Poor Grammar: Weaknesses of Men?

In chapter twelve of Ether a "loophole" is given for the possible grammatical and syntactical errors of the Book of Mormon. It states:23 And I said unto him: Lord, the Gentiles will mock at these things, because of our weakness in writing; for Lord thou hast made us mighty in word by faith, but thou hast not made us mighty in writing; for thou hast made all this people that they could speak much, because of the Holy Ghost which thou hast given them;This reference has been used to by some as an explanation for apparent anachronisms of the Book of Mormon. I even used it once in a half hearted defense to a man who told me he didn't see any difference between the Bible and the Book of Mormon.However, I believe that an important principle is taught in this that may actually serve as evidence of the Hebraic origins of the Book of Mormon.

First I would pose a question. As a believer in the Book of Mormon and accepting of its divine nature I ask, why would God allow there to be "weaknesses" in a testament of him? Wouldn't a testament of a perfect being need to be perfect? And as I do believe that the Book of Mormon to be of divine origin I thereby must have an explanation for this, for the outright admitance of errors by the prophet historian Moroni. Don't worry I do.I believe that weaknesses serve to depict people. They show who the person really is, not the mask of perfection and togetherness that is presented to the public. The noted author C. S. Lewis once said in his book Mere Christianity, "What a man does when he is taken off his guard is the best evidence for what sort of a man he is...Surely what pops out before the man has time to put on a disguise is the truth? If there are rats in a cellar you are most likely to see them if you go in very suddenly. But the suddenness does not create the rats: it only prevents them from hiding." Surely the rats are a better indicator of the true person rather than the public appearance.

So what do these weaknesses tells us about the true character of the Book of Mormon. Ether 12 states that the weaknesses are of men so in that light could they be used to better understand the true character of the Book of Mormon people? I think so.One example of a very indicative weakness is the supposedly poor grammar. Some of the sentences in the Book of Mormon are just massive, full of run-on sentences and many clauses. This type of writing is not correct in English. English has a very formal sentence structure; subject, verb, predicate, and this is not the form of the Book of Mormon. So could we consider these errors? Take for example Mosiah 7:21 which states: "And ye all are witnesses this day, that Zeniff, who was made king over this people, he being over-zealous to inherit the land of his fathers, therefore being deceived by the cunning and craftiness of king Laman, who having entered into a treaty with king Zeniff, and having yielded up into his hands the possessions of a part of the land, or even the city of Lehi-Nephi, and the city of Shilom; and the land round about" What does this apparent weakness - the addition of multiple clauses - in writing tell us?

It tells us about the authors. English does not allow for such sentence structure, therefore English is not the original language. And I suppose that one desperately searching for an argument could say that Joseph Smith, being as untrained in the English language as he was could have written it seeing that he knew nothing about writing anyway. However, to be able to extrapolate on the English language, changing the structure while maintaining the understandability of it, and all the while following a unfamiliar structure from a foreign land and tongue is not possible.

That is right, there is a language that has a similar structure and it actually happens to be the same language from which the Book of Mormon purports to be translated: Hebrew. Brian Stubbs in an article posted on the FARMS website - http://farms.byu.edu/display.php?table=jbms&id=125 - says, "The fact remains that Semitic mechanisms of narrative allow structural lengths of language in Hebrew and Arabic that are different from and hardly typical of English. In light of patterns inherent to Hebrew, Arabic, Egyptian, and many Native American languages, the copious presence of certain long, awkward structures in the Book of Mormon, in my opinion, speaks much more for the text's authenticity than would a lack." He gives the explanation of "hal clauses" in Hebrew. "Hal-clauses (or circumstantial clauses) typically relate an accompanying state, circumstance, or condition, often expressed in English by subordinating conjunctions such as when, while, or after or by participial phrases. However, in both Hebrew and Arabic the same accompanying conditions are often structurally featured by 'and + noun + the rest of the clause.'" And the best translation of the "hal clauses" in English is accomplished by using the gerund of the verb, such as "being"."'a certain man, being called Amlici, he being a very cunning man, yea, a wise man as to the wisdom of the world, he being after the order of the man that slew Gideon by the sword'".

So the rats are out and we can see them. So what do they mean? What do they tell us? These rats tell us who the people really are, and the people of the Book of Mormon are what they purport to be.