The Christ Conspiracy.

[_Jersey Girl]

Gaz offers the following:

"From Hugh Nibley, Temple and Cosmos: pg. 26-27

We have been assuming..... that our temple is of the same class as the temples of the Egyptions. Let me explain that. The ordinances of the Egyption temple were essentialy the same as those performed in ours. And that is to be explained very simply: they have a common origin. The clue is given in Abraham 1:26: " Pharaoh, being a righteous man, established his kingdom and judged his people wisely and justly all his days, seeking earnestly to imitate that order established by the fathers in the first generations, in the days of the first patriarchal reign, even in the reign of Adam, and also of Noah, his father, who blessed him with the bblessings of the earth". he sought diligently, he sought earnestly, to imitate that order that went back to the fathers of the first generation in the first patriarchal reign. The egyption ordinance also always had one purpose - to go back to the sp tpy - the First time, the time of the first man, who was Adam. the Egyptions didn't have it, and they knew it. So they sought to imitate it. Interestingly, Oharaoh spent his days in the archives in the House of Life, searching through the geneological records with the nobles of the court turning over the records, looking for some geneological proof that he really had authority. he never found it, and it broke his heart. And "Pharoah being of that lineage by which he could not have the right of Priesthood, notwithstanding the Pharaohs would fain claim it from Noah" - made a very good imitation, seeking very earnestly to imitate that order which went back to the beginning.

From this we see that this ancient religion was actually based on Christian teachings, albeit corrupted. To assign Christianity was stolen from Egyptology is rather amuseing through this light."

Extracting this: From Hugh Nibley, Temple and Cosmos: pg. 26-27

We have been assuming..... that our temple is of the same class as the temples of the Egyptions. Let me explain that. The ordinances of the Egyption temple were essentialy the same as those performed in ours. And that is to be explained very simply: they have a common origin. The clue is given in Abraham 1:26: " Pharaoh, being a righteous man, established his kingdom and judged his people wisely and justly all his days, seeking earnestly to imitate that order established by the fathers in the first generations, in the days of the first patriarchal reign, even in the reign of Adam, and also of Noah, his father, who blessed him with the bblessings of the earth". he sought diligently, he sought earnestly, to imitate that order that went back to the fathers of the first generation in the first patriarchal reign. The egyption ordinance also always had one purpose - to go back to the sp tpy - the First time, the time of the first man, who was Adam. the Egyptions didn't have it, and they knew it. So they sought to imitate it. Interestingly, Oharaoh spent his days in the archives in the House of Life, searching through the geneological records with the nobles of the court turning over the records, looking for some geneological proof that he really had authority. he never found it, and it broke his heart. And "Pharoah being of that lineage by which he could not have the right of Priesthood, notwithstanding the Pharaohs would fain claim it from Noah" - made a very good imitation, seeking very earnestly to imitate that order which went back to the beginning.

From this we see that this ancient religion was actually based on Christian teachings, albeit corrupted. To assign Christianity was stolen from Egyptology is rather amuseing through this light.


Extracting this: The ordinances of the Egyption temple were essentialy the same as those performed in ours.

What ordinances is Mr. Nibley talking about there and what period of Egyptian history is he referring to?

Jersey Girl

[_Ray A]

this also happened when Lysanias was tetrarch of Abilene and Annas and Caiaphas were high priests. But Lysanias ruled Abilene from c. 40 B.C.E until he was executed in 36 B.C.E by Mark Antony, about 60 years before the date for Tiberias and about 30 years before the supposed birth of Jesus! (emphasis added)

This was answered a long time ago:

Another supposed mistake has been detected by some in Luke iii. 1, where Lysanias is said to have been tetrarch of Abilene (west of Damascus) in the fifteenth year of Tiberius (AD 27-28), whereas the only Lysanias of Abilene otherwise known from ancient history bore the title of king and was executed by order of Mark Antony in 34 BC. Evidence of a later Lysanias who had the status of tetrarch has, however, been forthcoming from an inscription recording the dedication of a temple 'for the salvation of the Lords Imperial and their whole household, by Nymphaeus us, a freedman of Lysanias the tetrarch'. The reference to 'the Lords Imperial'-a joint title given only to the Emperor Tiberius and his mother Livia, the widow of Augustus-fixes the date of the inscription between AD 14 (the year of Tiberius' accession) and 29 (the year of Livia's death). On the strength of this and other evidence we may well be satisfied with the verdict of the historian Eduard Meyer, that Luke's reference to Lysanias is 'entirely correct'.'

http://www.Bible.ca/b-new-testament-documents-f-f-bruce-ch7.htm

The basic argument that X predated Y, X and Y are similar in some way; therefore, ths story Y depends on X, is pretty weak.

According to an entry in Wiki on Lysanias:

Recently, archaeology stepped in and found an inscription on a temple from the time of Tiberius (the Roman emperor from 14 - 37 AD), which named Lysanias as the Tetrach of Abila near Damascus --- just as Luke has written.

The temple inscription reads:

Huper tes ton kurion Se[baston] soterias kai tou sum[pantos] auton oikou, Numphaios Ae[tou] Lusianiou tetrarchou apele[utheors] ten odon ktisas k.t.l

Translation:

"For the salvation of the August Lords and of all their household, Nymphaeus, freedman of Eagle Lysanias tetarch established this street and other things."

The reference August lords is a joint title given only to the emperor Tiberius (son of Augustus) and his mother Livia (widow of Augustus) - this reference establishes the date of the inscription to between A.D. 14 and 29: the year 14 was the year of Tiberius' accession and the year 29 was the year of Livia's death....

So the 15th year of Tiberius is the year 29 AD, and it lies within the reign of the August lords. Therefore, Luke's reference was right, Lysanias was a tetrarch around the time of John the baptist (AD 29).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysanias

[_Ray A]

I watched his series of videos called the power of myth, and he seemed to come to the same conclusion, that Christ stemmed from egyption myth.

What Campbell and others fail to understand is that Christ was the same God who instructed noah to build the Ark, and from the writeings of Noah, an apostate Egypt developed their beliefs.


From Hugh Nibley, Temple and Cosmos: pg. 26-27

We have been assuming..... that our temple is of the same class as the temples of the Egyptions. Let me explain that. The ordinances of the Egyption temple were essentialy the same as those performed in ours. And that is to be explained very simply: they have a common origin.

I think the word should be Egyptians, not Egyptions. I have read Temple and Cosmos, but this must have slipped past me, or I've forgotten, and no longer have the book anyway. What I don't understand about your point here is that the Egyptians developed "apostate beliefs". Yet Nibley is saying that the "Egyptian temple [ceremonies?] were essentially the same as those performed in ours"? How could they have apostate beliefs and it be the same as the Mormon temple ceremony? Did the Egyptians know about Eloheim and Jehovah, and Peter, James and John? The temple ceremonies could not have been the same. I'm not even sure that the Egyptians had temple ceremonies anything on a par with Mormon temple ceremonies. They had basic afterlife beliefs, which was why they placed food in burial tombs, and sometimes servants or slaves of masters or kings were slain to accompany them in the afterlife. Their concept of the afterlife was nothing like Mormonism.

[_Gazelam]

It's obvious that neither the priesthood, nor the Spirit of the Lord accompanied the ordinances they performed, they were merely imitating what they had from the records of Noah.

The South Americans had something similar as a remnant of what was left behind from the Nephites:

http://www.ayahuasca-shamanism.co.uk/Koricancha-2.htm

[_Ray A]

It's obvious that neither the priesthood, nor the Spirit of the Lord accompanied the ordinances they performed, they were merely imitating what they had from the records of Noah.

The South Americans had something similar as a remnant of what was left behind from the Nephites:

http://www.ayahuasca-shamanism.co.uk/Koricancha-2.htm

This of course is speculation on your part. The link mentions worship of the sun, moon and earth, but whether this is a corrupted form of what the Nephites left behind is pure speculation. The Book of Mormon does not say what went on in temples, and the closest we come to teaching is this, from Jacob 1:

15 And now it came to pass that the people of Nephi, under the reign of the second king, began to grow hard in their hearts, and indulge themselves somewhat in wicked practices, such as like unto David of old desiring many wives and concubines, and also Solomon, his son.
16 Yea, and they also began to search much gold and silver, and began to be lifted up somewhat in pride.
17 Wherefore I, Jacob, gave unto them these words as I taught them in the temple, having first obtained mine errand from the Lord.

But what he taught them has no relation to temple ordinances as we know them today. The Nephites could not have taught Celestial marriage as revealed in D&C 132, because the Book of Mormon does not say that marriage is essential to exaltation, in fact they didn't even have the concept of exaltation! Plural marriage was eschewed except under very limited circumstances and only to "raise up seed", not for salvation or exaltation, as it would later become in section 132. The temple ceremony also mentions the three kingdoms, and the Nephites did not have a concept of three kingdoms. That came in 1832 with section 76. The sun, moon and stars as relating to the three kingdoms is unknown in the Book of Mormon. So, hypothetically, even if they did have temple ceremonies, it would have been very different to what Mormon temple ceremonies are today. But the temple in the Book of Mormon was a place of teaching - gospel principles. So if the Nephites didn't have it, how could the Egyptians? Especially if they were apostates.

[_Ray A]

Here you will find all of the written records which point to Jesus' existence: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus

Now I'm not just going to Wiki and plucking this out. I have studied all of this on my own, but I find that this Wiki entry summarises it. These are the evidences:

1) The Gospels. (The strongest evidence)
2) The Pauline Epistles. (Paul never met Christ in the flesh)
3) The New Testament Apocrypha.
4) The Gospel of Thomas.
5) The Gnostic texts.
6) The early Church Fathers. (Who lived long after Christ)
7) Non Christian writings. Josephus, Pliny, et. al., who are summarised in order as follows:

7a) Josephus
7b) Pliny The Younger.
7c) Suetonius.
7d) Tacitus.
8) Jewish Records. Fill in the citations needed if you have them:

The Mishnah is a law code and not a record of legal proceedings nor a general history. This and other legal texts of the Roman Period were later compiled into the 30 volume collection called the Talmud. It mentions a person called Yeshu, who lived during the reign of the Hasmonean King Yannai (Jannaeus) in the early 1st century BCE and who was executed by stoning for enticing other Jews to idolatry. Despite the disimiliarity of this individual with Jesus, they are sometimes equated.[citation needed] The name Yeshu (ישו) uses the same letters as the abbreviation "Y.Sh.V." (יש״ו), which scribes use to stand for the longer phrase, "his name will be erased and its memory" (ימח שמו וזכרו Yemakh Shmo V-zikhro), which signifies a Jew convicted of enticing to idolatry, whose name has been blotted out. [citation needed] Thus, several individuals whose names the scribes refuse to preserve are also sometimes equated with Jesus. [citation needed]

Jesus as a historical person:

Consequently, scholars like Sanders, Geza Vermes, John P. Meier, David Flusser, James H. Charlesworth, Raymond E. Brown, Paula Fredriksen and John Dominic Crossan argue that, although many readers are accustomed to thinking of Jesus solely as a theological figure whose existence is a matter only of religious debate, the four canonical Gospel accounts are based on source documents written within living memory of Jesus' lifetime, and therefore provide a basis for the study of the "historical" Jesus. These historians also draw on other historical sources and archaeological evidence to reconstruct the life of Jesus in his historical and cultural context.

Note: Historical and archaeological contexts do not prove much. A myth can develop out of valid historical and archaeological contexts. Especially when it's only a "living memory". Does anyone doubt that James Michener's novels do not contain historical fact? For example, Caribbean.

On Josephus:

The following passage appears in the Greek version of Antiquities of the Jews xviii 3.3, in the translation of William Whiston:

3.3 Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man; for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ. And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day; as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him. And the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day.

As usual with ancient texts, the surviving sources for this passage are Greek manuscripts, all minuscules, the oldest of which dates from the 9th century. It is likely that these all derive from a single exemplar written in uncial, as is the case with most other ancient Greek texts transmitted to the present in medieval copies, and have come down through the hands of the church. The text of Antiquities appears to have been transmitted in two halves — books 1–10 and books 11–20. But other ad hoc copies of this passage also exist.

Textual continuity
Many modern historians reject the passage as an interpolation for several reasons inherent in the text. In its context, passage 3.2 runs directly into passage 3.4, and thus the thread of continuity, of "sad calamities," is interrupted by this passage. The context, without the testimonium passage, reads:

3.2 So he bid the Jews himself go away; but they boldly casting reproaches upon him, he gave the soldiers that signal which had been beforehand agreed on; who laid upon them much greater blows than Pilate had commanded them, and equally punished those that were tumultuous, and those that were not; nor did they spare them in the least: and since the people were unarmed, and were caught by men prepared for what they were about, there were a great number of them slain by this means, and others of them ran away wounded. And thus an end was put to this sedition. 3.4 About the same time also another sad calamity put the Jews into disorder, and certain shameful practices happened about the temple of Isis that was at Rome.
However, it can also be argued that the ragged structure of Antiquities involves frequent disruptions to the narrative, not least because it was mainly composed by a number of scribal assistants, and therefore this argument is not conclusive.



Vocabulary
The passage 3.3 also fails a standard test for authenticity, in that it contains vocabulary not otherwise used by Josephus, according to the Complete Concordance to Flavius Josephus, edited by K. H. Rengstorff, 2002.



Josephus's faith
It is argued that "He was [the] Christ" can only be read as a profession of faith. If so, this could not be right, as Josephus was not a Christian; he characterized his patron Emperor Vespasian as the foretold Messiah.

However, the supposed confession of Josephus relies on the standard text. But a recent study by Alice Whealey has argued that a variant Greek text of this sentence existed in the 4th century—"He was believed to be the Christ." The standard text, then, has simply become corrupt by the loss of the main verb and a subsequent scribal "correction" of the prolative infinitive. In any event, the audience for the work was Roman, and Roman sources always write of "Christus", never of "Jesus", which could make this merely an identification.(emphasis added)



Anachronisms
Some of the deepest concerns about the authenticity of the passage were succinctly expressed by John Dominic Crossan, in The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Peasant[2]: "The problem here is that Josephus' account is too good to be true, too confessional to be impartial, too Christian to be Jewish." Three passages stood out: "if it be lawful to call him a man … He was [the] Christ … for he appeared to them alive again the third day; as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him." These seem directly to address Christological debates of the early 4th century. Consequently, most secular historians (and even many Christian scholars) dismiss the Testimonium as an interpolation.

For the rest of the summarisation, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephus_o ... _Flavianum

So again I ask, is there any direct, contemporary evidence for the existence of Jesus?

[_Gazelam]

Ray,

Along with the Sun, Moon and Stars there was also the garden of eden shown by the Gold and Silver flora and fauna representing the Garden of Eden.

Whether or not Celestial Marriage was practised under the Law of Moses is something I have been wondering. Celestial Marriage is an ordinance of the higher priesthood which under the Law of Moses may have been withheld. But do not forget that after Christ came among the Nephites he returned the people to the Higher law and restored the Melchizedek Priesthood. So it is certain after this point that it would have been restored.

The teachings found in the temple were taught to Adam and they have been continually taught to all of gods children who were in a position to accept them. How much of these teachings were given to the general assembly of the church during the Law of Moses period is unknown. But the same teachings we have today in the temple were to be found in all periods of the past.

Gaz

http://farms.BYU.edu/display.php?table=transcripts&id=57

Here is a link that discusses what Adam knew, towards the end of the article.

[_Ray A]

Below I give a quote from the New Testament scholar F.F. Bruce, from his book The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? (1959). When I first read this book I was somewhat startled at Bruce's claim that the historicity of Jesus is as axiomatic as the historicity of Julius Caesar. Even then I thought this was a bit of a stretch, and furthermore I didn't find any confirming evidence throughout Bruce's book. The following quote is taken from a Christian website, one that I picked at random, which shows that even they recognise the problem with historicity, but I've found this with many:

Question: "Did Jesus really exist? Is there any historical evidence of Jesus Christ?"



Answer: Typically when this question is asked, the person asking qualifies the question with "outside of the Bible." We do not grant this idea that the Bible cannot be considered a source of evidence for the existence of Jesus. The New Testament contains hundreds of references to Jesus Christ. There are those who date the writing of the Gospels in the second century A.D., 100+ years after Jesus' death. Even if this were the case (which we strongly dispute), in terms of ancient evidences, writings less than 200 years after events took place are considered very reliable evidences. Further, the vast majority of scholars (Christian and non-Christian) will grant that the Epistles of Paul (at least some of them) were in fact written by Paul in the middle of the first century A.D., less than 40 years after Jesus' death. In terms of ancient manuscript evidence, this is extraordinarily strong proof of the existence of a man named Jesus in Israel in the early first century A.D.



It is also important to recognize that in 70 A.D., the Romans invaded and destroyed Jerusalem and most of Israel, slaughtering its inhabitants. Entire cities were literally burned to the ground! We should not be surprised, then, if much evidence of Jesus' existence was destroyed. Many of the eye-witnesses of Jesus would have been killed. These facts likely limited the amount of surviving eyewitness testimony of Jesus.


Considering the fact that Jesus' ministry was largely confined to a relatively unimportant backwater area in a small corner of the Roman Empire, a surprising amount of information about Jesus can be drawn from secular historical sources.

(emphases added)



http://www.gotquestions.org/did-Jesus-exist.html



The two last paragraphs seem contradictory to one another.




The problem is that there are no contemporary secular sources which verify the existence of Jesus the way they verify Julius Caesar. Granted, Caesar was an influential historical figure, but what I'm focussing on here is Bruce's claim that the existence of Jesus is as axiomatic as the existence of Caesar. It is NOT. Here is Bruce's quote:

Whatever else may be thought of the evidence from early Jewish and Gentile writers, as summarized in this chapter and the preceding one, it does at least establish for those who refuse the witness of Christian writings, the historical character of Jesus Himself. Some writers may toy with the fancy of a 'Christ-myth', but they do not do so on the ground of historical evidence. The historicity of Christ is as axiomatic for an unbiased historian as the historicity of Julius Caesar. It is not historians who propagate the 'Christ-myth' theories.' F.F.Bruce: http://www.worldinvisible.com/library/f ... docc10.htm

On the other hand, Julius Caesar's historical Background: http://www.vroma.org/~bmcmanus/caesar.html

And:

Gāius Jūlius Caesar (IPA: [ˈgaːius ˈjuːlius ˈkaisar];[1]), July 12 or July 13, 100 BC – March 15, 44 BC) was a Roman military and political leader and one of the most influential men in world history. He played a critical role in the transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire. His conquest of Gaul extended the Roman world all the way to the Atlantic Ocean, and he was also responsible for the first Roman invasion of Britain in 55 BC. Caesar was widely considered to be one of the foremost military geniuses of his time, as well as a brilliant politician and one of the ancient world's strongest leaders.

(emphasis added)



For the full biography: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Caesar



As a sidenote I'm referring to a review (with excerpts) of former nun Karen Armstrong's book on the power of myth, and I have added all emphases:

As soon as people became aware of their own mortality, writes Karen Armstrong, they created stories that gave their lives meaning, explained their relationship to the spiritual world, and instructed them on how to live their lives.

Human beings have always been mythmakers. Archaeologists have unearthed Neanderthal graves containing weapons, tools and the bones of a sacrificed animal, all of which suggest some kind of belief in a future world that was similar to their own. The Neanderthals may have told each other stories about the life that their dead companion now enjoyed. They were certainly reflecting about death in a way that their fellow-creatures did not. Animals watch each other die but, as far as we know, they give the matter no further consideration. But the Neanderthal graves show that when these early people became conscious of their mortality, they created some sort of counter-narrative that enabled them to come to terms with it. The Neanderthals who buried their companions with such care seem to have imagined that the visible, material world was not the only reality. From a very early date, therefore, it appears that human beings were distinguished by their ability to have ideas that went beyond their everyday experience.

We are meaning-seeking creatures. Dogs, as far as we know, do not agonise about the canine condition, worry about the plight of dogs in other parts of the world, or try to see their lives from a different perspective. But human beings fall easily into despair, and from the very beginning we invented stories that enabled us to place our lives in a larger setting, that revealed an underlying pattern, and gave us a sense that, against all the depressing and chaotic evidence to the contrary, life had meaning and value.

Another peculiar characteristic of the human mind is its ability to have ideas and experiences that we cannot explain rationally. We have imagination, a faculty that enables us to think of something that is not immediately present, and that, when we first conceive it, has no objective existence. The imagin­ation is the faculty that produces religion and mythology. Today mythical thinking has fallen into disrepute; we often dismiss it as irrational and self-indulgent. But the imagination is also the faculty that has enabled scientists to bring new knowledge to light and to invent technology that has made us immeasurably more effective. The imagination of scientists has enabled us to travel through outer space and walk on the moon, feats that were once only possible in the realm of myth. Mythology and science both extend the scope of human beings. Like science and technology, mythology, as we shall see, is not about opting out of this world, but about enabling us to live more intensely within it.

The Neanderthal graves tell us five important things about myth. First, it is nearly always rooted in the experience of death and the fear of extinction. Second, the animal bones indicate that the burial was accompanied by a sacrifice. Mythology is usually inseparable from ritual. Many myths make no sense outside a liturgical drama that brings them to life, and are incomprehensible in a profane setting. Third, the Neanderthal myth was in some way recalled beside a grave, at the limit of human life. The most powerful myths are about extremity; they force us to go beyond our experience. There are moments when we all, in one way or another, have to go to a place that we have never seen, and do what we have never done before. Myth is about the unknown; it is about that for which initially we have no words. Myth therefore looks into the heart of a great silence. Fourth, myth is not a story told for its own sake. It shows us how we should behave. In the Neanderthal graves, the corpse has sometimes been placed in a foetal position, as though for rebirth: the deceased had to take the next step himself. Correctly understood, mythology puts us in the correct spiritual or psychological posture for right action, in this world or the next.

Finally, all mythology speaks of another plane that exists alongside our own world, and that in some sense supports it. Belief in this invisible but more powerful reality, sometimes called the world of the gods, is a basic theme of mythology. It has been called the 'perennial philosophy' because it informed the mythology, ritual and social organisation of all societies before the advent of our scientific modernity, and continues to influence more traditional societies today. According to the perennial philosophy, everything that happens in this world, everything that we can hear and see here below has its counterpart in the divine realm, which is richer, stronger and more enduring than our own. And every earthly reality is only a pale shadow of its archetype, the original pattern, of which it is simply an imperfect copy. It is only by participating in this divine life that mortal, fragile human beings fulfil their potential. The myths gave explicit shape and form to a reality that people sensed intuitively. They told them how the gods behaved, not out of idle curiosity or because these tales were entertaining, but to enable men and women to imitate these powerful beings and experience divinity themselves.

In our scientific culture, we often have rather simplistic notions of the divine. In the ancient world, the 'gods' were rarely regarded as supernatural beings with discrete personalities, living a totally separate metaphysical existence. Mythology was not about theology, in the modern sense, but about human experience. People thought that gods, humans, animals and nature were inextricably bound up together, subject to the same laws, and composed of the same divine substance. There was initially no ontological gulf between the world of the gods and the world of men and women. When people spoke of the divine, they were usually talking about an aspect of the mundane. The very existence of the gods was inseparable from that of a storm, a sea, a river, or from those powerful human emotions — love, rage or sexual passion — that seemed momentarily to lift men and women onto a different plane of existence so that they saw the world with new eyes.

Mythology was therefore designed to help us to cope with the problematic human predicament. It helped people to find their place in the world and their true orientation. We all want to know where we came from, but because our earliest beginnings are lost in the mists of prehistory, we have created myths about our forefathers that are not historical but help to explain current attitudes about our environment, neighbours and customs. We also want to know where we are going, so we have devised stories that speak of a posthumous existence — though, as we shall see, not many myths envisage immortality for human beings. And we want to explain those sublime moments, when we seem to be transported beyond our ordinary concerns. The gods helped to explain the experience of transcendence. The perennial philosophy expresses our innate sense that there is more to human beings and to the material world than meets the eye.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... Id=4992705


Again, let me reiterate, I'm not just "plucking" all of this off the web. I've read several of Armstrong's books, including what could be termed her "exit story" from Catholicism, Through The Narrow Gate (1981). Thankfully, she didn't go through a "venting" process and we weren't subjected to profanities and rants about Catholicism. She is an example of someone who "saw[ed] through the myths", and did so with intelligence and aplomb.

The paucity of historical evidence for Jesus should give anyone pause. Thousands of religions have sprung up in his name, and early Mormon leaders like Brigham Young even associated polygamy with Jesus, even while we have no record in the gospels that he was even married! This is myth at work. The speculations about the Trinity, in my opinion, come from Hellenism, and Jesus' God status from Egyptian and Persian mythology. The Hebrews seemed quick to adopt the Epic of Gilgamesh from ancient Sumeria, and other Babylonian mythology. It's all part of the quest for meaning. I'm sure Josh McDowell and Hugh Nibley have answers, but do they stand the test of critical inquiry? There will have to be a significant improvement on F.F. Bruce.

[_Ray A]

Ray,

Along with the Sun, Moon and Stars there was also the garden of eden shown by the Gold and Silver flora and fauna representing the Garden of Eden.

Whether or not Celestial Marriage was practised under the Law of Moses is something I have been wondering. Celestial Marriage is an ordinance of the higher priesthood which under the Law of Moses may have been withheld. But do not forget that after Christ came among the Nephites he returned the people to the Higher law and restored the Melchizedek Priesthood. So it is certain after this point that it would have been restored.

The teachings found in the temple were taught to Adam and they have been continually taught to all of gods children who were in a position to accept them. How much of these teachings were given to the general assembly of the church during the Law of Moses period is unknown. But the same teachings we have today in the temple were to be found in all periods of the past.

Gaz

http://farms.BYU.edu/display.php?table=transcripts&id=57

Here is a link that discusses what Adam knew, towards the end of the article.

Gaz,

If you read Quinn or Prince, or even the History of the Church, you'll see that the concept of the "higher priesthood" was not taught until about 1831-32. It came "by revelation" to Joseph Smith, not by heavenly messengers. These quotes you give are retrospective teachings. If you study the apostasy of David Whitmer, and that's all I can call it in view of his total rejection of the Doctrine and Covenants or any concept of higher priesthood, you'll see why this was retrospective. The reason the kingdoms of glory are not in the Book of Mormon is because Joseph Smith didn't even think about this until he was revising the Gospels. The same applies to baptism for the dead. Joseph Smith first publicly taught this in 1840. Joseph Fielding Smith speculated that perhaps it was taught in Book of Mormon times, but "not recorded". Neal A. Maxwell wrote that the baptism of infants was being disputed at around the same time that Mormon mentioned it, trying to draw a parallel, but baptism for the dead is not mentioned in the Book of Mormon. Here is what Joseph Smith said, in section 128:

5 You may think this order of things to be very particular; but let me tell you that it is only to answer the will of God, by conforming to the ordinance and preparation that the Lord ordained and prepared before the foundation of the world, for the salvation of the dead who should die without a knowledge of the gospel.

In verse 18:

And not only this, but those things which never have been revealed from the foundation of the world, but have been kept hid from the wise and prudent, shall be revealed unto babes and sucklings in this, the dispensation of the fulness of times.

Were the Nephites "wise and prudent"? Why was baptism for the dead not revealed to them when infant baptism was? Or, why would they hide this, but not the teaching on the baptism of infants?

Joseph Smith said that seeking their dead was the "greatest responsibility in this world" for LDS members. Those who neglect it, he said, "do it at the peril of their own salvation" (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, pp.193, 356).

Yet although the Book of Mormon goes into detail about infant baptism, it says nothing about baptism for the dead, even though it went some 400 years after when it was first supposedly taught by Paul.

If the Book of Mormon contained the "fullness of the gospel", it ignored baptism for the dead. There is only one conclusion, in my opinion, Joseph had a progressive theology, and sometimes he made new revelations retroactive, ignoring historical contexts.

[_Yoda]

If the Book of Mormon contained the "fullness of the gospel", it ignored baptism for the dead. There is only one conclusion, in my opinion, Joseph had a progressive theology, and sometimes he made new revelations retroactive, ignoring historical contexts.

Playing devil's advocate here, I think this goes back to the question, what is really meant by the statement, "fullness of the gospel"? I always interpreted this to mean the fullness of the gospel of Christ. This wouldn't necessarily mean that the Book of Mormon would cover every ordinance, every process. If you believe the Doctrine and Covenants to also be LDS Canon, then you have to allow for modern revelation which would cover additional ordinances such as baptism for the dead, etc.

The current "catch all" that allows for changes in doctrine and practice is that we believe in continued modern revelation as stated in the 9th Article of Faith:

"We believe all that God has revealed, all that He does now reveal, and we believe that He will yet reveal many great and important things pertaining to the Kingdom of God."