Zosimus

And Philo was also a Hellenized Platonist I think he has it backwards because he doesn't acknowledge or even bring up that the gospel of John in the New Testament shares many themes with the writings of Philo, a Hellenized Jewish Platonist who was very popular during the lifetimes of the authors of the New Testament. Here's a good overview from the Community of Christ (RLDS): Philo of Alexandria: Judaism as Greek Philosophy He also doesn't mention that the writings of Origen and Clement of Alexandria sound an awful lot like Philo, a Hellenized Jew that they had read and coopted. Or that Justin Martyr, who you quote above, was also heavily influenced by Plato. Origen: The First Christian Genius Justin Martyr: The First Christian Philosopher That is what he is saying. What he isn't saying is that it was largely the three hellenized Christians you quote above that did the replacing. And those three were heavily influenced by Philo, a hellenized Jew. While you agree with Hansen, he would not agree with you. Maybe a better way to approach Hansen's claim is that platonism was adapted by Philo, Origen, Clement, Justin Maryr and others to come up with some incorrect ideas, while many original truths resembling platonism were later deemed heretical by church councils. Origen is a good example. We Mormons see many of his ideas such as the pre-existence of souls, a pre-cosmic fall, and a universal restoration (apokatastasis) as being similar to our original truths, yet he was posthumously branded a heretic by a church that became suspicious of the teachings of a pre-cosmic fall, pre-existence of souls and a universal restoration. Those teachings felt too much like Greek philosophy. The problem was never Plato's ideas, it was the way Christians have either misused Plato to become a more cosmopolitan faith, or rejected Plato because he wasn't a Judean patriarch. Notice it was two Christian admirers of Plato that made the claim? I think it was Justin Martyr who also said that Socrates was a Christian. Although I’m sure he really wanted it to be true, It's clearly not true, or possible. Although I highly doubt Plato could get any of his ideas from the books of Moses, I would think that Judeans and Greeks got many of their ideas from the same earlier sources.

This is the tension in this discussion innit. Many of the things Mormons see as early Christianity is Platonism. Both Origen and Clement of Alexandria was heavily influenced by Plato. Origen, who you quote, was a student of the platonist Ammonius Saccas who also taught Plotinus, the founder of neoplatonism. This goes back to the earlier questions in this thread, if we remove the Hellenist influence from Judaism and Christianity, we'd not have all these works that allow us to recognize all these 'original teachings' that Joseph Smith restored. This is why it feels to me that Hansen has things backwards. The early Christians that had training in Plato somehow were the ones that managed to inject many of the 'original teachings' that were later rejected as heresies by the orthodox Church. Smith restored many of them

Isn't this the 'Hellenization model' you described as an oversimplification?

Do you have a reference supporting this? Greek manuscripts were found in Qumran. At least 27 manuscripts were Greek including Greek biblical fragments. (source) There's even some fragments of Enoch that might be Greek. If they were fleeing Greek influence and escape everything Hellenistic, I don't imagine they'd be reading Greek bibles translated in Alexandria. afaik the Enoch texts found in Qumran don't have much about premortal human spirits and Qumran doesn't have much to show for such a worldview. The only thing I can find is that Josephus said much later that the Essenes taught that souls composed of the finest ether were imprisoned in bodies. But it seems Josephus was riffing in an attempt to Hellenize the Essenes or as he says it, they were followers of "the Pythagorean way of life" and their belief in eternal souls imprisoned in bodies agrees with "the sons of Greece."

This feels like an oversimplification of what Givens is saying, and I think Givens is also, by his own admission, oversimplifying the earliest instances we have of the idea in writing. In his first two chapters, he covers a handful of early Mesopotamian and "Semitic' accounts of gods discussing and planning within a pre-mortal state. But these examples are hardly anything like what we find in his later chapters, ending with Smith. And there's nothing in the Mesopotamian and Semitic accounts that don't also appear in Indian (you yourself bring up atman in the Upanishads) or Persian or Chinese or Norse or anywhere in human history we find myths. The Atrahasis or the Laws of Hammurabi or the Bible or the Upanishads might hint at pre-mortality, but Givens is clear: “Positing as it does claims about God, the creation, and human origin, [the Timaeus] is a text that will present special appeal as well as special challenges to early Christian philosophers. Whereas the account in Genesis leaves ambiguous the question of whether God organized or introduced into existence physical matter, Timaeus makes matter clearly preexistent. Over the next centuries, the dialogue will be invoked time and again to fill in the voids left in the Judeo-Christian creation narrative, offering an account, no less plausible than Noah’s flood and Babel’s tower, of divine motives, human origins, and life’s purpose.” He also says: "All we know for sure is that, when we encounter Semitic treatments of human preexistence in the early Christian era, they are within a Jewish culture that has been affected by a host of influences, including Babylonian myth, Ugaritic traditions, and most important, the philosophy of the classical world." Many traditions have pre-mortal gods, but it wasn't until Plato that the idea became a challenge those traditions had to respond to. The early Christians were some of the first to accept the challenge, and Mormonism would not look like it does today without Plato. For example, Givens: “Implicit in several of Plato’s dialogues, including Timaeus, the ideal is most explicitly stated in Theaetetus, where Socrates tells Theodorus, “a man should make all haste to escape from earth to heaven, and escape means becoming as like God as possible.” Not only is this idea central to Platonic philosophy, it is inextricably connected in his thought with pre-mortal origins. Preexistence and theosis will increasingly be linked, to the eventual detriment of both, in the subsequent thought of Origen, the Neo-Platonists, and a host of others." That sounds way more like Mormonism than what we find in Akkadian poems or even the Bible. I think Hansen has got things backwards, the apostasy really kicked off when Christian philosophers rejected the "pagan" ideas of premortality and eternal matter and divine potential

Kinda the opposite. the Platonic/Gnostic idea was that creation was the organization of pre-existing matter by a demiurge. Early church fathers came up with "out of nothing" to reject that idea of a lesser creator god and eternal matter, and to insist that the one God was the source of everything, matter included.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ir67qcZTRUk These must be the same plates we discussed a few months ago here, now becoming a proper conspiracy

How do Heartlanders reconcile Cowdery and other early leaders, closer to the original source, making statements that the Lehites landed in Chile or somewhere on the coast of South America? The articles below report on the Lamanite Mission missionaries (Cowdery, Parley P. Pratt, Ziba Peterson, Peter Whitmer Jr.) preaching in Kirtland en route to Missouri, and the first article explicitly names Cowdery as the source. This is the earliest known mention of Chile as the landing, just months after the Book of Mormon was published, and before the Williams document everyone usually cites. Observer and Telegraph (Hudson, Ohio), 18 November 1830 "According to the narrative given by one of these disciples — Oliver Cowdery — at their late exhibition in Kirtland… This new Revelation, they say is especially designed for the benefit, or rather for the christianizing of the Aborigines of America; who, as they affirm, are a part of the tribe of Manasseh, and whose ancestors landed on the coast of Chili 600 years before the coming of Christ, and from them descended all the Indians of America." Another report on early LDS missionaries teaching a South America landing: Fredonia Censor (New York), 7 March 1832 "The Revelation commenced about 600 years before Christ, with a prophet of the name of Lehi, of the tribe of Joseph… He with another family who accompanied him, built themselves a ship and landed on the coast of South America, where they increased very fast…" Do you accept a landing in Chile? Is your narrow neck then Panama or somewhere in North America?

I've got a lot of thoughts wrt Nibley's Ancient State. In summary, Smith thought himself as a restorer, in a long line of restorers, of an "old forgotten doctrine of the divine plan" or "primordial revelation", as Nibley calls it in "Three Shrines: Mantic, Sophic, and Sophistic" Nibley himself sums up well in Eloquent Witness: "The idea of an “archaic wisdom,” prisca arcane, or “primeval revelation,” a knowledge of the ancients far in advance of later times, has always intrigued philosophers and theologians. But today it is the scientists who are taking it seriously. Joseph Smith was well acquainted with the idea..." According to that essay, Nibely was a Patternist. This loops him in closely with the likes of Bryant and Faber who laid the foundations of Patternism. Nibley makes the case himself, he just fails to acknowledge that the material was available in 1820s America. As I've mentioned elsewhere, Ethan Smith straight up copies Faber. Bryant and Faber influenced a number of Americans writing in the 1820s. For sure, Paine wasn't the first, he was the most widely distributed. Afaict Paine picked up his claim that Hilkiah forged the Book of the Law to justify Josiah's reforms from Voltaire. It was in the little pocket version of Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary which was widely circulating in America. Voltaire seemingly gets it from earlier sources like Spinoza. This conflict between the skeptics and the Biblical apologists goes back a long way, at least as far back as Scaliger, who was a major influence on Nibley. He heaps praise on Scaliger in a separate essay in Ancient State. Like Campbell, I am impressed how well the Book of Mormon resolves all the great controversies of the period roughly between Scaliger forward to Joseph Smith.

If King Benjamin was the first to formulate it, then he wouldn't have done it by merging 1 Corinthians and Romans. The simpler explanation is that Rev Boston did the merging, Edwards borrowed from him a year later, and then Joseph wrote it into Mosiah 3:19.

Boston's sermons with both phrases had been republished in New York in 1811 by Evert Duyckinck, who coincidentally also published Anthon's Classical Dictionary, which IMO was another source for Book of Mormon narrative elements

Very funny, after you posted this I also looked up "plan of salvation" in Google Books and one of the same books that came up for my search on "natural man is an enemy to God" popped up again. Both phrases are in one text: Human nature in its four-fold state by Rev. Boston (1735) Plan of salvation is in there three times, and it looks like Wesley lifts his passage from Boston almost verbatim Boston: "Every natural Man is an Enemy to God, as he is revealed in his Word. An infinitely holy, just, powerful, and true Being, is not the God whom he loves, but the God whom he loaths. In effect, Men naturally are Haters of God..." Wesley: "Every natural man is an enemy to God, as he is revealed in his word, — to an infinitely holy, just, powerful, and true Being. In effect, men are naturally 'haters of God'..."

Also variations found in a sermon by Jonathan Edwards in 1736, and then published within America MEN NATURALLY GOD'S ENEMIES. AUGUST, 1736. SERMON, VII. "A natural man is as full of enmity against God."

WW Phelps was an editor of one in nearby Canandaiga. Phelps has a lot of telling phraseology that gives away his learning. He certainly had access to books, journals and editorials from all over the country, and Europe. Phelps read the Book of Mormon just 3 days after it was published and a year later was called to "to head printing and publishing for the Church" I think we often overlook that much of the unique theology in Mormonism was developed after 1830, when Joseph was swimming in theological, philosophical and political conversations, and lots of print

That was my first thought, but George's journal has far more detail, such as: "When the spies first began to question us, it was observed that they picked out the greenest looking fellows in the Camp to quiz. As I was only 16, very large of my age, my eyes weak and naturally deficient of sight, wore a pair of striped bed-tick pantaloons, which were worn off on the inside, nearly up to my knees on account of my interfering as I walked, my straw hat having been smashed by accidentally sitting on it in the tent, Joseph invited me to throw myself in a position to answer such questions; and on passing through the towns I generally fell somewhat in the rear cutting a sorry figure which naturally singled me out — on the principle that children and fools always tell the truth. In this way I had many amusing conversations with inquisitive strangers. I tried to treat them with kindness and urbanity, but presume very few of them gained much information by talking with me." And if History isn't sourcing the account from GAS, then I don't know where else it would be coming from

Yes, the George A. Smith journal is nearly word-for-word, so it must come from there, with the [as I was called] insertion added later. The question would be when did the editors gain access to George A. Smith's journal? He was only 16 during Zion's Camp, and it seems he is writing much of it from memory after the fact.

As Weebles mentioned, it is also in the A1 volume of the History of the Church, which was partly dictated and edited by Joseph Smith. The George A. Smith account published later is almost word-for-word, so the History of the Church version must have been taken from his journal? There is an insertion in the paragraph that attributes the account to Joseph Smith, suggesting the editors (if not Joseph himself) intended the account to be first person: After reading the full entry, I am surprised that the camp was not making an effort to fool the attendees into thinking they were a camp full of liberal freethinkers. They served sacrament to all attendees, and it was only Joseph's speech that was not related to a Christian topic like baptism or free grace or restorationism. It was Joseph who decided the topic and the speaker, so I wonder why Joseph chose to speak on liberal freethinking, when he could have given himself any topic he wanted. Makes me think either, 1. he was very comfortable with the topic, or 2. he wanted to communicate ideas that resembled liberal freethinking. I suppose there are other options, but those two seem most logical to me

The footnote in the Bushman article is confused or wrong. But found it here

I don't think we know the names of any other local youth who participated the debate club. There were the Lapham brothers, Increase Lapham (b 1811) went on to become an accomplished antiquarian and scientist. He was the first to excavate the burial mounds of Aztalan, Wisconsin, thought to be the location of the Aztec homeland at that time. So at some point he was able to become one of the leading experts on the moundbuilders. His brother Fayette would interview Joseph Smith Sr. in 1829. But they were a few years after Joseph and moved around a lot, so they don't fully represent the learning available to a young man in Palmyra in the 1820s. There's also Luther Bradish, who at the time Joseph would have been participating in the debate club, was traveling deep into Egypt/Sudan and was riding camels into Jerusalem and Syria before continuing on through Europe to Scandinavia. Bradish wasn't in Palmyra between 1820 and 1826, but since his parents lived in Palmyra at the time, I imagine his travels were closely followed and discussed by the locals. Bradish would of course become the first to give his opinion on the transcript of the gold plate characters. It was possible for a young man from Palmyra to access the outside world. That account was not Turner's, it was George A. Smith, Joseph's first cousin (source)

Turner was clear, he thought Joseph was lacking in intellect and ambition. Which makes it all the more convincing when he admits Joseph had enough intellect to help solve questions at the debate club, and that he had enough ambition and skill to very passably exhort on theological topics at the camp meetings. Portentous had a more specific meaning between 1830s and 1850s. This is how Turner used the word in a different context in the same book: "In 1786, '7, a boy, I saw the Revolutionary fathers in their primary assemblies. The scene was solemn and portentous! They found their common country without a constitution and govern- ment, and without a union. The supposed oppressive measures of an adjoining State had so alarmed the people of a portion of it, that open resistance was made for self-protection, and the protection of property." Source Regardless of any intended sarcasm, Turner is saying that Joseph Smith participated in discussions of topics that would have certainly required some overlap with texts that were sitting right there on the shelves of the print shop and of the old red school house on Durfee Street. I find it unthinkable that Joseph Smith wouldn't have picked up any of those books, and even if he didn't, that he didn't ponder deeply the questions others were discussing at the debate society. It raises another question. If Moroni had been instructing Joseph Smith on so many topics from theology to the ancient inhabitants of the Americas since 1823, then wouldn't Orasmus Turner have seen some of that learning sneak though? Why would Joseph be able to tell so many wonderful things to his family about the ancient inhabitants of America, but then Turner didn't notice anything remarkable? I think Turner was actually impressed by Joseph, and was simply underselling his intellect and ability

You think its far out that young boys are meeting at a debate society to discuss articles from a dictionary about the religions of the world that they found in the local iibrary? When exactly did Joseph learn enough much about freethinking deism to convince two to three hundred people over the space of an hour that he was one of the greatest reasoners they had ever heard? We need to explain where he picked up all that knowledge. I seriously doubt he was reading Paine, Hume and Volney after he restored the Gospel. I seriously doubt Moroni taught him enough freethinking deism that he could convince hundreds of people that he was one. The simple answer is, as one of the most respected Mormon scholars argues, he learned it while discussing books like Hume, Paine and Volney at the debate club. If those books were known to the youth at the club, why couldn't they also know the books like Dictionary of all Religions and Travels of Cyrus which were available at the Manchester Library? Both these books were widely circulating and popular. How is this far out?

the tool I’m referring to is simple, you load a pdf of a book into it and ask questions about the contents, and discuss in more detail the responses. In a similar way,Joseph would have been able to ask questions to people who had read the books in the Manchester Library, and then discuss in more detail the responses. It seems like this is exactly what would have been happening in the debate club on Durfee Street when Joseph was helping to solve moral and ethical questions being discussed Good example of how I imagine things played out. Lucy mentioned in her account that the neighbors accused them of stopping their farm work to win the Faculty of Abrac. Her response was something like the family did in fact endeavor “to remember the service of & welfare of our souls”, but not to the neglect of their farm. So let’s say Joseph spent the majority of his day working on the farm and then set an hour or two of his day to learning more about Abrac. He would go to Durfee Steet to discuss such questions. Let’s say someone at the club had checked out Hannah Adam’s Dictionary of All Religions at the nearby Manchester Library. They could have shared that Abraxas was the chief angelic spirit of a vast multitude of beings in the religious system of Egyptian Christians in the second century. These beings then formed a heaven for their own habitation and brought forth other beings of a slightly inferior nature. Then someone could say, hey, that sounds like the doctrine of order out of chaos I read about in Ramsay’s Travels of Cyrus down at the Manchester Library. Then they could debate whether or not angels and spirits preexisted and whether or not beings and creation emanated out of God, or were created out of nothing Joseph could then take those learnings back to the farm and ponder them for several hours while working in the fields Also, Lucy doesn’t say Joseph couldn’t read, only that he was less inclined to reading than his siblings. My sense is he preferred to do things like solve questions “of a religious nature” (as Lucy phrased it) from discussions he’d have at places like the debate club, and then ponder them in deep study, as Lucy herself suggests

He's referring to his mother's intellect shining through feebly, not to his public speaking skills. Also Orasmus Turner's account is hostile, so we should expect some effort to continue portraying Joseph in a negative light. When he says "Joseph had a little ambition", it feels to me like he's underselling Joseph's ambition, in line with the previous sentence portraying Joseph as being "lounging, idle, (not to say vicious,) and possessed of less than ordinary intellect" In any case, Joseph went from being a "very passable exhorter" able to help solve "portentous questions of moral or political ethics" to "one of the greatest reasoners" the crowds around Zions' Camp in 1834 had ever heard. The dictation of the Book of Mormon occurred at some point along that spectrum

"But Joseph had a little ambition, and some very laudable aspirations; the mother's intellect occasionally shone out in him feebly, especially when he used to help us to solve some portentous questions of moral or political ethics, in our juvenile debating club, which we moved down to the old red school-house on Durfee street, to get rid of the annoyance of critics that used to drop in upon us in the village; amid, subsequently, after catching a spark of Methodism in the camp-meeting, away down in the woods, on the Vienna road, he was a very passable exhorter in evening meetings." Source If we consider Joseph's (with Moroni's instruction) ability to entertain his family with stories of ancient civilizations alongside his (without Moroni's instruction) public speaking abilities on theology, free-thinking, moral and ethical issues, we're pretty close to understanding how he would have been able to dictate the text of the Book of Mormon.

June 1834 ”Sunday, June 1, the camp settled about a mile from Jacksonville. Fredrick G. Williams announced to the people of Jacksonville that there would be preaching on the Sabbath. George A. Smith noted that two to three hundred of the local inhabitants came to hear. The Prophet (who was called “Squire Cook” by the men of the camp that day) spoke, professing to be a liberal free thinker. [23] The crowd listened to his remarks with great attention, and many noted he was one of the greatest reasoners they had ever heard. ” Source What I gather from Bushman’s paper is that Joseph learned all this during a crisis of faith before he translated the gold plates. So even if he learned his oration skills after, he was deep in the discussions well before. The Book of Mormon is a remarkably sophisticated response to Paine’s theological works. Not only does it provide a clever response to his criticism of Josiah’s reforms (Lehi fleeing Jerusalem) but it also responds to Paine’s attack on the Pentateuch being a pious fraud orchestrated by Hilkiah to justify Josiah’s reforms (brass plates containing the original 5 Books of Moses) The Book of Mormon looks like a direct response to the deists like Hume, Paine and Volney using the same playbook (arkite myth-making) that Biblical apologists like Bryant and Faber used to respond to the same deists. Joseph could have got all that material easily through books and social clubs, as it was one of the hottest topic of the day. The origins of the moundbuilders being another its unconvincing to say that Joseph Smith was unfamiliar with moundbuilder speculations, or of Paine and the responses to Paine simply because he did not have a subscription to the Manchester Library. The whole church v. freethinker debate was dramatized within his own home, according to Lucy Mack Smith herself