halconero

Interestingly enough, it's possible that some of the earliest creation narratives actually started with Noah and the Flood. The flood itself is described in terms akin to the waters of chaos covering the earth at the start of Genesis 1.

Indeed that is a possibility, and also kind of the point I tried to make a few times in my previous posts (and perhaps failed to get across. My bad). The original figure wasn't my attempt to provide a particular proof of a particular timeline or lineage. It was my own private attempt (originally) to understand how different textual traditions developed and understood different patriarchal narratives, including Joseph Smith, but also the Yahwist, Priestly and other redactors of the Hebrew Bible.

I tried to keep my last reply focused more on what can be indicated directly from the textual sources, rather than inferred (by myself or anyone). That said, I think inferring is both valuable in its own right, and certainly do a lot of it on my own, so I wanted to offer my own in response. When I first started pulling these together, I more-or-less had a similar reaction. My original assumption was that you'd have a chain of father-son relationships with each link going through a sequential birth-ordination-blessing before someone further down the genealogical chain could go through the same. Meaning that Seth would, necessarily, be not only ordained before any of his sons or descendants further down the line could be ordained; and likewise receive their blessing before anyone further down the line. Stepping outside the Genesis, Book of Moses, OT2, or Doctrine and Covenants 107 accounts of this patriarchs, however, reveals patterns around ordinations, adoptions, birthrights, and blessings that are far more malleable than a strict genealogical oldest-to-youngest pattern would demand. Here are just a few examples: Jacob adopts Ephraim and Manasseh to be his own sons, and blesses Ephraim as the firsborn, despite Manasseh being the older child of Joseph (something which causes Joseph some consternation in Genesis 48). Jacob himself supplanting Esau for the birthright. The Nephite leadership and priesthood pass through Nephi's line rather than Sam's, who, by all indications, was himself righteous. Joseph Smith being ordained to the Aaronic Priesthood and baptising Oliver Cowdery without himself being baptised. John the Baptist being ordained to the Aaronic Priesthood at eight days old (D&C 84:27–28). Noah is ordained at age ten by Methusaleh. Joseph Smith himself being the prophet of the restoration despite having an older brother in Hyrum who, by all accounts, strove after righteousness too and received all the blessings Joseph received. Even going back to the 'patriarchal source texts' there are some interesting oddities: Mahaleel being ordained by Adam only after his son Jared, grandson Enoch, and great-grandson Methusaleh were ordained. Adam seems to handle *all* ordinations prior to his death. Once you adjust for the births, deaths, ordinations of others, Lamech's ordination occurs after Adam's death, which may explain why Seth was the one who did it With those examples in mind here are some possibilities: The blessings and ordinations in the D&C 107 + OT2 timeline reflect some sort of level-of-readiness for said ordination and blessing. It's possible that Enoch was a highly special individual in that, more than even his predecessors, he was uniquely ready to receive his blessing and walk with God ahead of all the posterity between him and Adam. His establishment of Zion, how the people there are described, and their eventual translation at least support, circumstantially, that Enoch was at a level of righteousness that would qualify him for such an ordination and blessing, perhaps even in advance of those genealogically before him. As counterpoint to #1, maybe individual righteousness isn't the primary rationale for the ordination or blessing versus the needs of the kingdom. There have been plenty of Latter-day Saints who have lived and died in the faith, exercising tremendous righteousness, who were 'only an elder' in the Melchizedek Priesthood, which recalls to mind the words of Elder McConkie: By the same token, we've seen apostles fall not only in this dispensation, but in the Saviour's too. At some point in my own life, the Lord thought it was time for me to be ordained a High Priest, which to me, comprises one of the greater mysteries of the kingdom when I look at how little I've managed to do with the office compared to some of the incredible elders I know. In either case, it may be that God decided that, for His purposes, Enoch should be ordained, and both he and his father Jared blessed, far in advance of others, including Seth. Not because they were better or more righteous than Seth, but because it was simply what needed to be done for a particular purpose in God's plan at the time.

Note on the ages used in the graph I posted: they synthesise D&C 107 and the OT1 Revision, which seems to be the copy with the most extensive edits by Joseph Smith. I'll post a couple other versions I made, which include (from memory, they're stuck on a drive right now that I'll need to dig up and connect): The Genesis alone timeline Genesis + D&C 107 The Book of Moses (i.e., the canonised version of OT2) + D&C 107 The births, lifespans, and ages at various ordinations and blessings all change slightly depending on the version used. As an aside, I'm not asserting that the D&C 107 + OT1 version is the *best* just because it's the one with the latest edits by Joseph Smith. One of the other versions outlined in the list may be more accurate (if taken literally) or more correctly symbolically (i.e., it convey's Joseph's intended meaning behind the edits). Perhaps. I'm just going off D&C 107:42; 53, which indicate that Adam blessed Seth three years prior to Adam's death at Adam-ondi-Ahman: 42 From Adam to Seth, who was ordained by Adam at the age of sixty-nine years, and was blessed by him three years previous to his (Adam’s) death, and received the promise of God by his father, that his posterity should be the chosen of the Lord, and that they should be preserved unto the end of the earth; 53 Three years previous to the death of Adam, he called Seth, Enos, Cainan, Mahalaleel, Jared, Enoch, and Methuselah, who were all high priests, with the residue of his posterity who were righteous, into the valley of Adam-ondi-Ahman, and there bestowed upon them his last blessing. D&C 107:47 indicates that Jared was ordained and blessed by Adam at the same time when the former was 200 years old: 47 Jared was two hundred years old when he was ordained under the hand of Adam, who also blessed him. If you have another source that says he was 162-years-old, please share! Seriously! The point of the original doc where my figure comes from isn't to prove anyone right or myself wrong; it was just to help me get the differences in timelines based on the different texts available in my own head correct. Also to try to understand how Joseph Smith understood this particular narrative or history as his thinking evolved over time. So another citation/source would be immensely valuable. Seth being the first ordained by Adam is supported by the text. I think it's reasonable to infer that Adam gave the sorts of blessings that lots of parents give to their children throughout their lives pertaining to comfort and health, but Doctrine and Covenants 107 seems to be talking about a particular type of blessing that occurs maybe once in a lifetime, possibly akin to patriarchal blessings today. The text indicates that Seth received his three years prior to Adam's death. Indeed. I've pondered a lot about this, but the text is silent on the reason why. At most we can assert that his blessing, his beginning to walk with God, and his establishment of Zion do occur in the same year; possibly in the same instance.

No clue, tbh. I think it's interesting and probably relevant to Joseph's ever-growing doctrine on Priesthood that, in Joseph's revelations, Enoch and his father Jared were the first to be blessed by Adam, and that Enoch's blessing coincides both with the establishment of Zion and his walking with God. Also that almost everyone else (save Mahalaleel) has to wait until the gathering at Adam-ondi-Ahman. We also don't really know much about the nature of the blessing. Was it a Patriarchal Blessing? Something pertaining to priesthood office? No clue! Seems important, though!

Do you mean changed the ages of the Patriarchs (I'm using that term loosely here to refer to the father-son outlined from Adam to Jacob (Israel), rather than just Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob) or why they changed OT1 versus OT2? I feel pretty confident about the answer to the second. Put briefly, Joseph Smith began his work of translating the Old Testament in June 1830 (side note: I'm always struck by just how *early* the Book of Moses emerged in the early Restored Church, given how dense it is theologically), with Oliver Cowdery as a scribe. Cowdery leaves for his mission in October 1830, and Joseph cycles through John Whitmer, Emma Smith, John Whitmer again, and then Sidney Rigdon. In March 1831, Joseph switches over to translating the New Testament and John Whitmer makes a copy (OT2) of the original translation efforts (OT1). When Cowdery gets back from his mission, he and Joseph go back revise the ages of the some of the Patriarchs (shown in the graph above), but do so in OT2. When Joseph finishes his work on the New Testament in July 1832, he goes back to the Old Testament, and picks up with Whitmer as his scribe, who uses the OT2 (without the revised ages) instead of the OT1. Exceedingly long story short, because of manuscripts and excerpts being all over the place between the Church and the Community of Christ, and lack of a good understanding (at the time) of the Bible translation process from an administrative point of view, the Church ended up relying on OT2 for our current version of the Pear of Great Price. That isn't a slight on anyone, historical contingencies, and my impression is that the Church and the Community of Christ have been very earnest to work with each other on matters of historical records and archiving as it pertains to overlapping histories. As to first question: why did they change the ages of the Patriarchs, they did not add an explanation as far as I'm aware (I might be wrong on that, obviously). Symbolic, in my opinion. The ages diverge from those in Genesis, and I can't identify any particular event with which they were trying to tie the ages of the Patriarchs. Note that I don't think symbolic has to imply that they didn't think the stated ages they were writting in where fake in some ways. God represents things symbolically with real, material things all the time (e.g., the water of baptism representing cleansing; baptism itself representing death, burial, and resurrection). So Adam being 1,000 years old can, at least to Joseph (as Brigham asserts), simultaneoulsy be real, and symbolic of a mortal 'day' of life. This is just a hunch, but Zion persisting 365 years has a 'year of years' feel to it. My guess is that it was revelation, which doesn't necessarily mean it wasn't also symbolic. The only reason I say revelation is that the timeline for the age changes lines up with the rest of the translation work Joseph was doing, which he did consider revelatory. Likewise, Joseph always seemed comfortable with the idea that previously published work was open to further revelatory editing, even the Book of Mormon. Ultimatley, I might be wrong about the above, and I'm not too emotionally attached to it if I'm wrong. Most of this stuff just has me like 🤷‍♂️ .

Yeah, this chart is a combination of the OT1, which Oliver Cowdery and Joseph Smith mostly worked on together + Doctrine and Covenants 107. Alternatives are the classic Genesis/D&C 107, and OT2/D&C 107. OT2 is mostly a copy of OT1, but is missing some edits that Cowdery and Smith addd later on. It forms the basis for the Book of Moses we publish today. Out of all these, OT1 tends to add the most years in the earlier patriarchal timelines. Enoch gains an extra 65 years, for example (he only gets 365 in the original Genesis account). The cumulative result is that the Flood date gets pushed a little bit later. As I said, I’m not saying one account is better or more correct than another; just different. I mostly did this out of curiosity when digging in the Joseph Smith papers. I’ll see if I can post the original xlsx file sometime, so people can pick it apart. I’m migrating from Windows to Linux (Fedora) at the moment, and I’m finding Office 365 formats to be the least friendly to transitioning. So this, plus a few others, are a bit messy atm.

This was actually one of the suggestions in the materials that got sent out and the FAQ panels they held: that Primary presidencies consider hosting their own training meeting if it's inconvenient to find a way for the teachers to attend the regular SS/RS/EQ/Youth Sunday School training meetings.

Another interesting take, again, by Brigham, was a statement of his that Joseph taught that the City of Zion was more akin to a country, and comprise the area of the Gulf of Mexico America. Combined with Joseph's other statements regarding the entirety of North and South America comprising Zion, it seems, if Brigham's statement is accurate, that they imagined it as more a merger of countries.

If you take Genesis, the Book of Moses (both the OT1 and OT2 revisions) and the Doctrine and Covenants 107 timelines as literal histories, there's actually a 635 year gap betwen Zion being taken up into heaven and the flood. Noah spends around 120 years alone building the ark before the flood happens. I put together a spreadsheet a while back that includes this figure: Note, if you're wondering why Adam shows a 1,000 year lifespan, it's because that's what Oliver Cowdery recorded in Old Testament Revision 1. The Book of Moses as canonised right now relies on Old Testament Revision 2, which was a copy of the *incomplete* OT1. Oliver Cowdery and Joseph Smith later went back and edited Adam's age there, along with a few others. Interestingly, Brigham Young later stated (I'd have to find it, it's somewhere in the Church's history catatalogue) that Adam, not Methuselah, was the oldest man to have ever lived. He further said that 1,000 was the appropriate lifespan for Adam, as a 1,000 years was a day unto God, thereby fulfilling God's promise that Adam would die in the 'day' he partook of the fruit. Obviously not canon, just relaying the discourse as far as I can remember it (I can look it up sometime, but I have a lot on my plate right now).

Getting It Right — Clarifying Claims About the Church Abuse Help Line This is a direct rebuttal by the Church of assertions made by Beau Oyler, a former bishop, regarding his experience using the Church abuse help line. Broadly speaking, Mr. Oyler alleges that the Church's primary focus was reassuring him that he didn't need to report the abuse, and that no concern was expressed regarding the family or informing law enforcement. The news release is worth a read, but put succinctly, the Church kept help line records, and outlines that he spoke with both an attorney and a licensed social worker three times over a three day period, and that, as part of these conversations, Mr. Oyler told help line personnel that both a third-party therapist and the perpetrator had reported the abuse to authorities. Furthermore, the social worker discussed steps to support the victim and family, and help line later followed-up with the stake president. Someone here can correct me if I'm wrong, but I can't recall the Church issuing a direct rebuttal like this in recent memory.

As the other resident Canadian here, I'm of two minds on the law and statement, but generally come down on the side of the Area Presidency. On the one hand, Duncan has accurately described the intended purpose of the law and scope. In that regard, I was somewhat surprised when they released the statement. On the other hand, I'm a bit skepitcal about the law because (a) Bloc Québécois shenangians (b) I'm not convinced it was necessary and (c) I do think there's been some scope creep at the Supreme Court of Canad over the past 10–15 years enabled by this sort of stuff. Some pretext: The main area of controvery the proposed nullification of s. 319(3)(b) of the Criminal Code. This is a provision for a defence against criminal conviction for, materially, willfully promoting hatred (eg printing and distributing material promoting detestation/vilification of an identifiable group, such as Canadian Jewish people). The defence is based on 'good-faith religious opinion / religious text'. In other words, if someone was promoting hatred of an identifiable group, based on their good-faith religious opinon or good-faith use of a religious text, they could be protect for doing so. An important caveat is that 'good-faith' actually does a lot of legal work here: Someone could not just use religion as a pretext for promoting hatred; there had to be evidence of long-standing religious conviction and opinion consistent with various activities and beliefs, not just centred around hating a group. Importantly, this defence is not applicable to crimes including threats, harassment, counselling violence, assault, etc. The provision, if nullified, would mean religious opinion would be treated as any other expression: Defendable if the religious statements were relevant to the public interest/benefit, and if they were believed to be true on reasonable grounds. On a lesser note, the Bill also proposed to remove oversight by the Attorney General of hate crime provisions. Currently, prosecutors have to get the okay from the AG's office to pursue hate crime provisions to criminal activity. Bill C-9 would allow them to pursue these charges independently, with the purported purpose being able to more quickly apply hate crime charges. With that pretext, let's address point (a) first (Bloc shenanigans): There is a strong Quebec political culture focused around the concept of laïcité. There isn't really a good translation for the word, but 'public secularism' is probably the best (IMO). While others prefer 'state secularism', centred on ensuring that the state is areligious in its functions, applications of law, and symbolism, I think that's too limited. More strongly, it proposes that religion should not be protected, preferenced, or considered distinct from any other belief system or ideology. Weaker versions of laïcité focus on removing any distinct provisions for religious speech or belief that do not apply to other public speech or belief. Stronger versions seek to nullify it more completely from public life. While I don't hold to it personally, I do see the former as more internally consistent, at least. It allows for the public display of religiosity along side, lets say, political signage or apparel. The latter has a tendency to be okay with the latter, but not the former. The Criminal Code presents one area of law, where, the 'ROC' (a term used to refer to the 'Rest of Canada', or the predominantly anglophone parts) still inserts itself into Quebec. Most other legal matters are governed by Quebec Civil Law, which itself is highly laicised. In other terms, while religion has been stripped of certain legal considerations under Quebec Civil Law, they persist in federal criminal law. The Bloc has long considered it a priority to laicize the criminal code to make it align with Quebec political culture. On point (b), it's not particularly necessary: Of all the parts of the bill, I think the most necessary parts are reforms around penalty maximums and bail considerations. Those, however, are probably the least contraversial parts and the only that would really add anything to what already exists. Everything else, which primarily focuses on investigation and charging mechanisms, the religious defence, and oversight, is more-or-less already workable under the current Criminal Code. The key diference is that the Attorney General had oversight over applying hate crime considerations, and the existince of the religious defence provision for promoting hate speech. Even for the latter, the religious defence law was never a get out of jail free card. As mentioned, the defence only applied to the promotion of beliefs that might otherwise be considered hateful and liable. It did not apply to other criminal activity. It also had to be done in good faith. You could not create a whole movement whose raison d'être was hating another group and promoting said hatred against it. As to the former, I'm not sure the benefits of expediting prosecutions for hate crimes outweights the benefits of oversight by the AG. On point (c), SCC creep: Historically, the SCC was focused on refereeing disputes between the provinces and the feds regarding their division of powers and authorities. Since the establishment of the Charter, they've become increasingly focused on litigating rights. While this is in some ways laudible, it has had the effect of overloading the SCC with cases unrelated to its original mission of adjudicating disputes over federalism. It also introduces possibilities for them to act like quasi-legislative body, undermining the already somewhat diminished concept of parliamentary supremacy. ----------- Overall, I'm not a sky is falling type of person over Bill C-9, which I've seen in other members of my ward. Nor do I think the Area Presidency are acting as such. The Bill does actually contain some good provisions, which I think could be hashed out in committee. The big sticking points are the redundancies and protections from its laicizing tendencies.

I've actually gotten out of the habit of using the term 'Mormon' in a self-referential way, and have, over time developed a habit of referring to myself as a Latter-day Saint or member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I like it, and will be probably keep doing so. That said, there is a middle ground, which is that I haven't been particularly shy about using 'Mormon' to bridge people between a term with which they're more likely familiar, to one the I use personally. I think refusing to acknowledge or refer to 'Mormon' as an external term of reference presently and an internal term of reference historically wasn't particularly helpful.

I have a genetic predisposition to high cholestorol and was recommended to begin a daily fibre supplement apart from dietary changes. Having tried Metamucil and other psyllium husk fibres, I much prefer barley-based beta-glucan fibre powders. They're relatively new, and are focused on reducing cholestorl versus bowel regularity. They're water soluable, which makes them mix better into water, feel 'lighter' and less thick than psyllium husk powder, and don't have 'bulking' properties (ie they don't produce massive bowel movements). Don't get me wrong, they do help with regularity, but it's effects are much less extreme. I use NutraStat, which is Canada based. I believe their US affiliate is Cerabeta. Its ingrendient list is boringly plain (in a good way): Just barley beta-glucan and barley. You'd have to hunt around for it in the UK, but just a quick search turns up beneo (based in Germany).

I'm fond of Gerrit Dirkmaat's repeated reminder that we don't need to all evidence board/conspiracy wall to know how to prepare for the Second Coming; the prophets already tell us what we need to do. Last I checked, they were admonishing us on the specifics of becoming better disciples of Christ.