Alma 2:4: "[Amlici] being a wicked man, would deprive them of their rights ..."
The last word in this phrase caught my attention. This is not its first appearance in the Book of Mormon. But it appears nowhere in the Bible, not even in the form of any possible synonyms such as claims or privileges.
I am no student of political science. It would be interesting to learn from such a person whether the concept of "rights" appears in the writings of philosophers pre-Declaration of Independence or even pre-Enlightenment. Under monarchies of the ancient world, did people speak of their rights?
In other words, can we defend this odd word purporting to derive from a first century B.C. expatriate Hebrew culture, or is it simply an anachronism deriving from the milieu of Joseph Smith's 19th century American environment?
Some scholars today give the Native Americans, such as the Iroquoi Confederation, significant credit for inspiring the democratic ideas that led to the American independence movement. By the first century B.C., the Lehites of the Book of Mormon had been in the New World around 500 years, completely cut off from the various kingships, tyrannies and empires of the Old World. Is it plausible that they, like the later English settlers, could have derived primitive democratic ideas from their New World neighbors?
The noun-sense of the English word "rights" as claims or privileges goes back at least as far as Old English, according to the Online Etymology Dictionary.
Showing posts with label Amlici. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Amlici. Show all posts
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
The dastardly demagogue
The Book of Mormon uses a rare word, scriptorally speaking, to describe the villain Amlici. He is a "cunning" man.
All instances of that word in the KJV Old Testament go back to its older, non-perjurative sense, as in skillful. Only in the New Testament, and only once, do we find it denoting a bad person. That is, Ephesians 4:14, speaking of "cunning craftiness."
The Greek behind that phrase is "panourgia," which translates, fittingly enough, as specious or false wisdom. Indeed, the enemy of righteousness may appear to be a clever person, honey-tongued and quick-on-his-feet, but ultimately, he is a fool with a sad fate ahead of him.
I wonder if the Hebrews, without the long history of sophistry and rhetoric of their Hellenistic neighbors, truly had a societal concept, an archetype, of the "cunning man," the panourgia, the demagogue, among them.
The closest that the Old Testament seems to get is the tale of how Absalom organized rebellion against his father, David. His doomed uprising began with beguiling promises to the disaffected subjects of his father's kingdom. ((2 Sam. 15:4) But his grandstanding seems rather clumsy -- no Greek sophist would have been impressed.
If the "cunning man," the demagogue, is not to be found among the ancient Hebrews, from whence did the New World Hebrew expatriates, the Lehites, derive the concept? Is this an anachronism? Or is it in fact a subtle clue that the Lehites were not alone in their new home, that there were among them remnants of another people who did indeed understand the concept and used it against them?
All instances of that word in the KJV Old Testament go back to its older, non-perjurative sense, as in skillful. Only in the New Testament, and only once, do we find it denoting a bad person. That is, Ephesians 4:14, speaking of "cunning craftiness."
The Greek behind that phrase is "panourgia," which translates, fittingly enough, as specious or false wisdom. Indeed, the enemy of righteousness may appear to be a clever person, honey-tongued and quick-on-his-feet, but ultimately, he is a fool with a sad fate ahead of him.
I wonder if the Hebrews, without the long history of sophistry and rhetoric of their Hellenistic neighbors, truly had a societal concept, an archetype, of the "cunning man," the panourgia, the demagogue, among them.
The closest that the Old Testament seems to get is the tale of how Absalom organized rebellion against his father, David. His doomed uprising began with beguiling promises to the disaffected subjects of his father's kingdom. ((2 Sam. 15:4) But his grandstanding seems rather clumsy -- no Greek sophist would have been impressed.
If the "cunning man," the demagogue, is not to be found among the ancient Hebrews, from whence did the New World Hebrew expatriates, the Lehites, derive the concept? Is this an anachronism? Or is it in fact a subtle clue that the Lehites were not alone in their new home, that there were among them remnants of another people who did indeed understand the concept and used it against them?
Friday, February 5, 2010
New villain on the scene
I have just reached the second chapter of Alma in my study of the Book of Mormon and am curious about the villain we meet there, Amlici. As with many of those who sought to overturn the order of things in the Nephite world, Amlici himself is an enigma. Was he wholly a Nephite or of some other ethnic derivation with an axe to grind, perhaps considering himself an aggrieved minority in the Nephite culture, as might an Ainu in Japan or a Native American in the United States today? Consider his very name -- impossible to derive from the m-l-k root so familiar in the Book of Mormon, if the transliterated "c" is in truth to be pronounced as an "s."
If he was simply a power-hungry Nephite, or if this is a title put upon him by his Nephite enemies (there is a long history in Native American culture of doing so -- just ask an "Eskimo") then I may be very off base but his name might mean "Man of Aml," if "ic" is a garbled version of the Hebrew "aish" and the final "i" is a possessive marker.
If he was simply a power-hungry Nephite, or if this is a title put upon him by his Nephite enemies (there is a long history in Native American culture of doing so -- just ask an "Eskimo") then I may be very off base but his name might mean "Man of Aml," if "ic" is a garbled version of the Hebrew "aish" and the final "i" is a possessive marker.
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