow shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant, which I made unto thy father Enoch; that, when men should keep all my commandments, Zion should again come on the earth, the city of Enoch which I have caught up unto myself.
And this is mine everlasting covenant, that when thy posterity shall embrace the truth, and look upward, then shall Zion look downward, and all the heavens shall shake with gladness, and the earth shall tremble with joy.
And the general assembly of the church of the firstborn shall come down out of heaven, and possess the earth, and shall have place until the end come. And this is mine everlasting covenant, which I made with thy father Enoch (Joseph Smith Translation Genesis 9:21-25).
When we "look upon" the bow, we, too, should "remember the everlasting covenant" and promise of Zion.
James Thomas Linnell's richly beautiful painting, "The Rainbow," found in the annex of the Salt Lake Temple--And the bow shall be in the cloud, and I will establish my covenant unto thee--carries that same message to the hearts of all who enter there.
The Lamanites may have so marked themselves at birth as a mark of cultural identity, or they may have marked themselves as a sign of war: "white and red," says Professor E.V. Gordon, "were used as symbolic of peace and war among the Indians as among many other peoples. Later the Indians of the prairies are known to have carried small flags, one of white bison's hide and the other of reddened leather, for use in the same way that the red and white shields were used by the Norsemen," An Introduction to Old Norse, 217, 5.347. For the Amlicites, who were Nephite dissenters, marking with red clearly also served as a sign of both identification with the Lamanites and for recognition in battle. Again, the mark may also have served an amuletic purpose. None of these five purposes for the marking in red contradicts or excludes the others.
So why a mark of red as register for cursing in Alma's record? Alma does not call up such an idea from his inner consciousness; it is cultural. In the system of signs by which the Nephites order their universe, red connotes cursing. Though there would have been other connotations associated with the color, and other reasons for the marking, the people of Alma's day would not have missed the point: by marking themselves in or for war, the Amlicites had also taken upon themselves both a new identity as well as the cursing associated with that identity. Like the Lamanites, the rebellious Amlicites had cut themselves off, or separated themselves, from the presence of God, and thus also from the people of God--that is the curse.
I An Ancient Practice
That same semiotic tie between red and separation, that is, cursing, famously appears in Egyptian books and paintings. Red is the color of Seth, the god who confronts the civilized order of things, and red marks all that pertains to him, including the desert wastes. All that is evil, all that is cursed, that is fit to be burned, trampled, or destroyed takes on a taint of red. We also recall the dot of red ink sometimes placed in the amulet of the Wedjat-eye, and so at the forehead, in order to subsume, and thus ward off, evil. For the Amlicites, marching to battle, the mark surely had a like amuletic quality, a quality blending an element of the dangerous with a hope of impregnability. The Amlicites, whose cause was not just and whose amuletic dreams ran red, were setting up themselves for disaster: "For God knows the rebel, and God punishes with blood" (Jan Assmann, Mind of Egypt, 146 = Instructions of Merikare).
The Egyptian language knows several words for red and related shades of hot color, the two most common of which are dashrut or dushrit (dshr) and chimas (tms). The color word chimas or timas concretely derives from the substance of red ink. The names of the cursed, that is, the rebellious, are recorded in (lit. "cut into") a register of timasaw or tms.w, the book of damnation, the book of the "red ones." The action of recording, in such a case, thus corresponds to that of marking--by cutting or tattooing or painting--the forehead with red. Those so recorded ("those of tms.w") are consigned to slaughter by knife and fire (red flames) in the Netherworld. It is the very act of cutting or painting forehead or register of tms.w that activates or, in Alma's words, "fulfills" the curse: "I will set a mark upon him that fighteth against thee and thy seed" (v. 16). And for Alma the supreme irony is that "they set the mark upon themselves, yea, even a mark of red upon their foreheads" (v. 13). The Lord allows the mark but intervenes not at all. It's all self-applied, and judgment immediately works its due.
The idea is captured by the Egyptian hieroglyph of enemy, a sign which reveals the fate of the Sethian enemy of order and reason--an ax to the head. But note: the sign ironically shows the enemy putting the ax to his own head. Thus for Alma, as for the Egyptians, enmity and rebellion (even coming out "in open rebellion against God," v. 18) make up the essence of folly. Rebellion brings not victory but inevitable reversal. The curse follows forthwith: "therefore it was expedient that the curse should fall upon them," v. 18. The curse falls upon the Amlicites even as they fall in battle, only later to be identified and counted by their red marks. All this again recalls the Egyptian notion of tallying the record of timasaw (tms.w), a tally of accountability and the accounting of fate. The red mark makes the exact tally of the enemy dead, as noted in Alma, possible, except in the case of the final tally, too innumerable for any count. The mark of red ultimately points to corpse and burial.
The books of Alma and Helaman have much to say about the doctrine of restoration, that is to say, divine retribution (Helaman 14:29-31). The doctrine accords with the Egyptian writings that speak of the punishment of timasaw (Book of the Amduat; Book of Gates), as a coursing from "red things" (evil deeds) to "red things" (evil punishments). Alma sums things up with impeccable Egyptian logic (a logic found throughout the Book of Mormon): "Now I would that ye should see that they brought upon themselves the curse; and even so doth every man that is cursed bring upon himself his own condemnation" (v. 19). Like the Egyptians, Alma, as shown again and again in his long book, considers rebellion the worst of all possible crimes, and as suits the crime, punishment begins its work with inexorable immediacy. (Further treatment of the theme, with sources, appears in Val H. Sederholm, British Museum Papyrus 10808 and Its Cultural and Religious Setting.)
II Latter-day Applications (updated 10 November 2015--and since)
"Orbed in a Rainbow" (Hodie, Ralph Vaughan Williams = John Milton, "Ring Out, Ye Crystal Spheres")
We are "to liken" all Scripture unto ourselves. What modern practices might correspond to the action of the Amlicites in marking their foreheads? Modern prophets warn against the practice of marking the body with tattoos. Tattoos "defile" the temple of God, for the body is intended to be the dwelling-place of the Holy Ghost (1 Corinthians 3:17; 6:19). As disciples of Christ, we manifest a constant love for all; neither do we seek to judge anyone who marks their body. At the same time, we share the prophetic warning about sanctifying the temple of God in our bodies.
Another practice reminiscent of marking the forehead with red is the use of color in social media as a sign of allegiance, a sign of support for practices not in harmony with the will of God. To superimpose symbolic colors onto one's own photograph on Facebook or Twitter, as a sign of both allegiance and dissent--even if that is a quiet dissent--follows the practice of the Amlicites. As disciples of Christ, we manifest a constant love for all; neither do we seek to judge anyone who uses symbolism to promote contemporary social causes of every kind. At the same time, we share the prophetic warning about allegiances and idolatry--about loyalty.
All Saints hope to reconcile the Divine purpose and the weaknesses of men. Indeed Christ's grace is made perfect in weakness. But in seeking to grasp the Reconciliation of God and Man, we cannot lose sight of the character of Atoning Love. Atoning Love comes through submission to the will of God. Jesus, even from the foundation of the world, so submitted His will to that of His Father. And submission, an awakening from weakness, remains forever the price for receiving that Love. Atoning Love is found in repentance, and thus also in the preaching of repentance and of strict obedience to the law of God.
The substance that makes up discipleship is a thing of many days and, likely, even many jarrings. Every six months we come together in General Conference. We look for peace and comfort and love; we may find testing and warning and rebuke. Learning at the feet of prophets and apostles was never easy. A disciple may be jarred into painful outcry for a day, but what is a day? As we continue in the covenant path, we must "hold on [our] way" by often also holding our tongues and by striving, meanwhile, to tame our hearts. Loyalty, pure and undiluted, in both public and in private, should be the aim of every true disciple of Christ.
Following Christ, we love and serve without distinction of persons. Yet the loving response to any and every weakness is never acquiescence; nor is it manifest in a sharing of signposts and symbols. The prophetic call is for "courage to defy the consensus" (President Thomas S. Monson). The swiftly multiplying Amlicites doubtless had their reasons for dissent. And as followers of the popular preacher Nehor, they believed that God would "in the end" save all men--and what news could be brighter? Yet the moment they marked their foreheads, a fleeting, worldly, allegiance became the controlling power of their lives. Such allegiance can result from so very many different causes and take such a variety of forms!
The Scriptures draw for thirsting saints so much refreshment from "the wells of salvation." This living water also brims with semiotic reflections in living color. As Latter-day Saints we must ever remember how the Scriptures of the Restoration present the rainbow, with its comprehensive spectrum, as a symbol of God's eternal covenant with Enoch to bring again Zion. The Doctrine and Covenants defines the community of Zion as "THE PURE IN HEART" (97:21).
The bow signals for the faithful that promised moment in which latter-day Zion and the Zion of Enoch will unite in radiant beauty and peace, a moment glimpsed in Ralph Vaughan Williams's stunning rainbow scene in the Christmas cantata Hodie. In the hope of the rainbow, promised tomorrow will dawn Today:
Orbed in a rainbow, and, like glories wearing,
Mercy will sit between,
Throned in celestial sheen,
With radiant feet the tissued clouds down steering;
And heaven, as at some festival,
Will open wide the gates of her high palace hall.
The festival is the panegyris, the glorious celebration of Zion, gathered in "from all thy creations" (Moses 7:31), what our Scriptures call the "general assembly" (KJV Hebrews 12:23). The phrase appears again in the Joseph Smith Translation of Genesis 9. Hugh Nibley explores the theme of the panegyris throughout some 70 years of books, talks, and essays.
And the bow shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant, which I made unto thy father Enoch; that, when men should keep all my commandments, Zion should again come on the earth, the city of Enoch which I have caught up unto myself.
And this is mine everlasting covenant, that when thy posterity shall embrace the truth, and look upward, then shall Zion look downward, and all the heavens shall shake with gladness, and the earth shall tremble with joy.
And the general assembly of the church of the firstborn shall come down out of heaven, and possess the earth, and shall have place until the end come. And this is mine everlasting covenant, which I made with thy father Enoch (Joseph Smith Translation Genesis 9:21-25).
When we "look upon" the bow, we, too, should "remember the everlasting covenant" and promise of Zion.
James Thomas Linnell's richly beautiful painting, "The Rainbow," found in the annex of the Salt Lake Temple--And the bow shall be in the cloud, and I will establish my covenant unto thee--carries that same message to the hearts of all who enter there.
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