“It supposeth me”

Late Middle English syntax.

The Book of Mormon has four instances of “it supposeth me that S,” where S stands for a sentence/clause. This impersonal, simple dative syntax has been discussed before. note.1 “Why the Oxford English Dictionary (and not Webster’s 1828),” Interpreter 15 (2015): 74–76, [link]. The specific formulation does not occur anywhere else, so Joseph Smith never heard it used, and it was not his native expression. Because there is no historical evidence of analogical formation, analogy is non-explanatory.

Here are the four instances of “it supposeth me that S,” shown in the order dictated:

aa5411
But behold, it supposeth me that I talk to you concerning these things in vain,
or it supposeth me that thou art a child of hell.

jb0208
And it supposeth me that they have come up hither to hear the pleasing word of God,

wm0102
And it supposeth me that he will witness the entire destruction of my people.

Joseph Smith dictated “it supposeth me” twice in the same compound sentence while he was in Pennsylvania, and twice over a month later when he was in New York. The finite that-clause is part of the complementation structure of the verb suppose, and me is an indirect object pronoun — a simple dative, since there is no to or unto preceding it.

While the exact syntax “it supposeth me that S” does not occur anywhere else, an impersonal, simple dative with the same verb does occur elsewhere, but only once, in a 1390s poem by John Gower, Confessio Amantis. note.2 Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. suppose, verb, definition I.i.4: “† intransitive. impersonal with complement and indirect object. him supposeth: it seems to him. Obsolete. rare.” a1393: “Bot al to lytel him supposeth, Thogh he mihte al the world pourchace.” J. Gower, Confessio Amantis (Fairfax MS.) v. l. 22. [ oed link ]. In that case, the expletive it is missing because the preposed dative him fills the subject slot — that is, it reads “him supposeth” rather than “it supposeth him.”

The four complements of the verb suppose in the Book of Mormon are clauses; in Gower’s poem, the complement is a phrase: “all too little.” The Book of Mormon equivalent of “but all too little him supposeth” would be “but it supposeth him that it is all too little.”

The meaning currently given in the OED for the verb suppose in Gower’s poetic language is ‘seem.’ This meaning fits the four examples immediately above. Contextually speaking, other meanings might fit the Book of Mormon’s “it supposeth me” passages as well, including ‘suspect,’ ‘believe,’ and ‘expect.’ (in the above order). ‘Suspect’ and ‘expect’ are additional archaic meanings of suppose in Gower’s poem.

In aa5411, we also read a biblical phrase that Tyndale used: “child of hell.” note.3 Matthew 23:15. The Wycliffite Bible has “son of hell.” Right after this, in the same verse, there is a “save it be” phrase, one of forty-eight in the Book of Mormon: “save it be on conditions that ye will deliver up . . .” There are no examples of “save it be” in the King James Bible or pseudo-archaic texts. Almost all examples before the nineteenth century are from Scottish English authors. Forty-eight examples are approximately fifteen times the number that occur in any other text. This archaic, poetic language was also something that Joseph Smith was not responsible for wording in his 1829 dictation.

Datasets like this small one involving “it supposeth me” disprove the theory that Joseph Smith used his native expression to produce Book of Mormon English. Not even fancifully supposing that he spoke Elizabethan English in 1820s America can save such a theory, since he would have needed to speak Late Middle English or be an English-language expert. (Of course he did not speak Late Middle English and he was not an expert in historical English usage.) Not even proposing that he made many mistakes as he dictated is explanatory, since four examples show that the expression was not the result of a mistake. Moreover, it is supported by the analogous simple dative expression “it seemeth me that S,” which was rare by the seventeenth century.

The reality is that he received a specifically worded text, which happened to be mostly early modern in character. That is how his 1829 dictation ended up with an unsurpassed number of various archaisms, like twelve ditransitive causatives (e.g. “did cause us that we should hope” aa5811). That is how it ended up with some syntax that only a English philologist might have known about, such as the simple dative suppose expression “it supposeth me,” as a syntactic variant of poetic “him supposeth.”

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