Knowing Why: 137 Evidences That the Book of Mormon Is True<\/em><\/a> (American Fork, UT: Covenant Communications, 2017), 180-181:<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
It\u2019s striking that, according to Joseph Smith, the title page of the Book of Mormon as it currently appears in English is \u201ca literal translation taken from the last leaf<\/em> of the plates\u201d (emphasis mine). \u00a0This seems to be consistent with an ancient practice called subscriptio<\/em>, in which information that we would customarily regard as \u201cintroductory\u201d \u2014 e.g., the title of the text and the author\u2019s name \u2014 is placed \u201cright at the end, after the last line of the text.\u201d \u00a0The eminent classicist Walter Burkert (1931-2015) of the University of Z\u00fcrich, with whom I was once privileged to spend a bit of time while he was visiting Brigham Young University, argued that the existence of this practice in ancient Greek literature was \u201ca detailed and exclusive correspondence which proves that Greek literary practice is ultimately dependent upon Mesopotamia.\u201d<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
On the basis of Burkert\u2019s argument, my late friend and colleague William J. Hamblin asked an intriguing question: \u00a0If the phenomenon of subscriptio<\/em> is indeed \u201cproof\u201d of a dependence of classical Greek literature on Mesopotamian influence, \u201ccannot the same thing be said of the Book of Mormon \u2014 that the practice of subscriptio<\/em> represents \u2018a detailed and exclusive correspondence\u2019 which offers proof that the Book of Mormon is \u2018ultimately dependent\u2019 on the ancient Near East?\u201d<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
The word proof<\/em> is, I think, too strong. \u00a0(Please note that it is actually Professor Burkert\u2019s word, not Professor Hamblin\u2019s.) \u00a0But Bill was right to observe that \u201cThis idea would have been counterintuitive in the early nineteenth century when title pages appeared at the beginning, not the end, of books.\u201d \u00a0Even Joseph Smith himself, when he published the English Book of Mormon in 1830, put the title page at the front of the volume rather than placing it in the back, on the \u201clast leaf.\u201d<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Incidentally, another instance of subscriptio<\/em> in the Book of Mormon seems to appear in the placement of Words of Mormon after the text from the small plates that they seem to introduce and to explain rather than as a preface to it.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 \u00a0 I base these notes upon John W. Welch, Neal Rappleye, Stephen O. Smoot, David J. Larsen, and Taylor Halverson, eds., Knowing Why: 137 Evidences That the Book of Mormon Is True (American Fork, UT: Covenant Communications, 2017), 180-181: \u00a0 It\u2019s striking that, according to Joseph Smith, the title page of the Book of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[7287,56,2905,996,55,1615,9619,9616],"class_list":["post-84182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-antiquity","tag-book-of-mormon","tag-latter-day-saint","tag-middle-east","tag-mormonism","tag-plates","tag-subscriptio","tag-title-page"],"yoast_head":"\n
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