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Image by James Fullmer |
Nearly three years ago, I wrote a blog post about the Book
of Mormon Onomasticon project, and it became a pretty popular post, even being
featured on Real Clear Religion. In that post, I used the name Zoram as a case study on how the meaning
of names can shed light on the text. The etymology I used there was Ṣûrām or
*Ṣûrʿām, “their rock” or
“rock of the people” and suggested that the narrative in 1 Nephi 4 lends itself
to a wordplay with Zoram.
At the time, I
noted that Zoram is first introduced into the narrative simply as the “servant
of Laban” (1 Nephi 4:20, 31, 33), and that it’s not until taking an oath
wherein he is promised his freedom that he is called by his name (1 Nephi 4:35). At
the time, I suggested this could be a deliberate literary device intended to
suggest that with the oath he became Zoram, a “rock,” steadfast and true
to his oath.
While this reading
is certainly interesting, Matt Bowen has just suggested an alternative
etymology which fits this narrative even better. He suggests that it is
a –rām (high/exalted/lifted up) name with the
demonstrative zô, hence Zôrām, would mean something like “one who is
lifted up/exalted.” The implications this has for 1 Nephi 4 are explained by
Bowen as follows:
In the context of Zoram’s liberation from having been the “servant [i.e., slave] of Laban” to become a “free man” (1 Nephi 4:33), perhaps his name came to connote “the one lifted up” out of bondage.
With this meaning of Zoram in mind, it indeed seems
significant that Zoram’s name is not used until after his oath with Nephi. At first just a lowly servant—or possibly
even a slave—through the oath he became Zoram,
the one who was lifted up out of bondage and into freedom.
Bowen’s etymology has the advantage over the previous
etymology in that it works very well with other narratives in the Book of
Mormon involving “Zoram” and other similar names, which is the focus of Bowen’s
paper.
This is just a small example of the many ways the study of
Book of Mormon names illuminates the narratives in the text. Book of Mormon
names continue to be a fruitful avenue of exploration, and Bowen has prodigiously
(two papers just this week!) been plumbing the depths of possibilities not only
with Book of Mormon etymologies, but with literary wordplays on the names found
throughout the texts.
While these are often speculative, and they may not all pan
out, the very fact that so many can be plausibly proposed is strongly
suggestive of the Hebraic origins of the Book of Mormon. If you disagree, you are welcome to make up a whole bunch of names and stories and
then see if any of the names can reasonably mean anything in Hebrew or Egyptian, and if so, you can then check to
see if those meanings happen to pun on the details of your randomly made up
stories in any meaningful way. Good luck.
Neal,
ReplyDeleteI think you know how much name and word etymology fascinates me! Guess what I'm going to print out now that my printer is working again!
Don Neighbors
Oh, if only we could accept the idea that the entire Book of Mormon is nothing more than the product of the Illuminati (who spent decades working on this) instead of Joseph, we can move on with our lives. Of course I have NO evidence of this in the slightest, but surely this is more plausible than the consistent story we get from the series of people who helped Joseph translate the plates.
ReplyDelete...or something.