On January 4th of 1836 in Kirtland, Ohio the Prophet Joseph Smith established a class for the study of the Hebrew language. Class was usually held in westernmost of five rooms in third, or attic, story of House of the Lord in Kirtland. Room also used by JS as ecclesiastical office space and intended as translating room. Their teacher was a competent Hebrew scholar, Professor Joshua – Jeshua Seixas was their teacher. He was sure of his doctrine and his powers and his destiny and what an observant Jew would call a “navi” – a revered teacher.
Why did he choose Hebrew? However, if he altered the reading in numerous places and, in the Bible as well as in the new Mormon Scriptures, restored, as Joseph himself said, "many important points touching the salvation of man which had been taken from the Bible or lost before it was compiled," this was partial translation certainly. In doing this, and in supplying missing ancient books supplementary to the Bible, Joseph seems to have kept a paramount object before him, namely, to provide the Dispensation of the Fullness of Times with a Word of God complete and harmoniously one...
Iin November, 1835, the Mormon high Elders were determined to study Hebrew in the coming months. Why was it Hebrew and not Greek? No revelation had chosen Hebrew, and a knowledge of Greek was required to translate the New Testament correctly by learned means. Is not Mormonism, above all, a Christ-centered religion?
Was it the lucky chance that, on November 2, 1835 — just as he was reorganizing the School — Joseph, with Oliver Cowdery, Sidney Rigdon and others drove over to the infant Willoughby University, four miles from Kirtland, to hear "Dr. Piexotto" lecture at the medical college and that, in talking with the Jewish physician, they learned that he could and would teach them Hebrew in Kirtland?
Apparently, when OliverCowdery left for New York, within days of that encounter, he was charged to purchase the best textbooks he could find for the coming winter's study of Hebrew. When he returned to Kirtland on November 20, he brought home, Joseph Smith tells in his Journal, "a quantity of Hebrew books, for the benefitof the school," which included a Hebrew Bible, Lexicon and Grammar — and, 44/DIALOGUE: A Journal of Mormon Thought...
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