{"id":31354,"date":"2016-03-01T00:08:05","date_gmt":"2016-03-01T07:08:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=31354"},"modified":"2016-03-01T00:08:05","modified_gmt":"2016-03-01T07:08:05","slug":"bom-jacob-7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2016\/03\/bom-jacob-7.html","title":{"rendered":"BOM Jacob 7"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>
Sunset can be both beautiful and melancholy
(Wikimedia Commons; click to enlarge)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The bulk of Jacob 7<\/a>, today\u2019s reading, is about Jacob\u2019s encounter with the antichrist Sherem. \u00a0But that\u2019s not what I\u2019m going to focus on today.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve always been struck by the note of melancholy with which the book of Jacob closes:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I conclude this record, declaring that I have written according to the best of my knowledge, by saying that the time passed away with us, and also our\u00a0lives\u00a0passed away like as it were unto us a\u00a0dream, we being a\u00a0lonesome\u00a0and a solemn people,\u00a0wanderers, cast out from Jerusalem, born in tribulation, in a wilderness, and hated of our brethren, which caused wars and contentions; wherefore, we did mourn out our days. \u00a0<\/strong>(verse 26)<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Melancholy is a vanishingly rare tone in the Book of Mormon. \u00a0Alert readers can, of course, pick up a touch of it, perhaps, in the comments of Mormon, and for good reason: \u00a0Since he was a little boy, Mormon says (see Mormon 2:18-19<\/a>), he had seen little but human evil, and he lives to witness the slow, drawn-out, but, in the end, virtually total destruction of his people. \u00a0I think an element of melancholy can also be seen in the uncharacteristic and frank self-criticism of the so-called \u201cpsalm of Nephi,\u201d in 2 Nephi 4<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Jacob was born a refugee. \u00a0In the Arabian desert. \u00a0He never knew the great city of Jerusalem where his father, mother, and siblings had been born and where they had lived in wealth and comfort. \u00a0In fact, that city had, as he knew by now, been destroyed. \u00a0There was no going back. \u00a0And his prophet-father and prophet-brother were now dead, and he was living in a dramatically foreign land, hated by his own extended family, who opposed his most sacred beliefs and would have welcomed his death. \u00a0His, I think, is the melancholy of exile, an acute sense of being a stranger and a pilgrim on this earth. \u00a0A sense that we, who are sometimes too comfortable in this fallen world, could probably stand to feel somewhat more often than we typically do.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

But the overall spirit of the Book of Mormon is hopeful, faithful, positive, confident in the ultimate triumph of both God and good. \u00a0And \u2014 important note \u2014 melancholy certainly isn\u2019t the characteristic mood of the Yankee prophet Joseph Smith who, in his own autobiographical sketch (see Joseph Smith\u2013History 1:28<\/a>), describes himself as having a \u201cnative cheery temperament\u201d \u2014 something confirmed by scores of eyewitness accounts \u2014 and confesses to a degree of guilt over what he feared was inappropriate levity and youthful association with \u201cjovial company.\u201d \u00a0It\u2019s a faint suggestion, I think, that Joseph wasn\u2019t the author.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

One other item:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The last two words of Jacob are \u201cBrethren, adieu.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Many anti-Mormon pamphlets, books, and speakers have made merry with that word adieu<\/em>. \u00a0Was there French on the plates? they triumphantly demand. \u00a0Sometimes, they even go so far as to lay out evidence demonstrating \u2014 as if any literate person has ever argued otherwise \u2014 that French didn\u2019t even exist<\/em>, neither in the Middle East nor in the Americas, during the sixth century BC.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve long been inclined to award the prize of Most Blitheringly Stupid Anti-Mormon Argument in History to this hoary old chestnut.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The English Book of Mormon claims to be a translation, not a transcript of the original ancient text. \u00a0Adieu<\/em> is a translator\u2019s representation, in a modern language, of what was on the Nephite plates. \u00a0The translation could, I suppose, just as easily have rendered it sayonara<\/em> or ciao<\/em>. \u00a0(The German, Arabic, and Spanish translations have, respectively, Gott befohlen, Br\u00fcder!<\/em> and Wadaa\u2018an ayyuhaa al-ikhwatu<\/em> and Adi\u00f3s, Hermanos!<\/em>)<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

If the text had read, instead, \u201cGoodbye, brethren!\u201d the same critics could, by the same logic, have pointed out that goodbye<\/em> is English, and\u00a0that English\u00a0didn\u2019t even\u00a0exist<\/em>, neither in the Middle East nor in the Americas, during the sixth century BC.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

But such an argument would also undercut the Bible. \u00a0Take Genesis 1:1, for example, which begins with In the beginning<\/em>. \u00a0But every single one of those three words is English!<\/em> \u00a0Did Moses or whoever wrote Genesis speak\u00a0English?<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

This would be a rock solid argument against the Bible . . . for idiots. \u00a0It would apply to virtually any biblical passage.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

And, for that matter, to any English translation of any ancient document. \u00a0Was there English in the original dialogues of Plato? \u00a0In the first manuscripts of Homer\u2019s Iliad<\/em>? \u00a0In the Code of Hammurabi? \u00a0With one fell swoop, an enterprising but stupid polemicist could demonstrate that every ancient and\/or purportedly \u201cforeign\u201d document that we have is a forgery!<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

But, a slightly more sophisticated Book of Mormon critic might counter, isn\u2019t it significant that adieu<\/em> is a French word, and not an English one? \u00a0Isn\u2019t it a dead giveaway that Joseph Smith, or Sidney Rigdon, or Solomon Spalding, or the Illuminati, or Hydra, or whoever the proposed author or authors du jour<\/em> might be, used French?<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Hardly.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Both writers and translators use the words in their vocabularies to render their thoughts. \u00a0Adieu<\/em> doesn\u2019t help at all to distinguish a translated English Book of Mormon from a freely created one.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

And adieu<\/em> was securely situated in English by Joseph Smith\u2019s time. \u00a0It has an entry, for example, in Noah Webster\u2019s 1828 American\u00a0Dictionary of the English\u00a0Language<\/em>. \u00a0In fact, according to the Oxford English Dictionary<\/em>, it had already entered into English by the 1300s, if not earlier. \u00a0And, of course, don\u2019t forget the nineteenth-century country and western or folk song \u201cRed River Valley,\u201d and, please, as the song says, \u201cdo not hasten to bid me adieu.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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