I mentioned in my post on Deseret that the Jaredites actually originated in the 2nd age of Tolkien's Middle Earth. I did this in passing, basically, to allow me to use the language of Tolkien to perhaps give greater meaning to the use of Deseret in Brigham's Mormonism.
I am going to actually attempt to further connect the Jaredites to Tolkien in looking to the strange story of the Brother of Jared and his request for Jesus to light stones for him. The question that has often been asked (and is the right question, in my opinion) is why did the Brother of Jared land on lighted stones as the solution to the problem?
This particular story and question has been addressed by various Mormon scholars across the years, and I won't pretend to know as much of the various cultures, languages, and myths that they have made connections to. Their various guesses may be right, and I think at least a few of their guesses may be right in ways that perhaps they didn't mean.
Take Hugh Nibley... I believe his position was the the Brother of Jared based his solution on the story of Noah's Ark, in that early traditions held that Noah illuminated his ship with stones.
I believe he could be at least partly right, if we replace Noah with Earendil, who also sailed across a sea with a shining stone aboard his vessel (on his brow, more specifically). I think actually the convoluted tale of Noah we have today is probably based on multiple individuals and stories, with Elendil and his family being the other story mashed in with Earendil. Elendil and the Faithful fled a drowning and flooded Numenor with shining stones (the Palantiri) aboard their vessels. In both of these events -Earendil and Elendil- and the stories and promises made in them, we see echoes of Noah's story.
It seems the Jaradite voyage across the sea would have been at the same time that Elendil's group would have had their own final voyage from Numenor, so the Brother of Jared's idea would have been based on his knowledge of Earendil alone, as I see it. Given this timeline, it is interesting to think of the Jaredites and the Numenorean Faithful relocating to new lands during the exact same cataclysm. The great wave and winds that drove the Numenorean ships to the shores of Middle Earth for the last time, were the same waves and winds the drove the Jaredite barges to their new destination. As an aside, the fact that the Jaredites were journeying during these massive earth upheaveals (as Aman and part of Eressea were taken away, and Numenor was buried) also helps explain why it took them 344 days to finally reach land despite 'furious' winds blowing them at all times. The fact was that, given the cataclysms and floods in the area they were going, the land simply wasn't ready yet to land on.
All this is interesting to think about, but I wanted to use two words which I believe may have Elvish origins to introduce some things that I believe give even greater depth to the Brother of Jared's story beyond and in addition to basing his request on Earendil's tale.
Those two words are: Moriancumer and Zerin.
With both words one has to use a little imagination, but I think the results are at least worth considering. These two words, I believe, place the Jaredites in the land of Moria (from Tolkien's Middle Earth), and the events of the Brother of Jared and the stones he created also tied directly to Tolkien's world.
In Moriancumer, it is simply a matter of looking at the root of the word and seeing Moria-ncumer. In this my language or translation skills fail to make any additonial progress or meaning, and I am left to just recognize the root of Moria in the name of that land (as well as a potential title adopted by the Brother of Jared according to Mormon legend). Thus, as to what 'ncumer' could mean in addition, I only have really poor guesses, assuming that this could be a Elvish word and that it hasn't been altered. I come up with things like "Moria/Black chasm void" (Moria-(n)-kuma) or "Moria mound one alone" (Moria-cum-er) and all sorts of other things.
I liked that "Moria mound one alone" a bit because if I take the 'one alone' (er) as perhaps also meaning Eru (also known as the one), then the name almost seems to refer to Eru-Jesus appearing at Moria. But its admittedly a stretch, and the translations I have come up with aren't very good. So, I have had to settle for just recognizing the root Moria is potentially in there, and then relying on the strength of the rest of the story to keep me in this thought.
And it is where we get to Zerin that things get more interesting, though, and which I think further places the Brother of Jared at Moria during his interaction with Jesus.
First, Zerin is (apparently) the name of a mountain that Moroni says that the Brother of Jared moved by the power of Faith. I say 'apparently' because I am proposing that the word Zerin is actually not the name for the mountain at all. In making this point, lets first look at the phrase that contains Zerin in the current Book of Mormon edition:
For the brother of Jared said unto the mountain Zerin, Remove—and it was removed. And if he had not had faith it would not have moved; wherefore thou workest after men have faith.
The first strange thing that occurs to me is that this would be the first and only time in scripture (and in general, actually) that a mountain with a proper name is not called "mount". In all other instances of named mountains, you will find it as something like Mount Zion, Mount of Olives, Mount Sinai, etc. I can't think of or find any exception other than Zerin. It is seems strange. You don't read or talk of the Mountain Zion, or Mountain Sinai, etc.
It's also important to note that any punctuation like commas, dashes, etc. that we find were originally added by the typesetter, and were not in the actual manuscript. As we saw with Deseret, changes made by the typesetter may not have accurately captured original intent and can drastically change the meaning of a phrase, and this extends to the addition of punctuation.
Without the added punctuation by the printer, the manuscript looks like this:
For the brother of Jared said unto the mountain Zerin Remove and it was removed and if he had not had faith it would not have moved; wherefore thou workest after men have faith.
I will add what punctuation I think should go in here, without changing any of the words, and then go on to explain what this has to do with Moria:
For the brother of Jared said unto the mountain "Zerin! Remove!” and it was removed and if he had not had faith it would not have moved; wherefore thou workest after men have faith.
So, in this change, I have "Zerin" being a word that is said to the mountain in conjunction with a command (or request) to be removed, at which the mountain did what it had been asked to do. Again, this makes sense given my previous comments on the use of mountain vs. mount... if Zerin was meant to be a name, I think it would have read "Mount Zerin". The fact that it doesn't, to me, indicates at least some basis for believing that Zerin is not a name for that mountain, but rather should be included in what the Brother of Jared said to the mountain.
So, what is Zerin? Just as with Deseret, I look to the Elvish languages for any hints. Unfortunately, we won't find any Elvish words at all that start with Z. Adunaic words do (a language of Numenor), but we have very few words on record there. So, it could be that we are dealing with an Adunaic word, and have to remain lost as to its meaning.
Not be deterred, though, and using a similar dubious approach to Deseret, I think it is possible that Zerin might actually be a phonetic spelling for the word "Seron", with the S and Z sounds being pronounced the same or being interchangeable (just go ask 100 people to pronounce "Tesla" and see how many favor a more s-ish sound vs. z-ish), and the "o" in seron being short. Again, I confess to some bending and rationalization here, but my workarounds are not completely out of the realm of possibility.
In any case, with Seron, we get an Elvish word for "Friend" or "Lover".
At this point, anyone familiar with Durin's Door and the story of Gandalf and the Fellowship entering that door might see where I am going with this. It was at Durin's Door that Gandalf needed to speak the word "Friend" in order to open the door and enter Moria. Of course, Gandalf said "Mellon", which is the Sindarin word for friend. But, I don't think the door is picky on its Elvish dialect, and friend said in another way I think works just as well.
So, what I am saying is that the Brother of Jared stood at Durin's Door, uttered the word "Friend", removed the mountain (i.e., Durin's Door) in order to gain access to the mines of Moria. Durin's Door was for all intents and purposes considered part of the mountain at Moria, built into the cliffside and indistinguishable from the rest of the cliffside unless one was able to see the runes that had been placed upon it by Celebrimbor, the great Noldor prince, craftsman and smith.
This explanation at least gives context and meaning for Moroni's vague reference to this man moving a mountain, in that there is now a specific purpose for the mountain (or part of it) to be moved.
But why is the Brother of Jared there, and why does he need to access Moria?
The metal Mithril was found and mined in only two locations on Middle Earth. One was on Numenor, and the other was Moria. Numenor, due its imminent destruction, was inaccessible to the Jaredites (and some of their party had just fled from there, and from their vassals in Middle Earth also), so Moria was the only place that Mithril could be obtained.
I propose that the Brother of Jared was familiar with the properties of Mithril, being both a master craftsman in that incarnation, but also a master craftsman in a life previous. In that previous life, he would have been Celebrimbor, the same being who had used Mithril in the manufacturing of at least one of the rings of power he made (Nenya), and in creating the runes and drawings on the Durin's Door itself.
Thus, the Brother of Jared in standing before and opening Durin's Door, was actually opening the very door he helped create an entire age before!
As a master craftsman, and having worked with the material before (in times he could remember, as well as times he could not), he would have known its properties. Just as the mithril was refined in such a way on that door would interact with light in given situations (in this case, refined to "Ithildin" which would react to and glow/ reflect moon and star light), I think the Brother of Jared felt it was possible that he could molten and refine the mithril to not just reflect light, but to contain it. In believing this, I think it is also likely that in addition to the tale of Earendil, he was also remembering Feanor and the Silmarils (Feanor was Celebrimbor's grandfather, by the way) and that it was possible to make stones that could contain the light of creation.
Consquently, the solution that the Brother of Jared came up with was actually well thought out and landed on with knowledge that he would have had of Mithril and its properties as well as his own abilities, expertise, and craftsmanship in making these stones. No one else would have been in a position to make them, or even to understand that this was a viable option. What he did not know for sure, but he had faith in, was that Jesus could ultimately provide the light source that he had crafted these stones to contain.
So, Celebrimbor helps create a door as an entrance to a mine that he himself will need to access in another life (as the Brother of Jared) in order to help lead a group of people across the sea, with the same light guiding and leading those people to a new world the same way that Earendil was led safely to Aman. His own skills as a craftsman would be put to full use in creating a work of art to rival anything that had been created in any age before or since - not even the Rings of Power that he created, or the Silmarils that Feanor made, could be said to have been touched individually by Eru-Jesus himself, and filled with his light.
This is a very interesting post of yours.
ReplyDeleteFrom https://www.mormondialogue.org/topic/73357-the-meaning-of-the-name-mahonri-moriancumer/
"Mah means something, what, how, who or which. Of course you recognize the word “on” which means light and is also metaphor for the Savior. This is part of the word Tzion in Hebrew, meaning holy people of the Lord and also the place where they reside. We spell it Zion today. On was the city of the sun where the holy people dwelt, so by link, “on” in this word means the same thing, Zion, but in a different place. Ri means water originally. Today it is used to mean moisture or dampness, but it also means irrigation. We can put these together and get something like Who [provides or leads to] light [on the] water. There is double meaning in this as you can see. He provided the illuminated stones that provided light in the boats. He also led them across the water to the land of Zion, although they never had a Zion civilization.
The last name is a little more difficult, but we can understand it. “Mor” means to change or perform a wonder. The word “ian” is a conjunction and I know of no other meaning. It means “in order to” or “for the purpose of.” The root “cum,” pronounced “coom” is a common verb meaning “to raise up” or “to rise.” “To raise up” is a phrase we know from other scripture which means to save. The suffix –er indicates instrumentality. I think this is just the English translation of the suffix although there is a similar one in Hebrew.
Putting the parts together, we get a description of “Someone who performs wonders in order to lift, raise up, or save.” We can see from these descriptive terms the very things that the brother of Jared did while assisting the people to prepare for and cross the ocean."
But if we swap out his understanding of 'Morian' for yours then it might mean something like 'Someone who raises up Moria'.
Lighter-of-water Moria-raiser (or opener?)
ben:
ReplyDeleteHa - that could be. Who knows. I believe the Jaredites predated the Hebrew language by a fair amount, so I am not sure that looking there, as the scholar from link you sent has, really gives us anything.
But it is a good example of the fact that you can probably apply scores of languages to the name of Mahonri Moriancumr (if that first name is legitimate) and probably come away with with meanings that have something to do with the Jaredites and/ or the Brother of Jared from each one if you look and twist hard enough. Thus, the exercise of trying to definitively land on any meaning from the name I think is pretty fraught and not really worth spending too much time on, based on my own experience.
In this post, rather than trying to land on a definition of a word, I was more interested in using possible definitions to explore a more expansive story. In these cases, it is the story that matters, and kind of a neat thing that a word might support that story. In other words, I think the story as told above holds true for reasons outside of these words and names, but it is kind of nice and interesting when you can see those words potentially match up.
I've ran plenty of other Jaredite names and places through Tolkien's languages, and come up with a few other hits, but many more misses, and even on the hits it feels as tortured as my examples above and in the link you sent me.
The book of Ether makes an interesting case study for elvish words. A lot of the place and people names seem to translate fairly easily.
ReplyDelete