Royal Skousen discusses the use of "stomacher" and "tires like the moon" in 2 Nephi 13 (=Isaiah 3); argues they are examples of cultural translations.

Date
2019
Type
Book
Source
Royal Skousen
LDS
Hearsay
Direct
Reference

Royal Skousen, The History of the Text of the Book of Mormon, Part 5: The King James Quotations in the Book of Mormon (Provo, Utah: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies; Brigham Young University Studies, 2019), 215

Scribe/Publisher
Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies
People
Royal Skousen
Audience
Reading Public
Transcription

stomacher:" and instead of a stomacher, a girding of sackcloth" (Isaiah 3:24 ~ 2 Nephi 13:24)

The Hebrew word here, pətīgīl, is otherwise unattested. The Greek Septuagint translated it as “a tunic of mixed purple”, which has led to the general translation of this article of clothing as “a fine garment” or “a rich robe”. Miles Coverdale, in his 1535 Bible, translated it more specifically as stomacher, “an ornamental covering for the chest (often covered with jewels) worn by women under the lacing of the bodice”.

tires like the moon: "and cauls and round tires like the moon" (Isaiah 3:18 ~ 2 Nephi 13:18)

In the Hebrew, the word tire refers to something round, either a crescent or perhaps a round pendant for the neck. The use of tire here in Isaiah 3:18 originated in the 1560 Geneva Bible: ”in that day shall the Lord take away the ornament of the slippers and the cauls and the round tires”, where tire is a shortening from attire and refers to an ornament for a woman’s head. The 1568 Bishop’s Bible expanded on this by placing an internal note in square brackets after round tires: “and the cauls and the round tires [after the fashion of the moon]”. This interpretive remark was apparently derived from the Greek Septuagint and the Latin Vulgate, where the word used for “crescent ornament” or “little crescent” was a diminutive of the word for moon. The 1611 King James translators decided to embed this remark within the text itself by omitting the brackets, thus “and round tires like the moon”. Since the interpretive prepositional phrase was not in the original Hebrew, it should have been placed in italics in the King James text.

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