Beatitudes, wine ≠ wine, serpents, and Samarkand
May 17th, 2007 by Fenevad
Glenn has invited me to be a guest poster on his blog, so I thought I’d start by posting on a topic I did some research on a number of years ago: the use of etymological/source language arguments to prove Gospel points. I have four examples:
- Perhaps the most common example of this topic I’ve heard is that beatitudes comes from be + at, i.e., the beatitudes tell where we should be at. I first heard this one as a teenager, and frankly it didn’t make sense to me then, but I’ve heard it over many pulpits and in many Sunday School classes (although fortunately not in that taught by dear Bro. Costanza). This explanation is what is known as a folk etymology, and there are many such popular explanations used in Gospel contexts to “prove” doctrinal points. (For the record, beatitude comes from the Vulgate’s beati ‘blessed/happy (plur.)’ used in the formula of the beatitudes.)
- A popular one when I was a missionary was used as a way of reconciling the Word of Wisdom with the fact that New Testament figures, Jesus included, drank wine. Many missionaries would argue that wine was a translation of many different Hebrew/koiné Greek words, and that it usually referred to must, which is not alcoholic. This argument had the advantage of allowing missionaries to make it seem that current interpretation of the Word of Wisdom (the actual text of which clearly does allow both wine and beer, not that I want to drink either) was not in conflict with the Bible. It had the disadvatange of being entirely false and was made by missionaries who wouldn’t have been able to distinguish Greek from Ebonics or Chinese…
- Six is the number of the devil based on the word serpent as derived from s(up)er ‘more than’ + pent ‘five’. I.e., serpent means “greater than five,” thus proving that six is the number of the devil.
- Finally, just to tie this into the discussion from a few days ago about the Ten Tribes, I supply one final example that was used by a BYU religion professor. He argued that when the Ten Tribes left Assyria for the lands to the north they went to Central Asia and that we can actually find proof in the city name of Samarkand, which means “Town of the Samars.” This etymology is at least plausible as kand (Sogdian kanθ) means town, but most scholars apparently consider the name to derive from Samara Khanda ‘region of war’ (in Sanskrit). I admit that I don’t know enough about the city to know who is right, but in the LDS context this linguistic reasoning is interesting.
I’m interested to know what other linguistic reasoning people have heard in the Gospel context. If you have any interesting examples, please share them.
(By the way, if you couldn’t tell, I made the bit about serpents up, but it sounds like the kinds of things we hear. The others are ones I have heard, however.)
I’ve been instucted from the pulpit about the be-happy-attitudes. No, the speaker did not notice the irony in “Blessed are those that mourn…”
In the MTC we were instructed that the word atonement derived from being at-one with God. I believed it until a few days later I was studying my German and the German word for atonement doesn’t have anything to do with being one with God.
And this, from GBH on October 1990 general conference:
…More than fifty years ago, when I was a missionary in England, I said to one of my associates, “How can we get people, including our own members, to speak of the Church by its proper name?”
He replied, “You can’t. The word Mormon is too deeply ingrained and too easy to say.” He went on, “I’ve quit trying. While I’m thankful for the privilege of being a follower of Jesus Christ and a member of the Church which bears His name, I am not ashamed of the nickname Mormon.”
“Look,” he went on to say, “if there is any name that is totally honorable in its derivation, it is the name Mormon. And so, when someone asks me about it and what it means, I quietly say–’Mormon means more good.’ ” (The Prophet Joseph Smith first said this in 1843; see Times and Seasons, 4:194; Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, pp. 299-300.)
His statement intrigued me–Mormon means “more good.” I knew, of course, that “more good” was not a derivative of the word Mormon. I had studied both Latin and Greek, and I knew that English is derived in some measure from those two languages and that the words more good are not a cognate of the word Mormon.
Mark IV,
I almost mentioned atonement in this post. That etymology actually is good (the word is first attested in 1513 with the meaning of bringing people into accord), but its Gospel usage represents a uniquely English-language perspective on the concept. Thus you could make arguments based on the meaning in English, but they wouldn’t have any reference to source texts or make sense in other languages at all.
Regarding Mormon as ‘more good,’ that is a common one, but I have to admit I know little about it.
And yes, be + at(ti)itude is another variation of what I cited. I’ve heard both, and neither one really makes sense except in a very strained manner.
I remember having the same attitude that you did about beatitude with regard to the word atonement - the folk etymology just didn’t sound right. I was surprised to find that “at one” was the original meaning of the word when it came into being relatively recently. How disappointing.
I remember being dubious enough of the etymology of “atonement” that, one Sunday after Elder’s Quorum, I went to the nearest OED (which happened to be in the BYU Writing Center, where I worked at the time) to prove snarkily to myself that the teacher had been wrong (and arm myself for the next time that folk etymology came up). Imagine my surprise when the Bible of the English language told me the word literally derived from at-one!
Great post Fenevad. I collected a fair number of these for my Japanese/Lost Tribes of Israel MA Thesis. Here is an excerpt:
Many missionary belief tales focus on language and folk etymology to draw a connection between Japan and Lost Isreal. This next group of items deals specifically with the written language, the kanji, or Chinese Characters borrowed by Japan. By breaking apart the different radicals of the ideographic kanji, some missionaries believe they have discovered a clue to the origin of the Japanese people in the latent traditions of ancient Israel.
ITEM 9
The word ‘mana-ita’ meaning bread board, as I understand it, ‘ita’ is the kanji for board, but ‘mana’ is written in katakana [the phonetic alphabet reserved for foreign words in Japan], suggesting that the word ‘mana’ was a tradition the Chinese had no written symbol for the Japanese to borrow. The ‘mana,’ of course, is ‘manna’, the Hebrews’ food in the wilderness during the exodus. [Bill Erikson. 8 October, 1996.]
ITEM 10
Another example is the word “gisei” meaning sacrifice. “Gi” comprises, among others, the radical for “hitsuji” or sheep. It’s interesting that the word sheep is associated with the word sacrifice. A person I met streeting. in Osaka told me the above Kanji examples as well as many others that I have since forgot. He claimed to have written a book about this connection between Kanji characters and Israel. Unfortunately, I don’t have the title nor publisher. [Eric Gardanier, 1 October, 1996].
ITEM 11
I collected a fair amount of stuff while I was in Fukuoka from 1993 1994. My favorite topic was kanji. The common kanji “Ta” meaning rice field is a square with two lines dividing it into quarters. If you were creating a character that would remind people of a famous garden or field, what would you use? Genesis tells us that four rivers came out of the center of the Garden of Eden. These might be related. [Matt Krebs, 2 October, 1996]
ITEM 12
Many of the Chinese characters show a correlation to Bible stories. For example, the word “fune” (boat) is comprised of three radicals: a radical that means boat, the number eight, and the character for mouth. Eight mouths, or eight people, are the same number of people on Noah’s ark. [Eric Gardanier, 1 October, 1996].
ITEM 13
One of the best explanations I heard was the one for “FUNE”. Look up the kanji in a dictionary, and you’ll see a symbol on the left side and the characters “8″ and “mouth” on the right. “FUNE” of course means boat or ship. The symbol on the left is a boat. Why do they need more symbols? Especially since Japanese are famous for simplifying their characters and strokes? Mouths often represent numbers of people, as in the English idiom “another mouth to feed.” So the character could be interpreted to mean a boat with 8 people on it. This should bring to mind Noah, with his family: Shem, Ham, Japheth and their wives. Eight people in all. I have more Kanji like this, but I’d have to dig it out. [Matt Krebs, 2 October, 1996]
Brother Fenevad,
Strange that Glenn did not consult me when extending this so-called invitation. There is a great danger in taking the word too lightly, and I fear that all you are doing here is undermining precious testimonies, and that is serving a different master than the master I serve.
We know that the Adversary is far older and smarter than we can possibly imagine. We know that his mission is to make us all unhappy like he is. We know that he planted dinosaur bones in the ground to confuse modern man and damage our faith in the true age of this earth. How hard would it be, then, for him to plant these crazy ideas that Mormon does NOT mean more good, or that atonement does NOT mean at-one-ment, or that beatitute is NOT the way we are reminded to be-at-it-dude (a foreshadowing of Presiendent Kimball’s “just do it” slogan — a divine slogan, I should add, that the Adversary mimicked — as he does all of God’s ways — for the gain of lucre with a shoe company that will gain no mention from me here — although I might add that those of you wearing Nike are supporting devil-worshippers, and I hope your feet are comfortable as you tread your wide and crooked path to h*ll!!!).
OF COURSE THEY DO! Ye who have eyes to see let him see! I guess we have too many Thomases in our midst — Thomases who just want to go out and drink wine so they listen to all the devil’s clever lies!
Please, I exhort you — remember oh remember that the Adversary is da evil one (”d-evil”) — am I the only one in tune with the ways of the Lord these days? Sometimes I know how lonely the three-Nephites must feel, but they’ve got it easy. There is only one of me.
One of the prominent theories in the Church is that the Germanic peoples are the lost tribes, and there have been attempts to demonstrate it linguistically, by pointing to putative similarities between Germanic and Hebrew (and also by similaries in toponyms and tribal names in Europe and known Hebrew tribal names, e.g., the tribe of Dan = the Danes). One such study was even published in the Ensign.
There are a number of factors that make this an attractive hypothesis for those looking to establish linguistic links between the lost tribes and a known people. The most tantalizing for some is the fact that Germanic is clearly Indo-European in origin, but about thirty percent of the Germanic lexical stock comes from an unknown, non-Indo-European source. When studies linking Germanic to Hebrew surface, they focus on Hebrew as the source for those unknown-source words, and they find some similarities. This hypothesis could be bolstered by the timing of the Assyrian displacement and the Germanic arrival in Europe.
However, someone demonstrated once on the Linguist List (sorry, I don’t know the link right off), that given any two random languages and a sufficiently comprehensive dictionary and a fairly loose notion of semantic relatedness and phonological similarity, you would expect to find apparent cognates for about 95% of the terms in the dictionary in the other language. The results are what are sometimes referred to by linguists as “ransacking the dictionary” proofs, and they are inherently flawed. The Japanese fune example highlights why: you find some meaning components that are “similar” to other meaning components in another system and then assert a factual connection. (You can see why kanji/hanzi are so attractive, since they virtually encode for folk etymology, but I wonder what Chinese linguist would give as the explanation for the derivation.)
The problem is that we tend to amplify patterns that match our expectations and dismiss those that don’t. There are methods to counter our assumptions about language relatedness (the “historical method” in linguistics, which in intellectual heritage is related to the “Finnish method” in folkloristics), but they require a lot of work to use effectively.
Finally, one quick question Glenn. Is fune (ボート?) the kun or the on reading of that kanji symbol? If it is the on reading, then any connection between the semantics of the characters and the meaning of boat are off, but if it is the kun reading, it is a little more interesting.
Dear Brother Knudsen,
I hope that you will excuse this sheep in wolf’s clothing and not cast me out with “the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars”.
Fenevad,
Fascinating post. I’d be interested to know what the Hebrew or Greek equivalent of Atonement meant.
Don’t let Knudsen’s judgments get you down. I know he puts himself in league with the Three Nephites, but that doesn’t automatically mean the rest of us who post here are seeking to undermine people’s testimonies.
Fenevad,
“Fune” is the kun reading (the Japanese-pronunciation) while “sen” is the on reading(the borrowed Chinese-pronunciation ). But even then, the character has apparently undergone some stroke-change (most likely a result of error) to the bottom right radical from Chinese to the Japanese. The Chinese is 舩 while the Japanese is 船. The Japanese version looks like kuchi 口 which is mouth. But in the Chinese it is mou 厶 which means secret. Combined with the symbol for eight 八, the Chinese radical is 公 (gong) which means fair, equitable. So the idea that the Japanese “fune” has a radical meaning “eight mouths” fits very nicely into a worldview where ancient truths have degenerated over time but have now been restored allowing us to fill in the gaps on all the fragmented survivals and rewrite history to justify our beliefs — but that’s about all it is.
j_t,
Please remember the story of Jesus in John 8:7. “He that is without sin among you…”
So you see — the righteous are sanctioned to cast stones. It is called “righteous” judgment, and it is the same judgement I expect to receive for myself. I can’t help it if I hold myself to higher standards.
There are a variety of terms used in Greek (I really can’t speak to the Hebrew), but the general sense is one of ransoming/redemption, ie., of paying a price.
Well, now I can’t resist tossing in my favorite Japanese folk Mormon etymology - the shimesu-hen. This radical appears in a simplified 4-stroke format in the modern kanji for “kami” (god), and is prominent in the kanji for perhaps an old Japanese religious term - “matsuru” (to deify). The folk etymology is that this radical represents a sacrifice on an altar with blood dripping down, as if in the ancient Israelite sense. I don’t know if this is really what the ancient Chinese source was trying to represent, but if it was, I would reply that lots of ancient religions had a blood sacrifice motif.
Also, I’ve made a bit of a study of Izumo Taisha, which is one of the oldest and largest shrines in Japan, though not the most important. The bishop of a nearby ward claimed he knew for a fact that there was an object with a Hebrew letter inscribed on it enshrined there, although there would really be no way he could know.
Was the bishop Yamane-koydai? I loved Izumo, by the way. Beautiful place.
Sorry to continue the threadjack.
Glenn, no, it was old Bishop Noda in Matsue. Izumo is one of those beautiful out-of the way places that you really hope stays that way. And I have met few better Japanese Mormons than Bro. Yamane.
I was reading a while back about the preservation of pre-Jesuit Nestorian Christian texts in Japanese temples. I have no idea how credible the claims are, but Nestorians were tremendously influential in Central Asia and China, so it is plausible that there could have been a Christian influence on some of the Chinese characters that went into Japanese. There may also have been Jewish influence even earlier than the Nestorians.
My impression is that there is a strong movement among Japanese Christians (i.e. non-LDS) to identify themselves with ancient Israel or with visitations by early Christian missionaries. For instance, several mountains are said to have the ark of the covenant buried within, and connections between native shinto shrines and the ancient Israelite temple/tabernacle are emphasized. They produce a lot of books, but I think the scholarship behind their assertions is dubious, at best.
LDS Japanese borrow what they want to from this movement to create their own unique LDS folklore.
Lief,
I have come across this as well. There are also Japanese Jews who feel the same way. Rabbi Marvin Tokayer is a good example (A New York native who was rabbi in Japan for about 30 years and is a big beleiver that many Shinto customs contain strong survivals of Israel lore). What has fascinated me about this is how easily it is for these different groups to come together and latch on to the same body of lore with such excitement and then subtly redirct towards their own vernacular ends — ends that, ultimately, invalidate the other groups. It is really interesting stuff.
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