This post is a summary of the article “Verbal Punctuation in the Book of Mormon III—Behold” by John Gee in Volume 63 of Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship. All of the Interpreting Interpreter articles may be seen at https://interpreterfoundation.org/category/summaries/. An introduction to the Interpreting Interpreter series is available at https://interpreterfoundation.org/interpreting-interpreter-on-abstracting-thought/.
A video introduction to this Interpreter article is now available on all of our social media channels, including on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7ZRQPO7QiY.
The Takeaway
Gee explores the use of the word “behold” as verbal punctuation in the Book of Mormon, showing how it aligns with biblical usage and how its use differs from the writings of Joseph Smith.
The Summary
In this article, John Gee provides the third offering in his series on verbal punctuation in the Book of Mormon, this time focusing on the word “behold.” With 1,640 instances in the book’s original text, 1,213 of which representing markers of verbal punctuation (rather than as a verb), the word helps structure the text in a number of ways, and Gee provides examples of each, including:
- Deictic usage, where the word calls attention to a person (or group of people), place, thing, period of time, event, or state of affairs (e.g., Lehi calling his sons and daughters to attention in 2 Nephi 4:3).
- Unexpected effects, with behold being used to highlight a contrast between audience expectations and where the narrative actually leads (e.g., the persecution of Lehi in Jerusalem being contrasted with the tender mercies of the Lord in 1 Nephi 1:20.
- Modifying a proposition, with the word indicating a statement that modifies the statement which precedes it, in the same way an adjective modifies a noun (e.g., Lehi’s description of his dream being clarified by a number of statements in 1 Nephi 8:2-4).
Though some of these instances occur at textual breaks, Gee argues that behold serves those same three functions at those breaks rather than the break being a separate function. Gee goes on to show how these same functions are present in Biblical Hebrew, via the word hinnēh. Importantly, though there are examples of behold serving these functions in the writings of Joseph Smith (i.e., his letters and his 1832 History, the latter of which imitates scriptural phrasing), there are some key differences that suggest the match is a poor one. Joseph used behold much less often than in the Book of Mormon (0.71 uses per page in the 1832 History vs. 2.28 in the Book of Mormon), and when he does it’s much less likely to represent verbal punctuation (i.e., his early writings use behold as a verb 44.4% of the time compared to 26% in the Book of Mormon). Gee suggests that this evidence not only helps ground the Book of Mormon as an ancient record, but helps us better understand what the Book of Mormon is actually saying when it makes such frequent use of the word behold.
The Reflection
One can always make use of additional cases where the Book of Mormon fails to align with Joseph’s own likely thoughts and preferences, and the word behold appears to be such a case. One wonders, in this case, how the Book of Mormon’s frequency of the term compares with the Bible (on first glance, it’s used much more often in the Book of Mormon, with only 1,300 or so biblical cases)–which might help counter arguments of biblical imitation—or with Early Modern English, on the off-chance this provides yet another example of archaic syntax. Fitting it in more concretely with the broad (and increasingly compelling) tapestry of linguistic evidence would be a true boon.
