Here is your assignment for #2 think of some idioms or metaphors that you see in The Book of Mormon. Hint here is one, Hardened their hearts.
Note: I feel like for this section you would be best just spending an hour to listen to or read up on Marvin Perkins. An especially good hour of your time should be spent watching on Youtube, a presentation that he did for a group of saints in Sweden.
https://youtu.be/i_UsOPZ_-uI The thrust of Marvin’s talk isn’t just the Priesthood and Temple restrictions for members of sub saharan African descent, he does such a good job of sharing insight into the idioms.
Idiom examples. Skin of blackness, scales of darkness, hard heart, blind eyes, Stiff necks, scales over eyes, exceedingly white all are idioms. There are many idioms in the Book of Mormon, the ones I’ll list here are specific to body parts.
Hardened their hearts 2 Ne 5: 21
Stiffened their necks 2 Ne 6:10
Sidney Sperry Wrote about idioms https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1107&context=jbms
“Opened their mouth”
“By the hands of” Alma 9:10
The heart in ancient Israel was thought to be where our intelligence was stored. We had our thoughts in our hearts. The brain was just a bunch of grey matter in your skull. To have a hard heart was to have one’s thoughts not centered on God. Indeed it was choosing spiritual separation from God.
A stiff necked person was one who is stubborn and unchanging. No desire to repent.
The skin covers our body. If we are pure, we are white. If we are sinful we are black. The reference to skin, means that the difference can be observed. It is visual, and one can tell gloomy from pure. Gloomy - in an otherwise healthy individual, looks sad. Purity-radiates.
Ancient Hebrews used body parts to compare to a degree of faithfulness, so why not use skin to describe all over sinfulness and atrociousness in wickedness?
1828 Dictionary: Flint: noun - 3. Any thing proverbially hard; as a heart of flint
This is telling us that it is a proverb - from same source: http://webstersdictionary1828.com/Dictionary/Poverb
PROVERB 3. In Scripture, it sometimes signifies a moral sentence or maxim that is enigmatical; a dark saying of the wise that requires interpretation.
Why Flint? This is to help establish that Nephi is speaking proverbially in this verse.
He also uses “hardened their hearts against him.” This is a clear idiom meaning thag http://webstersdictionary1828.com/Dictionary/hardened
HARDENED, participle passive Made hard, or more hard or compact; made unfeeling; made obstinate; confirmed in error or vice. Someone who has hardened their heart is unfeeling, made obstinate or is confirmed in error or vice.
http://webstersdictionary1828.com/Dictionary/heart
HEART 4. The seat of the affections and passions, as of love, joy, grief, enmity,
courage, pleasure etc. The heart is deceitful above all things. Every imagination of the thoughts of the heart is evil continually. We read of an honest and good heart and an evil heart of unbelief, a willing heart a heavy heart sorrow of heart a hard heart a proud heart a pure heart The heart faints in adversity, or under discouragement, that is, courage fails; the heart is deceived, enlarged, reproved, lifted up, fixed, established, moved, etc.
So a heart can be hardened. This is a familiar axiom. Most have grown up understanding that we don’t want our hearts proverbially in the wrong place, or set on the wrong things.
Taking an Idiom literally is a poor way to understand scripture.
Let’s take for instance the hard heart. If we take this literally we are saying that people, who are sinful and set their hearts on the things of the world, are basically suffering a major heart attack. Their arteries are clogged and death is imminent. This of course is foolish.
The idiom does not need much interpretation we know that God doesn’t smite people with a literal hard heart.
How about a stiff neck? I think that if there were Lamanite and Nephite chiropractors, that they would have done really good business depending on who was not righteous at a particular time.
Again, we know that this is a figure of speech and that God does not make the wicked and stubborn among us require Ibuprofen, massage, alignment, and a warm bath to be soothed.
Scales of Darkness, 2 Nephi 30:6
6 And then shall they rejoice; for they shall know that it is a blessing unto them from the hand of God; and their scales of darkness shall begin to fall from their eyes; and many generations shall not pass away among them, save they shall be a pure and a delightsome people.
This verse was the one that Joseph changed in 1840, he took out the idiom of white and changed it to pure. When we understand that there are other idioms in this scripture we also see the ancient textual evidence come forth. Notice, that Nephi also gives God a "hand" in this scripture.
I don't know if Nephi was trying to help us understand God's corporeal nature here, or if this is just another idiom.
How about a skin of blackness; why use skin? Well, the Lamanites were really bad. Nephi’s brothers were plotting to kill him. They were rebelling against a great light. They had seen an angel, had Laban delivered to them, watched their brother build a boat, and many other miracles, yet they persisted in extreme wickedness so much so that their countenances had a change that was defining. They were all over bad. The body part that is all over us is our skin. It is not a stretch mark to see that this idiom fits. There is a pattern of comparing righteousness and wickedness to body parts. The very scripture in 2 Ne 5:21 has the idiom for hard heart before discussing a skin of blackness. Blackness, remember, is enormity in wickedness.
Many in the church, choose to interpret this blackness as an indication of race.
This is a controversial interpretation. It requires setting aside the definition of the day, and also disregards the idiom that surrounds it.
One reason that this happens is that it is hard to get Idiom correct. Idiom by definition is supposed to not translate well.
An idiom (also called idiomatic expression) is an expression, word, or phrase that has a figurative meaning conventionally understood by native speakers. This meaning is different from the literal meaning of the idiom's individual elements.
In other words, idioms don't mean exactly what the words say.
Let’s keep going, we are just getting started. Click for Part 3 Melanin Levels
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