This is Scripture Roundtable 167 from The Interpreter Foundation, in which we discuss the Book of Mormon Gospel Doctrine Lesson #23, More Than One Witness, focusing on scriptures in Alma 8-12, bringing in various insights to help us better understand the scriptures. These roundtables will generally follow the 2016 Gospel Doctrine schedule of scriptures, a few weeks ahead of time.
Panelists for this roundtable are Mike Parker, Martin Tanner, and Daniel Peterson.
This roundtable is also available as an audio podcast, and will be included in the podcast feed. You can listen by pressing the play button or download the podcast below:
Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:06:00 — 22.7MB)
The phrase in Alma 11:23 where Amulek says to Zeezoram “…thou child of hell…Why tempt ye me?” is grammatically incorrect as the word “ye” is plural. It should say “Why temp thou me?” Apparently it has been changed in other language editions to reflect the proper singular form. Any thoughts?
I think I recall Stan Carmack discuss this one. “ye” was used interchangeably in early modern English as singular or plural, just as “you” is so used now. “ye” differed from “you” in that “ye” was the nominative 2nd person pronoun (meaning replaced the subject of the sentence) and “you” was the accusative 2nd person pronoun (replaced the object of the sentence).
“ye” and “you” differed from “thee” and “thou” in that the former were for formal 2nd person use and the latter were familiar use (among friends and family members). “ye” is not nor was not the plural of “thee” and “thou.”
Today, “you” has pretty much replaced the other three terms to be the normal 2nd person pronoun regardless of number or case.
It shouldn’t say “why tempt thou me?” because that would imply a familiar relationship between Amulek and Zeezoram.