LDS Why is the word "Bible" in the BoM?

TuxAme

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From 2 Nephi 29:

3 And because my words shall hiss forth—many of the Gentiles shall say: A Bible! A Bible! We have got a Bible, and there cannot be any more Bible.

4 But thus saith the Lord God: O fools, they shall have a Bible; and it shall proceed forth from the Jews, mine ancient covenant people. And what thank they the Jews for the Bible which they receive from them? Yea, what do the Gentiles mean? Do they remember the travails, and the labors, and the pains of the Jews, and their diligence unto me, in bringing forth salvation unto the Gentiles?

Isn't the fact that the word Bible appears in the Book of Mormon kind of disconcerting? The Bible itself doesn't even contain the word.
 

yeshuaslavejeff

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Disconcerting? Nah. It needn't be.
There are very popular "Fisherman's Bible", "Gun Owner's Bible", "Shooter's Bible" , Card Shark's Bible,
Drug User's Bible, Political Bible, Coin Collector's Bible, Baseball Card Bible, Sport's Bible,
many of them idolatrous if allowed to be...
but not one of them needs to be......
but (just realized!) ALL of them COULD BE mis-leading/ disconcerting.... just like the bom.... if considered real or true or valuable in place of what is actually right and wholesome and true....
 
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Anto9us

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My answer is that an American guy in early 1800's made all the BOM up -- he was someone so steeped in King James English that he did not successfully keep it out of the mouths of allegedly ancient Israelites; so we have word-for-word phrases from NT put in the 'sacred plates' written by made up ancient prophets

and when you think about it, when BOM was 'translated from' the alleged sacred plates -- why wasn't it translated into 1830 American English -- rather than King James English?
 
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tampasteve

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and when you think about it, when BOM was 'translated from' the alleged sacred plates -- why wasn't it translated into 1830 American English -- rather than King James English?
I am not saying that I agree with the BOM, but if I understand correctly "translated" is not really the right way to think of it. The words were shown to JS, so he did not translate them as one might translate German to English.

Also, given that 2 Nephi is a prophesy we could simply say that Nephi was told about the Bible, or collection of scriptures we translate as "Bible".
 
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Anto9us

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"the Greek word for "book" looks a lot like Bible in English"

That is true -- but the Greek word for CHURCH -- ecclesia; doesn't look anything like the English word CHURCH (which is all over the place in Book of Mormon).
 
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TuxAme

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Also, given that 2 Nephi is a prophesy we could simply say that Nephi was told about the Bible, or collection of scriptures we translate as "Bible".
I understand that it's supposed to be prophecy, but it still seems too suspect that it uses the word "Bible" rather than simply referring to future Scriptures.
 
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DaveDavids

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βιβλος ( biblos )

βιβλος biblos {bib'-los} primitive root; TDNT - 1:615,106; n n AV - book 13; 13 1) a written book, a roll, a scroll

First used in:

Mat 1:1 The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.
 
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tampasteve

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That is true -- but the Greek word for CHURCH -- ecclesia; doesn't look anything like the English word CHURCH (which is all over the place in Book of Mormon).
I understand that it's supposed to be prophecy, but it still seems too suspect that it uses the word "Bible" rather than simply referring to future Scriptures.

Sure, but again, since it was not translated like a normal text the words were simply shown and written, as the story goes, IIRC. So where the original text might have read "scroll" or papyrus, etc. the word shown to JS was "Bible". Perhaps a convenient way to explain away anachronisms, but none the less...

The BOM has to be thought of different than the Bible. Remember that the LDS faith is to be the continued true faith, so the ancients would have had the knowledge of Jesus, etc. which is why you see Jesus mentioned before He even came to the people of the BOM.

Again, just going with the way I have heard the story told.
 
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Anto9us

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Nephi uses exact words of Apostle Paul - 2 Nephi 4:17 "O wretched man that I am!"

Anyone find that a "little disconcerting"?

As to giving the BOM a "special status" as regarding its 'quasi-translation' -- I can't buy into that -- it is a book written like other books on planet earth.

The New Testament has 2500-3000 manuscripts of whole books or parts of books -- they are subject to critical analysis by scholars.

BOM had -- not has -- alleged metal plates as its origin which have since vanished. The plates were allegedly written on in "Reformed Egyptian" (which itself does not exist) -- I use the word TRANSLATION for lack of a better one for a process whereby Joseph Smith allegedly wore special "looking-glass eyeglasses" -- similar to seers' glasses he used earlier in his life to look for hidden treasure under the ground.

Hence we have a made-up story about made-up metal plates written on in a made-up language by made-up ancient people, which contains words and phrases straight out of Paul, Hebrews and Jesus' parable about house built on sand!
 
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Jane_Doe

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Isn't the fact that the word Bible appears in the Book of Mormon kind of disconcerting? The Bible itself doesn't even contain the word.
This line of questioning isn't very useful. You got two possibilities:

- The Book of Mormon is not what it says it is so the question is kind of... like asking is something disconcerting in work of fiction. It just doesn't make a lot of sense.

- Or the Book of Mormon is what it says it is (a translation of an ancient record) and there's no problem having a word translated thus.

Either way it's quite of a short discussion.
 
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Anto9us

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I disagree, Jane -- I feel this thread and the earlier one about words used anachronistically in BOM are legitimate grounds for discussion here.

These exact kinds of thoughts were going through my head as I tried to read BOM and encountered plagiarism and phrases right out of the New Testament being put in the mouths of allegedly ancient Israelites.
 
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dzheremi

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Just a friendly guess, the Greek word for "book" looks a lot like Bible in English.
Βιβλίο = "book"

This. If it was written in Greek, and talks about a book, it's going to have this "Bible"-like word in it, since that's where the word "Bible" comes from. Only in languages that took their word for the scriptures directly from Greek does "Biblia" (or Bible) mean the Holy Bible in particular (and we have some derived terms in English where the original meaning of just 'book' is kept, i.e., a bibliography is a list of books, not a list of Bibles, and a bibliophile is a lover of books, not just Bibles). I'm fairly certain (FenderTLS or other EO may correct me otherwise) that in Greek proper you would need to use a construction containing "Biblia" to talk about the Holy Bible in particular (as opposed to any common "biblia"/book); something like Biblia to Hagia or similar (I could look it up, but I'm under the weather this week, so I'm not feeling up to it, honestly). In Afroasiatic languages like Arabic and Coptic, that is definitely the case. كتاب kitab in Arabic means 'book' ( = biblia; any book). To talk about the Holy Bible you say كتاب المقدس kitab el muqaddis, literally 'the holy book' ( = the Holy Bible; side note: this is why the Muslim holy book, the Qur'an -- ever hopeful that it might piggyback on preexisting religions it claims to be the correction and completion of -- uses various adjectives in its name e.g., el Qur'an el Karim "the Noble Qur'an", which is another way of functionally saying "the Holy Qur'an" without having to style itself too closely to the preexisting books by out-and-out calling itself "el Qur'an el muqaddis"...the devil is sneaky, my friends, but luckily the cheap knockoffs he makes are very obvious to those who know what they are looking at!). In Coptic, the word for book (= biblia) is chom, so I believe (though I've never heard it spoken, since we announce whichever particular book we're reading from using the standard Greek heading "Evangelion kata Ioannis" or whichever) it would be Pichom Ethowab, following the pattern of other nouns in the genitive, e.g., Pipneuma Ethowab 'Holy Spirit' (pi- is the definite article, cf. Arabic al-/el).

As a linguist and a thinking person more generally, this is one of those things that actually does raise my eyebrow about the BOM, because if it is in any kind of Egyptian originally, you would think it would use a construction similar to the above (and there's no wiggling out of it by claiming that 'reformed Egyptian' was some sort of cipher for writing some form of Aramaic or something, as I've dealt with in other threads, since they work the same way; see the Syriac scriptures, as pictured below, which work the same way, grammatically), and not say "Bible" with the meaning that it has in English (and Spanish, etc.) in particular.

21BX7P9D6EL._SX372_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

A Syriac Holy Bible or Kthobo Qadisho, as advertised on Amazon.
 
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BigDaddy4

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Just a friendly guess, the Greek word for "book" looks a lot like Bible in English.
Βιβλίο = "book"
The verses referenced in the OP were supposedly written by a Jewish prophet in the Americas in roughly 559-545 BC, using "Reformed Egyptian" as the original language, and "translated" in the late 1820s by Joseph Smith. The last book of the BoM was written in around 421 AD, again in the Americas by a Jewish prophet. I'm not sure when Greek would have been introduced in the Americas during that time period?
 
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