Hebraisms in the Book of Mormon

Excerpted online article from FAIRMormon.org

What is a 'Hebraism'?

A hebraism is a way of speaking or writing that uses the grammatical or rhetorical styles of Hebrew. For example, if originally written in English, the Book of Mormon would speak about "brass plates" instead of "plates of brass." However, "plates of brass" matches how a Hebrew writer or speaker would express themselves.
Therefore, Book of Mormon scholars look for evidence of the Book of Mormon's ancient Hebrew origins by identifying phrases or expressions which are not typical for an English speaker of Joseph Smith's day which may reflect a 'direct translation' of the underlying Semitic-style language of the Book of Mormon.
The presence of hebraisms does not prove the Book of Mormon is an ancient record, but they suggest that the translation was (at times, at least) relatively 'tight,' and require the critic to explain where Joseph Smith would have picked up such expressions in rural New York of the 1820s.

Do Hebraisms exist in the Book of Mormon?

Many LDS sources argue that Hebraisms exist. Some have been overly enthusiastic or operated using problematic methodology. For example, Hebrew and other Semitic languages frequently give give a verb a cognate direct object for emphasis, eg. "he dreamed a dream" or "He hit him a hitting." Since the KJV translators were frequently literal in rendering the Hebrew, the Old Testament contains many English examples of this. Thus, the presence of the cognate accusative throughout the Book of Mormon, though a valid Semiticism, cannot be used as strong evidence for the Book of Mormon. (An appreciation of such devices can enhance our appreciation of the text, however.)
For a Semiticism to be strong evidence it must be

1. present in the Book of Mormon, but
2. not common to Joseph's language environment (i.e., the KJV, or English of his day.)

Several such constructions exist.

Hebrew idiom

Dan Peterson wrote:

In an ancient Hebrew idiom, for example, arrows are "thrown" (see, for example, Alma 49:22). Also, just as in ancient Hebrew and other Semitic languages, in a construction known as a "cognate accusative," the word denoting the object of a verb is sometimes derived from the same root as the verb itself. "Behold," says the prophet Lehi, "I have dreamed a dream."35 Similarly, the (to us) redundant that in such expressions as "because that they are redeemed from the fall" and "because that my heart is broken" is a Hebraism (see, respectively, 2 Nephi 2:26 and 2 Nephi 4:32).^[1]

Colophons

• The use of colophons in the Book of Mormon reflects ancient practice unknown to Joseph.^[2]

Jershon

• For example, in Alma 27:22, the Nephites give the land Jershon to the Anti-Nephi-Lehi's "for an inheritance." Jershon follows a common Hebrew practice of creating names by suffixing -on to the tri-consonantal root. In this case, we have the root y-r-sh, which means among other things, "to inherit." (Hebrew /y/ is usually represented in English with a j.) In other words, the Nephites give the land "Inheritance" to the Anti-Nephi-Lehi's for an inheritance. If making up names at random, one could eventually make some that fit Hebrew patterns. However, the extreme unlikelihood of an imaginary name making sense in a reconstructed Hebrew original argues against this being the case with Jershon.

Names

Main article: Names

"Up" to Jerusalem

• Nephi always describes going to Jerusalem as going up (e.g., 1 Nephi 3:9; 4:4; 5:6; 7:3–4), and leaving Jerusalem as going down (e.g., 1 Nephi 2:5; 3:4, 16, 22; 4:35; 5:1; 7:2, 5). This is consistent with Biblical usage in both the Old and New Testaments (e.g., down: 2 Samuel 5:17; Luke 10:30; and Acts 8:15; up: 2 Chronicles 2:16 and Matthew 20:18).^[3]

What is chiasmus?

Chiasmus is a poetical or rhetorical form used by many languages, including Sumero-Akkadian [Sumeria, Assyria, Babylon], Ugaritic [Syrian area circa. 2000 B.C.] , Biblical Hebrew, Aramaic, the Talmud, the New Testament, Greek, and Latin.^[1]
Chiasmus is a form of parallelism, in which related or contrasting ideas are placed in juxtaposition for emphasis. Chiasmus uses "inverted parallelism," and takes its name from the Greek letter chi (χ) which looks like an English "X". This name was chosen to reflect the pattern of chiasmus:

Chiasmus pattern

Idea A Idea B Idea C Central idea D (the 'turning point' or 'cross' of the chi) Idea D repeated (optional) Idea C repeated Idea B repeated Idea A repeated

Because chiasmus relies, to an extent, on relationships between ideas or concepts, as well as on words (e.g. on rhymes or meter) it can survive translation remarkably intact, even if the translator is unaware of its presence. John W. Welch was the first to notice chiastic structures in the Book of Mormon.^[2]
Chiasmus itself can be understood in two distinct ways. It can be seen simply as a structural element (which describes the parallels in inverted order). It can also be seen as a rhetorical figure which employs this structure. While the second definition requires a degree of intentionality on the part of the author, the first does not. The difficulty lies in assessing whether or not a proposed example of chiasmus is really chiasmus or not - that is, is it an intentional figure or an accidental occurrence.
Chiasmus as a structure can be found nearly everywhere in prose. However, without considering the rhetorical value of the text, we can only be relatively certain of the intentionality of chiasmus when its structure is offset from the surrounding text in a way that draws our attention to it. This usually only occurs within poetic material where the text around the proposed chiasmus also follows relatively rigid (and intentional) textual patternings. Semitic poetry, for example, frequently uses paired parallel phrases. A passage might go something like this:

A:A' B:B' C:C'

And so on. If on the other hand, in the middle of a series of these parallelisms, we encounter something like this:

A:A' B:B' C:D:E:E':D':C' F:F' G:G'

Then we would have a chiastic structure interrupting the more typical paired parallelisms, and the use of chiasmus would be viewed strongly as being an intentional departure from the parallels that surround it - and thus a real example of chiasmus. This kind of proof does not work in general prose - where we normally do not expect to see structured text. Arguments for the occurrence in prose (and in poetics) are usually centered around the rhetorical value of the text. This can appear in several ways. A classic example of the rhetorical value of a chiasmus is seen in the Hebrew Psalm 82. There, the text uses a word which is ambiguous in Hebrew - meaning either "to rule" or "to judge" (in verses 1,2,3 and 8). The intial instances, when read in Hebrew are ambiguous until, through the chiastic structure, they are explained, and the first half of the poem can be re-read and the ambiguity resolved. Thankfully, when translated, most translators resolve the ambiguity for us. Scholars have developed a series of rules and criteria that can be used to help identify when a proposed chiasmus is an intentional one. Accidental chiastic structures are of little value in textual interpretation, since viewing one as intentional (when it wasn't) may lead to misinterpretation of the text. While the center of a chiasmus is usually the main point of the structure, this is not always the case, further complicating the issue.
While Chiasmus as a term was not known to Joseph Smith (the term "chiasmus" was not coined as a reference to this structure until 1871), its use in English, and its description as a rhetorical figure preceded the creation of the Book of Mormon significantly. Two early descriptions of the figure can be found in George Puttenham (1589) who decribed it as: "Ye haue a figure which takes a couple of words to play with in a verse, and by making them to chaunge and shift one into others place they do very pretily exchange and shift the sence." A few years earlier (1577), Henry Peachem, in his book of rhetorical tropes The Garden of Eloquence wrote: "The use serueth properlie to praise, dispraise, to distinguish, but most commonly to confute by the inuersion of the sentence."