Sariah

[Guest]

Revisiting “Sariah” at Elephantine
Neal Rappleye
https://www.mormoninterpreter.com/revis ... -6qj6qWVns

Am I reading him correctly?

He says in the Abstract:
"The appearance of the name Seraiah/Sariah as a woman’s name exclusively in the Book of Mormon and at Elephantine..."

And on page 6 says:
"the attestation of ŚRYH as a woman’s name both in the Book of Mormon and at Elephantine and only in these sources"

Is Neal claiming that the only place Sariah is found in use as a woman's name is in the Book of Mormon and the Elephantine papyrus?

I did a quick google book search and found an 1822 book with a female named Sariah.
https://books.google.com/books?id=bNtmg ... &q&f=false

[_mentalgymnast]

I did a quick google book search and found an 1822 book with a female named Sariah.
https://books.google.com/books?id=bNtmg ... &q&f=false

Just one of many 'lucky hits' for Joseph Smith and Co.

Man, he was good at getting things right. Serendipity is a powerful force in the universe, it seems.

To tag a name that would have common roots in antiquity. Who would have thought?

Regards,
MG

[_tapirrider]

Just one of many 'lucky hits' for Joseph Smith and Co.

Man, he was good at getting things right. Serendipity is a powerful force in the universe, it seems.

To tag a name that would have common roots in antiquity. Who would have thought?

Regards,
MG

Is Neal claiming that the only place Sariah is found in use as a woman's name is in the Book of Mormon and the Elephantine papyrus?

[_SteelHead]

Take the name Saria as appears in the Bible. Add an "h" or just mash it with Sarah as the person's name later becomes. How could he have known?

Scrapping the bottom of the barrel with this one Neal.

[_tapirrider]

Take the name Saria as appears in the Bible. Add an "h" or just mash it with Sarah as the person's name later becomes. How could he have known?

Scrapping the bottom of the barrel with this one Neal.

Seems this started with Dr. Chadwick. In his paper on the matter he stated "The skeptic might suggest that this name was an invention of Joseph Smith, since Sariah does not appear in the Bible as a female personal name." Chadwick goes on to say that it had only been found as a male name in ancient Israel until the Elephantine papyri.
https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/vie ... ntext=jbms

Seems the mopologists have taken "might suggest" and built a straw man so they can declare victory. I can't find any claim by anti-Mormons that Sariah should have been a male name. Maybe the Tanners mentioned it but I haven't found it. Definitely not in the CES letter. The only places I find that it should have been a male name is from mopologists.

Joseph Smith wouldn't have had to make it up, it was a known female name in his day and earlier. Cotton Mather would have had an aunt Sariah if the small pox had not killed her in her childhood. And a census check found many Sariahs, both males and females in the 19th century, some females before 1830, and some of those pre-1830 females having been named that in Europe before coming to the States.

Dr. Chadwick's research is fascinating in showing the antiquity of a name being used for both males and females, but it doesn't make Joseph Smith's use of it in the Book of Mormon miraculous. To achieve that spine tingling notion about Sariah in the Book of Mormon, it requires mopologists to suggest that it was only found in the Book of Mormon and the Elephantine papyri.

[_Stem]

Revisiting “Sariah” at Elephantine
Neal Rappleye
https://www.mormoninterpreter.com/revis ... -6qj6qWVns

Am I reading him correctly?

He says in the Abstract:
"The appearance of the name Seraiah/Sariah as a woman’s name exclusively in the Book of Mormon and at Elephantine..."

And on page 6 says:
"the attestation of ŚRYH as a woman’s name both in the Book of Mormon and at Elephantine and only in these sources"

Is Neal claiming that the only place Sariah is found in use as a woman's name is in the Book of Mormon and the Elephantine papyrus?

I did a quick google book search and found an 1822 book with a female named Sariah.
https://books.google.com/books?id=bNtmg ... &q&f=false

I don't think that's quite what he's saying. he's responding to Hoskinson who has questioned whether the Elephantine reference to Sariah is not a very good sample of the name being used as a female name from texts of that era. Rappleye, here, is arguing it is a good example of Sariah being female. And then he notes some connection between Elephantine and Northern Israel, because that is presumably where Lehi's lineage is from, which to him means something significant in terms of Sariah's name--because if Sariah was a female name in this Elephantine source, then it could also be female in the Book of Mormon.

I"m like, who cares? What a lame point to make, particularly since as you point out, Sariah, can be found as a female name in any source look at in Joseph's era.

[_tapirrider]

I don't think that's quite what he's saying. he's responding to Hoskinson who has questioned whether the Elephantine reference to Sariah is not a very good sample of the name being used as a female name from texts of that era. Rappleye, here, is arguing it is a good example of Sariah being female. And then he notes some connection between Elephantine and Northern Israel, because that is presumably where Lehi's lineage is from, which to him means something significant in terms of Sariah's name--because if Sariah was a female name in this Elephantine source, then it could also be female in the Book of Mormon.

I"m like, who cares? What a lame point to make, particularly since as you point out, Sariah, can be found as a female name in any source look at in Joseph's era.

I hope Rappleye clarifies it. He isn't the first one to suggest that is is only found in the Book of Mormon and the Elephantine papyri.

Peterson did this in 2000. "For example, the name of Lehi’s wife, Sariah, previously unknown outside the Book of Mormon, has been found in ancient Jewish documents from Egypt."
https://www.lds.org/study/ensign/2000/0 ... n?lang=eng

It was not "previously unknown outside of the Book of Mormon".

Ash suggested it too. "While "Sariah" is not found in the King James Bible, s'ryh is a well documented male name in ancient Israel and appears 19 times in the Hebrew Old Testament, representing eleven different men. Until recently, however, it was not known to represent a female name. So even if Joseph was able to read Hebrew in 1829 (which he could not), why would he use a common Israelite male name for Lehi's wife?"
https://www.deseretnews.com/article/705 ... -East.html

[_Philo Sofee]

The only reason the apologists find it only in ancient sources and the Book of Mormon is because they only look in ancient sources and the Book of Mormon. Contemporary sources with Joseph Smith is taboo, illegal use of their time, false leads into pretended reality, not on the Brethren's radar, therefore of literal no significant importance, etc. As long as they can say "we have not seen it in any contemporary sources," then they tell the truth. However, it does come across as colored when they finish the thought that "we, however, have no bothered to look into any contemporary source, because for us, only the Book of Mormon and any ancient source suffices for our point to be made, hence sources from Joseph Smith's time has not been looked into."

[_Symmachus]

Did they find the names Zelph or Onandagus in the Elaphantine papyri yet? That'd be something worth looking into.

[_Lemmie]

Did they find the names Zelph or Onandagus in the Elaphantine papyri yet? That'd be something worth looking into.

Good point. The last apologetic offering I read on the names in the Book of Mormon emphasized the fact that there were around 190 names out of about 340 names in the Book of Mormon that were absolutely unique.

Arguing that one name in the Book of Mormon is used in an ancient manner while also noting that over 60 percent of the names are not only not used in an ancient manner but are not used at all by anyone else on the planet is pretty much the definition of meaningless coincidence.

And I'm not a linguist, but from a statistical standpoint, it seems suspect that 60 percent of the names used by a group of people disappeared. When the Book of Mormon people mingled with the vast numbers of people Book of Mormon apologists now say filled the Americas, didn't any of them get to name their offspring?