Hello! So if you're multilingual, you're
probably aware that different languages
follow different grammatical rules. For
example, "David's shoes" in Spanish would
be, "Los zapatos de David" or "the shoes
of David." So if you were to hear someone
say, "Hey, look at the shoes of David," you'd
understand what they're saying, but you'd
probably also be able to tell that
English is not that person's first
language, since that's not how we talk. (what you think it
means)
Joseph Smith claimed he translated the
Book of Mormon from a record written by
ancient Jews. If that's true, you'd think
we'd be able to see some elements of the
ancient Hebrew language in the English
translation of the Book of Mormon. And
guess what? We do.
The Book of Mormon exhibits dozens of
Hebrew isms throughout its text. We've
talked about some of them before, but
this video is going to focus in on just
one category, called "if and the
conditionals". In English, we don't have if
and conditionals, we have if-then
conditionals.
If I eat 15 Costa Vida raspberry
smothered chicken Chipotle burritos, then
I will die. But in Biblical Hebrew it
would be, "If I eat 15 Costa Vita
raspberry smothered chicken Chipotle
burritos and I will die." They mean the
same thing, but an English speaker would
never naturally use and if and
conditional. This is where things get
interesting. If you read the current Book
of Mormon, you won't see any if and
conditionals. This is because Joseph
Smith and early editors thought these
were grammatical errors, which in English
they are, and they edited them out, which
is a real bummer because Joseph's
obviously had no idea that these errors
were evidence of the authenticity of his
work. Thankfully though we can look at
the original manuscript of the Book of
Mormon and the first edition of the Book
of Mormon,
where we find our if and conditionals.
Right now, Moroni 10:4 says, "If ye shall
ask with a sincere heart with real
intent having faith in Christ he will
manifest the truth of it unto you..." In the
first edition it said, "If ye shall ask
with a sincere heart with real intent
having faith in Christ and he will
manifest the truth of it unto you."
The first edition version of Helaman 12
was a gold mine: "and if he saith unto the
earth, move and it is moved; yay if he
sayeth unto the earth thou shalt go back
that a lengthen is out the day for many
hours and it is done... And behold, also if
he saith unto the waters of the great
deep, be thou dried up, and it is done.
Behold if he saith unto this mountain, be
thou raised up, and come over and fall
upon that city, that it be buried up and
behold it is done. And if the Lord shall
say, be thou a curse that no man shall
find thee from this time henceforth and
forever, and behold no man getteth it
henceforth and forever. And behold if the
Lord shall say unto a man because of
thine iniquities, thou shalt be accursed
forever and it shall be done and if the
Lord shall say because of thine
iniquities thou shall be cut off from my
presence,
and he will cause that it shall be so."
Here's the thing, I'm not gonna tell you
what to believe, but these are my
thoughts: Either Joseph Smith was a fraud or a prophet of God. If he's a fraud you
have no choice but to believe that he
either put these if and conditionals in
here on purpose to give the book a more
authentic look or it was a complete
coincidence. (coincidence I think not) I do
not believe he put these in here on
purpose. There are no if and conditionals
in the King James Version of the Bible.
Even by Joseph Smith's time they'd been
edited into better English like what has
been done with the Book of Mormon. And
it's highly unlikely Joseph had access
to any literature that would have taught
him about this stuff in the 1820s. Also
if he put them in here on purpose to
give the book a more authentic look, why
would he edit them out? It doesn't make
any sense. He would have kept them in and
called a bunch of attention to them.
"You know what this here is an if and
conditional, look the book is real!" But he
doesn't do that. He thinks they're errors
and he fixes them. Could it all just be a
big coincidence then? Well believe what
you will, but nobody wrote like this in
Joseph's time. Maybe once could just be a
coincidence, but he does it over and over
again, back to back, in the Helaman
example. That doesn't look like an
accident to me. The other option is that
this is a legitimate translation of an
ancient document of Jewish origins. But
wait, there's more! This is just one
Hebrewism. We've got plenty more to
cover. As these things continue to
compound one on top of the other, the
chances that Joseph just made this stuff
up grows inhumanly small. We'll get to
more of those in future episodes. In the
meantime, check out the links in the
description for more info on this topic,
and have a great day!
