Book of Mormon Evidence: Uto-Aztecan

Book of Mormon Languages

The Book of Mormon begins with a family of Israelites, led by a prophet named Lehi, who fled from Jerusalem around 600 BC and sailed to the New World. Nephi, who recorded this account, stated that he was making a “record in the language of my father, which consists of the learning of the Jews and the language of the Egyptians” (1 Nephi 1:2).¹ Near the end of the Book of Mormon, Moroni mentioned both Egyptian and Hebrew being among Nephite languages used in his day:

And now, behold, we have written this record according to our knowledge, in the characters which are called among us the reformed Egyptian, being handed down and altered by us, according to our manner of speech. And if our plates had been sufficiently large we should have written in Hebrew; but the Hebrew hath been altered by us also; and if we could have written in Hebrew, behold, ye would have had no imperfection in our record. (Mormon 9:32–33; emphasis added)²

The precise extent to which these languages were spoken, written, or altered over time among Book of Mormon peoples is unknown. But it is apparent from the text that in some form or another Hebrew and Egyptian persisted among the Nephites for nearly a thousand years of their history.

It should also be remembered that the Nephites weren’t the only Old-World migrants to be led to the New World by the hand of the Lord. The Mulekites, another colony of displaced Israelites, ended up merging with the Nephites during the reign of King Mosiah (Omni 1:12–19). And at a much earlier date, the Jaredites, after making their own ocean voyage, settled in the same general region. Thus, the Book of Mormon indicates that ancient American peoples could have been influenced by multiple infusions of Old World languages, with Hebrew and Egyptian being named explicitly.

Uto-Aztecan

In recent decades, linguist Brian D. Stubbs has discovered linguistic data among Native American languages that is relevant to the Book of Mormon. Stubbs is an established authority on the Uto-Aztecan language family, which includes around 30 languages spoken by natives primarily in western Mexico and the southwestern United States.³ He also has a background in Semitic and Near Eastern languages, giving him a rare combination of training in languages from both the Old and New Worlds.⁴

As Stubbs began to study Uto-Aztecan languages, he noticed a lot of similarities to the Semitic languages he had studied previously. In the early stages of research, he identified several hundred potential cognates (words having the same linguistic origin) between Hebrew and Uto-Aztecan.⁵ As he continued his studies, the list expanded to over 1000 potential connections, and he discovered links to Egyptian as well.⁶ Finally, after three decades of research, Stubbs published a comprehensive study documenting 1528 total connections between Uto-Aztecan and Semitic or Egyptian languages.⁷

As impressive as this list is, Stubbs suspected that any proposal arguing that Old World languages had a significant impact on a New World language family would be met with skepticism and resistance. He therefore put forth diligent effort to make sure he applied the strictest of methodological tools to his studies. For example, in his long lists of possible cognates, Stubbs has documented a consistent pattern of sound shifts. This adds strength to his impressive data because cognate terms in related languages often exhibit consistent phonetic changes.

For instance, in Uto-Aztecan, Stubbs noticed that the b sound in Semitic words consistently became kw, similar to a shift known to occur in other related languages.⁸ Thus, the Semitic baka(y), “cry,” relates to the reconstructed Uto-Aztecan term kweke, which also means “cry.”⁹ And the Semitic term bahamat, meaning “back,” corresponds with the Uto-Aztecan term kwahami, “back.”¹⁰ In each instance and around 40 others, the words and meanings are nearly identical, and each exhibit a shift from b in Semitic to kw in Uto-Aztecan.

In addition to b shifting to kw, Stubbs found another strain of Semitic wherein b shifts to p in Uto-Aztecan. The Semitic root for lightning is baraq, and in Uto-Aztecan the term for lightning is reconstructed as perok.¹¹ Uto-Aztecan yasipa, “sit, dwell,” corresponds with Hebrew yašiba, “sit, dwell.”¹² In addition to the Uto-Aztecan term kweke for “cry,” paka is another reconstructed word for “cry” in Uto-Aztecan, corresponding to the Semitic baka(y).¹³ Again, in each instance the words and meanings in the two languages are nearly identical, except for a shift from b in Semitic to p in Uto-Aztecan. 

The shift from b to p is also evident in the Egyptian cognates Stubbs found. For instance, in Egyptian sbk refers to the crocodile and is also the name of the crocodile god (Sobek). In Uto-Aztecan, the word for crocodile is reconstructed as supak or sipak.¹⁴ Egyptian bit means bee, while pitV in Uto-Aztecan means bee or wasp.¹⁵ Similarly, bik in Egyptian refers to falcons, and pik in Uto-Aztecan refers to hawks.¹⁶

The presence of two different common and consistent shifts for the Semitic b (one to kw and another to p), along with several other details, suggested to Stubbs that there were two strains of Semitic that influenced Uto-Aztecan, each with its own set of distinguishing features. Both appear to be Hebrew, but one (what Stubbs calls Semitic-p) shows influence from Aramaic,¹⁷ while the other (Semitic-kw) appears to have Phoenician influence.¹⁸ The Egyptian cognates manifest many of the same consistent sound shifts as the Semitic-p cognates.¹⁹

Each component contributes 400–700 (out of the total 1528) potential cognates with Uto-Aztecan. This is noteworthy because typically only 50–200 cognates are enough to establish a relationship between two languages.²⁰ Altogether, Stubbs estimates that approximately 30–40% of Uto-Aztecan is derived from Semitic and Egyptian languages,²¹ which he argues mixed with the Native American components of Uto-Aztecan between 2500–3000 years ago.²²

Significantly, Stubbs finds that recognizing the presence of creolized Semitic and Egyptian in Uto-Aztecan resolves seven out of nine persistent, unanswered questions linguists have about Uto-Aztecan.²³ Thus, this data has the kind of “explanatory power” that “linguists look for to identify the best among competing theories to explain what happens in language.”²⁴

Conclusion

Although some linguists have voiced reservations,²⁵ several linguists and other scholars have been impressed with Brian Stubbs’ thorough work.²⁶ Stubbs himself recognizes that “a general acceptance among linguists of Uto-Aztecan’s tie to the Near-Eastern languages will take a while or may never happen.” Nonetheless, he is confident “the case of Uto-Aztecan’s Near-East tie is strong.”²⁷ Even if the data is sound, Stubbs has acknowledged that finding Hebrew or Egyptian in a Native American language family does “not necessarily prove the Book of Mormon, since a Semitic element … could possibly have arrived independent of Lehi and Mulek.”²⁸

Nevertheless, this data dovetails remarkably well with what is presented in the Book of Mormon.²⁹ The book reports the influx of two Semitic-speaking peoples into the New World, within relatively close geographic proximity to each other, in the early sixth century BC. The first group—Lehi and his family—had roots in the Northern kingdom of Israel (1 Nephi 5:14). Northern Israel bordered Aramaic speaking regions, which influenced their dialect of Hebrew.³⁰ This same group also had knowledge of Egyptian (1 Nephi 1:2). This could account for the presence of Aramaic-influenced Hebrew (Semitic-p), plus Egyptian with similar sound shifts in Uto-Aztecan.

Less is known about the second group (the people of Mulek), except that they left from Jerusalem around the same time as the first, and by the time the two groups merged (in the second century BC), their languages were already mutually unintelligible (Omni 1:15–17). Giving careful consideration to subtle clues, though, Latter-day Saint scholars have suggested that they came to the New World aboard a Phoenician vessel.³¹ This could account for the presence of Phoenician-influenced Hebrew (Semitic-kw), with sound shifts independent of the other two strands of Near Eastern language in Uto-Aztecan.

Stubbs’ findings may be among the more powerful evidences yet found for the Book of Mormon.³² As Stubbs explains:

The strength of language evidence is that if enough of it has been preserved to be documented linguistically, then language is among the strongest kinds of evidence. Language families cannot be fabricated. Written records unearthed in the Americas are often labeled hoaxes … but language ties, when apparent, show specific ties from ancient to modern times, and the thousands of speakers of the related languages are beyond fabrication.³³