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HEBREW NAMES IN THE BOOK OF MORMONby John A. Tvedtnes

the preface to the work, David Noel Freedman wrote,The editor is to be commended for his catholicity andcourage and for his own original contributions in sev-eral domains including a unique treatment of the Bookof Mormon.6 Taking his cue from Welch, Donald W.Parry, a member of the Dead Sea Scrolls translationteam and contributor to the Oxford series Discoveriesin the Judaean Desert,7 published The Book of MormonText Reformatted According to Parallelistic Patterns in1992,8 just a few years after he published an article onHebrew Literary Patterns in the Book of Mormon.9

In 1979, Welch organized the Foundation for AncientResearch and Mormon Studies (FARMS). Although theorganization is perhaps best known for producing theDead Sea Scrolls CD-ROM distributed through Brill,10one of its primary activities is the publication of schol-arly books and papers on the Book of Mormon, includ-ing the semiannual Journal of Book of Mormon Stud-ies. Because of the organizations broad interest in an-cient texts in general, it was recently reorganized asthe Institute for the Study and Preservation of AncientReligious Texts at Brigham Young University.

Scholarly work on the Book of Mormon has not beenrestricted to the Institute. In his recent book onpostrationalism, Douglas Robinson of the University ofMississippi includes Joseph Smith and the Book ofMormon among his case studies.11 Even more signifi-cant is the forthcoming publication by Oxford Univer-sity of Terryl L. Givens book, By the Hand of Mormon:The American Scripture that Launched a New WorldReligion.

HEBRAIC STUDIES OF THE BOOK OFMORMONThe Book of Mormon has generally gone unno-ticed among Jewish scholars, with some notableexceptions. In two of his last books, the lateRaphael Patai included favorable comments onthe Book of Mormon,12 and his last book in-cluded an appendix recounting the voyage of

[Editors note: This paper was presented by JohnTvedtnes at the Thirteenth World Congress of JewishStudies in Jerusalem, August 2001.]

In the spring of 1830, Joseph Smith, a young Americanfarmer in the state of New York, published a volumeentitled the Book of Mormon. The book purports to bean abridgment of the history of a small group of peoplewho left Jerusalem about 600 B.C.E. and, led by aprophet named Lehi, came to the Americas. The abridg-ment was essentially prepared about a thousand yearslater by a prophet named Mormon. Smith claimed thathe had translated the text from metallic plates withdivine assistance.

While more than twenty thousand peoplemostlyAmericans and Britishcame to accept the book dur-ing Joseph Smiths lifetime, most people considered itto be the work of a charlatan.1 Today, more than elevenmillion people profess a belief in the Book of Mormonas ancient scripture alongside the Bible, and that num-ber increases annually by approximately 300,000. Since1830, more than one hundred million copies of the bookhave been published in over a hundred languages, withmore than five million copies currently being distrib-uted each year.

SCHOLARLY STUDIES OF THE BOOK OFMORMONScholarly study of the Book of Mormon began aroundthe turn of the century when Thomas W. Brookbankintroduced the concept of Hebraisms in the Book ofMormon. 2 Over the years a few scholars, includingmyself, have looked into that topic and found it arather fruitful field.3 In 19691970, John W.Welch wrote his seminal work on chiasmus inthe Book of Mormon, demonstrating thatchiastic structures pervade the text.4 In 1981,Professor Welch edited his Chiasmus in Antiq-uity, with contributions from several scholarssuch as Yehudah Radday, and including Welchsown Chiasmus in the Book of Mormon. 5 In

2 Hebrew Names In the Book of Mormon

Copyright 2002 by FAIR

the Book of Mormon prophet Lehi to the New World.13During the 1970s I met with David Flusser on a num-ber of occasions, during which meetings he acknowl-edged the Book of Mormon as an authentic ancienttext.14

Prior to coming to Israel in 1971 I received a letter froma friend, Robert F. Smith, who was then attending theHebrew University in Jerusalem. Smith told me of anEnglish lecture on the history of the Hebrew languagein which Haim Rabin had cited a passage from the Bookof Mormon to illustrate the use of the Hebrew conjunc-tion vav and told the assembled students that the Bookof Mormon reflected Hebrew better than the EnglishBible. I was initially skeptical, but when I came to theHebrew University and took several courses from Pro-fessor Rabin, I found him very open to the idea that theBook of Mormon was translated from an ancient He-brew text. In a Hebrew etymology course, I cited pas-sages from the Book of Mormon to make my case inseveral papers and was delighted to receive high marksand favorable comments.15

LANGUAGE AND SCHOLARSHIPBefore proceeding with an examination of Hebrewnames in the Book of Mormon, I should lay some ground-work regarding the language of the book. Nephi, whowrote the first portion of the book in the sixth centuryB.C.E., wrote, I make a record in the language of myfather, which consists of the learning of the Jews andthe language of the Egyptians.16 Most researchers readthis as meaning that Nephi used Egyptian charactersto transliterate Hebrew words. This is also suggestedby the last contributor to the book, Moroni, son of Mor-mon, who wrote:

We have written this record according to ourknowledge, in the characters which are calledamong us the reformed Egyptian, being handeddown and altered by us, according to our man-ner of speech. And if our plates had been suffi-ciently large we should have written in Hebrew;but the Hebrew hath been altered by us also;and if we could have written in Hebrew, behold,ye would have had no imperfection in ourrecord. 17

In 1966, William Foxwell Albright addressed a letter toa Book of Mormon critic in which he explained that hewas a Protestant and hence not a believer in the Bookof Mormon, but then observed, It is all the more sur-prising that there are two Egyptian names, Paanch[Paanchi] and Pahor(an) which appear in the Book ofMormon in close connection with a reference to the origi-nal language being Reformed Egyptian. Puzzled at

the existence of such names in an obscure book pub-lished by Joseph Smith in 1830, Albright vaguely sug-gested that the young Mormon leader was some kind ofreligious genius.18 Since that time, scholars have notedthe intermingling of Hebrew and Egyptian script onostraca19 from both Arad and Ein-Qudeirah and vari-ous documents from Egypt are known to contain Semitictexts written in Egyptian characters.20

My first foray into Book of Mormon names was my 1977article, A Phonemic Analysis of Nephite and JarediteProper Names, in which I examined the more than 160names found only in the Book of Mormon.21 Assumingthat Joseph Smith transliterated Book of Mormonnames with some regularity, it was readily demonstrablethat the names of the Nephites, descendants of Lehi,followed the phonlogical patterning of Hebrew. None ofthe names included consonants that do not exist inHebrew, and while the stops (plosives) like t or p couldbe found at the beginning of names, when they appearedmedially or finally after vowels, they were spelled thand ph, respectively.

More important, of course, is the question of whetherthose names have valid etymologies in Hebrew. Manyof them do, though a few are Egyptian in origin, whichaccords well with what we know about ancient Israel-ite names, especially from the large number of sealsand bullae22 now available. A number of researchershave looked at the issue of Hebrew etymologies for Bookof Mormon names, notably Robert F. Smith, John W.Welch,23 Paul Y. Hoskisson,24 Stephen D. Ricks, JohnGee,25 and myself (all of Brigham Young University),Jo Ann Hackett of Harvard, and Gordon C. Thomassonof Broome Community College.26

Most of these scholars are participating in a compre-hensive study of the Book of Mormon onomasticon tobe published by Brigham Young Universitys Institutefor the Study and Preservation of Ancient ReligiousTexts. In 1995 two amateur Hebrew students, Josephand Norrene Salonimer, wrote a book on the subject, IKnow Thee By Name (privately published). Thoughsome of their suggestions have merit, I found the bookgenerally wanting in my review thereof.27

BOOK OF MORMON NAMESHaving laid the foundation, lets turn to the names them-selves, beginning with a look at some nisbe (gentillic28 )forms, of which the Book of Mormon, like the Bible, hasjust a few.29 We have Moroni (Moronite, Alma 43:16,etc.), from the place-name Moron (Ether 7:56, etc.);Lamoni (Lamanite, Alma 17:21, etc.), from Laman, sonof Lehi (1 Nephi 2:5, etc.); and Muloki (Mulekite, Alma20:2; 21:11), from an ancestral Mulek (Mosiah 25:2, etc.),

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John A. Tvedtnes 3

said to be a son of the Jewish king Zedekiah who es-caped death at the hands of the Babylonians (Helaman6:10; 8:21).30 It has been proposed that Mulek is theman known from Jeremiah 38:6 as Malkiyahu ben ha-Mellekh.31 Other names that may be gentillic are Limhi(Mosiah 7:9, etc.), perhaps from the personal nameLamah (Mormon 6:14), Amlici (Alma 2:1, etc.), andHimni (Mosiah 27:34, etc.).

Some Book of Mormon personal names include the He-brew elements for father or people (or, followingArabic, paternal uncle or clan). These include Abinadom(Omni 1:12) and Abinadi (Mosiah 11:20, etc.), perhapsfather of my wandering, Aminadi (Alma 10:23), per-haps people of my wandering. One Book of Mormonscribe categorized his people as wanderers, cast outfrom Jerusalem,32 while another called them wander-ers in a strange land.33

Some Book of Mormon place-names also have goodHebrew etymologies. The city Zarahemla (Omni 1:12,etc.), for