Idolatry or idleness

A few passages in the Book of Mormon appear to contain errors immediately followed by corrections. This is probably the most obvious instance:

. . . and thus we see that they buried their weapons of peace, or they buried the weapons of war, for peace (Alma 24:19).

Since "weapons of peace" doesn't make any sense, the "or" seems to be a correction, meaning "or rather." Since one can't easily erase an error once it has been engraved on a gold plate, it makes sense that errors would be corrected in this way. Alternatively, "weapons of peace" could have been Joseph Smith's slip of the tongue rather than a mistake on the plates, but that seems less likely, since his scribe could have just crossed out the incorrect phrase and written the correct one. The mistake itself could have been made in any language, though.

The following example from Alma, though, seems like it must have been a slip of the tongue on Joseph's part, since it is only in English that idolatry and idleness sound similar.

For those who did not belong to their church did indulge themselves in sorceries, and in idolatry or idleness, and in babblings, and in envyings and strife . . . (Alma 1:32).

This seems to be an error and correction because "idolatry or idleness" is such an odd expression otherwise. The two concepts seem to be unrelated, but they do sound similar in English. However, another possibility is that the text really is equating idolatry with idleness to make some point -- something along the lines of "fasting and prayer, or otherwise rejoicing and prayer" (D&C 59:14). Three other passages in the Book of Mormon, which pair idolatry with idleness but without using similar-sounding words, suggest that this is in fact the case:

Now they were a lazy and an idolatrous people; therefore they were desirous to bring us into bondage, that they might glut themselves with the labors of our hands; yea, that they might feast themselves upon the flocks of our fields (Mosiah 9:12).

Yea, and thus they were supported in their laziness, and in their idolatry, and in their whoredoms, by the taxes which king Noah had put upon his people; thus did the people labor exceedingly to support iniquity (Mosiah 11:6).

Thus they were a very indolent people, many of whom did worship idols, and the curse of God had fallen upon them because of the traditions of their fathers; notwithstanding the promises of the Lord were extended unto them on the conditions of repentance (Alma 17:15).

This juxtaposition does not occur in the Bible. The closest thing I can think of conceptually is the occasional references to idols as "vanities," for example:

They have moved me to jealousy with that which is not God; they have provoked me to anger with their vanities: and I will move them to jealousy with those which are not a people; I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation (Deut. 32:31).

The Hebrew words translated "vanities," and pretty clearly referring to the worship of "that which is not God," means "emptiness, futility, uselessness" and is thus conceptually akin to idleness. So perhaps that is the idea behind the "laziness and idolatry" passages in the Book of Mormon: useless people who worship useless things.

Is El a Lamanite god in the Book of Mormon?

No El, no El, no El, no El

-- Christmas carol

(That epigraph is just a throwaway pun, of course, though it is perhaps worth noting that this very old carol includes a non-biblical detail concerning the new star which seems to be right out of the Book of Mormon: "And to the earth it gave great light / And so it continued both day and night.")

Hugh Nibley makes much of the lack of Baal names in the Book of Mormon, asking how the uneducated Joseph Smith could have known that such names happened to be very unpopular around the time Lehi left Jerusalem. I find this completely unimpressive, since no uneducated Christian would expect Israelite names to include the name of this "false god." Besides, the Book of Mormon does include one Baal name: Isabel (Alma 39:3), which is apparently either a form of Jezebel (Hebrew ʾIzeḇel, meaning "Where is Baal?") or is parallel to Isaiah (Yəšaʿyāhū, "Yahweh is salvation"), with Baal replacing Yahweh. This name occurs over 500 years after Lehi left Jerusalem, presumably part of an unbroken tradition of Baal names.

What I do find striking is the relative lack of El names. Of the 300-some proper names that are unique to the Book of Mormon, not a single one of them incorporates the element El. The Bible, in contrast, contains over 300 El-derived names. The El names that do occur in the Book of Mormon fall into three categories:

(1) Names used by Isaiah (Immanuel) and Malachi (Elijah), appearing in the Book of Mormon only where whole chapters from those books are quoted verbatim, by Nephi (2 Ne. 17:14, 18:8) and Jesus  (3 Ne. 25:5) respectively.

(2) References to the biblical figures Israel -- which, significantly, means "fights against El" -- and (probably) Samuel. Jesus' reference to "all the prophets from Samuel and those that follow after" (3 Ne. 20:24) presumably refers to the biblical Samuel, since Samuel the Lamanite was a very recent prophet.

(3) Lamanite-affiliated names: Lemuel, Ishmael, and Samuel. These are the only El names that belong to Book of Mormon rather than biblical figures, although the names themselves are biblical.

The original founders of the Lamanite group were Laman, Lemuel, and the sons of Ishmael, Ishmael himself having died before the schism. The land of Ishmael was Lamanite territory, "being called after the sons of Ishmael, who also became Lamanites" (Alma 17:19). As for Samuel, he is scarcely ever mentioned without a reminder that he is a Lamanite. I strongly suspect that the Lamanites adopted El as their primary name for God, after which the Nephites stopped using it.

But isn't el just a common noun referring to any god or tutelary spirit? Yes, and so is baal a common noun meaning "lord." That doesn't stop such names from becoming associated with a particular religion, leading those who oppose that religion to avoid them. Even in English, God generally implies the specific god worshiped by Christians and some Jews.

We know that the Nephites and Lamanites used different names for God, because the Lamanite king of Ishmael (500-some years after the departure from Jerusalem) doesn't understand the name of the Nephite deity:

And Ammon began to speak unto him with boldness, and said unto him: Believest thou that there is a God?

And he answered, and said unto him: I do not know what that meaneth.

And then Ammon said: Believest thou that there is a Great Spirit?

And he said, Yea.

And Ammon said: This is God (Alma 18:24-28).

The Lamanite name for God is translated as "Great Spirit" -- thus possibly the biblical El Elyon, "the highest el."

What was the primary Nephite name for God? Not Baal, obviously, per Nibley (Isabel is a "harlot," probably the leader of a false religion like the Jezebel of Rev. 2:20-22, whose work as a self-proclaimed "prophetess" is called "fornication" and "adultery"). The next obvious candidate would be Yahweh. Certainly that name was used, as as the last verse in the book refers to "the great Jehovah" (Moro. 10:34). As an element in names, it occurs in the Nephite names Jeremiah, Joshua, and Zedekiah, all of which are biblical. It is likely that these Nephites were named after Hebrew figures rather than with specific reference to Yahweh (just as we use names like Martin and Dennis without intentional reference to Mars and Dionysus). The only non-biblical Nephite names that seem to incorporate Yahweh are Amalickiah and Mosiah. It has also been suggested that the distinctive -ihah ending in Ammonihah, Cumenihah, Mathonihah, Moronihah, Nephihah, and Onihah (though cf. the Jaredite name Orihah) may be a form of Yahweh.

Nibley has proposed that, given the Egyptian connection, Amon or Ammon (king of the gods in Egypt, also rendered Amen) may have been used as a divine name by the Nephites. The main objection to this is that Ammon itself appears as a personal name in the Book of Mormon. While names incorporating the names of gods are common, it seems highly unlikely that anyone would be named simply God. Whether or not it is a divine name, it does seem to occur in a lot of Nephite names, including (allowing for some variation in the second vowel) Aminadab, Aminadi, Ammonihah, Amnigaddah, Amnihu, Amnor, and Helaman. Since only one of these has a double m, it is possible that Amon (or Amin or Aman) was a divine name and that Ammon meant something else. If we allow Omn as a variant, we might add Gadiomnah, Omner, Omni, and Teomner to the list (though cf. Antiomno, a Lamanite). It's an interesting possibility, especially given Joseph Smith's own use of Ahman or Aumen as a name of God.