The Goodness and the Mysteries

Monday, December 31, 2012

Wherefore, Holy Brethren

The "Apostle" is the sent one, which in the context of the Worship of the Shalems is the same thing as a high priest. Those who share in the heavenly call are fellow hearers of the voice of the Lord, calling from the Holy of Holies.

Sunday, December 30, 2012

He Took on the Seed of Abraham

The seed of Abraham are Melchizedek priests, high priests. The Book of Abraham tells us the same thing.

Saturday, December 29, 2012

Him that Had the Power of Death

Jesus overcomes the devil, and delivers the shalems from bondage. He must do this by paying the uttermost farthing.

Friday, December 28, 2012

Partakers of Flesh and Blood

There's a playful ambiguity in verse 14. On the one hand, Jesus took a body of flesh and blood like any mortal. On the other hand, the writer alludes to the feast of the flesh and blood of Melchizedek, the bread and wine eaten in the hekal.

Thursday, December 27, 2012

I Will Declare Thy Name

The writer continues with liturgical quotations. Psalm 22 appears to be the collective cry of a congregation urging the Lord to appear to them. That makes it a good complement to Isaiah 8, in which the Melchizedek priest who is the Lord is still hiding, but he -- the child of the Virgin -- will be a sign and a wonder for Israel. This reminds us of Hebrews 2:4 and suggests what signs and wonders the writer is there referring to: the appearance of the Virgin's Son.

Wednesday, December 26, 2012

It Became Him

Christ leads God's other sons into "glory." He is made "perfect through sufferings," and the word that means 'make perfect,' teleosai, comes from the same root that appears in Matthew 5:48.

Tuesday, December 25, 2012

A Little Lower than the Angels

The writer quotes Psalm 8, identifying it as the testimony of someone "in a certain place" (Greek pou, somewhere). This Psalm is about the exaltation of a man or men. These men are created "lower than the angels," which in temple geography means that they rise from outside the temple, or perhaps are created in the first of the three rooms. Nevertheless, God crowns and enthrones them -- they are exalted with God. This is the Worship of the Shalems, and Hebrews uses this imagery to describe the exaltation of Jesus.

By Way of Explanation

This blog started as an email list, to which I sent daily updates of my Book of Mormon reading, as I promised my Elders Quorum I would do. Then it came to this URL as a private blog, and then to a Drupal-powered site. I wanted to invite people to join a private community that talked about the Book of Mormon.

The Drupal site, tragically, has crashed (probably nothing to do with Drupal), so I brought the blog back here. In the meantime, I've also published a couple of books -- Plain and Precious Things: The Temple Religion of the Book of Mormon's Visionary Men and The Goodness and the Mysteries: On the Path of the Book of Mormon's Visionary Men.

As of year end 2013, I've been called to teach Gospel Doctrine in my ward. So I'm leaving up all the old posts and comments, and I'm now going to use this blog to post class outlines, book recommendations, and so forth. Please feel free to share and comment!

Here I Stand

Here are some things I think about the Book of Mormon, the Bible and the origin of the Nephite community. This is not systematic, but intended to explain what might seem like idiosyncratic perspectives.

A) I believe the Book of Mormon is what it claims to be.

B) I believe the Bible is a collection of books recording the experiences and thoughts of Israel and the early Christians.

C) I think both halves of the Bible have been doctored by people who didn't like the true ancient religion of Israel and the true doctrines of Christ, and wished to conceal them beneath their own teachings.

D) I think Lehi left Jerusalem during one of the great moments of conflict in Israelite religion, when reformers (often called "Deuteronomists" by Bible scholars) were changing the way religion was practiced in Israel and rewriting the holy documents to prove themselves right.

E) We read these reformers as heroes in the Bible, because they won, and got to tell the story the way they wanted it. Lehi belonged to the other party, the "prophets" or "visionary men", who lost. This "loser's view" of the sixth century B.C. makes the Book of Mormon an invaluable resource that secular Bible scholars would kill to have. Ironically.

F) This is gross simplification, but: the visionary men went underground, but didn't cease to exist. 1 Enoch is one of their books, along with much of what we call Second Temple or Intertestamental literature or the Apocalyptic Books or the Pseudepigrapha or the Apocrypha. The Dead Sea Scrolls people inherited many of their ideas. The first Christians were Israelites of the traditional religion, more heirs of the visionary men, who recognized Christ as the Messiah who had been promised by the ancient faith.

G) Lehi and his people carried the practices of the visionary men into the promised land. They loved the temple, and its rites were the sources of their prophesies. Crucially, they had visions, the imagery of which was derived from temple furniture, architecture and ritual (1 Nephi 8 and 1 Nephi 11-14 are showcase examples of this). I think it is demonstrable that the Nephites knew an endowment rite, which is expressed both in 1 Nephi 8 and in the Sermon at the Temple (and elsewhere, as I discuss in Plain and Precious Things). That and the Day of Atonement rite were the "rock" and the "salvation," the two ordinances central to the doctrines and prophecies of the visionary men.

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