Right on Target!

[Guest]

BREAKING NEWS.

San Antonio, Texas--Daniel Peterson, former president of the Richard Pryor Mormon Fan Club, has recently alerted the world to the latest Mormon apologetic bull's-eye. The Book of Mormon name Gidgiddoni (3 Nephi 3:18) has turned up in some neo-Assyrian records, records that we have good reason to believe were not in the library at Manchester and thus were unlikely to have been consulted by the Prophet Joseph Smith.

There are generally two approaches to Book of Mormon names. One of them searches for plausible etymologies for Book of Mormon names; the other looks at whether the name is actually attested. If it is attested it does not matter much whether or not we can figure out an etymology for the name (that is, whether we can determine what the name originally meant). Both of these approaches are useful and have their merits.

The Book of Mormon name Gidgiddoni can now be added to the list of names that are attested.

Bull's-eye! Take that Phillip Jenkins!

The name Gidgiddoni, with its reduplication and doubled consonant, is unusual for a Hebrew name. We now know that it is not.

I totally agree, but then I've always maintained it's not a Hebrew name.

It is a well attested name in Neo-Assyrian records. It comes from the same Assyrian empire that is discussed so extensively in the works of Isaiah. The name is mentioned many times in Assyrian records, covering a number of individuals. It is spelled a number of ways:

Gíd-gi-da-nu (SAA 1: 152:6)

Gíd-gi-da-a-n[i] (SAA 1: 152 r 9)

[Gíd-g]i-da-a-[ni] (SAA 1: 152 r 6)

[Gí]d-gi-da-a-[ni] (SAA 1: 39 :4)

Gíd-gi-da-a-nu (SAA 6: 31 r 23)

Gíd-gíd-da-nu (SAA 11: 123 ii 13)

Gíd-gíd-da-[nu] (SAA 12: 51 r 12)

O. M. F. G...some Neo-Assyrian administrative records prove that the Church is true.

The variety of cuneiform spellings demonstrates the following points about the Assyrian name.

The second d is doubled. (see Gíd-gíd-da-nu).

The a is long. (see Gíd-gi-da-a-nu). This is important because Assyrian (Akkadian) long a goes to an o in Hebrew. Cuneiform does not have an o sound and uses a variety of strategies to reproduce it.

The form of the name borrowed into Hebrew is the oblique case. Hebrew does not have case endings but does have names ending in -i.

Hmmm. The Canaanite vowel shift is a phonological phenomenon by which proto-Semitic long ā appears as long ō in Phoenician and Hebrew. Thus, Hebrew will have šalōm but Arabic has salām and Hebrew will have kōtēḇ where Arabic has kātib.

But it's misleading to say that "long a goes to an o in Hebrew." It is not that Hebrew speakers could not pronounce a long "a" (in fact, it's a common phoneme) and turned every long "a" they heard into a long "o," even when they borrowed a word. A more accurate characterization would be to say that, sometime in the second millennium BC, this vowel shift occurred in the Semitic languages of northwest Palestine but not in any other Semitic languages. But there are plenty of cases of long "a" in Hebrew that resulted after Canaanite vowel shift occurred (e.g. pretonic lengthening), and since therefore that phoneme was unproblematic for Hebrew speakers, that long "a" tended to remain when words with that phoneme were borrowed from other languages when that borrowing occurred after the Canaanite vowel shift (any time after c. 1500 BC, in other words). This helps us to determine whether a word is a borrowing or not. Words that have a long "o" where we would expect it are generally not borrowed, but if a word has a long "a" where we would expect a long "o," then you know it's a borrowed word.

The simplest explanation is that an Assyrian individual with the name Gidgiddanu was mentioned in the brass plates. This was then the source of the name for this particular military leader several centuries later.

Oh, so you're saying this name was borrowed from Assyrian several centuries after the Canaanite vowel shift? Ok, so then why the hell didn't they just borrow it as Gidgiddanu? The long "a" would be sure indication that this name was borrowed. Yes, there is the Canaanite vowel shift, but note that it is "shift" rather than "shifts"—it only happened once, and it happened at least a thousand years before the brass plates were stolen from a government official in Jerusalem who was brutally murdered in the robbery by a deranged religious zealot. Whatever conditions were responsible for the vowel shift is open to debate, but what is not debatable is the fact that it was dormant in the period in question.

So, why did these brass plates filter this Assyrian name through a vowel shift that was no longer operative? As a point of comparison, let's look at another known borrowing from a Akkadian, also a name, the name of the month nisān (at Nehemiah 2:1). This comes directly from Akkadian, araḥ nisānu, "month of the sanctuary." Notice that long "a" in the Akkadian shows up with long "a" in Hebrew, not a long "o." The word nisān has to be a borrowing, because otherwise we would have *nisōn, due to the Canaanite vowel shift. If Gidgiddoni really comes from Akkadian, then why should it be anything other than Gidgiddani or just Gidgiddanu? If Gee is right, then the borrowing of Akkadian Gidgiddanu violates what we know of Biblical Hebrew phonology because it posits that the Canaanite vowel shift is still operating, and if that were so, then we have to explain why we don't have *nisōn in Hebrew.

The simplest explanation is that an Assyrian individual with the name Gidgiddanu was mentioned in the brass plates. This was then the source of the name for this particular military leader several centuries later.

The simplest explanation is that everything we know about the chronology of the Canaanite vowel shift and its relation to Biblical Hebrew phonology should be called into question in order to provide evidence that a name from some obscure Assyrian bureaucratic records was borrowed by a text for which there is no external evidence and then centuries later borrowed again as a personal name? I guess we define "simple" differently.

Thus the number of attested non-biblical names in the Book of Mormon has just increased by one.

I don't think so. Nice try, though. The only other one I'm aware of is Alma, which is pretty easy to demolish (hint: that Aramaic "3almah" in the Bar Kochba material only supports the Book of Mormon name "Alma" if that 'ayin goes back to a ghayn, but if it does, there is a problem, because that ghayn still existed in the Hebrew of sixth century, so you have to start inventing Nephite sound laws, and if you're inventing stuff then you are no longer in the realm of evidence and you might as well not even bother with the Bar Kochba letters).

So, I think we're still at 0.

EDIT: Daniel Peterson's blog from which I got the link to these arguments prefaces the link by saying, "My friend and former FARMS colleague Matt Roper continues to do very valuable work," and following that I originally attributed these arguments to Matthew Roper. But, as Tom as pointed out, the blog post is actually by John Gee, not Matthew Roper. I have edited this to reflect that and apologize to Matthew Roper and John Gee for the misattribution.

[_Spanner]

First Nahom, now Gidgidoni! I am going to have to go back to church now.


Actually, I am surprised there are not a raft of overlaps between crazy Mormon names and names from somewhere in the Middle-East. There must be millions of names from Middle-Eastern/North African history - the chances that some will be reinvented somewhere else must be pretty high. Particularly in the Book of Mormon case, where the author does a lot of mix-and-match with syllables from Biblical names.

[_ludwigm]

Holy crap!
Americans (US' ...) spell and pronounce everything as weird as they can.

The spelling of Book of Mormon's names... They follow the stupid english (yes, I used the lower case) spelling: geezes

I like Your works, Symmachus. They are as valid as fairMormons. My wife could be happy with them.

[_Symmachus]

First Nahom, now Gidgidoni! I am going to have to go back to church now.


Actually, I am surprised there are not a raft of overlaps between crazy Mormon names and names from somewhere in the Middle-East. There must be millions of names from Middle-Eastern/North African history - the chances that some will be reinvented somewhere else must be pretty high. Particularly in the Book of Mormon case, where the author does a lot of mix-and-match with syllables from Biblical names.

Well, in fact there are a raft of overlaps between crazy Mormon names from somewhere in the middle east: namely, bronze age Palestine as mediated through the Bible.

I honestly don't get NHM, because Nahum in the Bible is such an easy source for that. That NHM could be Book of Mormon Nahom is either a 1) a coincidence or 2) not a coincidence.

Apologists say it is 2) not a coincidence. On what grounds? Because they say it is not. It's a subjective choice.

Ok, well, what do they make of the Biblical name Nahum? It is either 1) a coincidence that it is basically the same as Nahom or 2) it is not a coincidence.

Apologists say it 1) is a coincidence. On what grounds? Because they say it is. It's a subjective choice.

With Gidgiddoni and Alma, though, there is no easy source, and that means an independent attestation in the right context could constitute evidence. Unfortunately, the historical linguistic arguments of the apologists do not withstand scrutiny very well, and they end up ignoring objective criteria and making subjective choices again.

Of course at the end of the day, historical linguistic analysis of the Book of Mormon for any language other than English is 100% subjective because we have no way of knowing what kind of linguistic features were present in the Nephite language, let alone how accurately the text conveys those features. For all I know, Nephites repeated the Canaanite vowel shift on a Sunday afternoon at 3:27 pm on April 4, 23 BC, and that is why we get the "o" (which Roper assumes is long but could have been short) instead of the "a." What's the evidence for that? None; it's just a convenient assumption that avoids the pitfalls I pointed out above. But, as I said before, if you're just going to rely on baseless assumptions and make stuff up, why even bother with the linguistics in the first place?

Holy crap!
Americans (US' ...) spell and pronounce everything as weird as they can.

But have you ever seen Hungarian?

The spelling of Book of Mormon's names... They follow the stupid english (yes, I used the lower case) spelling: geezes

Good point. At the end of the day, we are dealing with how a superstitious English-speaking 19th century scribe on the American frontier heard a English-speaking 19th century hillbilly pronounce some names from a book he says was written on gold and buried in his backyard, as he learned from an angel.

I like Your works, Symmachus.

You are very kind, LudovicusM.

They are as valid as fairMormons.

Ouch.

[_scorndog]

historical linguistic analysis of the Book of Mormon for any language other than English is 100% subjective because we have no way of knowing what kind of linguistic features were present in the Nephite language

Interesting observation. That leads to a question about old English meanings that are in the text that Skousen has pointed out.

[_Kishkumen]

Of course at the end of the day, historical linguistic analysis of the Book of Mormon for any language other than English is 100% subjective because we have no way of knowing what kind of linguistic features were present in the Nephite language, let alone how accurately the text conveys those features. For all I know, Nephites repeated the Canaanite vowel shift on a Sunday afternoon at 3:27 pm on April 4, 23 BC, and that is why we get the "o" (which Roper assumes is long but could have been short) instead of the "a." What's the evidence for that? None; it's just a convenient assumption that avoids the pitfalls I pointed out above. But, as I said before, if you're just going to rely on baseless assumptions and make stuff up, why even bother with the linguistics in the first place?

Probably because you are desperate to find one possible shred of confirmation for something that just ain't so. You see these Assyrian names, and they are just... sooo.... clooooose. Aaaakkkkk! What do you do? It must be right! So, you allow yourself a little wiggle room on your methodology because it. MUST. be. right. And who will fault you for it? You have some fellow boosters with PeeehDeees who are eager to lap your theory up and promulgate it more broadly. Win. Win. Win. Win. And then Ooops! Someone who actually knows something sees what is wrong with it, sees how sloppy you were, knows exactly why you were so sloppy, and FAIL.

But, interestingly, the high fives continue at the Interpreter Lounge.

[_Kishkumen]

By the way, I believe Joseph Smith spelled out the names in dictation process so they would be exactly right, If I recall correctly.

[_moksha]

Speaking for believers everywhere, we are giddy about Gidgidoni. It doesn't matter if we must make a stretch past any vowel shifts or alternate ways of interpreting this newly found evidence. Now we have additional verification and that puts us into a speak-to-the-hand euphoria. This will be a game changer for sure! I nominate Matt Roper to the Nauvoo Legion of Honor!!!

[_Chap]

By the way, I believe Joseph Smith spelled out the names in dictation process so they would be exactly right, If I recall correctly.

Half a minute. Surely the Nephites spoke (and wrote) a semitic language? Hence no indications of vowels, one would expect; the Nephites lost contact with their ancestral culture - and indeed were already extinct as a people - well before the Masoretes introduced the vowel pointing we have today.

So where did Smith get his vowels from?

[_Kishkumen]

So where did Smith get his vowels from?

Actually, the Book of Mormon was written in Egyptian, as the book itself states twice (once at the beginning of Nephi and the second time in Mosiah). And the vowels come from God, as they always have.