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Video transcript:
Hey guys! In this video, we’re going to look at the ancient Hebrew practice of inverting quotations, and we’ll see where this same ancient technique also shows up in the Book of Mormon. Let’s do it.
So here’s the deal. If you’re writing an essay in English and you want to quote someone else’s work, you put their words in quotation marks. Simple and straightforward. Ancient Hebrew writers, however, obviously didn’t use quotation marks. When they wanted to refer to previously written material, one of the things they sometimes did was invert or swap around some of the elements of the original material.
For example, In Leviticus 26:4, we read that “the land shall yield her increase, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit.” Later, Ezekiel 34:27 refers back to this verse but inverts parts of it: “And the tree of the field shall yield her fruit, and the earth shall yield her increase….”
We find another simple example in Genesis 27:29, which says, “Cursed be every one that curseth thee, and blessed be he that blesseth thee.” Numbers 24:9 swaps these elements around, saying, “Blessed is he that blesseth thee, and cursed is he that curseth thee.”
This phenomenon, sometimes called “Seidel’s Law,” was first discovered in the 1950s by Moses Seidel. Since that time, other biblical scholars have built on Seidel’s foundation. Interestingly, researchers have also found instances of this ancient technique in the Book of Mormon.
For example: Isaiah 28:10 says, “For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little.” 2 Nephi in the Book of Mormon quotes Isaiah extensively, and in 2 Nephi 28:30 we see an inversion, “For behold, thus saith the Lord God: I will give unto the children of men line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little.”
Another example: Psalms 24:4 teaches that “He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart” will be blessed. Alma 5:19 refers back to this Psalm by inverting these elements: “Can ye look up to God at that day with a pure heart and clean hands?”
In Genesis 1:20-27 we read about the order in which living things on the earth were created. We start with the fish, fowls, the beast, cattle, every creeping thing, and then male and female. In 2 Nephi 2:15, Lehi gives a brief summary of God’s creative acts but lists them in reverse order:
“And to bring about his eternal purposes in the end of man, after he had created our first parents, and the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air, and in fine, all things which are created, it must needs be that there was an opposition….”
Isaiah 52:7 is a fun one. It says, “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace; that bringeth good tidings of good.” Both 1 Nephi 13 and Mosiah 15 invert this statement.
My favorite example stems from 3 Nephi 12 when Christ gives his famous “Sermon on the Mount” to the Nephites. Later, in 3 Nephi 15 and again in 3 Nephi 18, elements from the sermon are repeated but in reverse order.
So the question is, how did this ancient technique end up in the Book of Mormon? The way I see it, you’ve got a few options:
- You could try to argue that Joseph Smith was a fraud and just happened to notice inverted quotations in the Bible and intentionally incorporated them in the Book of Mormon to make it look more authentic. Of course, the challenge here is that Joseph never called attention to this feature of the text, and credentialled biblical scholars didn’t even discover this literary style until more than one hundred years after the publication of the Book of Mormon.
- You could instead argue that inverted quotations in the Book of Mormon all occur by accident — that every instance is a coincidence. BYU scholar Donald Parry pointed out that the repeated use of this literary practice argues against coincidence. I’d also point out that inverted quotations are only one of many different Hebraisms we find in the Book of Mormon. And as more and more of them pile up, the harder it becomes, at least for me, to chalk everything up to coincidence. That said, I can’t prove that it’s not a coincidence, so you’re free to go that route if you choose.
- The third option is that this technique shows up in the Book of Mormon because it is truly a translation of an ancient text, just as it claims it is.
This option is what makes the most sense to me. That said, to be clear, none of this information categorically proves that the Book of Mormon is indeed ancient. I do not advocate for building your testimony on stuff like this. That should be between you and God. But this kind of academic nugget does help to provide fertile ground where belief can grow. As author Austin Farrar wrote, “Rational argument does not create belief, but it maintains a climate in which belief may flourish.” If you want to check out some more of these academic nuggets, go watch this episode on Chiasmus, and have a great day!