Word Study

Word Study

The Word Study tab, in the panel beside any chapter, shows the words behind the English: the Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek words the King James Version translates, what the Book of Mormon's names may mean, and where its dates fall in Israel's calendar. Everything here works offline.

Opening it

• Type a word in the box at the top of the tab, such as anointed, Messiah, Zarahemla, or seventh month.
• Right-click a word in any chapter and choose Look Up Original Word.
• In Book of Mormon chapters, names and dates are links. Hover over a name to see its meaning, or over a date to see its month and holy days. Click either one to open its full card in Word Study. A plain click opens the link; dragging still selects and highlights text as usual.

Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek words

Look up an English word to see each original-language word the King James Version translates that way. Reading the New Testament, Greek is listed first; reading the Old Testament, Hebrew and Aramaic come first. Picking a word shows its entry: the word in its own script, its pronunciation, its meaning, Strong's definition and derivation, and how the King James Version translates it. Strong's numbers in an entry (like H4886) are links to the word it comes from, and Back returns to where you were.

Right-clicked in the Bible or the Joseph Smith Translation, you get the exact word behind it in that verse. It comes first, marked In this verse ("In John 3:16, "loved" translates…"), followed by the other words the King James Version translates that way. A word the translators supplied (printed in italics in many Bibles), or one the JST added, has no Hebrew or Greek behind it, so you get the general matches instead. Typed into the box, a word always shows the general matches.

The word-by-word tags come from the CrossWire Bible Society and eBible.org's Strong's-numbered King James Version (public domain).

Sources: Strong's Hebrew and Greek dictionaries in Open Scriptures' corrected editions (CC BY-SA), with short meanings from STEP Bible (Tyndale House, Cambridge; CC BY 4.0).

Book of Mormon names

Every proper name in the Book of Mormon has a card, all 309 of them. Group forms lead to their name, so Nephites opens Nephi and Lamanitish opens Laman. Each card is labeled by how sure its meaning is:

Label	Meaning
Defined in the Book of Mormon	The text itself gives the meaning, as with Irreantum, "many waters" (1 Nephi 17:5).
Biblical name	The same name appears in the Bible, and its Hebrew or Greek entry is shown below the card.
Hebrew root	A clear match to a Hebrew word, such as Shazer, "twisting," or Jershon, "place of inheritance."
Proposed meaning	A scholarly suggestion with lower confidence.
Meaning unknown	Checked, but no credible proposal exists.

A card shows:

• Proposals, most likely first, each with its origin and, where the source names one, the scholar who proposed it. Strong's numbers open the Hebrew entry.
• Study notes: connections the text itself makes. For example, Zeezrom lay "scorched with a burning heat" at Sidom, which has Sodom's consonants and Sodom means "burnt" (Alma 15:3). Some names may be titles or nicknames rather than birth names, such as Isabel, "a Jezebel."
• Related names: names sharing consonants or an element, such as m-l-k, "king" (Melek, Mulek, Amlici...). Click one to open its card.
• A reminder for uncertain meanings. Moroni wrote that the Nephites altered their language "according to our manner of speech" (Mormon 9:32-34), and Hebrew in Lehi's day was written without vowels, so a name's consonants are a surer guide than its vowels. Jaredite names carry their own note: their language is older than the Nephites' and unknown today (Ether 1:33-35).
• A link to the name's page in BYU's Book of Mormon Onomasticon, which gathers the scholarly proposals. The meanings here are this project's own short summaries, linked rather than copied.

The Hebrew calendar

The Book of Mormon numbers its months ("the fourth day of the first month"), as Israel did before the exile, but never names the holy days. Clicking a date, or typing one such as seventh month, opens that month's card:

• The month's name before the exile (Abib, Ziv, Ethanim, Bul) and after it (Nisan, Tishri...), with its season.
• The holy days of the law of Moses, which the Nephites kept (2 Nephi 5:10): Passover, Unleavened Bread, Weeks, the memorial of blowing of trumpets (later called Rosh Hashanah), the Day of Atonement, and Tabernacles. If you clicked a day, the card places it among them, for example "Passover falls 10 days later, on the 14th."
• Later days kept separate. Events after Lehi left Jerusalem, such as the city's fall, Purim, and Hanukkah, are listed apart, since the Nephites wouldn't have known them.
• Every Book of Mormon event dated in that month. One example is the storm at Christ's death "in the first month, on the fourth day," which is the month of Passover in Israel's calendar (3 Nephi 8:5).

Whether the Nephite months lined up with Israel's isn't known. The Nephites counted their years from Lehi's departure, the reign of the judges, and the sign of Christ's birth (3 Nephi 2:8), and each card says so.