The Mormon Monk

In his talk at Ohio State University ’s conference on “The King James Bible and Its Cultural Afterlife,” David Richter  pointed out several glaring inaccuries in the KJV translation . However, the more interesting aspect of his presentation—at least to me—was his work detailing the Hebrew word play lost in this (and, frankly, every other) English translation. The trouble with translating Hebrew is that the language has a VERY limited vocabulary. Because there are so few Hebrew lexemes, every word carries multiple significations; the language uses variations of the same word to represent many different ideas. For this reason, reading Hebrew is more an art of interpretation than a science of translation/substitution. (Incidentally, during the conference one speaker pointed out that the ambiguity of Hebrew is so significant that some scholars wonder whether it was originally intended to be a spoken language. Can you imagine listening to someone speak and wondering which of five ...

The story of David and Jonathan--their friendship and loyalty in the face of danger and almost certain death has inspired men and women for millennia. A seventeenth-century poet and distant ancestor of mine, Anne Bradstreet, commemorated their love and mutual respect in these words, spoken by David: "O lovely Jonathan! how wast thou slain? In places high, full low thou didst remain Distrest for thee I am, dear Jonathan, Thy love was wonderfull, surpassing man, Exceeding all the love that's Feminine, So pleasant hast thou been, dear brother mine." Recently, I learned of another prominent early American figure who idealized the friendship between David and Jonathan, calling on that bond as a way to sanctify one of his own friendships. When John Adams was studying law under the tutelage of Colonel James Putnam, he met another young lawyer named Jonathan Sewall. As lawyers Adams and Sewall rode the Massachusetts circuit together, traveling with a judge from one small town t...

In chapter forty-five, Isaiah develops and extends the temple imagery he introduced in chapter forty-four ; the chapter division is a modern imposition on a seamless section of text. After rebuking Israel for corrupting the temple ordinances the Lord promises that Cyrus, a future king of Babylon, will help Israel to rebuild the temple (44:28), introducing this unborn leader as a type of all temple worshippers: “Thus saith the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden [. . .] I will give thee the treasures of darkness, and hidden riches of secret places [. . . for] I have even called thee by thy name: I have surnamed thee [. . . and] I girded thee” (45:1-5) Cyrus has been anointed and clothed, as Aaron and his sons were anointed and clothed preparatory to entering the temple , and he has received a new name signifying his entrance into covenants with the Lord, as Abraham and Sarah received new names (Genesis 17:5-7, 15). After describing Cyrus’s entry into the temp...

At Ohio State University ’s recent conference on “The King James Bible and Its Cultural Afterlife,” David Richter gave a fantastic paper on “Misleading Moments in the KJV” that helped to clarify several potentially confounding passages in Genesis. Jacob’s deception of Isaac (with Rebekah’s help!), when he steals Esau’s blessing, has always troubled me, but before Richter’s talk I had never noticed before that, according to the King James Version, Esau really doesn’t have cause to be upset. You’ll remember that when, after Jacob has tricked Isaac into thinking that he’s Esau by covering his arms in goat’s hair and cooking him some goat meat, Esau returns to the house he begs Isaac for another blessing: “Hast thou but one blessing, my father? Bless me, even me also, O my father” (Genesis 27:38). Isaac does bless him, and Esau’s blessing is, at least in the KJV, substantially the same as Jacob’s. In Jacob’s blessing, Isaac pronounces, “God give thee of the dew of heaven, and the fa...

During Saul's tenure as the king of Israel, he received a command to commit genocide against the Amalekites. For the most part, Saul fulfilled this commandment, killing "man and woman, infant and suckling" (I Sam. 15:3). However, he failed to kill "ox and sheep, camel and ass," sparing the "best" Amalekite livestock for a burnt offering to God (I Sam. 15:3, 15). Not interested in the sacrifice of animals he'd commanded Saul to slaughter, the Lord sent Samuel to relieve Saul of the kingship for his disobedience with this memorable phrase: "Hath the Lord   as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams" (I Sam. 15:29). This verse, one of just twenty-five Old Testament verses that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints encourages its juvenile Sunday School students to memorize, sends a very clear message: obedien...