Controversial Issues on BBC Documentary

I've been on a bit of a hiatus due to health problems, but I now hope to be back on a regular basis. Anyway, I had something on my mind about the recent documentary aired by BBC where John Sweeney investigates the Mormon Church and Mitt Romney. I know its been a while since it aired but I just saw it tonight on Youtube. However, I would like to give my opinion on it.

I would mainly like to comment on the way Elder Holland answered the questions and held his ground in the midst of the controversial topics. I thought he did a very good job under the circumstances. Rather than break the documentary down step-by-step or accuse someone of not doing a good job, I think I will just stick to the issues at hand and give my opinion of some of the subjects covered:

1. Polygamy: I think it should have been emphasized that polygamy was phased out gradually following the 1890 revelation, and completely banned in 1910 with the exception of existing marriages. Also, more effort should have been taken to show that the FLDS is separate from the urban polygamist groups as well as the mainstream LDS church.

2. Book of Abraham: The issue was way too over-simplified by saying that Egyptologists translated the real document and it doesn't match up, and that the pictures were changed. I think maybe Elder Holland could have pointed the way to Hugh Nibley's research, including the research on the hypocephalus that just came out recently in "One Eternal Round." Theologians in LDS and secular circles alike have argued for a Semitic connection to the Egyptian funeral documents and the work of the scholars should have at least been mentioned.

3. Temple Penalties: I think an explanation about how many traditions mention you should be willing to die for your faith, and if that includes not revealing secrets given to you by God, you should be willing to make any sacrifice. I don't think its fair to say that someone can't be loyal to the government because they are willing to keep sacred covenants with God and not subject those sacred covenants to mockery.

4. Strengthening the Members Committee: Most big corporations have an internal affairs department, this is nothing new or sinister. Most churches also keep files on members and try to get members back if they leave. I was with several churches prior to being LDS and this would not have been strange or unusual in any of them. Investigating to make sure standard doctrine is taught and that members who have strayed know they are welcomed back does not seem like a bad thing.

5. 1826 Glasslooking Trial: This was incorrectly said "con-man" which isn't true. When Joseph Smith was on-trial for glasslooking it was because he was trying to make a living by helping people to find buried treasure on their property by gazing into his seer stone. These people believed in his prophetic abilities and did not feel like they had been taken. However, this was an illegal activity in the state of New York. Most believing LDS would not have a problem knowing that Joseph Smith attempted to use his prophetic abilities to get by in frontier America.

After considering these things, I think more and more that the church should explain more controversial materials in their publications. They have been doing this lately, such as in the "Joseph Smith Papers" books and the Book of Mormon issue of the Ensign. I believe that the more these controversial issues are out on the table, they will actually be less controversial because people will know their true explanation. I think it would serve to make the church stronger in the long run.

Astrological Cults and Facsimile 1 of the Book of Abraham

For this blog I would like to explain my opinion as to who the five gods are in Facsimile 1 of the Book of Abraham. The Book of Abraham is the second book of scripture in the Pearl of Great Price, the fourth book in the scripture cannon of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. There are four books recognized as scripture by the church: the King James Bible, Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price. The Pearl of Great Price consists of necessary doctrinal information for Mormons from each of the seven dispensations of time. The Book of Abraham is from Abraham's dispensation.

The picture posted with this blog is Facsimile 1 of the Book of Abraham. Egyptologists have identified this as being a scene from the Book of Breathings and critics of the church have claimed this proves that Joseph Smith didn't know what he was talking about when he attributed it to the life of Abraham. However, in later years Hugh Nibley was able to show that similar scenes have since been found that use this very motif in depicting the life of Abraham.

Joseph Smith identified the gods in the picture, which are the Four Sons of Horus, as Elkenah, Libnah, Mahmackrah, Korash, and Pharaoh. Sobek, the crocodile god in the picture, has long been identified with the god of Pharaoh, so I would like to focus on two of the other gods.

I believe that the four gods next to the altar may be astrological, and that this was an astrological cult doing the sacrificing. According to Albert Pike, in the Scottish Rite ritual monitor, Elkamer was the name of the moon god in pre-Islamic Middle Eastern countries. Going back to Abraham's time this name could have originally been Elkenah. "El Kamer," sometimes spelled "Al-Qamar" is a name used for the moon in some dialects even today.

The other god, Korash, bears a similarity to what Albert Pike calls "Korasht" in the Scottish Rite ritual monitor. This is the god of Jupiter that was worshiped the same as Elkamer. Also interesting is the number 4, as in Jupiter's four moons. Some Egyptologists have identified Horus and his four sons with Jupiter and its four moons, so this doesn't sound like much of a stretch. This link has an interesting article on Jupiter worship: http://www.varchive.org/itb/jupiter.htm

Anyway, it makes one wonder if Albert Pike and Joseph Smith could have been exposed to any of the same material, or if these were direct hits and that the people that were going to sacrifice Abraham were practicing an astrological cult.

Book Review: One Eternal Round by Nibley and Rhodes

For my next blog I thought I would write a review of Hugh Nibley's final book "One Eternal Round." I bought the book for $48 at Deseret Book, and did not mind paying that since the book was over 600 pages long and was Nibley's final work on the Book of Abraham that many said would finally silence the critics. So, I went into this book with high expectations. However, I also approached the book knowing that it was an unfinished work that was edited and finished by posthumous author Michael D. Rhodes. That, coupled with Nibley's already difficult writing style that tends to go off on tangents before tying together several topics in what some have termed "parallelomania," I knew I was in for an unusual apologetic work.

The chapters do a good job presenting the evidence, but I found them very lacking in terms of a conclusion. It was obvious Nibley intended on editing this before publishing and that much of the material would have been different had Nibley lived. So, what you basically have is a smattering of evidence promoting Joseph Smith's interpretation of the Book of Abraham, but the reader is left to tie them together to a conclusion. Now, for a breakdown of the chapters:

The first chapter is a 28 page introduction giving the reader some background on the Book of Abraham controversy and the various attacks against it, such as the Tanners. The chapter only skims the surface of the attacks so I strongly recommend reading FAIR-wiki to get the history of this issue, but you are left with a sufficient background to the objections against Joseph Smith's translations.

Chapters 2 through 5 offer a very technical background of Egyptology and Abraham, showing paralells with the Book of Abraham with other ancient works and archaeology. It attempts to show that the Book of Abraham is an ancient document by showing us evidence of similar works throughout history. While interesting, it can be some very tedious reading.

Chapters 6 through 8 interpret the hypocephalus (Facsimile 2 in the Book of Abraham) in light of what the Egyptologists say it means and it compares the interpretation with Joseph Smith's. Some of the parallels drawn here will only make sense to those that have read the Book of Abraham and been through the Temple Endowment, and the book is very careful where the temple is concerned to only mention the paralell but not tell you where or if its found in the Endowment. So, if you're preparing for the temple you may want to re-read these chapters after going through the Endowment because you will notice a few "ah-ha" moments when you read the interpretations, particularly the items in Facsimile 2 that are "had only in the temple of the Lord" or "not to be revealed at this time." In this respect, the book takes the risk of losing its audience here, and it doesn't really leave you with a conclusion about the interpretations. So, you will have to do a lot of thinking after reading these chapters to sort out the paralells, since most aren't that apparent.

Chapter 9 provides us with a comparison of the Book of Abraham with other ascension documents throughout history. Nibley has done this well in the past, and its nice to have them all right here in one chapter. These ascension texts do a good job validating both the Book of Abraham and the Book of Moses.

Chapters 10 and 11 go into hermeticism, the foundation of masonic doctrine. Hermeticism was mostly in fashion in the middle ages, but its sources stretch back in time to the ancient Egyptians. The paralells between Mormonism and Hermeticism will become apparent after reading these chapters and Nibley does a good job of presenting the evidence here.

Chapter 12 gives an introduction to the Kabbalah with a discussions of similarities between the Book of Abraham and Sefer Yetzirah, as well as similarities between the Hypocephalus and the Tree of Life. This was probably my favorite chapter since I have learned much about the Kabbalah in the Scottish Rite and this chapter does a good job tying in the Book of Abraham with ancient Judaism. While one could argue that Joseph Smith got the parallels from his own masonic background, it is still fun to consider the ancient parallels. Also, much of this kabbalistic material was not available to Smith during the 1800s and the highest masonic degree he could have received was the Royal Arch, so the probability he could have known many of these concepts is very slim.

Chapters 13 and 14 were in my opinion disappointing. They attempted to tie in a paralell between Sheshanq, the owner of the Hypocephalus, and Alexander the Great and Nimrod. The book itself says that these conclusions can't be proven. I think Nibley's intention here was to open up the way for future research, and I hope something comes out of it.

Chapter 15 was very fascinating and appealed to the math teacher in me. It is called "Geometry" and uses the ancient mathamatical constructions to show relationships in the Hypocephalus, such as the Pythagorean Theorem, Golden Ratio, etc. I think it will open the way to much research on Facsimile 2 of the Book of Abraham.

Overall, I would highly recommend this book, but only if a person already has a good background on the Book of Abraham issues. I don't think it will convince a person either way. If you are LDS it will confirm your testimony, while if you are non-LDS it may seem the paralells stretch different directions without a conclusion. For someone that is both Mormon and Mason you will definitely find things to confirm the ancient origin of both, and I think in the proper hands this book could help equip the person to argue that what we follow has an ancient origin and wasn't dreamed up in the 1800s. I highly recommend putting this book, Nibley's other works on this topic, and Hidden Treasures of Knowledge by Stephen Morgan together and see what you can come up with for each drawing on Facsimile 2. You will see "One Eternal Round" does its job adding to the plethora of evidence. Will it shut-up the critics permanently? I don't think so, but it is definitely a step in the right direction.

What I'm Researching

If anyone has already started reading this blog, I know it's been awhile since I have updated, but I'm working on some research projects right now, which I will post about as soon as they are ready.

Here's a few:
1. The Book of Abraham Facsimile 1 and ancient astrology cults
2. Hermetic philosophy and 2 Nephi in the Book of Mormon
3. Scottish Rite 4th degree and the role of secrecy in the mystery religions

I'm working on a lot right now for the Guthrie and Master Craftsman programs so it may take a week or two, but I'm planning to have some interesting posts up in the near future.