Book of Mormon Evidence: Attestation of Alma

Criticism of the Name Alma

Two male characters—a father and son—have the name Alma in the Book of Mormon (Mosiah 17:2; 27:8). Throughout the years, commentators have criticized this name for not being ancient, not being Hebrew, or not being male. Such critics have also regularly suggested modern sources from which the name could have been derived.

Writing in 1910, Charles Shook argued that instead of being an authentic Jewish name, “Alma, the name of one of the Nephite judges, is the Latin word for ‘benign’.”¹ M. A. Sbrensny gave a similar assessment in 1911. Concerning the various names of characters in the Book of Mormon who also have books named after them (including Alma), Sbrensny claimed, “There is not a single discovery or scrap of evidence in support of any of the following names of heads, under which the book has been divided.”²

In 1978, Walter Martin—a prominent Evangelical author—wrote that “Alma is supposed to be a prophet of God and of Jewish ancestry in the Book of Mormon. In Hebrew Alma means a betrothed virgin maiden—hardly a fitting name for a man.”³ In 1984, Robert McKay similarly argued in The Utah Evangelical that although Alma shows up as a term in the Hebrew Bible (referring to a young female), “it is not used as a proper name.” This article further implies that the way this name is assigned only to males in the Book of Mormon (and also among Latter-day Saints) is erroneous: “So Mormons who name their sons ‘Alma’ have actually named them ‘lass,’ or ‘virgin’ or a young woman. Interesting!”⁴ McKay further elaborated on these same points in an article in 1985.⁵

In 1986, John Smith (also writing in The Utah Evangelical) sarcastically wrote, “We still find it interesting that so many Mormons saddle their sons with a word that means ‘lass or ‘damsel.’ … It reminds us of the ‘Boy Named Sue’.”⁶ In 2002, Thomas Finley explained in The New Mormon Challenge that “Modern potential sources for the name Alma could be, among others, the phrase alma mater or even the transliterated Hebrew word for ‘virgin’ or ‘young woman’.”⁷

Even within the past decade, such claims have resurfaced. In 2016, another Evangelical author wrote, “Throughout the Book of Mormon, there are multiple ways Smith displayed a lack of understanding regarding languages. For example, Alma, for whom the book of Alma is named, is a Hebrew name which means ‘Betrothed Virgin.’ It would not have been the name of a man.”⁸ Thus, we can see that the name Alma has been a repeated target of Book of Mormon critics over the years. 

Ancient Semitic Attestations of Alma

It turns out, however, that forms of Alma are repeatedly attested in ancient documents as a Semitic male’s name. As pointed out by Hugh Nibley in 1973, Alma shows up twice, with two slightly different spellings, as a masculine name in the Bar Kochba Letters (Jewish documents written around AD 130 and only discovered by archaeologists in the twentieth century).⁹ The name is also featured repeatedly in Semitic documents from the ancient city of Ebla (in northwest Syria), which date to the second half of the third millennium BC.¹⁰ Recently, it has been discovered that the name Alma is also found as a Semitic male’s name on an ossuary from Jerusalem that dates to the first century AD.¹¹

As for the possible meaning and origin of this name in the Nephite record, the Book of Mormon Onomasticon explains: 

Book of Mormon ALMA could be from the Hebrew common noun עלם ՙlm, meaning “youth” or “lad,” which occurs twice in the Old Testament, 1 Samuel 17:56 and 20:22, plus a hypocoristic ending ā meaning “Lord.” (Its feminine form, עלמה ՙalmâ, appears nine times in the Old Testament, where it means “a young woman,” including the famous passage in Isaiah 7:14.) ALMA would then mean “Young man of God.”¹²

Wordplay on Alma

Not only is Alma anciently attested as a masculine Semitic name, but various layers of wordplay seem to attend this name in the Book of Mormon. This involves the meaning of Alma as a “young man,” the concept of “hiddenness,” and the idea of Alma being one “to whom” the arm of the Lord was revealed.¹³ As summarized by Matthew Bowen, “The three-dimensional wordplay on the name Alma in Mosiah 17–18 demonstrates yet again how sophisticated onomastic wordplay in the Book of Mormon can be.”¹⁴

Conclusion

The critics of the Book of Mormon were clearly wrong in some of their claims about the name Alma. Contrary to their assumptions, this is indeed a known Semitic masculine name. While its attestations are not from Lehi’s day, its appearance in ancient Near Eastern documents from Ebla (late third millennium BC) and Judea (first and second centuries AD), suggest that the name had a long history and considerably strengthens the plausibility of Alma being derived from a genuine Semitic source.¹⁵

This, of course, doesn’t remove the possibility of Joseph Smith simply borrowing the name from his environment (under the theory that he fabricated the contents of the Book of Mormon). While feasible, it seems doubtful that he was aware of the Hebrew term ՙalmâ (meaning “a young woman”), as proposed by several of the Evangelical authors.¹⁶ Even if he knew of this Hebrew term, one would wonder why he would apply it as a male personal name in a fictitious story. Joseph Smith was probably more likely to encounter Alma as a Latin-based female name or term, but the question would still remain as to why he would apply it to males in the Book of Mormon.¹⁷

More recently, based on records found on Ancestry.com, it has been argued that Alma was a fairly common masculine name in Joseph Smith’s day and that some men likely even went by this name in his immediate environment.¹⁸ However, this claim is most likely based on erroneous historical data. In a recent study using this same online resource, Neal Rappley and Allen Hansen tracked down 42 instances of Alma being listed as a male’s name in records from the years surrounding Joseph Smith’s birth (1780–1820). Yet they note that “only four were males when the search results were compared with the available records …. This means that roughly nine times out of ten, a ‘male’ Alma was actually a misgendered woman.”¹⁹ 

Moreover, of those remaining four names, the evidence suggests that three of them may not have been named Alma at all! Instead, the evidence indicates that they had more traditionally masculine names, including Alva, Ahira, and Almon (suggesting clerical errors in spelling or the possibility of Alma being a nickname). The fourth name, Alma Pratt, couldn’t be either confirmed or disproven to be a male, since further records were unable to be found. Concerning these findings, the authors write, “It is clear that the search results of Ancestry.com cannot be taken at face value, and when the data is combed more closely, it indicates that as a male name, Alma was exceptionally rare in Joseph Smith’s time and place.”²⁰ This data validates the concerns of Kevin Barney, who, more than two decades previously, had suggested caution about relying on such databases without further verification.²¹  

It should also be remembered that Alma never occurs as a personal name in the Bible, and Joseph Smith still couldn’t have known—even if he took this name from his immediate cultural setting—that it was an authentically ancient masculine Semitic name. The likelihood of Joseph randomly selecting non-biblical names from his environment that would one day turn up in ancient Semitic contexts isn’t known, but several commentators have seen evidentiary value in this name. For instance, Barney concluded, “I am tremendously impressed by the post-Book of Mormon appearance of Alma as a male Semitic name.”²²

It should also be remembered that this isn’t the only non-biblical name in the text that has found support in the ancient world in the years since the Book of Mormon was published. Nor is it the only name that has been prematurely ridiculed by critics of the Book of Mormon. For additional names that fit one or both of these characterizations, the following survey may be of interest: Abish, Aha, Chemish, Comron, Cumorah, Gidgiddoni, Hagoth, Himni, Isabel, Jarom, Laman, Josh, Kish, Lehi, Muloki, Paanchi, Pahoran, Pacumeni, Sam, Sariah, Sebus, Sheum, and Shilum.²³ Note that this list doesn’t include names such as Jershon, Mosiah, Omni, Zarahemla, and Zoram that, although not known to be attested in ancient documents, involve plausible Hebrew linguistic elements or constructions.²⁴

Finally, it must be recognized that Alma is accompanied in the text by multiple layers of proposed Hebrew wordplay. The same is true of many other Book of Mormon names.²⁵ Thus, those who want to confidently argue that this name was derived from Joseph Smith’s 19th century environment, or that such an explanation is just as valid as the case for its ancient origins, still have a lot of explaining to do. The collective case for the authenticity of many Book of Mormon names is remarkably strong. Alma is just a small piece of that much larger puzzle.