#author is becoming a homelander apologist

[saudrag]

the depth of self-awareness homelander showed in the new episode (s4e5) is mind boggling. and the fact that he did not get defensive over his manipulation of ryan, trying to excuse his previous actions, but instead he recognised the manipulation for what it was and corrected his behaviour while also acknowledging his wrongdoings out loud?

when ryan said that he wants to help people, you can see that john was not happy with that decision, because he doesn’t believe people deserve saving. and, from john’s perspective, when humans only showed him violence and manipulation and anguish since the little age, he is right. but if that’s what ryan wants, then he will support him, even if this suggestion makes him deeply uncomfortable and challenges his views and evokes the trauma. john will try because he no longer wants to be the same tormentor to ryan as his own “family” was to him.

absolutely incredible improvement, it makes his character so much more likable. the self-reflection was a very unexpected touch.

homelander really wants to be a better parent to ryan than the lab team was to him. and maybe he can even be that parent. we can only wait and see if he can really keep his promise and not fall in another vicious cycle.

[mariacallous]

In Stalin Park on Stalin Avenue in the Georgian town of Gori sit the preserved peasant house where Josef was born a cobbler’s son, and a museum dedicated to the life – or an airbrushed version of the life – of the blood-soaked Soviet dictator that he became.

The park lost its six-metre bronze of Stalin in 2010 – much to the disgust of some locals – but a dozen new Stalin statues have gone up around Georgia during the 12-year rule of Georgian Dream, a party that is accused of moving the country back towards Russia and autocracy by its opponents in Saturday’s parliamentary election.

Georgian Dream has “embraced a positive or ambivalent outlook on the Soviet period” and done nothing to counter Russia’s “weaponisation of the image of Stalin tailored to the Georgian context, which presents him as a symbol of Georgian patriotic pride”, says Giorgi Kandelaki of Tbilisi’s Soviet Past Research Laboratory (SovLab).

“A long-term strategy of Russian disinformation in Georgia is to cultivate an anti-western, ethno-religious, chauvinistic nationalism or nativism, in which the western world is a danger to our souls – to oversimply it, we will all become gay – and the Russian world is our salvation,” he adds.

“In this project, the figure of Stalin serves as a kind of umbrella, something that brings the whole project together, and they’ve been rather successful in this effort.”

Georgia suffered no less than other Soviet republics during Stalin’s near 30-year rule, but a significant part of the nation has always been proud that one of its own became master of the Kremlin and its empire, beat Nazi Germany – without much help from the West, as they see it – and made the Soviet Union a military and industrial superpower.

The millions of people shot, tortured and starved to death by Stalin’s regime are, to his apologists in Georgia and elsewhere, mere historical footnotes or exaggerations and lies spread by enemies of the Soviet Union and Russia.

Visitors to the Gori museum first follow a red carpet up a marble staircase to where a tall Stalin in pale stone stands beneath a blue stained-glass window; the military-religious aesthetic recurs through a museum that opened four years after the dictator’s death in 1953.

Its rooms tell a story of how Josef Dzhugashvili was born into poverty in Gori in 1878, lived as a daring bank robber and revolutionary under the pseudonym Stalin (from the Russian for “steel”), and succeeded Vladimir Lenin as Soviet leader in 1924; so began three apparently glorious decades of military triumph, astonishing progress in industry and agriculture and visits from admiring foreign dignitaries bearing gifts.

The newspaper headlines, photographs and paintings are from the repertoire of Soviet propaganda: Stalin addressing workers in a train factory; hugging a happy young girl on Red Square; even offering a welcoming hand and warm smile in a portrait that hangs over the Kremlin desk where he would have set the seal on so many lives.

The tone is entirely uncritical and often reverential, as in the mausoleum-like chamber of red and black where a bronze cast of Stalin’s death mask sits on a white plinth; meanwhile, in a less sombre setting downstairs, the souvenir shop offers Stalin-branded bottles of wine, pipes, clocks, fridge magnets and other mementos.

An employee checking tickets complains that Gori’s Stalin statue was removed in 2010 when Mikheil Saakashvili was Georgia’s president, and a guide tells a group of Russian visitors that he wanted to close the museum “but thank God it didn’t happen”.

Saakashvili was jailed in 2021 for exceeding his authority and ordering an attack on an opponent, but allies regard him as a political prisoner of Georgian Dream.

Its billionaire leader Bidzina Ivanishvili says that after the election he will seek to ban Saakashvili’s party and prosecute other opponents, while protecting Georgia from western attacks on its “traditional values” and attempts to drag it into war with Russia.

At the same time, Georgian Dream insists that it wants to join the European Union, is not pro-Russian and fully respects democracy and the rule of law.

Kandelaki argues that by mirroring Moscow in glossing over Soviet crimes, Georgian Dream is bolstering a Kremlin worldview that glorifies the “Russian world” as an enduring conservative bulwark against a decadent and destructive West.

“In the last year they have shut down access to two of Georgia’s most important archives completely – the KGB and the Central [Communist] Party archives,” he says. “This is not a coincidence, it is a policy – for them, the Soviet past is something to protect.”

There are even attempts in Russia and Georgia to align Stalin – an atheist and prolific persecutor of believers – with the Orthodox Church, and he briefly appeared on an icon in a Tbilisi cathedral this year before it was defaced by a protester and removed.

Polls shows that favourable or ambivalent attitudes towards Stalin span generations in Georgia, and depictions of the dictator on Georgian TikTok are mostly positive, according to a recent report by the digital forensic research lab of the Atlantic Council.

The homes of two of the think tank’s Georgian experts on Russian influence and disinformation, Sopo Gelava and Eto Buziashvili, were searched by the authorities on Thursday, sending a chill through civil society and opposition circles in Tbilisi just two days before an election that Moscow and the West will be watching.

[collymore]

The real extremists are in Israel, stealing land and killing Palestinian kids!

By Stanley Collymore

More rightwing garbage from the usual sources against evidently unquestionably, demonstrably moral, decent and very conscionable pro Palestinian supporters; simply, naturally and expectedly effectively coming from the surfeit of biased, customary Zionist Yid apologists and their rather routinely bought, simply fellow white, mercenary beneficiaries! While, generally, in effect all these specifically, genocidal acts of calculatedly and maliciously contrived terrorism, distinctly comes from Israel whose odious, murderously terroristic, very evilly ingrained assailants started it some 80 plus years ago, to get what they wanted, but simply, weren't either lawfully or morally, much less so even spiritually, entitled to! However Britain and clearly also the USA allowed their rabid, barbaric purloining of Palestine because these evil, white hypocritical bastards distinctly simply didn't want these Zionist Yids generally infesting through this undoubtedly, discernible physical presence of Yids there, their very evidently delusionally perceived, white master race, and naturally also impregnable-holding, of these lands!

Bearing in mind that other than a few refugees from the obviously, literally post European holocaust countries the vast majority of these clearly Zionist Yid emigrants as rather undeniably they still are and actually unquestionably so in the case of Palestine are undeniably ethnically Russian! Yet, effectively, not satisfied with what they in disgraceful collusion very obviously with the USA, UK and naturally essentially the white West, have very genocidally acquired; massively similar, in all respects, one can rest assured to that likemindedly abhorrently convict inured and rather fatuously delusionally claimed, Terra nullius Australia; these odiously very sick Yids, still want much more! And also quite interestingly, despite their visibly, very distinctly, and ongoingly evil, barbarously executed genocide against defenceless Palestinian old men and women; females generally and collectively very young children and their very evidently courageous defenders bravely putting their own lives altruistically at risk, to actually protect them! Yet brazenly the USA and Britain distinctively, essentially in tandem actually with their family of obviously supposedly important Aryan white men, women and also their nations justly can and only do see or basically, ever acknowledge terrorism when ever it significantly undoubtedly financially suits them.

(C) Stanley V. Collymore 3 March 2024.

Author's Remarks: The two most evil myths arrogantly though evidently to anyone with a very functioning brain, discernibly delusionally proselytized on Planet Earth, and have actually been so quite ongoingly for far too long, are simply those embodying the concept of exclusive white Aryan, master race supremacy; plus, just as well, the similarly, really malevolent and egregious belief of their clearly natural associates in actually barbarous genocidal activities, who rather asininely believe, that they obviously have an open remit to really simply do whatever they want and choose to do, because they are somehow uniquely, the prescribed favourites, along with being as well the simply permanently, obviously designated chosen official representatives distinctly of the Universe's omnipotent deity whosoever that is to us lesser informed nonentities!

Be that idiotically as it is, as there's simply no cure for rampant stupidity and this after all is the genesis of a crucially enlightened 21st Century not a make believe, and evilly fanciful one. And why all conscionable, as well as courageous persons globally must collectively assist the Palestinians in quite successfully, unquestionably regaining their indigenous homeland, and never permit it to become another distinctively absolutely toxically verminous, abhorrently genocidal delusional, Terra nullius Australia!

[jacobsvoice]

Bernie’s Bile

Senator Bernie Sanders, the son of a Polish immigrant father, grew up in Brooklyn and spent a summer working on a kibbutz. That experience seems to have been formative, not only stoking his left-wing politics but poisoning his view of Israel.

His recent column in The New York Times (May 15) lays bare this noxious mixture, also known as Jewish self-hatred, that drives him to castigate Israel. He begins with the commendable, if obvious, affirmation: “Israel has the right to defend itself.” But he quickly segues to the question: “What are the rights of the Palestinian people?”

That leads him to Sheikh Jarrah, a prosperous neighborhood  located just north of Jerusalem’s Old City. It has become the  spark igniting waves of violence sweeping through Jerusalem, spreading across Israel and triggering a fusillade of rockets from Hamas in Gaza. According to the Sanders narrative, Palestinian families in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah “have been living under the threat of eviction for many years, navigating a legal system designed to facilitate their forced displacement.” Blame falls on “extremist settlers” who “have intensified their efforts to evict them.” But these “extremist settlers” are Yemenite Jews who want their property returned.

Sanders’ indictment provides a classic example of ideology obliterating truth. The four Palestinian families in Sheikh Jarrah who now face “expulsion” from “their” homes are living on Jewish-owned property in a neighborhood that is the site of the tomb of a renowned Jewish High Priest in the Second Temple era. In 1876 Jews purchased the burial cave and adjoining land, where Yemenite Jewish immigrant families lived until the property was seized by Arabs during Israel’s Independence War. He is oblivious to the 1970 Israeli law that allows Jews to reclaim East Jerusalem property owned by Jews before their forced eviction in 1948.

In Sanders’ warped view “extremist settlers” are to blame for the current eruption of violence. These evictions, he claims, are part of “a broader system of political and economic oppression” that includes “a deepening Israeli occupation” – of Judea and Samaria, the Biblical homeland of the Jewish people – and “a continuing blockade on Gaza that make life increasingly intolerable for Palestinians.” He ignores the current fusillade of Hamas rockets from Gaza.

In Sanders’ contrived “reality” Israel ranks among “similar authoritarian nationalist movements” that “exploit ethnic and racial hatreds in order to build power for a corrupt few.” Americans, he insists, must cease to be “apologists for the right-wing Netanyahu government and its undemocratic and racist behavior.” In his closing, now familiar, American refrain for oppressed minorities, he insists: “We must recognize that Palestinian rights matter. Palestinian lives matter.” In translation, Palestinians are the new Black Americans, oppressed by white racists – also known as Israelis.

The anti-Israel virus seems to have spread from The New York Times to the Los Angeles Times. According to the myopic vision of Palestinian journalist Daoud Kuttab, Palestinians have been fighting against a population replacement policy in Sheik Jarrah that is illegal under international law. A “one-sided Israeli legal system” allows Jews to settle in homes that they can claim to have at one time been Jewish. Kuttab is oblivious to the reality that these homes were indeed owned by Jews who were driven out by Arabs during Israel’s Independence War.

But Daoud Kuttab cannot match Bernie Sanders, who betrays his own people with his Israel-bashing diatribe. The New York Times, which denigrated Zionism and opposed Jewish statehood because its Sulzberger publishers were fearful that as American Jews they might be accused of divided loyalty, is the perfect forum for him. Sanders’ left-wing dogma has led him to defile the Jewish state and, in the process, demean himself.

Jerold S. Auerbach is the author of twelve books, including Print to Fit: The New York Times, Zionism and Israel 1896-2016, selected for Mosaic by Ruth Wisse and Martin Kramer as a Best Book for 2019.

Algemeiner (May 16, 2021)

[pallmaemalaise-blog]

Nationalism, loyalty and devotion to a nation; exalting one nation above all others, obedient without question.

Patriotism, love that people feel for their country yet still able to think critically and challenge/question authority.

George Orwell said, nationalism is ‘the worst enemy of peace’. Orwell had seemed to feel that nationalism is a feeling that one’s country is superior to another in all respects, while patriotism is merely a feeling of admiration for a way of life. These concepts show that patriotism is passive by nature and nationalism can be a little aggressive, okay, let’s face it, ubber aggressive.

I carried a passionate detestation for the military before I received my separation papers. A tour in Iraq can do that for you, hell, a substantial amount of time spent within the military culture can do that for you. It took several years for me to not cringe and see red come Veterans Day or Memorial Day. The idea of being thanked for my service or to boo hoo for the dead made my blood boil. I was quick to repudiate and combat the conditioned gesture with brazen snarky wit. 

Over the years, I like to think that I've evolved a bit. At first, I'd go for the jugular come Veterans Day but then I started to regain a sense of empathy for not just myself but for all soldiers, no matter their ethical ethos. I saw us as a disposable product produced by a malevolent manufacturer.

I no longer cringe, see red or have blood boiling moments come Veterans Day or at least this present one but what still remains is a healthy disappointment at not only the "thank you for keeping us free and safe" nationalistic fervor type but for the conditional empathic ones who lack the compassion and understanding it takes to comprehend why folks like myself enlisted in the military. They seem to fail to see the economic hardships many of us face and the left create the very same us and them divide that the right does.

Veterans Day can help bring to light the classism, fascism of the conditional egalitarian.

Would you like to support the troops? Do you feel the urge to thank us for our sacrifice? Especially those who have, not fallen but been killed? Are you one who has a desire to honor those who have served because you feel safer from illusions and fabricated threats brought to you by your pals at homeland security who of course are sponsored by war profiteers courtesy of the military industrial complex?

Well, if you do. Allow me to offer some suggestions.

You could support the troops and still be critical. Stop being an apologist for an outfit that uses us (troops) to carry out the war crimes and crimes against humanity that have been handed down by the elite. Again, soldiers are the product, the product of a criminal manufacturer.

I suggest, supporting the troops by not supporting war or any military intervention of any kind. I suggest we speak candidly about what war does to those on the other end of our barrels as well as the epidemics that plague us, our soldiers when we come home. I suggest we speak openly about post traumatic stress, traumatic brain injuries and military sexual trauma. I suggest we have conversations about a suicide pandemic among us, our veterans. I suggest we have dialogues regarding inadequate mental health treatment for the enlisted as well as the discharged.

Much like the fetus, the soldier isn't of value once he/she is discharged. If you pick up what i'm putting down?

Lets move on to the part where folks endlessly thank us for our sacrifice. How we sacrifice our lives and those lives who are touched by ours, whether by death, disfiguring/mental disability or simply a trauma or two. How we are "brave" due to our "sacrifices" and how "selfless" we are to defend the country, populace, flag, etc. but the reality is this, there is nothing brave or selfless in enlisting into the military. We are tools, pawns in a class ridden system to perform henchmen/womyn duties for a mob boss. Where is the honor in dying in illegal wars that are in result draining our economy while creating great wealth for a very selective few?

I feel we support profits over people by perpetuating the acceptance of war by simply remaining silent and this is what veterans day means to me. An arbitrary thanks and other ego bloating slogans that without honest, critical dialogue about the truth of war and our place and role we take as veterans and as a viewing society in it, then, I feel we only endorse, condone and ironically support the same machine that is responsible for deaths, traumas and mistreatment of the very same soldiers you claim on this day to care so, so, so much about.

This combat veteran sees lip service. I see a factory with unfair labor practices and the ceo stops by for an appearance to thank those workers, not for what appears to be their hard work but rather their complacency or desperation to work in such undesirable conditions.

It's shameful that it has become socially unacceptable to speak out about injustice regarding the military culture. As veterans we need to call ourselves out, we need to reject these pedestals, images created to make us feel good or that act as a superficial pat on the back and be honest with ourselves on what it means to be a soldier and more importantly, what we are asked to do and do as soldiers.

I see supporting the troops, veterans as follows. A compassionate comprehension of our economic system and how it's arrogant to blame folks for enlisting or serving. It’s classiest and lacks understanding. Support is to care enough to speak out against the system that governs them and set aim to stop it. Counter recruitment for example is an act of love. These words my fingers are pounding out on these keys is not done out of hostility or anger but out of love.

And lastly, as for honor. I see no honor in service. This doesn't necessarily mean I reject my military experience or that I’m not empathetic to those serving or have served. However, there is no justification for the blood on my hands. Thousands of folks are serving life sentences for bullshit petty crimes when if in any other domain other than the military and law enforcement, I'd be serving well-deserved multiple life sentences for performing my duties as a united states soldier spreading democracy. Impunity, thanks to a loose rules of engagement that leaves no room for any accountability whatsoever.

But at least contributing businesses give us some hand outs to show their appreciation. I mean, nothing says thank you for fighting for the interests of those who have absolutely no interest in you than a free breakfast at Denny’s.

[examiningmormonism]

Are Book of Mormon Names Evidence for Authenticity?

One of the most common arguments for the historical authenticity of the Book of Mormon is the use of nonbiblical personal and place names which have 1) sensible etymologies in Old World languages sometimes making contextual sense as wordplays and/or 2) have been verified from extrabiblical sources after Joseph Smith's day.

I find such arguments, taken as a whole, deeply unconvincing- despite a smattering of reasonably interesting cases. These cases are overwhelmingly the exception to the rule. A good model should account for the entire phenomenon of Book of Mormon names rather than picking out a few here and there and utilizing them as individual arguments isolated from the pattern of the text as a whole. 

Here are seven reasons why Book of Mormon names are not a sound argument for historicity. I begin with factors which undermine arguments for historicity and move towards arguments which mitigate against historicity.

-1- A survey of the Book of Mormon Onomasticon often- even typically- provides a list of possible etymologies, each of them called "plausible." I have never seen LDS scholars or apologists note how this completely undermines the argument for "direct hits." If you have three different plausible etymologies, at least two are chance connections, as these are mutually exclusive. So by virtue of providing different options, the LDS scholar has acknowledged the possibility and frequency of chance connections with ancient languages in unique Book of Mormon names.

-2- Claimed independent verification is often indirect and far afield from the Lehite exodus. For example, the oft-cited Jewish name "Alma" is found in a text dated 132 AD- 700 years after Lehi left Jerusalem! Moreover, the name is Aramaic and appears long after Hebrew ceased to be a spoken language (it was known as a liturgical and scriptural language only) among the Jewish people. As such, whether the word was actually used as a Hebrew personal name is unknown. The "A" in the name "Alma" could represent either the Hebrew aleph or the Hebrew ayin, both of them being real Hebrew words but with very different meanings. The common claim that Alma as a male name in the Book of Mormon would have been unthinkable as an invention of Joseph Smith because of its feminine gender in Latin is silly.

This is a very common mistake made by LDS scholars. On the one hand, they insist that Joseph was an unlearned farmboy. On the other hand, they compare the Book of Mormon with what would have been expected from a deeply learned scholar of his day. Was Joseph Smith a Latinist? Did he know Latin? How familiar was he with the notion of grammatical gender, which is not generally present in the English language? There is no evidence that Smith knew Latin or was particularly familiar with grammatical gender. The idea, therefore, that no person writing a text in his day would use Alma as a male name is unfounded. It is possible that Joseph vaguely recalled hearing about "alma" in a biblical context, as the word is used in Isaiah 7:14 (associated with the virgin birth in Christianity and thus given special importance) and generally understood (though alternative translations exist, i.e. those proposed by Eugen Pentiuc) to mean "young woman." This meaning is very interesting since the first reference to Alma in the Book of Mormon calls him a "young man." Were this derived from Hebrew and transliterated into English, the word "Elem" would be a much more natural fit.

-3- Independently documented nonbiblical Book of Mormon names are often very slight alterations of biblical names. The name Sariah is found in papyri from Elephantine, Egypt. But given that we are to evaluate Book of Mormon historicity based on a comparative analysis of two production contexts, the name is essentially a wash. One already convinced of historicity can, quite reasonably, note the presence of Sariah in extrabiblical documents as historical context for its use as the name of Lehi's wife. Nevertheless, the nonbelieving model for the production of the Book of Mormon explains the data equally well.

The name "Sariah" is a slight variation of the biblical name "Sarah." There is a one letter difference. Significantly, Sarah the wife of Abraham had her name changed from Sarai. Sarai provides the "i" which differentiates Sariah from Sarah. Moreover, an echo of the name of Abraham's wife makes sense given the story Smith is dictating. Smith is providing a history of a branch of the Israelite nation beginning with the wanderings of a family patriarch called by God to leave his homeland and journey to a new land of promise. This is the story of Abraham, called by God to leave Ur so that he might become the progenitor of a great nation in a land of promise. That Smith would give Lehi's wife the name "Sariah" is easily explained by a desire or instinct to echo the well-known story of Abraham without outright copying any of the personal names. Note, I am not saying that this is an argument against historicity. Instead, I am saying that the presence of the personal name "Sariah" is equally consistent with both models and thus provides an argument for neither.

The same applies to the name "Mosiah", though this name has no documentation from the ancient world outside the Book of Mormon. It does have a good Hebrew etymology as "the Lord saves." But it is easily explained as Smith's combination of "Moses" with the "iah" ending found throughout biblical literature. There is good evidence that the character of Mosiah is modeled on Moses. Mosiah leads his people to a new land. The language of Omni in describing the Lord's leading Mosiah and his people to the land is rooted in the story of the exodus. According to Omni 1:13, the Lord "by the power of his arm" lead Mosiah and his people through the wilderness into a new land of promise in Zarahemla. "Arm" language in the Bible is rooted in the exodus story. Compare:

And it came to pass that he did according as the Lord had commanded him. And they departed out of the land into the wilderness*, as many as would hearken unto the voice of the Lord; and they were led by many preachings and prophesyings. And they were admonished continually by the word of God; and they were led by the* power of his arm*, through the wilderness, until they came down into the land which is called the land of Zarahemla. (Omni 1:13)*

lest the land from which you brought us say, "Because the Lord was not able to bring them into the land that he promised them, and because he hated them, he has brought them out to put them to death in the wilderness." For they are your people and your heritage, whom you brought out by your great power and by your outstretched arm.' (Deuteronomy 9:28-29)

I should emphasize that I am not saying typology is an argument against historicity- this is a fallacious argument present in both biblical and Book of Mormon studies. Instead, I am saying that the presence of the name "Mosiah" is perfectly intelligible in light of Smith's background and a 19th century production context- as a conscious drawing of themes from the Old Testament into a biblically rooted history of ancient America.

-4- The most unique Book of Mormon names have the least extrabiblical documentation and sound etymology. Consider the names Mormon and Moroni. This sound very little like common biblical names. Thus, were they documented outside the Bible in the appropriate context, their presence would be a reasonable argument for historical rootedness (relative to this particular point- their overall significance, as with all arguments, must be determined relative to the whole fabric of argument and evidence) and somewhat striking. See:

https://onoma.lib.byu.edu/index.php/MORONI

https://onoma.lib.byu.edu/index.php/MORMON

Notice the lack of attestation for these words as personal names outside the Book of Mormon as well as the variety of mutually exclusive etymologies proposed. It is exactly where the Book of Mormon is "boldest" in departing from its biblical background that its language becomes the least intelligible as an ancient document.

-5- Personal and placenames often bear superficial resemblance to biblical names but lack etymological sense when actually considered in a Hebraic context.

Consider the use of the affix "ihah" in the Book of Mormon. This is very common- Moroni becomes Moronihah. Ammon becomes "Ammonihah." Nephi becomes "Nephihah." There are also instances of the affix without having a counterpart name lacking the suffix, such as Orihah. Notice how the same linguistic pattern appears in both Jaredite and Lehite names. This makes good sense if original names are being produced artificially from the same mind. It is hard to account for if these names have genuine and independent linguistic histories. The frequency of the affix "ihah" suggests that if the Book of Mormon is historical, it must have had a clear meaning in relation to those words to which it is affixed. The most natural source would be in the element derived from YHWH, such as in the theophoric names Isaiah, Jeremiah, Micaiah, Shemaiah, and so on. However, ihah makes little to no sense as a representation of the theophoric element found in "iah." See the entry in the Book of Mormon Onomasticon here:

https://onoma.lib.byu.edu/index.php/-ihah_As_an_Affix

In this insightful article, the origin of the affix is left unexplained. The author provides a series of powerful arguments against its origin as the theophoric element from YHWH. Yet, this linguistic anomaly is a pervasive feature of Book of Mormon names. Its explanation, therefore, ought to have an outsized role in considering the relative merits of our two possible production contexts. In an ancient production context, the origin of the affix is highly anomalous by normative linguistic principles. The anomaly is made more striking based on its presence in both Jaredite and Lehite names- two people groups with languages which should not be unrelated.

(I see absolutely no basis for demythologizing the Jaredite narrative with respect to the Tower of Babel. The implication is clearly that the Adamic tongue is not Hebrew and that it was unknown to those whose languages were confounded. We should not expect Jaredite names to resemble other Book of Mormon names, nor should we expect them to be intelligible in light of ancient Near Eastern languages.)

What about a production context in the 19th century? Here, "ihah" makes perfect sense. Needing to generate a reasonable variety of names and being familiar with the KJV Bible, Smith simply affixes "ihah" to many of the names already present in the text. As someone steeped in the Bible, Smith has heard countless names which have the "iah" theophoric element. For someone unacquainted with linguistics (as LDS scholars often point out), "ihah" sounds like a perfectly reasonable biblical-type name. This is exactly what one expects from a pseudotranslation. The result is a text with pervasive superficial similarities to biblical naming patterns but which makes little linguistic sense to one who has a understanding of the real structure and logic of biblical and ancient Near Eastern names.

-6- Proposed etymologies and ancient roots of Book of Mormon names are only possible when taken from a large "grab basket" of vaguely related ancient languages. I say "vaguely related" because Book of Mormon scholars are usually quite vague when attempting to explain the actual mechanisms of cultural cross-pollination which produced the family of names present in the Book of Mormon text. The proposed ancient Book of Mormon has personal and place names of Hebrew, Egyptian, Arabic, Akkadian- and Greek- backgrounds. How did these names come into the Lehite and/or Jaredite tradition? That Lehi was a sometime trader in Arabia and Egypt is simply not a sufficient explanation for how such a long tradition of names derived from these languages came to appear. While individual names might be intelligible in light of this or that language, there is no overarching theory coherently explaining the phenomenon of Book of Mormon names in its entirety.

It is highly instructive to contrast the contemporary situation in Book of Mormon studies with the principles set forth in Hugh Nibley's first article on the historical authenticity of the Book of Mormon, "The Book of Mormon as a Mirror of the East", published in 1948. In this article, Nibley seeks to explain Book of Mormon names on the basis of Egyptian language and culture as known from the Third Intermediate and Late Periods, precisely the time closest to the time of Lehi of Jerusalem. Nibley laudably seeks an overarching explanatory model for Book of Mormon names taken together. He notes the possible objections of critics of historicity- aren't some links with authentic names likely given the size of ancient languages from which the Book of Mormon scholar can choose? Nibley agrees- coincidences are likely if this is our method. But, he argues, such a grab-bag is not what we find. Instead, we find that Book of Mormon names consistently derive from Late Period Egyptian and make sense in light of the historical contexts of Late Period Egypt.

Why is this instructive? Because many or most of Nibley's etymologies have not panned out in LDS scholarship after the publication of his 1948 article. I checked a sample of names commented on by Nibley with the Book of Mormon Onomasticon. What I found was exactly the situation Nibley suggested would be likely to occur by chance. The Late Period Egyptian sources for most names has been set aside or suggested as an alternative but less likely etymology. Instead of this nonrandom distribution of linguistic connections, one finds the grab bag approach. Lehi's family is a good example. Lehi and Sariah are Hebrew (though Lehi makes no sense as a personal name), Nephi is Egyptian, Laman is Arabic. One of Nibley's key etymologies is "Ammon" as derived from Egyptian "Amun." While I agree with Nibley that "Amun" is the supreme God corresponding to the Hebrew Yahweh in their identities and relative positions, it is unlikely that a prophet of Israel versed in the Israelite tradition would, for some reason, transmit a lengthy tradition of using the Egyptian title for the high God. And indeed, "Ammon" based names are easily explained as derived from the biblical personal name "Ammon" in "Moab and Ammon." This is actually found in 2 Nephi 21- one of the Isaiah passages, where Isaiah is referring to Moab and Ammon.

-7- Finally, and most problematically- where are all the Mesoamerican names?! Very few Book of Mormon names have even a proposed explanation in terms of Mesoamerican languages. Those few proposed explanations that do exist are either based on very simple, monosyllabic names or are highly dubious. Yet, it is a cardinal doctrine of contemporary Book of Mormon scholarship that the presence of indigenous outsiders is implied throughout the text and constituted an essential part of the historical Nephite and Lamanite experience. To give an example from one of my favorite and most astute Book of Mormon scholars, Brant Gardner explains the linguistic confusion between Mosiah and Zarahemla in terms of the relative geographical distribution of different Mesoamerican languages in the time of King Mosiah. Book of Mormon scholars universally hold that the Lehites joined with much larger preexisting indigenous populations and made a minimal genetic contribution. If this is true genetically, it ought to be true linguistically as well.

If Brian Stubbs is ultimately correct about Hebrew and Egyptian in Uto-Aztecan (Stubbs is a real scholar, but many linguists have idiosyncratic theories about relationships among languages which don't pan out- the test for Stubbs' model should be its coherence with the overarching historical situation in which this linguistic influence is supposed to have taken place), then what is being proposed is that Lehite union with non-Lehite populations entailed not only the adoption of the Lehite religious tradition, but the Lehite languages- not only Hebrew but also Egyptian! Why are the Nephites and Lamanites speaking Hebrew and Egyptian to each other and requiring that new populations use these languages as well? Appeals to a belief in the sanctity of the Hebrew tongue are unsound because they are supposed to have imposed the Egyptian language as well. This is a very unlikely historical situation.

Brant Gardner's suggestion that the Nephites would have retained Hebrew and/or Egyptian as scribal languages is far more plausible. But this raises an essential question. If Mesoamerican languages are the spoken languages of Nephites and Lamanites, why are most of their names based in Hebrew, Egyptian, Arabic, or some other language from that region of the Old World? Where is the memory of these widely varied names even coming from? Lehi's family would have been familiar with a host of names in the Old World, but within a couple generations it is probable that nearly all such names except those in the founding generation would have been forgotten. The only possible source for continuing Old World names in cultures speaking Mesoamerican languages would be the brass plates. But it was not as if the brass plates were accessible to everyone. They were sacred objects housed in the Nephite temple. Even if one were to plausibly suggest that copies were made to teach the people, only an elite scribal class would be able to read these copies. One would expect Old World names to constitute a distinct minority of personal names found among 1) the elite with access to Old World texts and 2) highly religious families whose devotion to their Old World religious heritage held special significance.

Yet, it appears that these names don't fit this pattern at all. We find Old World and biblically based names among Nephite, Lamanite, and even Jaredite (notice the bizarre presence of "Aaron" and "Levi", both Hebrew names in the Jaredite lineage) peoples. During periods where Book of Mormon peoples are supposedly highly assimilated to preexisting cultures, there is no leap in Mesoamerican names. For example, the harlot Isabel, probably though not certainly of Lamanite background, has an Old World name. This is hard to explain as an historical phenomenon. It is very straightforward on a 19th century model where the author of the Book of Mormon is steeped in the KJV Bible. Isabel sounds like Jezebel, and Jezebel is the paradigmatic harlot in the Hebrew Bible and New Testament.

I think this is the most devastating factor in considering Book of Mormon names relative to the question of historicity. An historical Book of Mormon produced as a Mesoamerican codex should be filled to the brim with Mesoamerican names and names which only make sense in terms of Mesoamerican language. Yet we find almost nothing of this kind.

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Summing Up

We have seen that Book of Mormon names have the following characteristics:

-Many or most have biblical roots: Sariah, Mosiah, and Amulek are examples- from Sarah, Moses, and Amalek, respectively.

-Many are constructed from roots superficially resembling biblical names but lacking intelligibility as actual Hebraic names: Names with the "ihah" affix.

-Lehite and Jaredite names appear to share the same background and structural principles: Levi, Aaron, Gilead (as in biblical Ramoth-Gilead), Orihah. I have made an exception for biblical names found in the antediluvian period and in the Jaredite story (as in Seth and Noah) because these make sense in terms of the internal narrative of the text.

-The clearest connections are with a Hebrew background.

-Names making sense on a Mesoamerican background are absent. Arguably, there is not a single Book of Mormon name which makes more sense as a Mesoamerican name than as a biblical-type name.