The if...and conditionals of Helaman 12

[Guest]

I've been looking a bit at the so-called "if...and conditionals" of Helaman 12 over the past couple days due to a thread started by Her Amun over at MADB (cf. Royal Skousen's identification of these as a Hebraism). The basic idea here is that this passage doesn't make grammatical sense in English, but it does in Hebrew. (In modern editions of the Book of Mormon, the English has been corrected. The link I gave above is to a scan of the 1830 Book of Mormon. The original manuscript does not have the punctuation of the 1830 edition, but the 1830 edition is the closest thing you'll find online.) I have long held that this is one of the stronger apologetics of which I am aware, and that there is no easy explanation for it from a critical perspective. Yesterday I posted one possible explanation; here I'd like to modify that answer a bit and get your input.

I should begin by saying that one "Steve Miller" is quoted in Her Amun's post as saying that the Book of Mormon use of "if...and" seems to indicate a stronger cause-effect relationship than that construction denotes in Hebrew. That would seem to be a mark against the claim that what we have in the Book of Mormon is a "Hebraism".

Here is the raw text of Helaman 12:7-22. The portions in brackets are from the 1830 Book of Mormon; the remainder is Skousen's transcription of the original Book of Mormon manuscript. (I had to fill in Skousen's ellipses and provide context.)

[O how great is the nothingness of the children of men; yea, even they are less than the dust of the earth. For behold, the dust of the earth moveth hither and thither, to the dividing asunder, at the command of our great and everlasting God; yea, behold at his voice do the hills and the mountains tremble and quake; and by the power of his voice they are broken up, and become smooth, yea, even like unto a valley; yea, by the power of his voice doth the whole earth shake; yea, by the power of his voice, do the foundations rock, even to the very center;] yea and if he sayeth unto the earth move and it is moved; yea if he say unto the earth thou shalt go back that it lengthen out the day for many hours and it is done; [and thus according to his word, the earth goeth back, and it appeareth unto man that it standeth still; yea, and behold this is so: for sure it is the earth that moveth, and not the sun.] and behold also if he sayeth unto the waters of the great deep be thou dried up and it is done behold if he sayeth unto this mountain be thou raised up and come over and fall upon that city that it be buried up and behold it is done [And behold if a man hideth up treasure in the earth, and the Lord shall say, Let it be accursed, because of the iniquity of him that hath hid it up, behold, it shall be accursed;] and if the Lord shall say be thou accursed that no man shall find thee from this time henceforth and forever and behold no man getteth it henceforth and forever and behold if the Lord shall say unto a man because of thine iniquities thou shalt be accursed forever and it shall be done and if the Lord shall say because of thine iniquities thou shalt be cut off from my presence and he will cause that it shall be so[.-- And wo unto whom he shall say this, for it shall be unto him that will do iniquity, and he cannot be saved; therefore, for this cause, that men might be saved, hath repentance been declared.Therefore, blessed are they who will repent and hearken unto the voice of the Lord their God; for these are they that shall be saved.]

Here is a summary of what I think is the structure of the passage:

A. Men are less than the dust of the earth,
B. And God moves the earth however he pleases.
C. If God orders the earth to move and it does,
D. And if God orders that you be cut off for sin and it is done,
E. Then you better repent!

Here is that structure applied to the whole passage:

A. Men are less than the dust of the earth,

• O how great is the nothingness of the children of men; yea, even they are less than the dust of the earth.

B. And God moves the earth however he pleases.

• For behold, the dust of the earth moveth hither and thither, to the dividing asunder, at the command of our great and everlasting God;
• yea, behold at his voice do the hills and the mountains tremble and quake;
• and by the power of his voice they are broken up, and become smooth, yea, even like unto a valley;
• yea, by the power of his voice doth the whole earth shake;
• yea, by the power of his voice, do the foundations rock, even to the very center.

C. If God orders the earth to move and it does,

• yea and if he sayeth unto the earth move and it is moved;
• yea if he say unto the earth thou shalt go back that it lengthen out the day for many hours and it is done; and thus according to his word, the earth goeth back, and it appeareth unto man that it standeth still; yea, and behold this is so: for sure it is the earth that moveth, and not the sun.
• and behold also if he sayeth unto the waters of the great deep be thou dried up and it is done
• behold if he sayeth unto this mountain be thou raised up and come over and fall upon that city that it be buried up and behold it is done
• And behold if a man hideth up treasure in the earth, and the Lord shall say, Let it be accursed, because of the iniquity of him that hath hid it up, behold, it shall be accursed;
• and if the Lord shall say be thou accursed that no man shall find thee from this time henceforth and forever and behold no man getteth it henceforth and forever

D. And if God orders that you be cut off for sin and it is done,

• and behold if the Lord shall say unto a man because of thine iniquities thou shalt be accursed forever and it shall be done
• and if the Lord shall say because of thine iniquities thou shalt be cut off from my presence and he will cause that it shall be so --and wo unto whom he shall say this, for it shall be unto him that will do iniquity, and he cannot be saved;

E. Then you better repent!

• therefore, for this cause, that men might be saved, hath repentance been declared.
• Therefore, blessed are they who will repent and hearken unto the voice of the Lord their God; for these are they that shall be saved.

I think the problem here for most interpreters is that what we have from verses 13-23 is essentially one really long sentence, with lengthy asides (which I have italicized) in verses 15 and 22 that interrupt the sentence's flow. One of these asides immediately precedes the predicate in v. 23, thereby obscuring its relationship to the list of conditions that precedes it. Joseph was orally dictating this, and so we should not expect the crisp style of an expert author. Rather, what we find here has more of the cadence and rhythm of a frontier sermon.

Notice, however, how much sense my reading makes of this passage. The progression here is perfectly logical. If God curses a treasure and hundreds of years later this curse remains in effect, and if God similarly curses you and it is binding, then you're screwed unless you repent. If God divides asunder the earth and the waters and it lasts forever, and if he similarly cuts you off from his presence, then you're screwed unless you repent. So you might want to get on that ASAP.

What do you all think? Have I solved the "if...and conditional" mystery?

Best,

-Chris

[_CaliforniaKid]

I should add that it is yet another sign of Joseph's great genius that he could construct a sentence of such length and semantic complexity that even academic readers have been more likely to chalk it up to "Hebraism" than to grasp the full sentence in its English meaning.

[_Sethbag]

I never put much time into looking at the "if...and" claims, but what I did read of them wasn't really all that convincing to me. It always came across as parallelomania. There are so many things wrong with the Book of Mormon that one or two strained parallels to ancient Hebrew don't simply wipe them away - and they certainly don't nail down a causal connection.

A correlation is not a causation, and these Hebraism arguments start looking more and more like simple coincidence in the gigantic domain of all possible ways in which the Book of Mormon text might be scrutinized. If I scrutinize enough clouds, eventually I really will find one that looks like a rabbit, or a bird, or whatever.

I think what you've written here makes a huge amount of sense. You explain how this construct fits into a rambling explanation by someone of the reasons they ought to fear God and repent, and you do it in a way that undercuts the idea that this particular construct could only have come into the text if it were a translation from ancient Hebrew. I think it's really good.

[_CaliforniaKid]

Thanks!

[_The Dude]

in my opinion Helaman 12:7-22 is a written mess but works better as a sermon, especially following CaliforniaKid's outline. Since Joseph Smith is supposed to have dictated the passage, it makes some sense that this kind of writing appears in the Book of Mormon.

[_Scottie]

Why do they keep trying to find Hebraisms in Reformed Egyptian??

[_CaliforniaKid]

Reformed Egyptian is just the Hebrew equivalent of Pig Latin.

[_Sethbag]

Why do they keep trying to find Hebraisms in Reformed Egyptian??

You have to remember, the argument is that ancient Americans were actually writing in Hebrew, merely represented by Reformed Egyptian characters.

The explanation was that Reformed Egyptian was such a compact written language that the exact same thing could be written using its characters and take up significantly less space on the golden plates than if it had been written using actual Hebrew, and since golden plates were hard to come by, they had to go this route in order to squeeze as much stuff onto them.

It would be sort of like writing a book in English, but using the Japanese Hiragana to spell out the words.

Unsurprisingly, I'm very, very skeptical - and I was very skeptical about this when I was a TBM, too, since it didn't make much sense. My understanding (since I haven't studied this) is that ancient Hebrew didn't use vowels, and thus words were spellt using just strings of consonants only. Ancient Hebrew words spellt this way are pretty darn freaking compact already, and it seems exceedingly dubious that Reformed Egyptian could have been even more compact enough to have been worth the trouble.

I mean seriously, given what we know about Egyptian phonetic script, could Hebrew words in fact be written out more compactly using it than with Hebrew consonants only?

[_CaliforniaKid]

it seems exceedingly dubious that Reformed Egyptian could have been even more compact enough to have been worth the trouble.

As we know from the Book of Abraham manuscripts, a single Egyptian hieroglyph could communicate whole sentences or even paragraphs of English text. This language was better than compact: it was a veritable Big-Bang of meaning from a singularity of script. ;)

[_Sethbag]

it seems exceedingly dubious that Reformed Egyptian could have been even more compact enough to have been worth the trouble.

As we know from the Book of Abraham manuscripts, a single Egyptian hieroglyph could communicate whole sentences or even paragraphs of English text. This language was better than compact: it was a veritable Big-Bang of meaning from a singularity of script. ;)

Yes, we know that the entire Egyptian explanation in the KEP from Joseph Smith is pure, unmitigated bullsh**. Sorry RCrockett, but bullsh** is the absolute best term for the job here.

But what's interesting, CK, is how badly this whole "Egyptian hieroglyphs expanding to entire paragraphs' worth of meaning" from the KEP undermines the notion of Hebrew written using (reformed) Egyptian characters. This is because these Egyptian characters are not being used to write Egyptian, but rather to spell out, phonetically, Hebrew words. Thus we're talking about a phoneme by phoneme transliteration from one character representation to another.

And, again, could a direct, phoneme by phoneme representation of Hebrew words using any sort of Egyptian phonetic alphabet actually beat out Hebrew spellt with only consonants? I'm very, very skeptical. Especially once one compares ancient Hebrew characters with the gibberish Joseph Smith "copied from the golden plates" onto the paper he sent along to Charles Anthon. Those characters, if they are indeed Egyptian phonetic representations of phonemes would be highly, highly space-inefficient compared to Hebrew consonants.