[Moved (by Mark Liberman) due to its length, out of a comment by "Michael" on this Language Log post.]

The following maybe of interest to Language Log readers interested in this topic. In By the Hand of Mormon: The American Scripture that Launched a New World Religion (Oxford University Press, 2002) Terryl L. Givens (professor of Religion and Literature at the University of Richmond, Virginia) wrote the following (pages 132-135):

The State of the Debate

Language and Form

Nephi began his account with an explanation that he was writing "in the language of my father, which consists of the learning of the Jews and the language of the Egyptians" (1 Nephi 1:2). Later, the last chronicler, Moroni, adds his note that "we have written this record according to our knowledge, in the characters which are called among us the reformed Egyptian, being handed down and altered by us, according to our manner of speech" (Morm. 9:32).

Mormon scholars take this to suggest the possibility that the writers used modified Egyptian symbols to represent Hebrew words ("Hebrew words, idioms, and syntax written in Egyptian cursive script"⁵³), certainly a bizarre idea for a nineteenth-century audience. Now, as John Tvedtnes points out, "the use of Egyptian symbols to transliterate Hebrew words and vice versa, is known from sixth century B.C. texts discovered at Arad and Kadesh-Barnea."⁵⁴ Papyrus Amherst 63, for example, "contains a scriptural text in a Northwest Semitic tongue written in an Egyptian script."⁵⁵

Physical evidence for the unique script is limited to the purported transcription of characters taken from the plates and shown by Martin Harris in 1828 to Professor Charles Anthon.⁵⁶ They consist of seven horizontal rows of unusual markings, that have been variously described as everything from Phoenician writing to Mayan script to occult symbols, from "a Nubian corruption of Egyptian" to secret masonic code.

Though the expression "reformed Egyptian" garnered no small amount of ridicule at the time and since ("deformed English" rather than "reformed Egyptian," sniffed Charles Shook in 1910, after looking at the Anthon Transcript⁵⁷), scholars now generally recognize that "Demotic Egyptian, of origin not long before Lehi's Exodus, is certainly a 'reformed Egyptian,' as are other well-known and less-known variations."⁵⁸ Nibley points out that Meroitic, "a baffling and still largely undeciphered Egyptian script which developed out of Demotic under circumstances remarkably paralleling the purported development of the Nephite writing, has the most striking affinities to the characters on the so-called Anthon Transcript."⁵⁹ William J. Hamblin notes other examples of "mixing a Semitic language with modified Egyptian hieroglyphic characters," such as the Byblos Syllabic texts of Phoenicia, Cretan hieroglyphics, and Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions of ancient Syria and Palestine.⁶⁰

If the root language of the Book of Mormon is actually Hebrew, then Egyptian script notwithstanding, one would expect it to reflect Hebrew linguistic and literary patterns. As we saw, John Welch discovered the presence of chiastic patterns in the book in the late 1960s.⁶¹ Since then, Welch and others have analyzed numerous instances besides the Mosiah example. In an unusually extended and complex example, Alma recounts his miraculous conversion in a 1,200 word narrative, in the course of which 18 word groups are unfolded, then repeated in 18 mirror images with absolutely perfect symmetry (Alma 36). The fulcrum on which the chiasm rests is the word "atone," nestled between a recollection "of one Jesus Christ, a son of God" and a cry of his heart to "Jesus, thou Soun of God." On the fallen side of the chiasm, for example, we find attacks on the church, physical paralysis, fear of God's presence, and the pains of a damned soul. On the redeemed side of the chiasm we have joy "as exceeding as was my pain," longing for God's presence, physical restoration, and missionary labors. Even the syntactical patterns of one side mirror or develop those of the other, as "Do as I have done" of verse 2 becomes "Know as I do know," of verse 30, and "their trials and their troubles and their afflictions" of verse 3 becomes "trials and troubles of every kind, and in all manner of affliction" of verse 27.

Of course, not all the language of the Book of Mormon is elegant or rhetorically polished. The Baptist Herald, we noted, objected in 1840 that "the phraseology...[of the Book of Mormon] frequently violates every principle and rule of grammar." Mark Twain famously considered the book to be "chloroform in print,"⁶² and I. Woodbridge Riley complained at the turn of the century that "barbarisms and solecisms abound, due to what Smith called his 'lack of fluency according to the literati.' Over and above these are unique expressions, which well deserve the name of 'Smithisms.'"⁶³

Some defenders believe that apparent solecisms are actually evidence of Hebraic backgrounds. For example, one perennial Mormon critic mocks the seeming illogic of Alma 46:19, where in the 1830 edition Moroni is depicted as going "forth among the people, waving the rent of his garment in the air, that all might see the writing which he had written upon the rent."⁶⁴ As John Tvedtnes explains,

the unlikely usage of "rent" in English as a noun no doubt contributed to the fact that, in subsequent editions of the Book of Mormon, it was changed to read "rent part" (Alma 46:19). But the Hebrew would, in this instance, use but one word, qera', "rent (part)," coming from qara', "he rent, tore," for nouns, in Hebrew, are derived from roots—as are Hebrew verbs—by the addition of certain vowel patterns that distinguish them from other parts of speech.⁶⁵

Other examples of Hebraisms that Tvedtnes discusses include the absence of a "Heaven" in the singular (in the Hebrew "samayim" has only a dual form), pronominal suffixes, such as in Jacob 5:2 ("hear the words of me" instead of "my words"), and more than a dozen instances of the "construct state," where two nouns are linked by "of" rather than using one as an adjective. For example, we find "plates of brass" (or "gold"), "rod of iron," "altar of stones," and "words of plainness," but never "brass plates," "iron rod," "stone altar," or "plain words."

Additionally, there are several instances of the "cognate accusative." In English, one would say, "I had a dream"; in Semitic languages, "I dreamed a dream" would be a common construction. We find that particular formulation in the Book of Mormon (1 Nephi 3:2), as well as "cursed with a sore cursing" (Jacob 3:3), "work all manner of fine work" (Mos. 11:10), and "judge righteous judgments" (Mos. 29:43).⁶⁶

Royal Skousen, a Book of Mormon textual scholar, also notes the prevalence of a particular Hebraic "if-and" construction, that sounds oddly ungrammatical when transposed into English where an "if-then" form would be expected. The author of the Book of Helaman uses it seven times in just one single passage:

Yea and if he saith unto the earth, Move, and it is moved; yea, if he saith unto the earth, Thou shalt go back, that it lengthen out the day for many hours, and it is done. ... And behold, also if he saith unto the waters of the great deep, Be thou dried up, and it is done. Behold, if he saith unto this mountain, Be thou raised up, and come over and fall upon that city, that it be buried up, and behold it is done...and if the Lord shall say, Be thou accursed that no man shall find thee from this time henceforth and forever, and behold, no man getteth it henceforth and forever. And behold, if the Lord shall say unto a man, Because of thine iniquities thou shalt be accursed forever, and it shall be done. And if the Lord shall say, Because of thine iniquities, thou shalt be cut off from my presence, and he will cause that it shall be so. (Hel. p. 440 of 1830 edition)

Skousen notes that this non-English pattern occurs at least 14 times in the original version.⁶⁷ Of course, the real question is whether such patterns are unique to Hebrew or at least nonexistent in Joseph Smith's other writings. In a seemingly impressive article, skeptic Edward H. Ashment scours Joseph's revelations recorded in the 1833 Book of Commandments for these Hebraic constructions. And indeed, he does find examples of most (the cognate accusative, for instance). But in two cases (extrapositional nouns and pronouns, and naming conventions), he finds none. And twice he claimed to find parallels, only to blunder badly. No valid instance of either a pronominal suffix or an "if-and" construction occurs in the other writings of Joseph Smith that Ashment examines.⁶⁸ His inability to locate a single comparable instance of those Hebraic forms outside the Book of Mormon becomes, ironically, evidence that strengthens the claims of Skousen and Tvedtnes.