Wait … Isn’t Alma a Girl’s Name?

[Third Hour]

I recently splurged and spent $1.50 on a book at Deseret Industries. It's called Dead Sea Scrolls and was published by the San Diego Natural History Museum back in 2007. While flipping through it, I came across something delightfully unexpected. But before I explain what the surprise was, let's talk about Alma. For almost 200 years now, critics have taken various stabs at an assortment of names used in The Book of Mormon. Criticism of the name Alma, however, is unique. Why? Because apparently, Alma is a girl's name. What the critics have to say about Alma Criticisms show up in a few different places that I was able to track down. This first criticism comes from a book called The Maze of Mormonism, by Walter Martin (published in 1975): The next two examples come from the same writer—Robert McKay. One was published in The Utah Evangel and the other in The Inner Circle. Both publications were related, and part of an evangelical effort to draw people away from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day...

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