Posted by:
RPackham
(
)
Date: February 19, 2012 05:33PM
I discuss this criticism in my article on Mormon linguistic problems at
http://packham.n4m.org/linguist.htm#NOTVALID - I also discussed it when I spoke on linguistic problems at a recent Exmormon Foundation conference.
One of the most frequent criticisms of the language of the Book of Mormon is the frequent use of the phrase "And it came to pass..." That may well be a valid criticism of the literary style of the supposed translation, but that criticism overlooks the fact that the very same phrase occurs quite frequently in the King James translation of the Bible, over 500 times in the Hebrew Old Testament and over 70 times in the Greek New Testament. The phrase in the New Testament is a translation of the one Greek word 'egeneto' meaning "it happened." In the Old Testament it translates a word of four characters, WYHY, pronounced 'weyehi' meaning "and it happened." It is not unreasonable to assume that "Reformed Egyptian" might also have had such a single short word of four or even fewer characters.