Book of Mormon Archaeological Forum

by Alan Miner: "Step by Step through the Book of Mormon" (unpublished); citing excerpts from an article by Hugh Pinnock, used with permission from the author and Ancient America Foundation.

Hugh Pinnock writes that polysyndeton is among the easiest of repetitious ancient Hebrew writing forms to identify because it repeats "the word and at the beginning of successive clauses." A good
example of polysyndeton in the Book of Mormon is found in Alma 1:29:

an abundance of flocks

and herds

and fatlings of every kind,

and also abundance of grain,

and of gold,

and of silver,

and of precious things,

and abundance of silk

and fine-twined linen,

and all manner of good homely cloth.

Easily recognizable, polysyndeton was a tool frequently used by Hebrew writers and is an obvious support for the Book of Mormon's Hebraic roots. [Hugh W. Pinnock, Finding Biblical Hebrew and Other Ancient Literary Forms in the Book of Mormon, FARMS, 1999, pp. 21-23, 27]

(editor's note:) Joseph Smith was highly criticized for his "bad grammar" when the Book of Mormon was published. A typical comment was: "If God was goin' to give new scripture, He'd at least use good grammar."

Because of the Hebraic writing forms throughout the book (except the book of Ether....the Jaredites were not Hebrew), and because the translation by the prophet was word for word; the English translation was full of "bad English grammar." This is one more evidence that Joseph Smith did not write the Book of Mormon.

For a comprehensive book illustrating Hebraic writing in the Book of Mormon, I highly recommend "The Book of Mormon Text Reformatted according to Parallelistic Patterns" by Donald W. Parry, available at Amazon Books.

Doug Christensen