Vortigern and Ambros watch the fight between the red and white dragons: an illustration from a 15th-century manuscript of Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain.
Where Science Meets the Book of Mormon: Come Follow Me Lesson: August 12-18; Alma 43-52
According to Mormon’s abridgement of Alma’s record1, as we have it in Alma 43:44, “And they were inspired by the Zoramites and the Amalekites, who were their chief captains and leaders, and by Zerahemnah, who was their chief captain, or their chief leader and commander; yea, they did fight like dragons, and many of the Nephites were slain by their hands, yea, for they did smite in two many of their head-plates, and they did pierce many of their breastplates, and they did smite off many of their arms; and thus the Lamanites did smite in their fierce anger.”
There is a very interesting phrase in this verse, “they did fight like dragons.” This is not the first time that phrase appeared in the Book of Mormon. We are told in Mosiah 20:11, “And it came to pass that the people of Limhi began to drive the Lamanites before them; yet they were not half so numerous as the Lamanites. But they fought for their lives, and for their wives, and for their children; therefore they exerted themselves and like dragons did they fight.”
In addition to abridging the book of Alma, Mormon compiled and abridged the records of several authors to produce the book of Mosiah.2 Mosiah chapter 20 was part of the “record of Zeniff.”3 So, did Zeniff and Alma come up with this very catchy, unique phrase independently; did Mormon independently introduce the phrase when he made his abridgement; or was it a “common” phrase among the Nephites? In my opinion, it is very unlikely that two people, such as Zeniff and Alma would come up this phrase independently. I think it is far more likely that one person, perhaps Zeniff, coined the phrase and the other, Alma, copied the saying. I don’t think Mormon coined the phrase during his abridgement, because he did not use the phrase in describing the fierce battles in which he was engaged toward the end of the Book of Mormon record. We have no idea what the “reformed Egyptian” symbol may have been for “dragon,” which Joseph Smith saw and which he translated as “dragon.”
I have stated in a previous blog:4
“It is highly unlikely that Joseph Smith, or anyone else, for that matter, would have known much about proto-Canaanite or Canaanite language, which was hieratic — thus ‘reformed Egyptian,’ or, ‘…the learning of the Jews and the language of the Egyptians,’ in 1830. Indeed, Joseph was some seventy-five years ahead of the scientific curve on that one.”
“The first published scientific account of a Proto-Sinaitic language (also referred to as Proto-Canaanite, when found in Canaan) was based on the discovery of ten inscriptions in Sinai in the winter of 1904–1905 by Hilda and Flinders Petrie, and which only later became known as Proto-Sinaitic. Those inscriptions, plus an eleventh published (in French) by Raymond Weill in 1904, and taken from the 1868 notes of Edward Henry Palmer, were reviewed in detail, and numbered (345–355), by Alan Gardiner in 1916. Then in 1993, John and Deborah Darnell discovered two Wadi el-Hol inscriptions, in Middle Egypt, which, published in 1999, strongly suggest that Proto-Sinaitic writing originated in Egypt, around the mid-19th to 18th centuries BC.”5
The first time we encounter the word “dragon” in the Book of Mormon is in 2 Nephi 8:9 (compare Isaiah 51:9): “Awake, awake! Put on strength, O arm of the Lord; awake as in the ancient days. Art thou not he that hath cut Rahab, and wounded the dragon?” According to the Jewish Encyclopedia, Rahab was “Originally a mythical name designating the abyss or the sea; subsequently applied to Egypt. [Also]… an alternative for ‘Tiamat,’ the Babylonian name of the dragon of darkness and chaos… ‘Rahab’ is a name applied to the sea-monster, the dragon.”6 Bible Hub has the word “dragon” in the King James Bible as תַּנִּֽין׃ (tan·nîn), meaning a marine or land monster, sea-serpent, or jackal.7
The Vulgate, written mostly by Jerome between 383 and 404 AD, has Isaiah 51:9: “Consurge consurge induere fortitudinem brachium Domini consurge sicut in diebus antiquis in generationibus saeculorum numquid non tu percussisti superbum vulnerasti draconem.” So, Jerome also rendered tannin here as “draconem,” “dragon.” Jerome translated the Vulgate mostly from “modern” Hebrew, as did the scholars of the King James Bible (as much as possible), but “modern” Hebrew emerged in the 6th century BC, after the Babylonian captivity, which Lehi and his family escaped Jerusalem to avoid. Before the captivity, the Jews apparently had Proto-Hebrew, or reformed-Egyptian, derived from Proto-Canaanite, which apparently had Egyptian origins. In Canaanite and Hebrew mythology, a tannin was a sea monster and was a symbol of chaos and evil.
In Egyptian mythology, Apep, was an ancient serpent-like dragon demon who was the living embodiment of chaos and the greatest nemesis of the Egyptian gods. That description sounds like the Hebrew tannin. The Proto-Sinaitic symbol for the letter “N” is a snake, which stands for the Proto-Canaanite word naḥš, which means “snake”, and looks just like the Egyptian symbol for a snake or dragon.
A shorthand, reformed Egyptian version of this snake/dragon may look something like this:
However, in today’s modern Hebrew, tannin means crocodile. The Egyptian symbol for crocodile (sobek) was:
The crocodile also shows up in a more stylized version as:
Perhaps a shorthand, reformed Egyptian version may look something like:
The shorthand version of both the snake and the crocodile appear to fit the style of the “caractor” symbols copied from the original Book of Mormon plates, especially those circled:
“Caractors,” [possibly from Fayette Township, Seneca Co., NY, or Harmony Township, Susquehanna Co., PA; ca. 1829–1831]; title in handwriting of John Whitmer; characters probably also in Whitmer’s handwriting; one page; CHL. “This document was in the possession of David Whitmer at the time of his death in 1888. It is unknown when or from whom Whitmer acquired it. He probably acquired it from his brother John, who created it, or he may have received the document from Oliver Cowdery, who also gave Whitmer the printer’s manuscript of the Book of Mormon and other early church documents shortly before Cowdery’s death in 1850.”8
No snakes or crocodiles are mentioned in the Book of Mormon. Dragons are mentioned four times (2 Nephi 8:9, 2 Nephi 23:22, Mosiah 20:11, and Alma 43:44). 2 Nephi 8:9 was quoted above. 2 Nephi 23:22 (compare to Isaiah 13:22) states, “And the wild beasts of the islands shall cry in their desolate houses, and dragons in their pleasant palaces; and her time is near to come, and her day shall not be prolonged. For I will destroy her speedily; yea, for I will be merciful unto my people, but the wicked shall perish.”
Apparently, both Zeniff and Alma had access to Isaiah’s writings as copied from the Brass Plates (c.f. Jacob 7:23). Therefore, they would have read the Reformed Egyptian symbol, which Joseph Smith translated as dragon, whatever that was (perhaps a snake or a crocodile). I have no idea how Zeniff got from what Isaiah said about dragons to the phrase “like dragons did they fight.” Then it appears that Alma picked up the phrase from Zeniff’s writing and reformed it as “they did fight like dragons.”
Those, rather iconic phrases appear to be unique in all of English literature. A search through seven pages of Google citations revealed only Book of Mormon references to the specific phrase “they did fight like dragons” or to the general words fight like dragons.
There is an interesting discussion of the issue of dragons in the Book of Mormon at the website Scripture Central:
“One aspect of the Book of Mormon that sometimes turns heads is its four usages of the word dragon. Two of these occurrences are in quotations from Isaiah, which is perhaps not surprising since the word can be found in many passages of the King James Version of the Bible. However, the term is also used in two passages unique to the Book of Mormon, both times appearing as a simile for fierce fighters (Mosiah 20:11; Alma 43:44).”9
“Several species of crocodilians (including crocodiles, alligators, and caimans) can be found in the Americas. Many of these regularly attack humans and sometimes cause fatalities—their ferocity is noted in some of the earliest descriptions of them. The Americas are also home to dangerous serpents like pit vipers as well as many aquatic or semi-aquatic serpents such as water snakes, garter snakes, and the venomous yellow-bellied sea snake.”10
“Knowing that all these conceptions of the Hebrew tannin—serpents, crocodiles, and legendary primordial sea monsters—were familiar in a New World setting helps dispel accusations that the word dragon is out of place in the Book of Mormon. Rather, the term could well designate a number of powerful creatures that the Lehites would have been familiar with and that were spoken of in ancient American cultures. This understanding also helps elucidate what the Book of Mormon authors probably had in mind when describing those who fought ‘like dragons.’”11
John Sorenson also addressed this issue: “What kind of ‘dragons’ did he [Alma] have in mind? The reference was probably to the crocodile or caiman. There are a number of reasons to think so. One colonial period observer described these saurians thus: ‘Very ferocious, and greatly feared. . . . Some of the caymans are from twenty to thirty feet and upwards in length . . . and covered with scales through which a musket ball cannot pierce. Their tails are very powerful and dangerous; and their mouths are large, with three rows of formidable teeth.’ But this ‘dragon’ was much more than a dangerous bit of the natural world. In Mesoamerican mythology a giant creature of crocodilian form was thought to float on the supposed subterranean sea. His back was the surface of the earth, and his connection with earth and waters tied him symbolically with productivity and fertility. This ‘earth monster’ is repeatedly shown at the base of relief carvings at Izapa (on the Chiapas/Guatemala border), in early Maya sculpture, and even in Olmec art; hence the idea is very old and fundamental. . . . The Book of Mormon and the Near Eastern cultural background from which it developed represents a crocodile-related monster in similar ways. Second Nephi 9:9-10, 19, and 26 picture ‘the devil’ as a dragon or monster dwelling beneath the earth's surface. The Israelites shared with their Near Eastern neighbors the idea and image of this being as a symbol of chaos and evil. The Old Testament name of the creature is sometimes given as ‘leviathan.’ Its scaly back formed the ridges and hills of earth's surface. The ‘high places’ where early Palestinian inhabitants worshipped were named from a root that meant ‘back of an animal.’ The sea creature--chaos--was thought to have been conquered by Jehovah in an ancient epic struggle (Isaiah 27:1; 51:9; Psalms 74:13-14). This is surely the dragon referred to in 2 Nephi 9:9 and the ‘old serpent’ in Mosiah 16:3. The entire topic of dragons, monsters, and serpents is obviously too complex to do more than touch on here. We can at least note two things about Zeniff's dragon imagery: (1) it had powerful meaning to his listeners--beyond being a mere literary phrase, and (2) the complex of ideas is represented not only in the book of Mormon but in Palestine and Mesoamerica as well.”12
Whatever the monster Zeniff and Alma had in mind for their similes, the symbols employed in Mormon’s abridgement apparently was the same symbol used in 2 Nephi, when quoting Isaiah, for dragon. The Egyptians, and apparently, the early Canaanites and Hebrews, had no symbol for “dragon” other than either the symbol of a snake or crocodile.
One interesting note relative to this issue is that the European dragon is often clearly depicted as having two legs with three toes each (see the painting of Saint George and the Dragon, by Paolo Uccello, c. 1470), although others are depicted with more toes, as is the case for the red and white dragons of Wales depicted at the start of this essay. Numerous bipedal three-toed dinosaur tracks, and dinosaur tracks with more toes, have been discovered near the southern coast of England and the south-west coast of France in Jurassic-period (201.3 to 145.0 million years ago; during the first half of the age of dinosaurs) limestone, which was quarried for many of the castles in those regions — areas where much of the European dragon mythology appears to have originated. This correlation strongly suggests that the European “dragon” was often a theropod dinosaur. Apparently, there was no concept of extinction at the time — so, to the medieval and renaissance European mind, the three-toed tracks must have been made by some currently living monster. On the other hand, the Egyptian limestone, quarried for the pyramids and temples, dates from the Eocene period (some 55.8–33.9 million years ago; after the dinosaurs were extinct), so dinosaur tracks do not appear in that limestone. Perhaps the lack of dinosaur tracks in Egypt is why a dragon-like figure in Egyptian mythology was a snake, with no legs (any time a snake is depicted in Egyptian hieroglyphics with legs, those legs are very human-like), and not the bipedal, three-toed dragon of European mythology.
Trent Dee Stephens, PhD
References
1. see the introduction to Alma 1–44
2. 2017 Book of Mormon Seminary Teacher Manual; churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/book-of-mormon-seminary-teacher-manual-2017/introduction-to-the-book-of-mosiah?lang=eng; retrieved 4 August 2024
3. see the introduction to Mosiah chapter 9
4. Stephens, Trent D., The Language of the Jews and Egyptians, January 8-14, 2024; 1 Nephi 1–5; trentdeestephens.com; blogs
5. Goldwasser, Orly, How the Alphabet Was Born from Hieroglyphs, Biblical Archaeology Review, 36:40-53, 2010
6. jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/12534-rahab; retrieved 4 August 2024
7. biblehub.com/isaiah/51-9.htm; retrieved 4 August 2024
8. josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/appendix-2-document-1-characters-copied-by-john-whitmer-circa-1829-1831/1#source-note; retrieved 9 August 2024
9. post contributed by Scripture Central; scripturecentral.org/knowhy/why-does-the-book-of-mormon-mention-dragons; retrieved 4 August 2024; see the original for references cited therein
10. Ibid
11. Ibid
12. John L. Sorenson, An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon, F.A.R.M.S., pp. 187-188] [See also 2 Nephi 9:9-10, 19, 26
Comments