FAIR

Temples

Why Was Joseph Smith Initially Prohibited from Publishing His Bible Translation? (Old Testament Gospel Doctrine 5A)

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Liz Lemon Swindle, 1953-: Go with Me to Cumorah, 1997

An Old Testament KnoWhy for Gospel Doctrine Lesson 5: “If Thou Doest Well, Thou Shalt Be Accepted” (Moses 5-7) (JBOTL05A). See the link to video supplements for this lesson at the end of this article under “Further Reading.”

Question: For a while, the Lord prohibited Joseph Smith from sharing his Bible translation publicly. Also, Moses 1:42 explicitly says that the account of Moses’ vision should not be shown “unto any except them that believe.” Any guesses as to the reasons behind these restrictions?

Summary: I believe that these initial restrictions were due, at least in part, to the sacred content of many of the changes and additions in Joseph Smith’s Bible translation. This makes sense if we regard the knowledge that Joseph Smith received as he translated the Bible as part of a divine tutorial on priesthood and temple doctrines, authority, and ordinances. In fact, some parts of Genesis seem to contain echoes of what temple studies scholars would call a “temple text.” My study of the book of Moses and others of the initial revelations and teachings of Joseph Smith have convinced me that he knew early on much more about these matters than he taught publicly, contradicting the view of those who consider the fundamental doctrines, covenants, and teachings of the Nauvoo temple ordinances a late invention

The full article may be found at the Interpreter Foundation website: KnoWhy OTL05A — Why Was Joseph Smith Initially Prohibited from Publishing His Bible Translation?

For more discussion of evidence that Joseph Smith knew much about temple matters early on in his ministry, see the first video supplement to this lesson: “What Did Joseph Smith Know about Temple Ordinances by 1836?” (http://interpreterfoundation.org/conferences/2014-temple-on-mount-zion-conference/2014-temple-on-mount-zion-conference-videos/).

For a playlist of one-minute video clips discussing various aspects of Mormonism and Masonry in Nauvoo, see the second video supplement to this lesson at the FairMormon YouTube Channel (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0zdSoYy_fg&list=PLw_Vkm1zYbIHW8n88zdpJuzK83caT7A2H).

Was Adam Meant to “Rule Over” or “Rule With” Eve? (Old Testament Gospel Doctrine 4B)

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Eugène Delaplanche, 1836-1890: Eve, After Transgression, 1869. Photograph copyright by Jeffrey M. Bradshaw. In this poignant sculpture, the vacant, tearless eyes and agonized posture of the solitary figure bespeak the depths of Eve’s utter hopelessness immediately after her transgression.

An Old Testament KnoWhy for Gospel Doctrine Lesson 4: “Because of My Transgression My Eyes Are Opened” (Moses 4; 5:1–15; 6:48-62) (JBOTL04B). See the link to the video supplement to this lesson at the end of the article under “Further Reading.”

Question: After the Fall, God told Eve: “thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.” However, some say that the words “rule over” should be translated “rule with.” Which translation is correct?

Summary: A modern English translation makes the meaning of this difficult phrase clear: “You will want to control your husband, but he will dominate you.” Looking at the verse in context, it is evident that the Lord is not telling the couple how they should treat each other, but rather describing a tragic tendency in mortal marriages that they must avoid. As further evidence for this interpretation, note that the same Hebrew terms for “desire” and “rule” that describe a relationship of competition and rancor will later reappear in God’s warning to Cain: “Satan desireth to have thee; … And thou shalt rule over him.” In an honest effort to make sense of the troubling English translation of “rule over” in the King James Version, some have suggested that it should be read instead as “rule with.” Unfortunately, the “rule with” translation does not hold up under scholarly scrutiny. For example, in her BYU Masters Thesis, RoseAnn Benson argued conclusively that the “rule with” translation should be abandoned. In every occurrence of the underlying Hebrew she examined the phrase is best understood as “rule over,” as when a king rules over his subjects. This further confirms the idea that the verse is describing broken marriage relationships that would become a common tendency in the fallen world, with each spouse contending to “rule over” the other. It’s obvious that God did not intend Adam and Eve’s marriage to work that way. Instead, as the Proclamation on the Family explains, “fathers and mothers” — both then and now — “are obligated to help one another as equal partners.”

The full article may be found at the Interpreter Foundation website: KnoWhy OTL04B — Was Adam Meant to “Rule Over” or “Rule With” Eve?

For a video supplement to this lesson, see “The Tree of Knowledge as the Veil of the Sanctuary” on the FairMormon YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-B1FeOcTZ8

Did Satan Actually Deceive Eve? (Old Testament Gospel Doctrine 4A)

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Jan Breughel, the Elder, ca. 1568-1625: The Garden of Eden, 1612. Brueghel masterfully fills the foreground of the scene with the abundance, happiness, and beauty of newly created life, and then skillfully draws our eyes toward the two tiny figures in the background ominously reaching for the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge.

An Old Testament KnoWhy for Gospel Doctrine Lesson 4: “Because of My Transgression My Eyes Are Opened” (Moses 4; 5:1–15; 6:48-62) (JBOTL04A), 15 January 2018

Question: The scriptures say that Eve was “beguiled” by Satan when she partook of the forbidden fruit. But Latter-day Saints believe she made the right choice. How can both statements be true?

Summary: Some people paint Eve in a negative light, blaming her for bringing sin into the world. This is not the view of the Latter-day Saints. We emphasize her wisdom and perceptiveness, and see her actions in the Garden of Eden as a positive step forward in the divine plan. We teach that she did not commit a sin in taking the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge and honor her lifelong faithfulness. However, a few have taken this view to an unreasonable extreme, arguing that, for various reasons, she was not actually “beguiled” by Satan in her decision to eat the forbidden fruit. On the one hand, some believe that Satan was entirely truthful when he spoke to Eve. On the other hand, others teach or imply that regardless of what Satan did or said, Eve made the right choice with full understanding of the situation. These beliefs are based on honest intent, but are all mistaken. Scripture exposes how Satan used a series of clever tactics to mislead Eve, how God’s wisdom prevailed, and how Eve became a symbol of Wisdom itself.

The full article may be found at the Interpreter Foundation website: KnoWhy OTL04A — Did Satan Actually Deceive Eve?

For a video supplement to this lesson, see “The Tree of Knowledge as the Veil of the Sanctuary” on the FairMormon YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-B1FeOcTZ8

What Can the Architecture of Israelite Temples Teach Us About Creation and the Garden of Eden? (Old Testament Gospel Doctrine 3A)

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Michelangelo, 1475-1564: Creation of the Sun and Moon, 1511

An Old Testament KnoWhy for Gospel Doctrine Lesson 3: The Creation (Moses 1:27-42; 2-3) (JBOTL03A), 8 January 2018

Question: In reading the description of the seven days of Creation and the layout of the Garden of Eden, there seems to be more than meets the eye. What insights can be gained about these things from understanding the architecture of the Israelite temples?

Summary: The descriptions of the days of creation in Genesis and the book of Moses differ from those found in the book of Abraham and in modern temples. In contrast to the latter accounts, the narratives in Genesis and the book of Moses seem to have been deliberately shaped to highlight resemblances between the creation of the universe and the architecture of the Tabernacle and later Israelite temples. Understanding these parallels helps explain why, for example, in seeming contradiction to scientific understanding, the description of the creation of the sun and moon appears after, rather than before, the creation of light and of the earth. Careful study also reveals that not only the Creation, but also the Garden of Eden provided a model for the architecture of the temple.

The full article may be found at the Interpreter Foundation website: KnoWhy OTL03A — What Can the Architecture of Israelite Temples Teach Us About Creation and the Garden of Eden?

Why Did Moses Seem to Repeat the Same Experience Twice in His Vision? (Old Testament Gospel Doctrine 1A)

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Joseph Brickey: Moses Seeing Jehovah, 1998

KnoWhy 01A for Personal Study of Gospel Doctrine Lesson 1: “This Is My Work and My Glory” (Moses 1) (JBOTL01A), 6 January 2018

Question: At the beginning of the vision that appears in Moses 1 in the Pearl of Great Price, Moses saw the “world … and all the children of men” (Moses 1:8). Then, near the end of the vision, he seems to have experienced the same thing again when he saw the “earth, and … the inhabitants thereof” (Moses 1:27-29). Why is this so?

Summary: Careful study of Moses 1 and similar documents from the ancient world reveals that Moses’ experience was a tutorial on the plan of salvation from a personal perspective, including his departure from God’s presence in the beginning and his glorious return to that presence in the end through his faithfulness. In verse 8, early on in the vision, it appears that Moses saw the premortal world and all the spirits that God had created (compare Abraham 3:22-23). Later, in verses 27-29, he seems to have experienced a view from heaven of the mortal earth and all its inhabitants.

The full article may be found at the Interpreter Foundation website: http://interpreterfoundation.org/why-did-moses-seem-to-repeat-the-same-experience-twice-in-his-vision/

 

Mormon Temples and Freemasonry

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The video of Scott Gordon’s presentation from the 2017 FairMormon Conference is now available for free viewing. The transcript can be read here. You can purchase access to the rest of the conference videos here.

Scott Gordon
Scott Gordon is president of FairMormon and as such has been a writer of several articles and a speaker at firesides. He has a master’s degree in Business Administration from Brigham Young University with a bachelor’s in Organizational Communication. He has held many Church callings, including Bishop, and currently serves as the Ward Mission Leader. He is married to Sheri Farnsworth Gordon and has five children.

Book Review: An Introduction to the Book of Abraham

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10% off at the FairMormon Bookstore

Publisher: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University and Deseret Book
Author: John Gee
Number of Pages: 197
Binding: Hardcover
ISBN-13: 978-1-9443-9406-6
Price: $19.99
Click to purchase the book.

The Book of Abraham is my favorite book of scripture. Mostly it is because of chapter 3, which contains information that is not found anywhere else in LDS scripture. I also remember discovering the facsimiles as a child and thinking that they were really neat. Unfortunately, the Book of Abraham has also become a favorite for critics to attack, as it is the only book of scripture that Joseph Smith translated for which there appears to be any extant source material, and that material does not seem to match what is in the Book of Abraham. But it’s really much more complicated than that.

This book explains what is currently known about the Book of Abraham and its associated artifacts and documents, and why the critics are wrong. It is written by John Gee, who is a professor of Egyptology at BYU. He got his PhD in Egyptology at Yale and has written many research publications for professional journals as well as writing for LDS audiences. The book is written to be understandable by any reader (although an LDS background is very helpful) in a straightforward manner that actually makes for a fairly quick read.

The book contains 17 chapters, most of them fairly short, that build on each other. At the end is a series of questions and answers that basically provides a summary of the book. It also has photos of the extant papyri, maps, charts, diagrams, and other helpful or interesting illustrations scattered throughout. At the end of most chapters is a list of “Further Reading” with notes about each item. Unfortunately, there are not many footnotes in the book; they only exist to provide sources for quotes. So you have to refer to the notes in the “Further Reading” section to deduce where some of the information came from. This did lead me to find one inconsistency – on page 97, it says “The Book of Abraham begins much like other autobiographies from Abraham’s time and place.” However, on page 103 in “Further Reading,” there is an entry that says, “This essay is a comparison of the Book of Abraham with the only other autobiographical inscription to survive from the approximate time and place of Abraham.”

After the introduction, the book begins with a historical overview which explains how Joseph Smith got the papyri and then what happened to them after his death, with the church finally receiving surviving fragments in 1967 (most of what Joseph had in his possession ended up burning in the Chicago Fire of 1871). “To the disappointment of many, although these remaining fragments contained the illustration that served as the basis for Facsimile 1, they were not the portion of the papyri that contained the text of the Book of Abraham” (page 9).
The next chapter is about the translation. Some have thought that Joseph may have used a seer stone (see my review of Joseph Smith’s Seer Stones), but Gee says that “Some thirdhand accounts claim he did, but those accounts do not come from anyone who actually observed the translation” and that “By the time that Joseph finished translating the Book of Mormon in 1829, he no longer needed to use the Urim and Thummim to receive revelation” (page 20.) What is known is that much more was translated than what ended up being published (the rest has been lost), and that it was done without using a dictionary or grammar as a conventional translation normally would. It does appear that W. W. Phelps attempted to compile an Egyptian grammar after the translation, but the extent of Joseph’s involvement in that is unknown. [Read more…] about Book Review: An Introduction to the Book of Abraham

Book Review: The Council of Fifty: What the Records Reveal about Mormon History

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Publisher: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University
Editors: Matthew J. Grow & R. Eric Smith
Date Available: September 4, 2017
Number of Pages: 201
Binding: Hardcover
ISBN-13: 978-1-9443-9421-9
Price: $21.99

On October 3, 2016, the Joseph Smith Papers Project published a volume called Administrative Records: Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 1844-January 1846 (reviewed and explained here). It is a massive tome of around 800 pages containing information that had never before been published or studied. It contains many insights that help fill in gaps in Mormon history during this period. The Council of Fifty: What the Records Reveal about Mormon History is an introduction to some of those insights, or it can also serve as a summary of them for those that would rather not peruse the vast source material.

This book contains 15 chapters, each of which is a separate paper written by historians (many of which have worked on the Joseph Smith Project) such as Richard Bushman, Richard Turley, Patrick Mason, Gerrit Dirkmaat, Matthew Grow, Matthew Godfrey, Richard Bennett, Jedediah Rogers, and Paul Reeve. Like a sacrament meeting where each speaker is given the same topic, there is some overlap among many of the papers, yet each writer brings their own perspective and expertise. [Read more…] about Book Review: The Council of Fifty: What the Records Reveal about Mormon History

Book Review: The Joseph Smith Papers: Documents Volume 5: October 1835 – January 1838

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Publisher: The Church Historian’s Press
Date Available: May 15, 2017
Number of Pages: 768
Binding: Hardcover
ISBN-13: 978-1629723129
Price: $54.95

(Page numbers are from an Advance Review Copy, and may be different in the published version.)

This volume covers an interesting period of Joseph Smith’s life that includes the finishing and dedication of the Kirtland Temple and the associated visions, work on the Book of Abraham, the Kirtland Safety Society, and persecution and apostasy. Some of the documents included are from Joseph Smith’s journals, and so have already been published in Journals, Volume 1:1832-1839. Others are from Minute Book 1, archival collections, periodicals, other peoples’ diaries, legal records, etc. There are no journals available covering April 1836 to January 1838, so some of the best contemporary sources were chosen to try to fill things in.

The book starts with the usual material for this series, including a timeline of Joseph Smith’s life, maps, an explanation of the Joseph Smith Papers Project, a volume introduction, and an explanation of the editorial method. The book is then divided into seven parts, based on time periods. There is an appendix with blessings to Don Carlos Smith, Oliver Cowdery, Frederick G. Williams, and Sidney Rigdon. And then there is the usual reference material with source notes, a chronology, geographical directory and maps, pedigree chart, biographical directory, organizational charts, essay on sources, works cited, a cross-reference with the Doctrine and Covenants, index, etc. At the very back is a note about resources available on the Joseph Smith Papers website that relate to the series as well as this particular book.

Most of the first and second chapters of the Book of Abraham are included as “Book of Abraham Manuscript, circa Early June – circa November 1835-A [Abraham 1:4-2:6].” There is a historical introduction that explains how the papyri were obtained and what is known about the translation, as well as the publication in Times and Seasons. A footnote points out that “Though a notice printed in the 1 February 1843 issue of the Times and Seasons suggested that JS would publish ‘further extracts’ from the Book of Abraham, there is no documentary evidence that other extracts were produced. All extant manuscripts generated by JS and his associates during their study of the Egyptian papyri, dated circa 1835 to circa 1842, are available at the Joseph Smith Papers website, josephsmithpapers.org.” (page 77) [Read more…] about Book Review: The Joseph Smith Papers: Documents Volume 5: October 1835 – January 1838

Book Review: What You Don’t Know About the 100 Most Important Events in Church History

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Authors: Casey Paul Griffiths, Susan Easton Black, Mary Jane Woodger
Publisher: Deseret Book
Genre: Nonfiction
Year Published: 2017
Number of Pages: 336
Binding: Paperback
ISBN: 978-1629722467
Price: $22.99

I really don’t like the title of this book. It is the sort of title that is often referred to as “clickbait,” to get people to read an online article. It is also an insult to the reader’s intelligence for an author to assume what they don’t know. The preface indicates that the authors are at least somewhat aware of this, and begins almost with an apology, admitting that “such lists present an excuse for sensationalized writing and shallow analysis.” However, it goes on to explain that the book was inspired by another book called “The 100 Most Important Events in Christian History,” and that such lists “can impel a person to think critically about events, stories, and people.” Casey Griffiths decided to create a list for the history of the Latter-day Saints, enlisting the help of Mary Jane Woodger and Susan Easton Black. They also received assistance from their colleagues at BYU and used resources such as the Joseph Smith Papers.

The book is a large format paperback, printed on fairly cheap-feeling paper. There are small photographs accompanying each of the 100 short (mostly 2 to 3 pages) chapters, but they are all black and white and sadly most are not very high quality, possibly due to the paper used. This might have made a good coffee table book in a different format, but I suppose it’s more likely to be read in this form.

The book lists the events in chronological order. Many should be quite well known, in which case they have tried to include lesser known information. For instance, for the First Vision (event number 1), they include details from multiple accounts from Joseph Smith and his contemporaries, concluding by noting that “the details are less significant than the central message of the reality of God the Father and his Son Jesus Christ and of the Savior’s infinite atonement. President Henry B. Eyring said that the First Vision ‘represents that moment when Joseph learned there was a way for the power of the Atonement of Jesus Christ to be unlocked fully. Because of what Joseph saw and what began at this moment, the Savior was able, through this great and valiant servant and through others that He sent, to restore power and privilege. That power and privilege allows us, and all who will live, to have the benefits of Jesus Christ’s Atonement work in our lives’” (page 3). [Read more…] about Book Review: What You Don’t Know About the 100 Most Important Events in Church History