Joseph Smith in his King Follett Discourse introduces many new doctrines to his followers, one of them is the plurality of gods. He comes to this conclusion through a misunderstanding of scripture by way of a misunderstanding of the Hebrew Language.
"I shall comment on the very first Hebrew word in the Bible, Berosheit. I want to analyze the word; baith--in, by, through, and everything else. Rosh--the head. Sheit--grammatical termination. When the inspired man wrote it, he did not put the baith there. A man, a Jew without any authority, thought it too bad to begin to talk about the head. It read first, "The head one of the Gods brought forth the Gods"; that is the true meaning of the words. Baurau signifies to bring forth. If you do not believe it, you do not believe the learned man of God. No man can teach you more than what I have told you. Thus the head God brought forth the Gods in the grand council." (From the King Follett Discourse, can be found here)
More on this subject can be found in other writings by Smith...
". . . Paul says there are Gods many and Lords many; and that makes a plurality of Gods, in spite of the whims of all men. Without a revelation, I am not going to give them the knowledge of the God of heaven. You know and I testify that Paul had no allusion to the heathen gods. I have it from God, and get over it if you can. I have a witness of the Holy Ghost, and a testimony that Paul had no allusion to the heathen gods in the text. I will show from the Hebrew Bible that I am correct, and the first word shows a plurality of Gods; and I want the apostates and learned men to come here and prove to the contrary, if they can. An unlearned boy must give you a little Hebrew. Berosheit baurau Eloheim ait aushamayeen vehau auraits, rendered by King James' translators, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." I want to analyze the word Berosheit. Rosh, the head; Sheit, a grammatical termination. The Baith was not originally put there when the inspired man wrote it, but it has been since added by an old Jew. Baurau signifies to bring forth; Eloheim is from the word Eloi, God, in the singular number; and by adding the word heim, it renders it Gods. It read first, "In the beginning the head of the Gods brought forth the Gods," or, as others have translated it, "The head of the Gods called the Gods together." . . . The head God organized the heaven and the earth. I defy all the world to refute me. In the beginning the heads of the Gods organized the heavens and the earth. Now the learned priests and the people rage, and the heathen imagine a vain thing. If we pursue the Hebrew text further, it reads, "Berosheit baurau Eloheim ait aashamayeen vehau auraits"-"The head one of the Gods said. Let us make a man in our own image." I once asked a learned Jew, "If the Hebrew language compels us to render all word sending in heim in the plural, why not render the first Eloheim plural?" He replied, "That is the rule with few exceptions; but in this case it would ruin the Bible." He acknowledged I was right. . . . "(Joseph Smith, History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, ed., B.H. Roberts, from this website here).
Smith makes several mistakes when he says these things. One would be the removing of a word because some fictitious old Jew added it, "Baith." Another would be a simple mispronunciation of a word, "Rosh." Yet another would be an ignorance of the use of the plural form of certain words to denote royalty or majesty.
It seems silly to blame an old Jew just so you can make a point, which it is, but Smith gets more wrong than just this. The word "Baith" is not a word at all but the letter "bet." Also, "Rosh" isn't the way this word is pronounce, it is "Ray." The problem with this is that "Rosh" means "head" in Hebrew while "Ray" does not. So Smith is clearly in error when translates Genesis as "In the beginning the head of the gods..." To support this he uses the fact that Elohim is a plural word, but this is just a common word usage to show the majesty of someone. We see this clearly throughout the Bible where we have the plural use of Elohim followed by singular word forms such as "he."
I hope that this was informative and that it gave you a greater understanding of what Mormons actually believe and what their prophet actually taught. For more information on this very topic refer to the jewsforjudaism.org website. This here is basically a summary of what is found on there.
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for a well researched response to this blog, go here: http://www.fairlds.org/FAIR_Conferences/2004_King_Follett_Discourse_in_the_Light_of_Ancient_Beliefs.html
ReplyDeleteSorry to burst your bubble, but I know Hebrew and I can explain how this works.
ReplyDelete1. The way Joseph Smith explains Hebrew is from Joshua Seixas, and he used his pronunciation system which appears to be Portegues Hebrew. There wasn't a standardized pronunciation system as there is now in modern Israel.
2. Baith is a word, it means house and also it is a letter. Baith is the primitive form of bayit. The Hebrew letters are root words. Thus in order to get a meaning of a word, you have to build it up with letters and that the sum of the letters give the meaning of the words. This only works consistently with really ancient Hebrew however. Rosh is in the word and means head, but you have to remember that the primitive form is found in the word bereshit. The ray is a primitive form of Rosh.
Thus when you read the sentence Bereshit, bara Elohim, et-hashamayim ve-et ha-aretz it really says in the head of creation, gods created the heaven and the earth. We do know however, that the term roshit means in ancient hebrew in the beginning. Thus the b in bereshit is unnecessary and very well could have been added by typists. Also it is possible that bereshit is referring to the beginning of a reign, thus the beginning of the reign of god.
Nicely put Sean Galland
ReplyDeleteI think I'll stick with the Jews on Hebrew. I do see the logic of your argument; however, it fails to address any issue of importance with the problem at hand. I've fixed the link to the Jews for Judaism website and I suggest you read it. I wrote this post some time ago and reading through it again I can see that the wording isn't entirely clear.
ReplyDeleteThe problems with Joseph Smith's claims seems to be this: his translation is not a good rendering of the Hebrew text, the theology derived from such a translation is in direct conflict with the idea of monotheism which is viciously proposed and defended by the rest of the Old Testament and (albeit of considerably less importance for Mormons) it contradicts with theology for the past two thousand years.
I can understand and appreciate your point. I used to be a mainstream non-denominational Christian and had similar feelings. When I approached anti-Mormon literature, I started to realize that there wasn't much truth in it. When I really started to evaluate what Joseph had said, it drove me straight to learning Hebrew to see if what he had said was doctrinally supported.
ReplyDeleteWhat I found was more shocking to me than I had expected. Even though I was already baptised LDS, I discovered that in the bible it mentions in many places that there are many gods (particularly in the Psalms). Also I learned that Jews do not believe there is just one god, they believe that they were selected by the one true God, the God of Israel to lead and guide them as Ha-Shems chosen people. The fact of the matter is that there is a lot of assumptions about there being just one god, but that just shows that many people (and I don't blame them, it tooks two years of my life to get to this point) do not critically read the bible because of two reasons:
They rely on translations, and do not recieve the knowledge that the Hebrew provides.
Or, secondly they believe that because a tradition has been handed down for as long as they remember it must be true.
I think that everyone, Mormons, Christians, Jews, etc., should always do their homework and the research and not rely on evangelicals, bishops, pastors, rabbi's, and church leaders to tell them everything since much of this information is publicly and easily available. Heck yesterday I read Rashi. And the LDS church does not disenvow folks to do their own homework.
Also to directly comment on the question of Monotheism, Mormons are literally Monotheists. We pray to Ha-Shem in the name of Jesus Christ, we do this because Ha-Shem has asked us to. Ha-Shem is the only God that is important to us and we do as he asks us to do because we believe, just as Jews do, that doctrine is important and the covenants that we make are no laughing matter. Just because LDS scripture teaches us that Jesus was always present doesn't make us polytheists. Jesus teaches that he was always there, he was before the world was. Mormons believe that the scriptures had been changed to no longer indicate the presence of Jesus (although many scholars believe there are two gods, Eloheim and Yahew, however mormons see these two names as God the Father and Jesus, Jews see them as on in the same). I think that a possibility might have been during Hezekiahs reforms. But that is my mere speculation and not LDS doctrine.