The name "Alma" in the Book of Mormon

Parent page: Book of Mormon Names

Evidence

Was the name "Alma" inappropriate as a male name?

Summary

Despite common usage as a female name today, the name "Alma" has been known since the 1960s as a male Hebrew name. It occurs in contexts from 2200 B.C. to the second century B.C.

Detail

FairMormon Perspectives offers additional information about this topic

Matthew Roper, "Right on Target: Boomerang Hits and the Book of Mormon," Proceedings of the 2001 FAIR Conference (August 2001)

As can be seen, critics have had a lot of fun with the name Alma, however, in the 1960s Israeli archaeologist Yigael Yadin discovered a land deed near the Dead Sea dating to the early second century A.D. and rendered the name of a Jew mentioned therein as “Alma ben Yehuda” showing for the first time in modern history that the name Alma was an authentic Hebrew male name. Additional research in Ebla, in what is modern Syria, has also turned up this name showing that it goes back to nearly 2200 B.C

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The Neal A. Maxwell Institute provides additional information on this subject

Terrence L. Szink,"Further Evidence of a Semitic Alma", Journal of Book of Mormon Studies, 8/1 (1999)

Among the texts of Ebla are six separate documents that contain the personal name al6-ma written eight times (on two of the tablets the name occurs twice). Originally there was some uncertainty about the reading of the cuneiform sign al6, but this has been resolved and al6 is now an accepted reading at Ebla. It is not certain whether the transactions recorded at Ebla refer to just one person named Alma, or to several. In one document Alma is identified as a merchant from Mari, a city situated on the river Euphrates. Most likely the name al6-ma at Ebla is used to identify a male, there being few female merchants at Ebla.

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John A. Tvedtness, John Gee, and Matthew Roper,"Book of Mormon Names Attested in Ancient Hebrew Inscriptions", Journal of Book of Mormon Studies, 9/1 (2000)

Two of these names have been discussed in previous issues of the Journal. Jeffrey Chadwick demonstrated that Sariah, known in the Book of Mormon as the name of Lehi's wife, appears on one of the papyri written by members of a Jewish community in Elephantine, Egypt, in the fifth century BC and discovered at the turn of the twentieth century, and on several seals and clay bullae (for the meaning of this and other technical terms, see the glossary on page 44) found in Israel that date from the time of Lehi.1 Paul Hoskisson, following up on previous notes from Hugh Nibley,2 showed that the name Alma appears on a Jewish document of the early second century AD, also found in Israel.3 Terrence Szink provided evidence that the name Alma is even older, being attested on clay tablets found at the northwestern Syrian site of Ebla and dating to the second half of the third millennium BC4 A number of other biblical names have been found at Ebla, which is in the region that some scholars consider to be the homeland of the Hebrews.

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