Book of Mormon/Evidences/Hebraisms/Sami Hanna on the Book of Mormon

This page is based on an answer to a question submitted to the FAIR web site, or a frequently asked question.

Question

I have read a talk written by Elder Russell M. Nelson where he talks about a friend of his who translates the Book of Mormon back into Aramaic. Is there a source for this talk? I would like to find it.

Answer

At one time Elder Nelson had a neighbor named Sami Hanna, who was an Arabic scholar and a member of the Church. Based on his knowledge of Arabic and his experience translating the Book of Mormon into Arabic, Sami thought there were numerous things in the Book of Mormon text that were consistent with a Semitic original of that book.

Elder Nelson has alluded to Sami a few times in talks, as he has to others of his extensive network of friends who can read Hebrew. But he has never given a talk specifically on Sami. The internet article that circulates under his name was not written by Elder Nelson.

According to Sami's son, Mark, Sami left the Church some time ago and is now some sort of a fundamentalist Christian. He now repudiates his former comments on the Book of Mormon.

Such a repudiation is not, however, terribly significant. Sami's material on the BoM was never a part of mainstream LDS scholarship on the subject. It was linguistically naive in a number of important respects. For the details, see this link:

http://farms.byu.edu/display.php?table=review&id=49

The material relating to Hanna starts about halfway down.

There is an extensive literature dealing with Hebraisms in the BoM. A good place to start would be with John Tvedtnes, "Hebraisms in the Book of Mormon: A Preliminary Survey," BYU Studies 11/1 (Autumn 1970): 50-60, available online here:

<http://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/cgi-bin/docviewer.exe?CISOROOT=/byustudies&CISOPTR=21932&CISOSHOW=2997>

Endnotes

None

Further reading

FAIR web site

• FAIR Topical Guide: