Mittens (BrianH)
Dr. Grant Palmer (PhD, BYU - American History), a 34-year veteran of the Mormon Church's official Church Education System has abandoned his former faith in Joseph Smith, the LDS Church and the Mormon religion as a result of his study into the true origins of his former religion. His most notable work is a book entitled, "An Insider's View of Mormon Origins", in which Dr. Palmer traces the sources Joseph Smith used to write the Book of Mormon and the Book of Abraham, etc.
Dr. Palmer has also produced a variety of articles on the same topics. One of the items I found interesting recently come from this LINK. In the article entitled, "Has an actual Book of Mormon location been found - Nahom?" Dr. Palmer points out some interesting linguistic problems in the Book of Mormon. The fact is, the Book of Mormon's unique transliterated terms and place-names have no valid etymology - no history of use in any known language.
First off, Mr. Grant H. Palmer (a.k.a. “Paul Pry”) has no PhD, not from BYU or any other institution. He has no training or experience in linguistics, and knows no biblical or ancient Near Eastern languages relevant to the discussion of etymologies for Book of Mormon words of foreign origin. His book,
An Insider's View of Mormon Origins (Signature Books, 2002), is a poorly reasoned and poorly written hit piece, early parts of which I saw being circulated under his pseudonym back in the 1980s (see
FARMS Review, 15/2 [2003], online at
http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/publications/review/?vol=15&num=2 ). He would not know a proper etymology if he saw one, and is clearly not familiar with the academic literature on the subject
The short list presented to us above by you [BrianH “Mittens”] is well familiar from your
http://forums.carm.org/vbb/showthread.php?125557-BoM-Place-Names-Have-No-Valid-Etymology , but the list actually originated with scholars publishing with FARMS. A responsible and honest approach to the etymological questions would be to engage the proposals which have long since been made, showing in what ways you believe them to be “invalid.”
In fact, most of the words you mention have reasonable ancient Near Eastern etymologies, e.g.,
IRREANTUM, “Many Waters,” has several possible etymologies (as is the case for many biblical names), but I personally favor comparing the name of the greatest river in Syria, the
Orontes (Greek), which the Neo-Assyrians called ID
A-ra-ante (the ID superscript identifies rivers), Egyptian
’Irnt, and the Medo-Persians
Haeravanta,
Auruuant,
Arwand “rich, splendid, heroic.” Written in Egyptian with the water determinative at the end, it might have seemed quite appropriate to the Lehites.
RABBANAH, “‘powerful’ or ‘great king’” (Alma 18:13), clearly comes from Hebrew
rāb “great, magnate” and
rabbâ “heavy, much,” and in late Jewish antiquity the Aramaic form of the root,
rabbana, was used for the ruler of the Diaspora (exilarch) and for the heads of the great talmudic academies. However, note much earlier Assyro-Babylonian
rabbani,
rabbānû “chieftan,” written syllabically by those scribes in Sumerian cuneiform as LÚ.GAL “king.”
RAMEUMPTOM is a combination of two Hebrew words, *
rame-ʿomdam "Their-high-standing-place," combined to mean exactly what the Book of Mormon text says at Alma 31:13,21,23: “Holy-Stand; a place of
standing which was
high above the head." Note that it is a holy or high place of standing for Zoramites. Note further that the prayer recited by the Zoramites while on that stand is a dead ringer for an early form of the most important prayer in Judaism, the
ʿAmida (the prayer said while “standing”).
LIAHONA (only in Alma 37:38) is described as a fine brass “ball” with two spindles (1 Nephi 16:10), a “compass” (1 Nephi 18:12, Alma 37:38), and a “ball or director” (Mosiah 1:16, Alma 37:38), which appeared suddenly outside Lehi’s tent and showed what course to go in the Old World trek into south Arabia. Several proposals have been made, but I personally favor use of the Hebrew verb
hānā “to pitch (tent), encamp, dwell” (cognate with ancient Egyptian
hn “tent”), namely one “encamps” (Psalm 34:8 [KJV 34:7] “the angel of the Lord
encamps around those who fear him, and delivers them”), a word used frequently throughout Exodus and Numbers as the Israelites travel from location to location. Those who realize that the Lehites reenact that Israelite Exodus sequence, will see that lia-hona may mean “encamped for the Lord (Yah).”
This is only a small sampling, and there are many words and names from the Book of Mormon onomasticon which are very well based. Simply search the Maxwell Institute website at
http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu for the specific word of interest.
