s despite the fact that they are concerned with Zion's Camp and are dated April and June, 1834. In 103, Joseph obtains another pseudonym besides "Gazelam": namely, Baurak Ale, repeated in 105:16 and 27. Orson Pratt translates Baurak Ale: "God bless you," and "The Lord blesses." The form "baurak" is not actually found in the Bible but is a perfectly valid hypothetical form; Seixas gives it as one of the Roots "of common occurrence" and meaning "he blessed, knelt down" (Manual, p.77). The Bible prefers, for "he blessed," another form: ba - (like "bay") rak (Manual, p.29). Either form could say, "having blessed from aforetime, He continues to do." "Ale" or El is more fittingly a part of the name than "Jehovah" would be because 103 is the Lord's proclamation, to "the strength of my house."...
We continue with the search for effects of Joseph's Hebrew study discernible in astronomical and cosmological names, names of "strange gods" and Facsimiles 1 and 2, all of which are found in the first three chapters of the Book of Abraham. As we know, this Book, in Webb's opinion "is an actual translation from the Egyptian as written by an Israelite" (pp. 75-76); and he moves the Hyksos rule higher, to 2250-1750 B.C., so as to place Abraham in the middle of it. Names like Korash, Mahmackrah, and Shagreel, he states, are Hebrew. Of the three, only Korash sounds Hebrewish. The "Hebrew" which Webb transliterates as "Shagreel," a pupil of Seixas would transliterate as "Sha-gna-ra (ray)-el"; "el," of course, is Hebrew. Webb aserts, too, that Shinehah, Olea, and Kolob are Hebrew as truly as are Kokaubeam, Hah-ko-kau-beam, Kokob, and Raukeeyang. Three of these last four words are transliterated virtually in the Seixas way. All four are given their Hebrew meanings: stars, the stars, a star, firmament or expanse. Another such word is Shaumahyeem (exactly the Seixas pronunciation), heavens, in the sense of Genesis I; Shaumau is an invented singular, unkown to the Bible. Kolob, the name of the greatest of all the Kokaubeam, may be a variant of Kokob. Olea, a name for the moon, may be an invented variant for a Hebrew word for "moon," yau-ra-akh, the same as the vowels of Adonai were transposed into the word Jehovah. The more poetical word for "moon," le-vanah, the White One, turns into the name Libnah for one of the idolatrous gods. The name Jah-oh-eh for the earth ("Explanation," Facsimile 2), which applies literally the time-idea of Psalm 90:4, could be an inversion of the vowels of Ye-ho-vau (Jehovah) in Seixas' translation (p.15). This inversion has theological significance. One word remains: gnolaum (3:18) - "Yet these two spirits. . . shall have no beginning. . . no end, for they are gnolaum, or eternal." This, again, is an exact Seixas transliteration; however, the Hebrew word is not an adjective but a noun, which in the plural may act as an adverb. The phrase "an everlasting covenant" (Doctrine and Covenants 45:9) is taken from Genesis 17:13, where gnolaum, in the English idiom "everlasting," is, in the Hebrew idiom, a noun, "eternity."
How does Joseph use the Hebrew term-name Elohim or Eloheem, God? In translating "Elohim" in Exodus 22:28, he changed the King James "the gods" to "God." The Revised Version (R. V.), followed by the standard Jewish translation of 1917, changed "the gods" to "the judges." Joseph was a strict monotheist then. Likewise, in the Book of Moses, he positively, militantly makes "god" singular in recounting the creation of the universe and does not at all depart from monotheism in the first three chapters of the Book of Abraham nor in the Explanations of the three Facsimiles. But, in the fourth and fifth chapters of this later book, Joseph is triumphantly positive that Eloheem means "the Gods." "The Gods organized the lights in the expanse of the heaven"; "the Gods took counsel among themselves and said, Let us go down and form man in our image." Now, in the Hebrew we find: "And God said [singular], Let us make man in our image, after our likeness... And God created [singular], man in His image." With the exception of