Hi folks,
Is "dreamed a dream" a reliable indicator of a text's Semitic origin? No.
In addition to usage in the KJV (Gen. 37:5. 9; 40:5, 8; 41:11, 15; Judg. 7:13; Dan. 2:3) and Bunyan's
Pilgrim's Progress (see the OP), the phrase occurs in other early-19thC literature—even with the non-KJV nuance of Lehi's usage:
Behold, I have dreamed a dream; or, in other words, I have seen a vision.
[1 Ne. 8:2, emphasis added; see also 1 Ne. 3:2.]
In the early 19thC, James Ferguson published the early-18thC writings of Joseph Addison:
[A]nd promising myself that my slumbers would be sweet, I no sooner fell into them, but I dreamed a dream, or saw a vision ...
[James Ferguson, comp. and ed., The British Essayists, vol. 3 (London: J. Haddon, 1819), 87, bold emphasis added.]
From William Hone, early-19thC readers learned that
Joe Davis had dreamed a dream, or, as my narrator informed me, had seen a vision.
[William Hone, The Table Book, vol. 2 (London: Hunt and Clarke, 1828), 478, bold emphasis added.]
One poet put the language to verse:
And I have seen a vision,—
And I have dreamed a dream,
And sure that hour Elysian
Was no deceiving beam!
[Mary Ann Browne, Repentance; and Other Poems (London: Longman & Co., 1829), 110, bold emphasis added.]
The simple juxtaposition of "dreamed a dream" with "vision" doesn't appear to have been a linguistic stretch for early-19thC writers:
[H]is mother, a little time before his birth, dreamed a dream, wherein, in comic vision, she saw an infant son dancing a hornpipe upon Garrick's head.
[Catherine Oxberry, comp. and ed., Oxberry's Dramatic Biography, and Histrionic Anecdotes, vol. 4 (London: George Virtue, 1826), 128, bold emphasis added.]
I fell asleep, and dreamed a dream. I saw in my vision ...
[The Sporting Magazine 20, no. 121 (Oct. 1827): 408, bold emphasis added.]
If anything, "dreamed a dream" merely points to a biblical culture from which the BoMor emerged—a biblical culture much like that of Joseph Smith's.
My best,
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