What did LDS NOT borrow from other belief traditions/lit?

[_MCB]

This came up on another thread, and deserves one of its own.

These were borrowed
polygamy and multiple wives in the afterlife came from Islam

"Temple" came from Judaism and Masonry




What was not?

[_Equality]

Also borrowed: degrees of glory; successive and infinite progression of intelligences; God living on a planet that governs the light and revolutions of our solar system, etc.; the idea that infant baptism was an abomination; the legend that Elijah would return; the idea of some righteous folks being "translated" and not tasting of death, to walk the earth doing good, etc.; plurality of gods; the native Americans' ancestors were Israelites; treasures become slippery in the earth; the title of liberty story; Lehi's dream details; secret combinations; alma's conversion. These are just off the top of my head. It would actually make an interesting book to compile them all in one place.

[_Alfredo]

I would love to be directed to any recommended books, sites, information, etc. I could study concerning the subject of borrowed traditions in Mormonism...

[_Quasimodo]

This came up on another thread, and deserves one of its own.

These were borrowed
polygamy and multiple wives in the afterlife came from Islam

"Temple" came from Judaism and Masonry




What was not?

Dead dunking?

[_MCB]

I would love to be directed to any recommended books, sites, information, etc. I could study concerning the subject of borrowed traditions in Mormonism...

It is not publicly available yet. ;)

Dead dunking came from Catholic belief in purgatory and the efficacy of prayer and offerings for the dead. 2 Maccabees 12:39-46

[Guest]

This came up on another thread, and deserves one of its own.

These were borrowed
polygamy and multiple wives in the afterlife came from Islam

"Temple" came from Judaism and Masonry




What was not?

Dead dunking?

From an old letter to the editor in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, we have this:

Guy Bishop's comment [in Dialogue, Vol.23, No.2] that baptism for the dead was not a part of nineteenth-century American religion and that it was left to Joseph Smith and the Mormons "to establish a doctrinal stance on the subject" (p. 85) led me to reflect on a piece of information I picked up some years ago. This historical reference links the doctrine and practice with the eighteenth-century Seventh Day German Baptists of the Ephrata Cloister in Pennsylvania, and I thought it might be worth sharing with DIALOGUE readers.

In his book Conrad Weiser: Friend of Colonists and Mohawk (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1945), Paul A. Wallace gives an account of eighteenth-century frontiersman Conrad Weiser's experience at Ephrata (c. 1738). In a chapter entitled "Conrad Weiser Becomes A Priest After the Order of Melchizedek" Wallace says:

Out of the brain of Emanuel Eckering (Elimelech) there sprang that same year, 1738, the ingenious concept of the Baptism for the Dead. Persons who had died without the grace of total immersion might yet be saved if they were baptized by proxy. Peter Miller, who never lost his head amid all these insinuating mumeries, was against it; but [Conrad] Beissel [leader of the Seventh Day Baptists], ready as always to follow a religious wil-o'-the-wisp, set his seal upon it. Emmanuel Eckerling was the first to receive baptism in this kind. In a pool of the Cocalico, under Beissel's hands, he was immersed on behalf of his departed mother. The principle once accepted, the thing became popular, and the next world must soon have been swarming with souls so astonished to find themselves sainted by Cocalico immersion in abstentia. (p. 104)

Wallace cites as his source volume 1 of J. F. Sachse's The German Sectarians of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, 1899), which adds that baptism for the dead was "practiced for many years" at Ephrata, that it outlived and went beyond that community and was accepted by people of other faiths. Sachse also claims that as late as the 1840s there were traditions of "children having become substitutes in Baptism for parents, or vice versa" (p. 366).

Whether there is any connection between Emanuel Eckerling's baptism for the dead in Pennsylvania and Joseph Smith's thinking a century later in Nauvoo would no doubt be difficult to ascertain. However, if we have learned anything about Mormon history over the past couple of decades, it is that nothing is as simple or as obvious as it seems—including perhaps what we thought was our unique Mormon concept of baptism for the dead. (Letters to the Editor, Frederick S. Buchanan, Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, vol. 24, no. 1, p. 9)

I haven't read either the Sachse or the Wallace books, but it certainly appears that Joseph Smith was not the only one who read 1 Corinthians 15:29 to provide a basis for the practice (as well, perhaps, as the Maccabees passage).

Edited to add: I looked through an online text of the Sachse book and could not find the quotes or references quoted in the letter above. I'm not saying they aren't there, but I couldn't find them.

[_Tobin]

This is a rather uninteresting game. If your rules are loose enough, you can postulate almost every name, place, concept, and so on came from somewhere else or was derived from something else. After all, we all know Joseph Smith had the internet too.

[_MCB]

28 When the Father has subjected everything to him, the Son will place himself under the One who subjected everything to him. From then on, God will be all in all.
29 Tell me: what are these people doing who are baptized on behalf of the dead? If the dead cannot be raised, why do they want to be baptized for the dead?
30 As for us, why do we constantly risk our life? For death is my daily companion.

[_Quasimodo]

I would love to be directed to any recommended books, sites, information, etc. I could study concerning the subject of borrowed traditions in Mormonism...

It is not publicly available yet. ;)

Dead dunking came from Catholic belief in purgatory and the efficacy of prayer and offerings for the dead. 2 Maccabees 12:39-46

One learns so much here! I really thought this was original with the LDS.

However, if someone comes up with a a biblical recipe for funeral potatoes, I'm going to be skeptical.

[_Quasimodo]

From an old letter to the editor in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, we have this:

Out of the brain of Emanuel Eckering (Elimelech) there sprang that same year, 1738, the ingenious concept of the Baptism for the Dead. Persons who had died without the grace of total immersion might yet be saved if they were baptized by proxy.

It's an odd practice. On the bright side, they were doing it by proxy instead of exhuming the dead to baptize (shudder).