NOM

Just a little aside that I thought of while reading George Miller's comments on Joshua Seixas in the Masonic Book of Abraham thread. I brought this up on NOM 1.0 once, but now we have to discuss everything again, right?

Joseph Smith was studying Hebrew under Seixas while he was translating the BoA.

We don't make a big deal about the star Sirius these days but it is the brightest star in the sky and has historically been considered to have some special importance. From ancient times it has been called the Dog Star. I find it interesting that the Hebrew word for dog is Keleb, a word that is used 32 times in the Hebrew Bible. The most important star Abraham's cosmos is Kolob. Both names would be spelled KLB in Hebrew. This seems to fit Joseph's pattern for modifying existing names and words for his scripture. I can't help but wonder if Joseph and others assumed that Keleb/Sirius, being the brightest star, might also be the largest and most central, giving it a special precedence over the others.

Sounds perfectly plausible to me. Although we critics are often accused of giving young Joe, the ignorant farm boy, far too much credit. Surely he wasn't learned enough to know anything about the likes of any Keleb or Sirius. Which means the fact that the Hebrew Keleb (the brightest star) is so similar to Kolob (KLB being exactly the same, as you point out) is yet another faith promoting "evidence"!

Inspiration for sure.