BOM Alma 39

BOM Alma 39 June 27, 2016

 

Byam Shaw's Jezebel
Jezebel, as portrayed by John Liston Byam Shaw (d. 1919) Wikimedia CC public domain

 

One little point about today’s reading, Alma 39:

 

I’m struck by the name Isabel, which may point to the roots of the Book of Mormon in an ancient text with Near Eastern connections, as follows:

 

The Jezebel [אִיזֶבֶל / אִיזָבֶל] of 1 Kings in the Old Testament has long given that name a bad reputation — such that it would have been quite an appropriate name to bestow upon a harlot.

 

In fact, the book of Revelation does give that name to a kind of harlot, at 2:20:  “Notwithstanding I have a few things against thee, because thou sufferest that woman Jezebel [Ἰεζάβελ; Iezabel], which calleth herself a prophetess, to teach and to seduce my servants to commit fornication, and to eat things sacrificed unto idols.”

 

And so does the Book of Mormon.

 

Only it does so in a manner arguably more accurate than could have been found in the King James Bible known to Joseph Smith.  Isabel (cf. the modern German transliteration Isebel) is, in my judgment, a far better rendering of the Hebrew Izebhel or Izabhel than is the KJV Jezebel, with its misleading consonantal j (and better, even, than the Septuagint Greek, New Testament Greek, and Vulgate Latin Iezabel, which are presumably responsible for the KJV’s rendering of the name). Thus, the name Isabel is the same name as Jezebel, and is thus unusually appropriate for its Book of Mormon context.  But Joseph Smith could not have gotten it directly from his King James Bible.

 

Posted from Brockwood Hall, Cumbria, England

 

 


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