Some people have disparaged the Book of Mormon for being too repetitive. For example, Edward
Meyer, a prominent scholar of ancient history, found it to be “clumsy, monotonous in the
extreme, and repetitious.” And Mark Twain once joked that if Joseph Smith had left out
the phrase “and it came to pass,” then the Book of Mormon would have only been a
pamphlet. These types of criticisms may cause some to wonder, Does the Book of Mormon have
any literary merit?
Ironically, the very things that early critics found to be offensive to their modern literary
tastes have in many cases turned out to be remarkable evidence of its Hebrew origins.
The Book of Mormon indicates that the ancient prophets who wrote it tried to preserve the
literary traditions and learning of their Hebrew ancestors. The early Hebrew language
didn’t have punctuation or paragraph breaks. Instead, Hebrew writers used various types
of repetition to group, separate, compare, or contrast ideas. Scholars refer to these
repetitions as “parallelisms,” and the Book of Mormon is chock-full of them. Some
structures are short and simple. For instance, synonymous parallelisms such as this passage
in Genesis state an idea in one way and then repeat it, using similar words. A similar
structure is found in Second Nephi. Other parallelisms are more elaborate.
One structure called “gradation” repeats each successive idea until it builds to a
climactic conclusion, as can be seen in this example from the Book of Joel. Moroni chapter
8 offers a similar parallel structure, which shows how the doctrine of Christ leads step
by step to eternal life.
Perhaps the most impressive type of Hebrew parallelism in the Book of Mormon is chiasmus.
This structure presents a series of words or phrases in one order and then repeats and
reuses them in the opposite order, as in this passage from the Book of Isaiah. A similar
example can be found in the Book of Alma. Not all chiasms are so simple, though. This
chiasm in Leviticus 24 introduces seven ideas in one order and then precisely reverses them
in the opposite order. Alma 36 offers an even more elaborate example from the Book of Mormon,
where 17 ideas are given in one order and then reversed.
Over two dozen categories of Hebrew parallelism have been identified in the Book of Mormon,
and some of them show up in dozens and even hundreds of instances. One scholar has identified
more than 350 instances of chiasmus alone. That means that on average, a proposed chiasm
shows up on at least every other page of the Book of Mormon. It’s by no means an overstatement
to say that the Book of Mormon is saturated with Hebrew parallelisms.
But parallelisms aren’t the only Hebrew features in the text. It contains many other
grammatical and literary features that are typical of the Hebrew language. For instance,
while English writers usually avoid repeating adjectives or conjunctions when making lists,
Hebrew writers often included them before each item in the list. Notice how the conjunctions
“and,” “or,” “neither,” and “nor” are repeated in these biblical passages. The
same types of redundancies are found many places in the Book of Mormon.
Another peculiar feature of the Hebrew language is its use of “if/and” conditionals. In
English, we usually follow an “if” clause with the word “then” or with an implied
use of “then.” But Hebrew authors would sometimes add the conjunction “and” to
finish the “if” clause. Surprisingly the Book of Mormon has a number of if/and conditional
sentences that somehow got preserved in the English translation. We know that these aren’t
accidental mistakes because this feature, which doesn’t show up anywhere in the English
language, occurs seven times in a row in the original text of Helaman chapter 12.
A common editing feature found both in the Bible and the Book of Mormon is known as “repetitive
resumption.” After interjecting a comment into a history or story, a Hebrew editor would
typically follow up the interjection by repeating the phrase which came before it. For instance,
after stating the phrase “Shiz did not cease to pursue Coriantumr” in Ether chapter 14,
the editor inserted commentary about the divine punishments which were upon the people. Then,
before resuming the narrative, the editor restated the phrase from the beginning with
only slight variation, picking up exactly where he had left off.
The Book of Mormon is also full of Hebrew idioms and prophetic expressions. Biblical
prophets would sometimes curse their enemies using comparisons called “simile curses.”
In 2nd Kings, the Lord threatens to “wipe Jerusalem as a man wipeth a dish, wiping it,
and turning it upside down.” Similarly, in the Book of Mormon the prophet Abinadi
told King Noah, “Thou shalt be as the blossoms of a thistle, which, when it is fully ripe,
if the wind bloweth, it is driven forth upon the face of the land.”
Both the Bible and the Book of Mormon are filled with scriptural allusions, typological
narratives, and wordplays or puns. It is well established, for example, that Nephi modeled
his family’s journey to the promised land on the story of the Israelite exodus from
Egypt. In dozens of ways Nephi drew upon and emphasized parallels between the two stories.
At the same time, Nephi made extensive comparisons between himself and other early Israelite
leaders, such as King David. This chart highlights 38 specific parallels between Nephi’s slaying
of Laban and David’s slaying of Goliath. These are exactly the type of deep intertextual
comparisons that the Hebrew authors of the Old Testament are known to have used.
The Book of Mormon’s frequent use of Hebrew wordplays is no less impressive, especially
when considering the fact that Joseph Smith didn’t study Hebrew until five years after
the Book of Mormon’s publication. One classic example deals with the name Jershon. In Hebrew
this name would mean “place of inheritance,” and in the Book of Mormon that is precisely
its importance. It was given to the people of Ammon as a place of inheritance when their
Lamanite brethren threatened to destroy them. Dozens of other Hebrew wordplays in the Book
of Mormon could be cited, and the list of categories goes on and on.
Mark Twain even had a valid point about the Book of Mormon’s frequent use of “and
it came to pass.” It does seem rather redundant in English, yet even this phrase supports
the argument for Hebrew origins. It is used much more frequently in the historical narratives
of the Bible, and the Book of Mormon is mostly historical narrative. In addition, the King
James translators didn’t like how often biblical writers used this phrase in Hebrew,
and so they changed the wording about half the time when they translated the Bible into
English. This means that Joseph Smith likely wouldn’t have known that biblical authors
used this phrase so frequently merely by reading his King James Bible.
Some people have tried to underplay the significance of the Book of Mormon’s Hebrew features
by noting how Hebraisms, as they’re often termed, can occasionally show up by random
chance. In other jjcases, they’ve suggested that Joseph Smith picked up on these things
simply by reading the Bible or the biblical scholarship of his day. The problem with these
claims is that there are simply far too many Hebrew features in the Book of Mormon, in
both type and quantity, to assume that they were created by mere chance. And although
it’s possible that Joseph picked up on a few of these things in his readings of the
Bible, it’s highly improbable that he discerned and then implemented all of them so expertly
on so many occasions. As for the idea that Joseph Smith was well versed in the biblical
scholarship of his day, there is simply no historical evidence that this was the case.
In fact, all the evidence from both contemporary critics and believers indicates that the 23-year-old
Joseph was not well read at the time of the translation. The bigger problem though is
that even if he had somehow gained access to advanced biblical research, the scholars
of his day were still unaware of many types of Hebrew features that can be found in the
Book of Mormon.
The fact is that its Hebraisms are simply too numerous and too authentically ancient
to reasonably suppose that anyone in 1829 could have produced a text using them all.
Their presence demonstrates that the Book of Mormon is a remarkably rich work of literature.
It just follows the expectations of ancient, rather than modern, literary standards. Because
these Hebraisms make little sense coming from a young frontier farmer like Joseph Smith,
they provide remarkable evidence that the Book of Mormon was truly written, as the text
itself claims, by ancient prophets trained in the Hebrew literary traditions of their
ancestors.