Bookshelf: Othmar Keel

Othmar Keel's book The Symbolism of the Biblical World is a classic (40+ years old now) that I have only discovered in recent weeks.  It's full of nuggets that make amazing sense in light of the Visionary Men Paradigm.

In The Goodness in the Mysteries and also in class, discussing the Sermon on the Mount, I suggested that the relationship between Nephi's Visionary Men and the Secret Combinations is not casual -- as shown by their contrasting teachings on oaths, they are polar opposites.  So I enjoyed this passage in Keel:

Besides the entirely private enemy (enmity based on rivalry) arising out of some specified personal affair (dispute over an inheritance, over a woman, over an honorary post, etc.), every community knows a type of enemy which represents, as it were, the antipole to what the community recognizes as good and desirable and continuously threatens the same... Enemies of this sort are by their nature carriers of all that is subversive and evil.  The view which a particular group or culture holds of its enemies is crucial to an understanding of that group or culture.

Israel -- the One Who Sees God

Philo makes a number of interpretations repeatedly.  One is that Israel means "the one who sees God" and therefore the "Man of Vision" or the "race that has vision" (The Confusion of Tongues, XX, XXVIII, XXXI).  For Philo, "Israel" meant the "visionary men." John Chrysostom (Homilies 58), St. Augustine (City of God 16:39), and an old Christian document called On the Origin of the World (one of the Nag Hammadi texts) know the same meaning.

The Religion of Abraham

We'll get into Deuteronomy at some point, but as we're reading Moses / Genesis now, it's probably worth stopping a moment to summarize the religion of Abraham, as we see it here.  Here's a non-exhaustive list of observations:

1. Abraham hears God's voice and also sees Him.  
2. Abraham's God also communicates through dreams.
3. Abraham builds altars at the places where he sees God.   The Hebrew text uses the technical term maqom to refer to these sacred sites -- the word simply means "place," but Deuteronomy specifically forbids maqoms of sacrifice other than the Jerusalem temple.
4. Abraham knows sacred trees (what is translated here as the "plains" of Mamre is really the "oaks" or "terebinths" of Mamre).  
5. Under one such sacred tree, Abraham receives three holy men as visitors, shares bread with them and washes their feet.
6. Abraham makes covenants with God.  As a result of these covenants, he receives a new name.
7. For Abraham, astronomy has a sacred dimension.  He sees the stars in a visionary context, and the stars are people (his priestly descendants).
8. Abraham has a son by a "handmaid." We already noted interesting things about royal, tented, status-conferring Sarah and his relationship with her.
9. Abraham knows the sacrifice of a son on a sacred mountain.

Slide Deck for January 5, 2014 Lesson

These are the slides I'm presenting in Sunday School today.  Putting them into PNG format has killed the animations -- in particular, this seriously degrades slide 3.  Sorry about that.

Behold, It Is the Hand of the Lord

Nephite civilization (as Moroni knows it) ends with the wicked punishing the wicked.  Moroni proclaims this to be the "hand" of the Lord.

"Robbers" survive along with "Lamanites."  These robbers might well have thought of themselves as Nephites, but initiates into the false mysteries of the Gadiantons, rather than the true mysteries of the Visionary Men.

I Was Forbidden That I Should Preach

Mormon must have understood that the shalem's basic mission was preaching, because he immediately tells us why he didn't preach: he was forbidden.  The visionary men have once again gone underground.

Mormon's position is parallel to Isaiah's.  At Isaiah's calling, which took place in a temple setting, he was commanded to go preach... but in a way that his audience wouldn't understand.

Ye Have Both Heard My Voice, and Seen Me

Having conducted them through the Worship of the Shalems, Christ tells his disciples that they have heard his voice, and seen him.  This reminds me of what I pointed out the other day about Nephi's take on the Isaiah chapters: that he knows them as things that are spoken and witnessed, and not just as words on a page.  Nephi also tells us that he and Jacob both saw "the Redeemer," as Isaiah did, in the context of introducing the arc of Isaiah chapters in 2 Nephi.  Of course, in the climax of the Worship of the Shalems, the participants entered the strait gate and narrow way and met the Lord in person.

I Do Not Destroy the Prophets

The Nephites expected the coming of the Lord in terms of the Worship of the Shalems and the Day of Atonement.  When he arrives, he leads them through the shalem-ordinance, which leaves them understandably confused.  He assures them that the "law is fulfilled," but the "prophets" aren't yet.  The "prophets" are another name Nephi gives to Lehi's colleagues, the visionary men.