CWK: Becoming a god: deification in Mormonism and Orthodox theosis

[Kishkumen]

Focus, for Joseph, the sex was the real and tangible part of the con, the promise of eternal increase was the prop for his con to get the sex he desired. You are not helping yourself with this type of approach Kish. As I wrote the promise was a means to the end to get in the pants of these women.

No, I am telling you that you are boring me by repeating the same stuff I have read a thousand times here and elsewhere. You may find it "interesting" to reduce everything connected to deification and polygamy to the motive of "getting into the pants of these women," but, I'm telling you, he was pretty darn successful at that without all that religious noise. So, please try harder to come up with an explanation. Don't just repeat the same unconvincing stuff.

It is especially vexing when:

I don't need Joseph Smith to be a holy saint.
I already concede that he was sexually immoral quite a bit.
And, of course polygamy had *something* to do with his sexual appetites.

That doesn't satisfy you, though. To satisfy you, I need to agree to your reductive formula for the cause of polygamy and deification, and, if I don't, you somehow reason that I must be an apologist or even DCP himself.

It is as predictable as it is boring.

It was a tool and prop for his con, and it worked rather well for him for a season, at least until it caught up with him. The sex part of this was real, the power grab was real, eeking out a living was real.....the promise that these folks can become God's, was the con. It is really not that hard to see and understand.

Yeah, the con artist meme for explaining charismatic religious leadership is pretty well established now. You didn't invent it, and you are not the first person to propose these things. I daresay much better historians than you have fleshed them out for me much better than you have. That is why your version isn't very interesting to me. Yours isn't the best version I have read.

[Kishkumen]

Voltaire? The best Bible? So I went through Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary, and I don't know where to even start. Here's just one example related to the topic of deification. Voltaire's entry for the topic of Angels in summary:

1. An eternal God, absorbed in the contemplation of His own existence, resolved, in the fulness of time, to communicate His glory and His essence to beings capable of feeling and partaking His beatitude as well as of contributing to His glory.
2. God forms angels partly of His own essence, capable of perfection or imperfection, according to their will.
3. The Eternal divides the angelic army into several bands, and gave to each a chief. They adored the Eternal, ranged around His throne, each in the degree assigned him.
4. The angel who was "chief of the first band" becomes envious and rejects "the power of perfection" by exercising his "power of imperfection"
5. Other angels join his band, they go through the celestial creation recruiting other angels, declaring: “we will govern”
6. God, whose omniscience, prescience, and influence extended over all things except the action of the beings whom He has created free, beheld with grief and anger the rebellion of the various chiefs of the angels.
7. Yet confirmed in their spirit of independence, the rebel angels persisted in their revolt.
8. After some time, the first created angel (associated with Jesus) petitions for the rebel angels to be pardoned. Earth is created as a place of probation and rehabilitation for the angels.

That's just one single entry in an entire dictionary that, in my opinion, is a likely candidate for Joseph Smith Sr's "Best Bible" award

And if you go to the source of Voltaire's account, a British diplomat named Holwell who forged a set of ancient Indian scriptures to fill the gaps in the Old Testament, things get even more bizarre. At the core is an effort to restore the pure ancient theology alongside a sort of Pythagorean/Platonic metempsychosis/theosis

Have you looked into Voltaire's source for the Shastah (Shastra)?

[Gadianton]

Huh? I am interested in many things....Why are you so butt hurt? Smith was far more that just a womanizer....he was also a charlatan, a thief, and much more, including a piss poor husband and father.

Same for the Christian savior Donald Trump. You left one cult only to join a worse one. And you did it as an adult when you should have been able to know better.

It was a tool and prop for his con, and it worked rather well for him for a season, at least until it caught up with him. The sex part of this was real, the power grab was real, eeking out a living was real.....the promise that these folks can become God's, was the con. It is really not that hard to see and understand.

You're stretching the limits of your metaphor of D&C 132 being "rooted in sex".

cults of personality and authoritarian regimes end up with the leader getting easy access to sex, independent of how well sex-based themes are incorporated into the institutions in obvious ways. Glam rock bands that wrote songs about little but sex and partying and then end up in therapy because of all the sex and drugs, don't have a fundamental problem that country bands who ended up in therapy for all the sex and drugs they did, but yet wrote songs about paying their bills and rodeo. Motley Crue was in it for the music as much as Garth brooks was and wrote far better music.

Saying that Joseph Smith started Mormonism only for sex and the whole thing was a superficial scam to get more sex and nothing else is like saying Nikki Sixx started Motley Crue as a pretense only to party and get sex, hey, just read their lyrics! A huge problem with the argument is that cult leaders and music stars can hardly predict their success.

Authoritarian nightmares like the one you support typically end up anti-woman and with the men at the top having easy access to sex. You and msnobody don't get a free pass on criticizing the morality of Mormon leaders from a high horse of Trump supporting Christianity.

[Zosimus]

Have you looked into Voltaire's source for the Shastah (Shastra)?

I'd read it years ago and was impressed by the similarities to those crazy Lex de Azevedo songs I grew up listening to. But i didn't see how any of it could have reached the Smith's in the 1800s. I'd known that Voltaire had written a lot on the shastra, so was really surprised to read that Joseph Sr. was familiar with Voltaire's writings

The wild thing about the shastra is that its not a gentoo/hindu text, as Voltaire believed. Its about as Indian as the Book of Mormon is Indian. JZ Holwell was from London. He admired and referenced Ramsay's Travels of Cyrus and the lectures of a guy named Jacob Ilive, who "translated" the (pseudo) Book of Jasher. Holwell's shastra is really an 18th-century pseudo-Biblical text, with names like Birmah and Mozasor swapped in for Jesus and Satan.

The gentoo texts translated by Holwell are only one part of the story. The other prong is the gentoo texts translated by another British orientalist named Halhed who wrote "A Code of Gentoo Laws". Halhed was the most public disciples of Richard Brothers, behind the British Isrealism movement that, according to both Brooke and Quinn, influenced the New Israelite movement of Vermont. Halhed, who overlapped with Holwell in India and had studied his translations, published his testimony of British Israelism in Richard Brothers' "Revealed Knowledge of Prophecies" which was available in Hanover while the Smiths were there.

THE1800’s “NEW ISRAELITES”
Richard Brothers, the Woods, the Cowderys, and M. M. Noah

Apologies this is all off-topic. I'll try and get to opening a new thread

[Kishkumen]

Have you looked into Voltaire's source for the Shastah (Shastra)?

I'd read it years ago and was impressed by the similarities to those crazy Lex de Azevedo songs I grew up listening to. But i didn't see how any of it could have reached the Smith's in the 1800s. I'd known that Voltaire had written a lot on the shastra, so was really surprised to read that Joseph Sr. was familiar with Voltaire's writings

The wild thing about the shastra is that its not a gentoo/hindu text, as Voltaire believed. Its about as Indian as the Book of Mormon is Indian. JZ Holwell was from London. He admired and referenced Ramsay's Travels of Cyrus and the lectures of a guy named Jacob Ilive, who "translated" the (pseudo) Book of Jasher. Holwell's shastra is really an 18th-century pseudo-Biblical text, with names like Birmah and Mozasor swapped in for Jesus and Satan.

The gentoo texts translated by Holwell are only one part of the story. The other prong is the gentoo texts translated by another British orientalist named Halhed who wrote "A Code of Gentoo Laws". Halhed was the most public disciples of Richard Brothers, behind the British Isrealism movement that, according to both Brooke and Quinn, influenced the New Israelite movement of Vermont. Halhed, who overlapped with Holwell in India and had studied his translations, published his testimony of British Israelism in Richard Brothers' "Revealed Knowledge of Prophecies" which was available in Hanover while the Smiths were there.

THE1800’s “NEW ISRAELITES”
Richard Brothers, the Woods, the Cowderys, and M. M. Noah

Apologies this is all off-topic. I'll try and get to opening a new thread

Have you read this?

https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/re ... CA9A583069

[huckelberry]

Mark , I do not think it makes sense to try and deny the sexual dimension of Joseph Smith polygamy but that is only part of the matter. I think it is clear that Joseph sought to build a community of closely linked and committed people. There was a depth of commitment and sense of sacrifice that people desired and polygamy tapped into. That commitment system lives on today in the temple.

People probably have different reactions but for me dc132 is disturbing for reasons other than sex. I find the power grab , control and vainglory quite dark.

Joseph hid and denied polygamy. The folks for the most part denied it, if they even knew about it when he was alive. His is bane was going after Law and the others that wanted to expose it, which was very much part of section 132 and the sin Joseph asked forgiveness for and the very threat to Emma if she did not agree with it.

Section 132 starts with

1 Verily, thus saith the Lord unto you my servant Joseph, that inasmuch as you have inquired of my hand to know and understand wherein I, the Lord, justified my servants Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as also Moses, David and Solomon, my servants, as touching the principle and doctrine of their having many wives and concubines

It goes on to read that those that do not enter into it, are damned. meaning those that did not enter into plural marriage, and sexual relations, were not going to become Gods, of deified.

6 And as pertaining to the new and everlasting covenant, it was instituted for the fulness of my glory; and he that receiveth a fulness thereof must and shall abide the law, or he shall be damned, saith the Lord God.


it then goes on to speak of fruits of the "loins," virgins, etc....

Is this a power grab sure, a power grab deeply grounded in taking advantage of women sexually, with the promise of deification and eternal increase taking advantage of their motherly instincts and the promise of a eternal family.

It does live on in the temple for sure, which is a huge part of my point.

As far as building a community, sure, one that served and benefited him. But again, the very most knew nothing about polygamy, it was mainly BY that introduced it to the Brigamites, with help of his wives. While those that followed William and Emma denied it.

Mark, i think the fact that many people were involved in polygamy indicates it played an important structural social role.

I found in interesting Dialogue article, link pending

There were other polygamous husbands in Nauvoo besides the prophet and his private clerk. Smith urged that plural marriage was essential for the church, warning that “the church could not go on until that principal [sic] was established.”[41] Between April 5,1841, and January 17, 1842, he took his first four officially recorded plural wives: Louisa Beaman, Zina D. Huntington, Prescindia L. Huntington, and Mary Elizabeth Rollins Lightner. Theodore Turley, Brigham Young, Jonathan Holmes, Reynolds Cahoon, and Heber C. Kimball each took one plural wife in 1842. Smith married fourteen more women that year, making a total of twenty-three plural wives he and his associates married by the end of 1842. On January 18,1843, Willard Richards took the twenty-fourth plural wife. Other new polygamous husbands in 1843 included Thomas Bullock, William D. Huntington, Lorenzo Dow Young, Orson Pratt, Joseph Bates Noble, William Clayton, Orson Hyde, James Bird, Parley P. Pratt, James Adams, William Felshaw, Amasa Lyman, Hyrum Smith, Benjamin Mitchell, John Bair, Henry Lyman Cook, Ebenezer Richardson, John Taylor, and Edwin D. Woolley. In addition, Joseph Smith contributed fifteen more women to the total of forty-two new plural wives in 1843. In 1844, up to June 27 when the prophet was killed, Erastus Snow, John D. Lee, Ezra T. Benson, and Dominicus Carter became polygamists, and nineteen more plural wives in that half-year made a grand total of eighty-four plural marriages in the Nauvoo community while Smith was still alive.

............The thirty polygamous husbands from 1841 up to Joseph Smith’s death on June 27,1844, had married a total of 114 legal and plural wives, who had borne 131 children. These men averaged thirty-six years of age (range: 24-60) and had been married an average of ten years (1-32 years) before marrying a second wife of a mean twenty-five years of age (14-39 years). At that time, their legal wives averaged thirty-two years of age (22-56 years), four years younger than their husbands and seven years older than the first plural wife at the time of her marriage. At the time of these first polygamous marriages, the nuclear family included an average of four pre-polygamous children (0-9). During the Nauvoo years these families would grow to include an average of eight wives (2-43) and six children (1-17). In the post-Nauvoo years these original thirty families would eventually accumulate an average of twelve wives (2-55) and twenty-seven children each (0-65). Without Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, and Heber C. Kimball—the three most-married men—these families averaged four wives and six children during the Nauvoo years, and ultimately eight wives and twenty-five children each

https://www.dialoguejournal.com/article ... -report-2/

[Kishkumen]

Thanks for doing this huckelberry. If Markk were serious, he would learn this stuff for himself, but, since his goal is so singleminded, he feels actually learning about what polygamy was is a waste of his time. He can stop at proving Joseph Smith to have been a bad guy to his own satisfaction. What annoys the crap out of me is that I get accused of being DCP when I say I am not entertained by his myopic take on Mormonism.

After all, I dislike polygamy. I do not approve of it. It is a terrible social system that leads to disaster. I do not approve of Joseph Smith's terrible implementation of polygamy, full of lies, betrayals, and alienations as it was.

But the thing that is really odd here is that Markk seems to think that there is a necessary connection between something being a disaster and it being a con or two-dimensional in its conception. The logic of his assumptions does not bear out. Yes, people actually do things out of sincere motives they believe to be good that turn out to be disastrous in their ramifications.

To get back to what Gad said, look at the Trumpster Fire of our current political situation. Nearly half of the voting public is about to vote for a man who tried to overturn an election with an armed mob, and who has been called a fascist by two high-ranking generals that worked in his administration. Some of these people are wonderful folk, and some of them are doing this transparently awful thing out of what they sincerely believe to be good Christian motivations.

As D&C 132 shows, polygamy was considered to be part of the Restoration of All Things, an idea Joseph Smith seems to have taken very seriously, beginning with his translation of the Book of Mormon. Doesn't make it good. Doesn't make it right. Doesn't make it sustainable. Doesn't make Joseph Smith a "decent guy." But let's not tailor our explanations to suit our own prejudices. When people tell us why they are doing things, let's listen to them.

[Kishkumen]

You're stretching the limits of your metaphor of D&C 132 being "rooted in sex".

cults of personality and authoritarian regimes end up with the leader getting easy access to sex, independent of how well sex-based themes are incorporated into the institutions in obvious ways. Glam rock bands that wrote songs about little but sex and partying and then end up in therapy because of all the sex and drugs, don't have a fundamental problem that country bands who ended up in therapy for all the sex and drugs they did, but yet wrote songs about paying their bills and rodeo. Motley Crue was in it for the music as much as Garth brooks was and wrote far better music.

Saying that Joseph Smith started Mormonism only for sex and the whole thing was a superficial scam to get more sex and nothing else is like saying Nikki Sixx started Motley Crue as a pretense only to party and get sex, hey, just read their lyrics! A huge problem with the argument is that cult leaders and music stars can hardly predict their success.

Authoritarian nightmares like the one you support typically end up anti-woman and with the men at the top having easy access to sex. You and msnobody don't get a free pass on criticizing the morality of Mormon leaders from a high horse of Trump supporting Christianity.

Thanks, Dean Robbers. I agree with what you say here. You have a real talent for finding the right modern comparanda.

[Markk]

Huck wrote...Mark, i think the fact that many people were involved in polygamy indicates it played an important structural social role.

Hey Huck,

Sure, later as I wrote with the Brigamites. Very few were involved before Joseph died. Emma did not even know about for a long while. In the early Nauvoo period, pre expositor, and Joseph's martyr, how many were involved, you tell me and how was it interrogated in the church? At the time the Relief Society issued a statement that marriage was between 1 man and 1 wife because of rumors. Even while some of the women, like ES was having sex with Smith behind Emma's back.

Have you read Claytons journal? The ELC was basically verbal at this point and 132 was a two or three decades from being doctrine.

If we are going to be factual....and you can tell me. How important was sexual relations to Joseph in the early Ohio and Nauvoo days? Why was he having sex with these women, and promising them eternal life, giving them things like watches and land, if these sexual relations were not a key part of the ELC?

As I wrote, and you are alluding to, polygamy evolved....and always in a sexual nature, making sure all the quivers were full.

I took the time to listen to Kish's podcast while commuting today to work, and unless I missed it, he did not mention Joseph Smith, polygamy and the ELC once, not once. Do you think that it just might be important to note Joseph Smith's teaching on man becoming a God? So who is being factual here?

[Moksha]

What annoys the crap out of me is that I get accused of being DCP ...

Do you feel the urge to rage against a Malignant Stalker and a mini-stalker while listening to Vivaldi's Four Seasons?