Friday, May 13, 2011

Bountiful Zion, Zomar, Zamar, Shamry, Shamrana--and the Kirtland Egyptian Papers

When Hugh Nibley says the Egyptian Grammar and Alphabet (1835-36), with its "many happy guesses," "is not all pure nonsense," he means what he says: it is mostly pure nonsense ("The Meaning of the Kirtland Egyptian Papers," Maxwell Institute, Provo, Utah).

And what is the Egyptian Grammar and Alphabet? It consists of a collaborative endeavor by Joseph Smith and his associates to grasp the principles of governance upon which the Ancient Egyptians organized their society, attempts to unfold a corresponding view of the cosmos, and takes a wild stab at a locked language. It's a bit of boldness; yet no sooner begun, the project was closed, the notebook buried away. Thereafter, the brethren were put to school by Brother Joseph, studying Hebrew under the tutelage of a well-known teacher. As Hugh Nibley notes, serious mental labor at a known language would become the new prerequisite for further attempts to trace the ciphered past.

Grammar and Alphabet of the Egyptian Language makes for a promising title; it promises a complete and ordered view of the Egyptian mind: a library, a universe. After a day or two, the library shut its doors. By way of contrast with the ephemeral encyclopaedia, the Book of Abraham, published seven years later, glistens a radiant gem of expression and clarity. The Alphabet remains dark as clay; Abraham speaks with a poetic energy (see Richard L. Bushman, Joseph Smith, 290ff.).

Yet the Egyptian Grammar may have some light to shed on the ancient encyclopaedia. Consider the following statement, under the heading Beth, on page 23 of that document:

Beth  The place appointed of God for the residence of Adam; Adam ondi=Ahman. A fruit garden made to be fruitful, by blessing or promise; great valley or plain, given by promise, fitted with fruit trees and precious flowers, made for the healing of man. Good to the taste, pleasing to the eye; sweet and delightful to the smell; place of happiness, purity, holiness, and rest; even Zomar--Zion. [Note that the r in Zomar overwrites another letter; further traces show a dash written over an illegible word or words, followed by Zion.]

The words allude to the Revelation of Saint John and Doctrine and Covenants Section 58, which last describes--and transcends--an observed Sabbath in the delightsome land of Zion. To the little band of saints, sabbath gathering, Jackson County, Missouri (once Eden) was now home. And there also are echoes of the Book of Abraham yet to come: "another place of residence," "happiness," "rest": home.

Adam-ondi-Ahman (Nibley reads "Adam in the Presence of God"), found in early Latter-day Saint writings and attributed to the Prophet Joseph, names the residence of Adam after his expulsion from the Garden of Eden. Spring Hill, overlooking the Grand River near Westport, Missouri, was once the home of Adam, a once and future king (Doctrine and Covenants 116:1). As for Zion, the Prophet Joseph had already published a revelation about the home of Enoch: "And it came to pass in his days, that he built a city that was called the City of Holiness, even ZION" (Moses 7:19). And Zomar? Nothing on heaven or on earth seems to help us with Zomar.

Did the description of the great valley orchard of Zomar also come from the prophetic mind? Or did it come from the minds of his associates, perhaps in consultation with the Prophet? I picture these brethren sitting, speaking, pondering together; then each making his own attempt to pull the threads together. What results is disparity, separation, difference. Ultimately it is the Prophet Joseph alone who enters history as the translator of ancient records. There is no peer.

If it is Joseph Smith who gives us Adam-ondi-Ahman and Enoch's Zion, then Zomar plausibly also comes from him. Zomar as Zion thus also appears in the anti-Mormon letters of apostate Ezra Booth. Again, in an imaginative piece by Elder Parley P. Pratt, the expression zo-ma-rah fancifully names the "Pure News" of a longed-for future day--a Deseret News or Zion Times, if you will ("One Hundred Years Hence: 1945," 141, Millennial Star 6:9, 15 Oct. 1845; for these references see Samuel M. Brown, "Joseph (Smith) in Egypt: Babel, Hieroglyphs, and the Pure Language of Eden," Church History 78:1, 2009, 26-65, esp. footnote 114). According to Samuel Brown, "imaginative associations" like those about gardens and Zomar abound in "American hieroglyphic culture" and "both illuminate and extend familiar concepts from antebellum culture"--which explains everything! Yet Zomar, however odd in heaven or earth, "is not all pure nonsense." In fact, it is not nonsense at all--and we shall return to the theme of Joseph in Egypt momentarily.

We need a homing device to find rest in Zomar--and such a means is indeed forthcoming in languages with which Joseph Smith had no familiarity whatsoever.

Consider the following entry in Professor F. Grondahl's study of Canaanite names from Ugarit, alongside further instances from Herbert Bardwell Huffmon, Lamia R. Shehadah, and Wolf Leslau:

tsmr [ts-m-r]  "fructbar sein" [to be fruitful] (Amorite, Syriac, Arabic)
(Semitic tzadei [tz or ts] often appears in transliteration as a z: Zomar ~ Tzomar.)
Frauke Grondahl, Die Personennamen der Texte aus Ugarit (Rome, 1967), 199

shmr *tsmr, "bear fruit" (Arabic, Old South Arabic)
Herbert Bardwell Huffmon, Amorite Personal Names in the Mari Texts: A Structural and Lexical Study (Baltimore, Maryland, 1965), 267

Proto Semitic s[#1]mr, "bear fruit," "fruit," Arabic tsamr "fruit," Ugaritic tsmr "be fruitful"
Lamia R. Shehadeh, "Some Observations on the Sibilants in the Second Millennium BC," in Working with No Data: Semitic and Egyptian Studies (D. M. Golomb, Susan T. Hollis, eds, 1987), 236

Ethiopic samra, flourish, be fruitful, abound in fruit, grow abundantly; Arabic thamara, bear fruit,
South Arabic, tmr, produce crops
Wolf Leslau, Comparative Dictionary of Ge'ez (Classical Ethiopic), 503.

How about Akkadian (East Semitic)? Zamar (fruit), we are told, is the Neo-Assyrian form of Akkadian azamru.
Chaim Cohen, Joseph Maran, Melissa Vetters, "An Ivory Rod with a Cuneiform Inscription," Archaeologischer Anzeiger 2010/2, 1-22 (see note 47)

We may further descry the root ts-m-r in the Egyptian lexicon (cf. Woerterbuch V 300.10, 307.1, 308.2-3). (Ancient Egyptian shares some morphology and many cognates with other Afroasiatic languages.) The word tm or tm3 describes a sacred tree, while tm3.t becomes an Egyptian synonym for mother (probably, the fruitful one), especially divine mothers like Hathor, the goddess often depicted as a cow. (The final literal in tm3, an aleph, was originally pronounced /R/ and thus corresponds to Semitic /r/.)

What the word means becomes clear from a text describing the taboo violations of the rebel Seth (Book of the Overthrow of Seth and his Gang, pLouvre 3129 C35-6, in Urk IV, ed. Siegfried Schott = Jan Assmann, The Mind of Egypt: History and Meaning in the Time of the Pharaohs, New York, 1996, 392):

He has let the milk of Sekhat-Hor dry away,
he has thrown down the htmt cow, the mother of god.
He has cut off supply on the lake of the Tm trees,
he let the lake of the htmt cow dry up.

The name of the cow, the htm.t, or provider, unlocks the meaning: milk, mother, supply, lake, these all bespeak Egypt's bounty (Woerterbuch III, c.v. htm.t; the word plays on Tm). Supply (or nourishment) answers to the Egyptian shb.w; for instance, shb.t is a great melon rife with seeds. The lakes of the Tm trees and of the htm.t cow represent the source of all nourishment for Egypt, nourishment that begins with the food and drink offerings to the gods and the souls of the dead (Woerterbuch IV, 438: shb.t).

Another sacred tree, the Nebes, buds in continuance of abundance everywhere (Assmann, Mind of Egypt, 391):

He has neared Saft el-Henna, he has entered the walled quarter,
he has done sacrilege to the holy Nebes tree
--when it greens, the earth greens--
He has neared that sacred chamber of Iusas
with the acacia, which contains death and life.

All these trees and lakes make up Egypt's sacred gardens, small moments of paradise enclosed like memories behind the walls of temple estates. The Egyptian word for estatepr, answers to Hebrew bayit and so recalls the heading Beth in the description of the fruitful paradise in the Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar. Beth as house signifies nothing; beth, or bayit, as enclosed orchard, what the Persians called a pairidaeza, speaks volumes. These Egyptian gardens, with their waters and trees of life, constitute the ceremonial centers "that keep the universe in motion": "when it greens, the earth greens." The sway of the Nebes Tree is therefore absolute: "as it greens, so greens the earth to the extent thereof" (Hr 3wj=f, Urk. Vi, 21 n. b; Roland Kent, Old Persian: Grammar, Texts, Lexicon [1950], 195; Assmann, Mind of Egypt, 392; cf. Alma 32. An interpretation of these temple and tomb gardens may be found in Jan Assmann, Death and Salvation in Ancient Egypt (Ithaca, New York, 2005), tr. by David Lorton of Tod und Jenseits im Alten Aegypten, Chapter 9.2b, "Visiting the Garden," 221ff.).

As Grondahl notes, some of that greening to the extent thereof also appears along the Levantine coastline. From the list of Semitic names coming under the heading of ts-m-r, we learn that Tsmry is also a Ugaritic place name (UT 19.2701). In West Semitic the name would have been pronounced something like Tsamra. How do we know? Because the cuneiform writing of the associated name, Tsmrn, yields sha-am-ra-na. Why sha-? In Akkadian the tzadei (-tz/ts) is often realized as a shin (-sh). (Tsamra pleasantly evokes the modern name for Ugarit: Ras Shamra, Fennel Hill.) 

Tsamra signifies the Fruitful Land, a land called Bountiful "because of its much fruit and also wild honey" (see 1 Nephi 17, verses 5 and 6), or "A garden made to be fruitful. . . fitted with fruit trees. . . good to the taste. . . place of happiness. . . and rest; even Zomar." And even Cumorah: Tsamar or Zomar makes a linguistic and conceptual match with Kumara or Kumar, perhaps the Black Land, as in the rich Cornucopia of Egypt (Kumat). In Syria we find the Gath Kumara, the fruitful Wine Press of Cumorah. Kumara denotes an earthern ramp or rampart; it may also suggest a casting up of deep, rich soil for the cultivation of vines and fruit-bearing trees. In The Book of Mormon, the lands called Bountiful and Cumorah respectively make up the fruitful southern and northern bookends of the Land Northward.

We turn from place names to people. The name *Amm (i)-yitstamar (a Gt imperfect verbal stem: 'mtstmr = Ammu will be fruitful) is not only attested at Mari but also "borne by two kings of Ugarit," Herbert Bardwell Huffmon, Amorite Personal Names in the Mari Texts: A Structural and Lexical Study (Baltimore, Maryland, 1965), 81-2. Ugarit also attests the personal name, 'iltstmr (My god will be fruitful), ibid., 81 n.135. Cyrus Gordon translates 'Ammistamar as "'Amm has been fruitful in bestowing the son who bears this personal name,'" R. Hetzron, ed., The Semitic Languages, C. Gordon, "Amorite and Eblaite," 104. Need we be shocked by the same god bearing the Cumorah name: 'Ammukumarra, "Ammu is a rampart," Michael Astour, "Semites and Hurrians in Northern Transtigris," Ernest R. Lacheman Festschrift, 26?

Lamia R. Shehadeh adds more names from Ugarit: Ben-Tsomar, bn-tsmr (son of fruitfulness), and blessed Shamrana (little fruitful one), "Some Observations on the Sibilants in the Second Millennium BC," 236. The people of Mari and Ugarit were of the children of Canaan, among whom, though not noted by Professor Huffmon, are to be found the Zemarites (Genesis 10:18; 1 Chronicles 1:16). The ruins of the Zemarite city Simyra, "at the western base of Lebanon," is known to this day under name of Sumra. (Gesenius, Hebrew Lexicon). The Egyptians spelled the name Dmrm (Helck, Beziehungen, 241 = Baumgarter, Stamm III). Sumra (also a personal name in Arabic) connotes a Bountiful ruined, a lost Zion, even "ZION IS FLED" (see Moses 7:69; chapter 7 also recounts the transformation of the vale of Shum into a wasteland: Shum something recalls Sumra).

Does the root ts-m-r appear in Biblical Hebrew? Not according to Grondahl--but how about these Zemarites "of the families of Canaan"? A like root, D-m-r/z-m-r, does appear in Hebrew and other Semitic languages and, according to the lexicon, signifies protection or strength, though its use in the Bible is limited to personal names and to the poetic line about God being "my strength and (my) song" (Exodus 15:2, Song of the Sea; Isaiah, Psalms), and to some words from Jacob to his sons about taking a gift to the Egyptian vizier "from the strength of the earth" (miz-zimrat ha-aretz, Genesis 43:11). It is a gift for Joseph--a most appropriate gift, as we shall see.

Before going forward, a philological, if not musical, note is in order. First, the expression "my strength and (my) song" is now understood as "my strength and my protection" (with 'zz and zmr as indissoluble yoke pair, see James E. Hoch, Semitic Words in Egyptian Texts of the New Kingdom and Third Intermediate Period, #582; Frank Moore Cross and David Noel Freedman, "The Song of Miriam," JNES 14 (1955), 243). Because I also see a cognate in Egyptian Tm3-' (strong of arm), I take the primary meaning of the root z-m-r to be strength, with protection as a derivative (cf. Koehler, Baumgarter Lexicon of Hebrew I). Another Egyptian expression, Tm3-r3 (strong of mouth), calls up the idea of singer or musician, and, here, I see a play on words with a homonymous Semitic root. An unrelated root, zmr, does mean song, and that's what led to the translators' confusion (and the Egyptian word play). And I can easily imagine the earliest translators from Hebrew into Greek confusing zmr and zmr: It's the sort of mischief that happens all the time and which also, as it happens, generates moments of poetry unknown to the ancient writer--"my strength and my song." I'm sorry to see the expression go, no matter how powerful the combination of Uz and Zimri, those mythical bookends of the created world (see Ezekiel).

But what has that happy confusion to do with Zomar? Lexicographers render Jacob's "strength of the earth" as "best produce of the land" (Koehler, Baumgartner, Lexicon of Hebrew and Aramaic). Might the nominal reading of the archaic root z-m-r as strength in Genesis 43:11 represent yet another error in translation? or, perchance, a play on words? (The ancient translators of the Hebrew Bible into Greek do render: apo ton karpon tes ges, "from the fruit of the ground.") Either way the translation stands: the strength of the earth produces the best fruits of the land.

Consider the entire verse from Genesis:


Even in times of famine, Israel dwells in a land of blessing and promise, strength and song:

A little balm, a little honey,
spices and myrrh,
nuts and almonds.

The richly wrapped present ironically conveys a token of recognition and memory from a distant homeland and can be likened to the sweet smell lingering on the remnant of Joseph's coat. It is the lingering scent of Zion. (The book to read on the symbolism linking al-Thalabi, Lives of the Prophets, and Alma 46:24 is Hugh Nibley, An Approach to the Book of Mormon; cf. also Professor Erik Hornung's comments on the perfumed radiance that suffuses the divine in his Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt: The One and the Many).


The children of Joseph found their own Tsmry in their various lands of promise:

And Abijah stood up upon mount Zemaraim, which is in mount Ephraim, and said, Hear me, thou Jeroboam, and all Israel (2 Chronicles 13:4; cf. Joshua 18:22, in Benjamin).

And [after the horrors of the Rub' al-Khali] we did come to the land which we called Bountiful, because of its much fruit and also wild honey (1 Nephi 17:5 and also verse 6, in which the expression "Bountiful, because of its much fruit" is meaningfully repeated).

Both Ephraim and Zemaraim in 2 Chronicles 13:4 connote a place doubly fruitful (the -aim-ending as the morpheme of duality). In Genesis 41:52 we read: "And the name of the second called he Ephraim: for God hath caused me to be fruitful in the land of my affliction." Thus for King Abijah (My Father is Jehovah) to stand "up upon mount Zemaraim, which is in mount Ephraim," and to preach the Davidic covenant of peace, is to redouble fruitfulness.

But I venture into midrash. . . After all, the Brown-Driver-Briggs Lexicon (like Gesenius) defines Zemaraim as "double fleece of wool," by association with a synonymous root, ts-m-r, "to be shaggy," or woolly (perhaps "to be luxiurant, abounding in fleece?"; for this woolly root, see also A. Murtonen, Hebrew in Its West Semitic Setting, 362: CMR "wool"; note also CMR II, Aramaic "to heat up"; Akkadian cemer, "be swollen," a root which easily falls under the semantic sphere of CMR = ts-m-r, "to be fruitful" or "to produce fruit"). Still, doesn't the doubly fruitful make more sense than the doubly woolly?

The gift of Joseph overflows in the promise of Ephraim, Joseph's fruitful son:

"And take double money in your hand. . . and arise, go again unto the man" (Genesis 43:12-13).

Another reading logically considers the Arabic word ts-m-r or ts-b-r (tsumr), which signifies "the upper part or the high point of an object" ("der obere Teil oder die Spitze einer Sache," W. Baumgartner, J.J. Stamm, Hebraische und Aramaisches Lexicon zum Alten Testament, III (Leiden, 1983), 970); although these same Hebrew lexicographers rather modify the definition of the word found in Lane's Arabic lexicon, which last reads: "The side of a thing: or a side rising above the rest of a thing: or its upper part, or top: or its edge. . . the m is said to be substituted for n" (Lane 1727). Baumgarter and Stamm accordingly render Zemaraim as "double peak" and tsemeret ha-'aroz, in Ezekiel 17:3, 22 (see also 31:3, 10), as "the highest branch of the cedar."

I'm not convinced. Lane's lexicon begins its treatment of the root ts-m-r by saying it expresses something niggardly, tenacious, reserved. This is so because ts-m-r denotes something that has collected into a low place, specifically the resting-place of waters in a valley--a collecting pool, no less. From there, we get the connotations of foul or sour smells (from the stagnant pool) and of tenaciousness or stinginess, as well as the idea of a day of still wind or the time or action of sunset. All this sour downward gravity has little in common with twin peaks. The collecting pools of stinginess hardly reflect Zion. It's clear that tsumr (or tsubr), which refers to things like the edges or uppermost parts of a cup, does not provide the best reading for Zemaraim. The Arabic root thamara (noun thamar: fruit, fruits; result, fruitage, yield, profit, benefit, gain) better answers to our Zemaraim (Wehr, Cowan, Arabic-English Dictionary).

Given the fruitful significance of the Semitic root ts-m-r, and its semantic correspondence to the name Ephraim (as understood by the Hebrews), the ancient scribe was certainly aware of the connotations of standing "up upon mount Zemaraim, which is in mount Ephraim." As for the "highest branch of the cedar," is it not the highest branch, after all, that is the most productive, the most bountiful? Ezekiel's eagle, in its work of plucking and transplanting branches, brings about the fruit of Zion: "In the mountain of the height of Israel will I plant it: and it shall bring forth boughs, and bear fruit" (17:23). Then all shall know that the God of Enoch, the Rock of Zion, has "made the dry tree to flourish" (17:24).

Ezra Booth, in his keenly biting, detail-laden anti-Mormon letters to the Ohio Star, gives us the idea. For the consecration of the temple site of the New Jerusalem in Independence, Jackson County, Missouri, the brethren transplanted a tree (a very silly thing for them to do, says Booth) and laid a cornerstone ("Mormonism, No. VI," Ohio Star, Ravenna, Ohio, 17 Nov. 1831, in Matthew R. Roper (ed), 19th-Century Publications about the Book of Mormon, BYU, 2010):

"A shrub oak, about ten inches in diameter at the butt, the best that could be obtained near at hand, was prostrated, trimmed, and cut-off at a suitable length; and twelve men answering to the twelve Apostles, by the means of handspikes conveyed it to the place. . . The stone being placed, one end of the shrub oak stick was laid upon it; and thus was laid down the first stone and stick, which are to form an essential part of the splendid City of Zion."

As for the curious: "They will be able to ascertain the spot, by the means of a sappling [sic], distinguished from others by the bark being taken off on the north and on the east side. On the south side of the sappling will be found the letter, T, which stands for Temple; and on the east side ZOM for Zomar; which Smith says is the original word for Zion. Near the foot of the sappling, they will find a small stone, covered over with bushes, which were cut for that purpose. This is the corner-stone for the Temple."

All this fuss seemed absurd to Booth, who, blind to the purposes of the symbolic, lamented over the money lost by the Brethren to travel expenses: "more than one thousand dollars in cash."

But in a coming day "the dry tree" will flourish.

Good to the taste, pleasing to the eye, sweet and delightful to the smell.

Made for the healing of man.

From the bounty of the earth.


Copyright 2011 by Val H. Sederholm

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

"Weapons of Peace" in Alma 24:19 and in Ancient Egyptian Borrowings from Hebrew

Every reader of the Book of Mormon stumbles upon--and over--the following verse from Alma:


Editions of the Book of Mormon prior to 1849 read: And thus we see that they buried the weapons of peace, or they buried the weapons of war for peace. "The weapons of peace" differs significantly from "their weapons of peace"--it hints at a distinct idiom peculiar to the Book of Mormon, as we shall see.
(Royal Skousen, Analysis of Textual Variants in the Book of Mormon, Part Four, 2113-2114)

"Weapons of peace"? The phrase stumps everyone. Clarity follows: "weapons of peace" means "they buried the weapons of war, for peace." Ah, yes! Weapons of peace are weapons of war now laid to rest, and thus turned to peace.

Many Latter-day Saints doubtless see the corrective, explanatory clause as yet another indicant Joseph Smith translated from a language lost to memory. According to Emma, Joseph never paused for revision. Instead he struggled with an unfamiliar idea or idiom, sometimes grasping for words, until he got his "mind satisfied." Then he just moved on, leaving the knotty idiom as a trace of the pitfalls of translation (see Doctrine and Covenants, Section 9). A reader may light upon the unusual with joy and patience; a modern editor, agape at "weapons of peace" and intolerant of first drafts, lights on the author and demands: "and thus we see that they buried their weapons of war, for peace."

Grasping for words to express an unfamiliar idiom? Anyone who struggles to put the hieroglyphs into a modern idiom will relate. Ancient Egyptian keeps many a surprise. Consider how Egyptian borrowed extensively from Hebrew and adapted the borrowed words in novel ways. The borrowing even included the best known of all Hebrew verbs, sh-l-m (to be at peace, to be whole). We all know what shalom means.

The Egyptians--had they only known it--did not need to borrow the Hebrew root sh-l-m. Their own language, from the beginning, already knew a word of health and greeting cognate to Hebrew shalom: s-n-b ~ sh-l-m. (The letters n and b often correspond to Hebrew l and m.) The Egyptian word for "Greetings"! "Health and Peace be unto you"! is Yet the Egyptians did indeed borrow "Shalom!" And once borrowed, they adapted the word to express things never expressed. (James E. Hoch, Semitic Words in Egyptian Texts of the New Kingdom and Third Intermediate Period, #406, sha=ra=ma, as it appears in hieroglyphic "group writing" = *shalama? *shallema? "To Greet; Make Obeisance; Do Homage;" 283-284; #408, sha-ra-ma ~ shalama, "Peace; Greetings," 285-286).

New Kingdom Egyptian uses Hebrew sha=ra=ma (*shalama or *shallema) to express a nuanced idea of peace (Hoch, Semitic Words, #407, 285). For Professor Hoch, the word conveys two related actions: 1) "The word is used of putting away weapons," and 2) "The word is also used more generally with the sense of 'seeking peace.' " Hoch's definition of sha=ra=ma in Egyptian usage accordingly reads: "Vb. 'To Lay Down (Arms); Seek Peace.' " It is the first of these definitions that hits the reader of the Book of Mormon with a shock of recognition.

Consider the following three examples of sha=ra=ma (*shalama or *shallema) from Egyptian writings:

"Their bows and their weapons [x'w.w] were laid to rest [sha=ra=ma] in their store-rooms" (P. Harris I 78,11 [Dynasty 20]).

"And their weapons [x'ywere laid to rest [sha=ra=ma]" (P. Boulaq 6, 3 [Dynasty 21]).

"Put down [Sh-r-ma] (your) bows; lay down [sfx: loosen, relax, release] (your) arrows" (Pi'ankhy 12 [Dynasty 25]). (Note how the Egyptian name Pi'ankhy finds its match in Book of Mormon Paanchi, as no less a student than William F. Albright pointed out long ago.)

Let's try another translation or two of Pi'ankhy 12:

Put at peace bows; unbind arrows.

Pacify bows; relax arrows.

For the second definition, Hoch gives the following example:

Kupara came to seek peace [jw r sha=ra=ma = Heb. yrd lshalom, "come down to pay respects," II Kings 10:13, cf. Hoch, 284].

Semitic languages modify the verbal root by means of prefixes, infixes, doubling of letters, and so on, to express passive, factitive, causative, and reflexive meaning. We call such modifications of the root morphological verbal stems. For instance, D-stems double (Doppelstamm) the middle consonant of the triliteral root and often express causative, factitive, or denominative meaning, that is, they make nouns into verbs.

Several Semitic languages show variations on the verbal root sh-l-m in order to express the making of peace or even the concrete action of laying down arms. The Biblical Hebrew H-stem of sh-l-m (the causative stem with prefixed -h) signifies "to make peace"; in Talmudic Aramaic the causative A-stem signifies "to make peace; surrender"; the D-stem in Syriac, "to surrender; make peace"; the D-stem in Old South Arabic, "to sue for peace"; in Ethiopic (D-stem?), "to make peace"; and, finally, the D-stem in Arabic, which specifically refers to weapons: "to lay down (arms); surrender" (examples all from Hoch, 285, see also 284.)

Though Egyptian may, perhaps, borrow a Hebrew noun having the morphological properties of a verbal stem--*shallema, if that is the correct reading, suggests a verbal form derived from the Hebrew D-stem--Egyptian proper makes no use of such verbal stems (though some traces of archaic reflexive N-stems persist). "The form is possibly the D-stem, as in Arabic, but the Egyptians may have simply used the nominal form meaning 'peace' as if it were a verb" (Hoch, 285). Whether nominal *shalama or verbal *shallema, sha=ra=ma, when adopted (and adapted) by the Egyptians, expresses verbal meaning: "to greet, make obeisance, do homage, to lay down (arms), to seek peace."

What a word!

And it is only because such a borrowed, "frozen" form expresses verbal meaning, something peculiar to Egyptian among the Afro-Asiatic languages, that we can imagine a phrase weapons of peace, as a verbal phrase in the original record. I see the original Egyptian-cum-Hebrew wording for Alma's weapons of peace as x'w.w shalama. In attempting to render the verbal monstrosity weapons pacified into an acceptable English, the translator perforce nominalizes the phrase as a genitival construction: "weapons of peace"--two nouns glued together by genitive of into one happy phrase. And here he stumbles--only to make a stunning recovery: "weapons of war, for peace." The best way to view the original is as verbal phrase, though we could also imagine an appositive genitival phrase: "weapons in respect of peace"; "weapons in a state of peace" (really a verbal sense); or, literally enough, though awkwardly, "the weapons of peace" or "the peaceful weapons."

David Whitmer relates how Joseph would take breaks from translation, relax his mind by skipping stones in a pond. If ever there was occasion for such a break--"a time to gather stones together" as a "weapon of peace"--it was Alma 24:19.

"Peace Weapons"? "Peaceful Weapons?" No wonder the Prophet Joseph Smith struggled with the phrase. Because shalama here functions as a verb, x'w.w shalama literally signifies "weapons laid down in an act of submission or peace," or "weapons put into a state of peace"--what we would call "deactivated." (Indeed anthropology has much to say about the ceremonial stilling of the arms of war.)

We search diligently for what Hugh Nibley calls "the peculiar and the specific." The specific lexical nuance found in the peculiar Egyptian usage of borrowed Hebrew sh-l-m resonates with Alma's odd phrase, "weapons of peace."

And their weapons were laid to rest (jw n3y.w x'y sha=ra=ma).
Or: And their weapons of peace/And their weapons in respect of, or in reference to, peace/in a state of peace/at peace.

And thus we see that they buried their weapons of peace, or they buried the weapons of war, for peace (Alma 24:19).


"Mind satisfied": a phrase the Prophet used to describe the intellectual and spiritual calm following his intense quest for spiritual truth and his First Vision of the Father and the Son in the Spring of 1820. The Prophet worked hard to get his mind satisfied. Such work comprehends years of thought, reading, and observation, so well as the quickening moments of revelation in which the passage of time has but little to do with the celerity of the enlightened seeric mind. Hence William Clayton speaks of "prophets' time." Joseph Smith, in his task of translation, inhabits "prophets' time", a place or season beyond our comprehension.

Engraving Error? Daniel H. Ludlow, in A Companion to Your Study of the Book of Mormon, 210 (Deseret Book, 1977), puts forward the idea of an error in engraving for Alma 24:19. "Peace" was engraved on the gold plates by mistake; Mormon then corrected his error--would he have struck out the error first?--by writing, "what I meant to say was 'war.'" Logic works against the idea. Should the Prophet have encountered like errors in engraving--and there were such--why would he not have simply translated what the ancient prophet intended to write all along? In translation, mind meets mind. He wasn't trying to put out a "critical edition" of the Words of Mormon or a Mormon Plates Project.

Still, who can say?

In the view of this writer, it does not aid understanding to pinpoint the moment of error or confusion, or to ask whether it was Helaman, Ammoron, Mormon, or Joseph Smith who supplied correction or clarification to an original text. Answer: all of the above. Better to see transmission, including translation, as a continuum embracing Alma, Mormon, Joseph Smith, and the Modern Reader, all of whom make up an integral part in the on-going understanding of a place in Scripture. Alma-Mormon-Joseph-Reader make up one chain of both transmission and interaction: We shake hands with all the Prophets as we continue their work of understanding and applying God's word. If the Reader, in the continuing effort of transmission, struggles with a particular phrase; so, we must suppose, did Alma, Mormon, Joseph Smith.

Of course, the farther back we go, the more muddled things may get. We have to get our bearings as readers of an English book before we wade into deeper waters and unfamiliar idiom. In other words, we must immediately come to grips with the matter of who bears responsibility for that English. One thing only every reader knows, and knows it with absolute certainty, he is not responsible for the English translation of the Book of Mormon. Joseph Smith bears that responsibility (not Alma, Mormon, nor Moroni)--the buck stops with Joseph Smith--hence we focus on the difficulties of his divinely assigned task of rendering Egyptian and Hebrew idiom into English. We need to rid our mind of supposition and theory. Hebraisms there may be, Elizabethan usage we may spot, yet where the English of the Book of Mormon is concerned, the buck stops with Joseph Smith. Who can deny it?

Egyptian or Hebrew? Answer: Both.

The language written on the gold plates was an amalgam of both Egyptian and Hebrew. People wonder, despite Nephi's clear statement about making his record in the language of the Egyptians, whether the Gold Plates proffers Egyptian or Hebrew, that is, Hebrew in some form of Egyptian script. When we understand that the Egyptian of Lehi's day, and for hundreds of years previous, had extensively borrowed from Hebrew and other Semitic cousins, the question instantly loses significance. Nephi wrote in the language of the Egyptians, of his day--and there's an end on't.