Pyreaux

Beside the fact they were not delivering any binding revelation on geography, the Book of Mormon narrative itself disproves it. Mormon "hid up in the hill Cumorah all the records... save it were these few plates which I gave unto my son Moroni." (Mormon 6:6) Moroni then wandered for over 35 years after the battle at Cumorah before finally burying his plates in the ground, far away from Cumorah (Mormon 8:1–4, Moroni 10).

There is a distinction between the covenant initiation and resurrected state. An heir to a crown first becomes a prince at birth (in our case through formal covenant adoption by the Lord, "Born-again"). They hold the status, authority, and title of heir long before they sit on the throne to rule the kingdom. Abraham was already a king and a priest, that is what the Everlasting Covenant is, "I will make nations of thee, and kings shall come out of thee." (Genesis 17:6). The Hittites explicitly address Abraham, "Hear us, my lord: thou art a mighty prince [literally, 'a prince/king'] among us." (Genesis 23:6) Abraham received his priesthood under the hands of Melchizedek in life (Genesis 14:18–20; Hebrews 7; D&C 84:14). Melchizedek was actively a King and a Priest governing a city in mortality, and Abraham was ordained under his hands to the same order, then the order of King-Priests was an active, earthly covenant institution. Pushing the "Royal Priesthood" into the afterlife fails when you look at how "keys" of authority function among Christians. The Key of David (Revelation 3:7, Isa. 22:22) is an explicit earthly authority. "What he opens, none shuts; what he shuts, none opens." Jesus, son of David, explicitly bestows this key to Apostles on earth, "I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven..." If Christians had no priesthood in life, then why did Christ bestow the keys of a royal steward to mortal men to perform ordinances ("bind on earth") during mortality? (Matthew 16:19). If early Christians had no active priesthood or authority in mortality, then the commission to baptize, laying on of hands for the Holy Ghost, and the Lord's Supper had no significance. How are non-authorities remitting sins (John 20:23)? The Aaronic Priesthood is the namesake of the lesser rungs of the Melchizedek priesthood itself for ward-level ecclesiastical duties. Neither men nor women are striving to inherit the inferior Aaronic Priesthood. The Aaronic Priesthood is a preparatory, temporary order (Hebrews 7:11–12). Revelation, D&C 76, and D&C 131 is not promising the Aaronic Priesthood. The Everlasting Covenant of Marriage is the highest order of the Melchizedek Priesthood which cannot be entered by a men alone.

Genesis Rabbah 15:7, Rabbi Nehemiah famously argued that the forbidden tree was a fig tree. Are you wondering if the other trees were symbols, what is the fig tree symbolic of? If the other trees represent things like carnal awareness, agricultural civilization, or temple mysteries, the fig tree carries many symbols related to that. The shape of the fruit, its dense seeds, and the milky latex sap secreted by the tree were widely linked to human reproductive anatomy in ancient medicine. If the "knowledge" gained in Eden represents the transition from a hunter-gatherer existence (living off spontaneous wilderness) to the burdens of agrarian civilization, the fig is a prime cultural marker. The fig was one of the earliest domesticated fruit trees in the Fertile Crescent, predating grain farming. Cultivating fig trees requires a settled life, grafting, irrigation, and long-term planning. Fig leaves are notoriously rough, dry out rapidly, and crumble. In an allegorical story, the fig leaf symbolizes the inadequacy of human-efforts to fix a spiritual breach before God steps in to provide durable holy, white sheep skin garments, atoned (covered) by a lamb, as it were. If the Garden of Eden is understood as a Temple, the sacred trees were in the "midst"/middle like the Menorah tree is in the Temple, the fig tree represents something maybe at the threshold of sacred space, the tree-like pillar or tree wall art of the Temple. The fig leaf apron to poorly recreate the High Priest's Ephod (Exodus 28) that Adam may have lost. "Blessed is he that watcheth, and keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked, and they see his shame." (Revelation 16:15) In scripture, "garments" are often metaphorical for "works", like in Isaiah. White garments in Revelations are the righteous works of those who were (already) sanctified. Filthy garments are wicked works. Naked is to be void of works. One could, and have, interpret Genesis as the eyes of Adam and Eve obtained a spiritual sight, they saw they did not yet have righteous works.

Are you assuming mutual exclusivity? Can't an ultimate, perfected state in the afterlife also be an active covenant status, lineage, or authority held in mortality? Are there no kings or priests in mortality now or in the past? Of course there were. "They are they who are the church of the Firstborn." "They are they into whose hands the Father has given all things." "They are they who are priests and kings..." Even in your prooftext focused on the future, the text uses present-tense markers ("are" and "has given") to describe the covenant identity of those who overcome. A promise of ultimate inheritance in the afterlife does not erase the legal initiation that happens in the present. Concerning whether LDS women do not receive the Melchizedek priesthood On the contrary, women are washed, anointed, endowed like every priest. Temple Marriage is the highest order of the priesthood. It is as it was in ancient Near Eastern and ancient Israelite royal theology, a king cannot be crowned in isolation. Kingship and Queenship were inextricably linked through royal, temple-based initiations. LDS Women even participate in administering ordinances of the Melchizedek Priesthood in the temple to other women. As Joseph Smith taught when organizing the Relief Society and introducing the Temple Endowment, women are anointed to become Queens and Priestesses jointly with their husbands. The ancient temple rites is where sacred myrrh oil, vestments, and entry past the veil were given to the pair (Temple Marriage Psalm, Psalm 45).

By not assuming Genesis is a modern textbook. It wasn't, it was an ancient apocalyptic temple text. The Six-Day Creation is thought to be the six-day long vision Moses had when he was on the mountain before the Lord spoke to him on the seventh (Exodus 24:16) and told hm to construct the tabernacle after the manner he was shown on the mountain. Day One - Light, first you assemble The Holy of Holies, Day Two - The Firmament, put up the Veil. Day Three - Dry Land, Seas, and Plants, set up the water lavers and the Table of Showbread. Day Four - Seven Great Lights, set up The Menorah. Day Five/Six - Animals, set up The Altar of Sacrifice and the outer court. Day Six - Man in the Image of God, dress the High Priest in sacred vestments. Day Seven - God rests, the priest atones as a proxy for God. Genesis fits the pattern of an Apocalyptic vision. "Adam" seems likely to be an archetypal figure rather than a strict proper name. A "man" is a known code for a presiding High Priest. Signs suggests is in a rural temple east of Eden. Which is why, Genesis itself strongly hints at other humans existing outside the Garden (Gen 4:14–15; 17). Eden is not the world but one of four countries (Gen 2:11) In ancient Near Eastern Apocalyptic code, "beasts" frequently represent humans, foreign nations/kings, nation deities (demons), or un-covenanted mortals, while "men" or "angels" represent divine messengers, transfigured men, patriarchs, high priests or gods. The Serpent (nachash) can mean serpent, but as a verb means to cast spells, or whisper secrets, as an adjective means "shining one". Could be a fallen spiritual entity or lesser/other priest/power. It fits the standard apocalyptic convention of using animal imagery to describe spiritual and political order. Adam's creation represents the inauguration of a new priestly class, a king crowned at a specific moment in a kingdom that already existed, Adam was set apart to initiate a spiritual epoch, not to originate the species. Beasts - a ram with two horns = the two kings of Media; the ten-horned dragon = the ten Roman rulers; the lamb with seven eyes = human Jesus. Men - the man Gabriel = the angel Gabiel; the Son of Man = Son of God; Enoch's 70 shepherds = the 70 elohim of the nations. Beasts become men, is men become gods - in Enoch, Noah was a white bull who became a man when he was told a secret = Noah transfigured and walked with God; Moses was a white sheep who became a man on Mount Sinai = Moses was transfigured on Mount Sinai. (1 Enoch 85–90)

Elementary my dear Nofear, if he knew the consequences, he would still have reasons to do it anyway. 2 Nephi 2:17–18 after Satan fell from heaven, "he sought also the misery of all mankind." He can't spread misery by letting Adam and Eve remain in a paradisical Garden forever. Moses 4:4, Satan became the "father of all lies, to deceive and to blind men, and to lead them captive at his will." The Fall also gives him immediate power and control and dominion over spirits that he didn't have before. However, it seems "smart" is not the nature of the Beast. Doctrine and Covenants 129:8–9 "If it be the devil as an angel of light, when you ask him to shake hands he will offer you his hand, and you will not feel anything; you may therefore detect him." An evil spirit is bound by its own desire to deceive, even when it traps him. Moses 4:6 explicitly states, "And he knew not the mind of God, wherefore he sought to destroy the world." Again, a part of his nature is he is not very intelligent. He didn't fully comprehend how God's plan worked.

I'm just saying, FairLDS is not denying that Latter-day Saint theology contained such a concept, nor are they trying to erase the fact that early leaders spoke about creating worlds. What they are explicitly rejecting is a reductionist caricature that "omits virtually everything of importance". When FairLDS asserts that details about world creation "are not clarified" in scripture, the core of their argument remains valid. If someone says Christians just want to "sit on a cloud and play a harp," is a caricature. Do Christians talk about harps, clouds, and heavenly choirs? Yes. But summarizing the entirety of Christian salvation as "getting a harp" strips away any reverence. Showing that early LDS leaders taught literal world-building does not mean the pop-culture slogan "getting your own planet" is intended to be a comprehencive or fair representation of LDS theology.

So, you are demonstrating that the idea of creating and populating worlds was not a fringe theory or an anti-Mormon invention, but taught at General Conference and printed in manuals. You are ignoring the literal language used. Look closely at the word choice FairLDS objects to "getting your own planet." The church’s frustration is with the popularized pop-culture references like The Book of Mormon Musical or 1980s evangelical counter-cult films. Early Latter-day Saints used verbs of labor, "frame," "organize," "people," "govern," and "furnish." In their view, something you built through work. The phrase "get a planet" completely deletes the labor for a passive acquisition, as pop-culture parody frames a planet as a prize, like some luxury commodity. We use the words "worlds" or "earths" as in religious and biblical literature, while "planet" evokes a secular or sci-fi text. We're trying to reframe the conversation around Theosis, an ancient Christian concept that humans can become divinely transformed through Christ. Becoming like God in character. In any robust theology, some doctrines are core principles while others are secondary appendages. The mechanics of planet-building have always been speculative extensions of Eternal Increase. In Protestant theology, there is a famous maxim, "In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things charity." There are the non-negotiables such as the divinity of Christ, salvation by grace, the resurrection, and the authority of Scripture. The non-essentials are issues where Christians can disagree or have differing interpretations without compromising their salvation or fellowship. Classic examples are the passionate preaching from the pulpit speculations about exact timeline and mechanics of the end times, rapture, tribulation, or Armageddon. Even if "getting a planet" were the case, it would be good to move away from any accidental undercurrent of materialism and ego. Reframing it around theosis shifts the focus inward. Speculating about the physics of organizing chaotic matter in the next life provides zero practical utility for a person trying to navigate the complexities of mortality. Whereas Theosis emphasizes developing those divine traits now.

As recounted by Benjamin Brimhall. The language regarding governance, creation, and priesthood authority was almost exclusively directed toward men, reflecting both the cultural norms of the era and the structural organization of the Church. But the actual doctrine, seeing man cannot attain highest order of the priesthood nor the highest degree of celestial glory alone, a man cannot be a "God" without a "Goddess" companion, exaltation has always been described fundamentally as a joint enterprise. To suggest they intend to say women are somehow excluded runs counter to even the eldest LDS theology.

One pro-Christian view is to accept the historical reality of the Deuteronomic scribes did scribal editing for political consolidation and retrospective justification. The Deuteronomic histories, like Deuteronomy, Judges, Kings, the Deuteronomists emphasized a highly legalistic deity who demanded the absolute, violent eradication of the "other" people in the land, whom God did not send to Babylon. Deuteronomy could be propaganda by xenophobic Levitical scribes, using segments by Moses, but compiled during the reign of King Manasseh and planted in the temple to dupe young King Josiah to bring about a xenophobic reform, an anti-Melchizedek, anti-temple, anti-prophesy, anti-theophany, anti-proto-Christian reform that ultimately led to Jerusalem to be razed three times. 75 years later, Deuteronomic scribe Ezra and Nehemiah, return from Babylon to find an occupied Jerusalem, they needed to establish an exclusive identity to prevent assimilation. A command to utterly destroy groups could likely be a post-exilic retrojection. Ezra's regime was forcing Jewish men to divorce their foreign wives and abandon their mixed children (Ezra 10). He and his scribes rewrote all the books from memory. If God supposedly commanded the complete slaughter of ancient neighbors to prevent "contamination," then Ezra’s demand to exile foreign wives seemed mild by comparison. Weaponized against the Samaritans, depicting the northern tribes and their neighbors as historically corrupt, compromised, and marked for divine rejection. Malachi, a book not in chronological order, seems to disapprove of Ezra. Makes perfect sense to LDS, the Book of Mormon's opening chapters, Lehi left Jerusalem just a few decades after Josiah’s reforms. The Brass Plates would be scriptures unaltered by the final post-exilic scribal revisions of Ezra. Lehi and Nephi are classic "First Temple" prophets, building temples after the temple of Solomon. I was saying it's a very pro-Christian stance, Genesis and the New Testament breaks many Deuteronomic laws, yet many churches can't survive the implications of that line of study as many require the scriptures to be pure so it can be used as an authority to trump all other authorities. You can't have it all.

I intended to reply to this, answering it is not as simple as the questions look, then I forgot. I was born in the church. My mom converted at 14, and my dad is a 7th generation. I like it's always made sense and been enlightening to me, and seems more true the more I study, I am introverted and I don't like the social demands, but that's really just my problem, not the church's.

Um, no, I was saying the Christians were the populist, grassroots movement of the common people. Qumran were indeed educated, isolated, closed-circled group of Zadokite priests. Both groups intensely disliked the corruption of the Jerusalem/Temple establishment, they had the same anti-establishment, apocalyptic ideas. John the Baptist seems very associated with Qumran but clearly didn't stay in the monastery, baptizing mass crowds of common people.

I still think the oversimplification is to paint Second Temple Jerusalem as place where the High Priests were sitting around reading Plato or trying to be philosophers. That strips them of their organic, native development. The high priests were politicians dealing with Greek overlords, living in Jerusalem, Tiberias and Sepphoris. Jesus’s disciples were from the rural fishing villages and agricultural pockets of Galilee, places like Capernaum, Bethsaida, and Nazareth. Jesus never sets foot inside Sepphoris or Tiberias, and they were only a few miles away. Like the other working class, he actively avoided these urban hubs of foreign compromise. But even "Hellenized elites", who may have liked Greek styles and luxury still were not sophisticated intellectuals. The disciples were entirely insulated from Greek education, philosophy, and rhetoric, their worldview was shaped exclusively by the text of the Hebrew Scriptures and the oral traditions of their local communities. Jesus preached entirely around local themes of seeds, soil, nets, fish, and vineyards. His hated Jewish corruptions to the Law, the injustice for the poor and the hypocrisy of the ruling class. Christianity wasn't a brand-new invention, nor was it a product of Greek thought. Jesus the Christ, John the Baptist, James the Righteous, and Jude seem to have more than a little Qumran in them. The movement was populist and from grassroots. But Qumran itself saw every single compromise made by the Jerusalem establishment, whether it was a political treaty with a Greek king, or how the upper-class dressed, was through a magnifying glass of religious panic.

They weren't offended by the Greek language. Philosophy was incompatible the Raz Nihyeh, secrets of the way things are, as revealed to their leader. Truth was static, divine, and unlocked only through inspired interpretation of Hebrew scripture, the "pesher". Debate, logic, and speculative metaphysics of schools like Stoicism or Platonism were viewed as part of the "dominion of Belial" because it was seeking wisdom outside of God. The Community Rule lays out that they were leaving society and going to the wilderness to escape the corrupt of mainstream Israel, "They shall separate themselves from the session of the men of deceit in order to depart into the wilderness to prepare there the Way of the Lord; as it is written: 'In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make level in the desert a highway for our God.'" (1QS 8:12–15) The "men of deceit" were the religious rulers in Jerusalem who had done such things as adapt the Torah to find comfortable common ground with Hellenistic laws. The War Scroll's entire text is about an apocalyptic global war "against the Kittim of Asshur [the Seleucid Greeks]." (1QM). Kittim to refer to the invading Greek Seleucids and Ptolemies, and later the Romans. It and Pesher to Habakkuk (1QpHab) condemn the Greeks for idolatry. But the scrolls biggest ax is for the Hellenized Jews, those were the high priests and elites in Jerusalem who adopted Greek philosophy, Greek sports, and Greek religious syncretism. The Pesher on Nahum (4Q169), the community explicitly rails against the ruling class in Jerusalem for introducing Greek customs and cooperating with Greek kings, like Antiochus Epiphanes. Halakhic Letter, Miqsat Ma'aseh ha-Torah (4QMMT) outlining, "We have separated ourselves from the multitude of the people and from all their impurity, and from intermingling in these matters, and from participating with them in these things... because we have seen that they have no understanding of the Law." (4QMMT C:7–8). The "intermingling" refers to the sweeping changes made to Temple sacrifices, marriage laws, and festival schedules under Hellenistic influence. The Habakkuk Commentary (1QpHab) the community is talking about the high-priestly aristocracy for looting funds, taxing the population, and adopting Greco-Roman economic and political patterns to solidify their own power. "The explanation of this concerns the Wicked Priest, who was called by the name of truth at the beginning of his course... but when he ruled in Israel his heart became proud, and he abandoned God and betrayed the precepts for the sake of riches. And he robbed and hoarded the wealth of the men of violence who had rebelled against God, and he took the wealth of the peoples to add to himself a load of guilt." (1QpHab 8:8–12). The Damascus Document (CD) details the "three nets of Belial (Satan)" that have trapped the mainstream Jewish leadership in Jerusalem. One of those nets was the total desecration of the sanctuary through pagan-influenced laxity, "They defile the Sanctuary, for they do not separate according to the Law, but lie with a woman who sees the blood of her discharge... and each man marries the daughter of his brother, whereas Moses said... 'You shall not approach your mother's sister.'" (CD 5:6–11) Concern for moral, marital, and ritual standards that looked dangerously similar to the practices of the surrounding Hellenistic world, where close marriages was common practice to keep wealth and power concentrated. Even Jews who deeply resented the Greek political rule or religion spoke, wrote, and read Greek as a matter of daily survival and commerce. Some scrolls were brought by converts joining the community from Greek-speaking areas, while others may have been brought later from the Jerusalem libraries for safekeeping when the Roman army marched on Judea. They were heavily exposed to the Greek language, yet they fiercely resisted Greek theology, despite centuries of exposure to the Greek language, their theological core remained un-Platonic. Spirits as the heavenly blueprints before made on earth Their sectarian scrolls contain a highly developed concept of human spirits existing before mortality, but it is framed through a belief around divine pre-planning of Creation, but not Platonic philosophy. The most famous text on this is the Treatise on the Two Spirits, found within the Community Rule (1QS 3:15) "From the God of Knowledge comes all that is and shall be. Before they existed, He established all their design; and when they come into being... they fulfill their work according to His glorious design." Before the world was made, God created the Spirit of Light and the Spirit of Darkness. Every human soul is assigned to one of these two spirits before they are ever born. "Sons of Light" and the "Sons of Darkness". Your spirit exists pre-mortally as either a divine blueprint or an engineered spirit within God's design. God sits down at a metaphorical drafting table before the creation of matter. He designs individual human "spirits" and assigns them a definitive set of tasks, moral capabilities, and historical roles. The Thanksgiving Hymns (Hodayot / 1QH) "You have formed every spirit and established its work before creation... You determined the destiny of every human being according to the spirit given to him." (1QH 17:11–12) The Barkhi Nafshi (Bless, O My Soul / 4Q434–438) The text explicitly praises God for knowing a person "before they were ever formed in the womb," echoing Jeremiah but expanding it to general human populations. Spirits in storehouses of the winds 1 Enoch references heavenly storehouses. Enoch sees the "storehouses of all the winds" and these winds are alive. Often treated as identical to being the storehouses of human spirits in the Guf, where pre-existent or post-mortem spirits are kept under lock and key until their appointed time. References to these storehouses are seen in 4 Ezra (4 Esdras), 2 Baruch 30:2, Psalm 135:7, Jeremiah 10:13, Job 38:22, Ecclesiastes 12:7. Spirits in the Assembly / Council Enoch is granted a vision that purposefully blurs the line between the souls of the righteous and the angels: "And I saw another vision... the dwelling-places of the holy and the resting-places of the righteous. Here my eyes saw their dwellings with His holy angels, and their resting-places with the holy ones." (1 Enoch 39:4-5) There is the Zedekim, the "Assembly of the Righteous," is framed as part of the exact same celestial architecture as the "Assembly of the Holy Ones." The Zedekim, the righteous ones, in the heavenly court and divine council, are lead by a heavenly Melchizedek. Later there are clearer references to a pre-mortal council where Adam, Noah, Abraham, Enoch, and Moses sit with God before the physical world is constructed, a classic midrashic concept that was compiled and popularized by Eliyahu Kitov in Sefer HaParshiyot (The Book of Torah Portions) from texts like Bereshit Rabbah 8:7 and the Talmud.

The missionary who was attacked, he has a photo. I know we aren't fans of watching every hour long LDS video people post, so I have the video cued to the part with the photo, if you want to watch just a few seconds.

Its confirmed now.

Pick up any standard university textbook on the history of biblical scholarship, such as Bart Ehrman, and they will categorize Wright and Crossan, despite many disagreements on other things, as key leaders of a specific academic movement called Third Quest for the Historical Jesus. In fact, throughout the 1990s and 2000s, Wright and Crossan traveled the world together doing public debates, co-authoring books like The Resurrection of Jesus: John Dominic Crossan and N.T. Wright in Dialogue, precisely because they were the two most famous faces of the Third Quest. And Third Quest refutes the Hellenistic model using new archaeological data, like the Dead Sea Scrolls. I didn't claim Galilean fishermen penned the Greek texts, rather they are the dialogue of characters, it's all everyday vernacular of Jews, including asking if a man sinned before he was born in John, and they were non-Platonic, fiercely anti-Hellenistic Palestinian Jews in Judea. The Qumran community records starting around 250 BC, they literally fled into the desert to escape Greek cultural contamination. They despised everything Hellenistic. Yet, their writings are packed with highly complex worldviews regarding eternal spirits. They didn't need to get that from reading Plato, they had their own traditions of the First Temple and Enoch. The Anchor Bible Commentary on John, Raymond Brown systematically evaluates four potential backgrounds for the Logos. Greek philosophy (Stoicism/Platonism), Philo of Alexandria, Gnosticism, and Old Testament/Rabbinic Judaism. His conclusion is definitive. The primary, foundational background for the Johannine Logos is the Old Testament concept of the "Word" of God (Davar), combined with the personification of Wisdom (Hokmah) found in Israel's Wisdom literature like Proverbs 8, Sirach 24, and Wisdom of Solomon 9. In Stoicism, the Logos was an impersonal, material cosmic force. John’s Logos is a deeply personal, divine being. Brown argues the two concepts are completely different. Philo was a Hellenistic Jew trying to bridge Moses and Plato. For Philo, the Logos was still an abstract metaphysical concept or a buffer zone between God and matter. John’s "And the Word became flesh" would have been utterly abhorrent to Platonists and Philo, who believed the divine could never mix with corrupt physical matter. The Logos in John 1 isn't a Greek philosophical import at all. John took a Greek word and completely bent it to fit a Semitic, biblical worldview. Poisoning the well claiming Givens isn't qualified, Oxford University Press does not publish kooky apologist material. Every single book they release must pass a brutal, anonymous peer-review process conducted by independent, non-LDS, mainstream secular historians.

You're leaning on the Hellenization model, and the evolutionary model of religion, that attributes every concept of an eternal soul to Greece, but modern comparative religion shows that's an oversimplification. It is heavily discarded and widely recognized as obsolete, it was pioneered in the 19th-century. Over the last few decades, mainstream New Testament scholars like E.P. Sanders, Geza Vermes, N.T. Wright, and John Dominic Crossan, have completely re-evaluated the world of Jesus, Paul and John, leaning heavily on the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, not Plato. The disciples weren't educated Middle Platonists. They were everyday, working-class Galileans. Margaret Barker is a polarizing figure on some of her more radical theories. Though she was awarded a Lambeth Doctor of Divinity by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 2008. She's spoken well of by many mainstream historical-critical scholars view her work as brilliant but over-speculative. She's been warmly received by Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Anglican and LDS theologians, because the claims that vestments, rites and liturgies are very ancient are very appealing. Terryl Givens' Oxford University Press study When Souls Had Wings: Pre-Mortal Existence in Western Thought shows that the "Greek-only" narrative is an oversimplification. Givens traces how this doctrine continuously resurfaced across three millennia, despite being repeatedly and aggressively suppressed by mainstream religious orthodoxy. Givens argues that philosophers and theologians did not arbitrarily invent pre-existence, they kept turning to it because it solves many intellectual dilemmas that standard Christian theology struggles to answer. Suffering, genuine free will, deja vu and soulmates and kindred spirits. Givens maps the journey of the pre-mortal soul across history. Originating in ancient Mesopotamian myths where humans are imbued with a spark of divine blood, an idea formalized by Pythagoras and Plato, establishing the soul's native home in the stars. Mesopotamian and early Semitic frameworks featured the concept of a heavenly assembly where the destinies and "essences" of individuals were determined and formed before their earthly births. 700–300 BC, the Upanishads in ancient India established a highly sophisticated doctrine of the eternal soul (Atman) that pre-existed its current physical birth, independent of any Mediterranean contact. Anti-Mormon critics in the 19th centuries often accused Joseph Smith of "stealing" the doctrine of pre-mortal existence from Plato. But Joseph Smith didn't need to copy Plato, there was already a vibrant, brilliant underground stream of Western thought that mainstream scholastic theology had spent 1,500 years trying to suffocate. You don't need Margaret Barker to see the timeline flaws.

Your argument is the outdated, cynical evolutionary model. Dr. Margaret Barker's entire life's work is dedicated to proving that Jewish apocalypticism was not a late Greek invention. Instead, it was a preservation of the First Temple Israelite religion that existed but had been forced underground by the Deuteronomist reformers. Barker argues the exact opposite, Apocalypticism is the survival of the oldest, original Israelite worldview. Existing at least to the 7th century BC, well before the Greeks. A marginalized group burst back onto the scene as Apocalyptic Literature with Enoch. While it's true that the Old Testament uses nephesh in a holistic way (soul = the whole living being), the concept of an individual spiritual entity that survives death or exists before birth is found in ancient Near Eastern cultures centuries before Plato was born. The ancient Egyptians had a deeply complex, highly developed multi-part theology of the Ka and the Ba that lived before and after mortality, completely independent of Greek philosophy. Israel spent 400 years in Egypt. To claim they had to wait for Plato in 300 BC to conceptualize the ideas of a spirit is absurd. In ancient Ugaritic (Canaanite) texts similarities are remnants of a common Semite origin. The ancient Semites believed the spirit survived death as a distinct, conscious entity. Such as the Rephaim, in the Ugaritic texts, the spirits of the departed kings and righteous ancestors are invoked in liturgical rituals, invited to feasts, and expected to protect the living king. Isaiah 14:9 and Psalm 88:10, the dead in the underworld are called the Rephaim. When Abraham arrived in Canaan, he didn't find a spiritual vacuum either. He met Melchizedek, who was already the priest of El Elyon (The Most High God), a king living in Canaan.

Like more crowd participation opportunities? What should a person with a short attention span do when things get dull? You can't engage by shouting amen or clap. I'd would say meditate, but meditation beyond thinking or remembering is not a taught skill in the church. Meditation does activate the God Center of the brain, like prolong prayer does, except you push thoughts out instead of concentrating hard.

Jews believed in a preexistence completely independent of Plato with zero Platonic flavor. It was native to ancient Jewish apocalyptic thought. God actively "made" or "prepared" the souls before the foundation of the world. They are meant to come to earth as part of a grand design, "like the angels" (1 Enoch 69:11) "For all souls are prepared for eternity, before the composition of the earth." (2 Enoch 23:5) "And it shall come to pass at that time that the treasuries will be opened in which is preserved the number of the souls of the righteous, and they shall come forth, and a multitude of souls shall be seen together in one assemblage..." (2 Baruch 30:2) "Bring to an end the poverty of Zion, and remember the multitude of souls that have been numbered, and hasten the time of their birth." (2 Baruch 21:23) Church Fathers initially leaned toward it, but the Catholic Church ultimately condemned strict pre-existence at the Council of Constantinople 553 AD because it sounded too much like Plato’s reincarnation dualism. Instead, Catholicism sort of invented Creationism, the belief that God creates a fresh soul at the moment of conception, to justify Original Sin. John's 'Logos' subverted Platonism. The Logos is a translation of an established, personified Davar (Word) or the Aramaic Memra (Voice) that created the world, "And God said, Let there be light." And to a Middle Platonist "And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us..." is a grotesque impossibility. John didn't adapt Platonism, he just used their vocabulary.

Firstly, it's present-tense in the New Testament. Revelation 1:5-6: "Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father..." The Greek verb epoiesen "he made/has made" is telling the living members of the early seven churches that Christ already made them kings and priests on earth. D&C 84:33-34 states that those who received the Melchizedek priesthood on earth become "the seed of Abraham, and the church and kingdom, and the elect of God." You cannot inherit a kingdom as a king unless you have already been legally entered into the royal line. The Melchizedek priesthood is the vehicle that binds them to that royal order now and the afterlife. Someone receives true kingly "dominion" in the afterlife, but I'm arguing about what authority the New Testament church was operating under.

Are all High Places bad? Sunday School started 1 Kings. My thoughts on Kings has evolved over time to the point that they are no longer appropriate for Sunday School. It's simply not the time to dig into an overly long counter narrative. So, I heard the Sunday School throw the classic tropes around that condemn the construction of other shrines, high places and groves, as if they only exist to worship foreign deities. 1 Samuel 9 explicitly shows the prophet Samuel blessing a sacrifice at the high place in Ramah. Saul is told he will meet a group of prophets coming down from a high place playing harps, tambourines, and flutes (1 Samuel 10:5). 1 Kings 3:3–4 says Solomon loved the Lord, but "he sacrificed and burned incense at the high places." But Gibeon was "the chief high place," and it was precisely there that Yahweh appeared to Solomon in a dream and granted him his wisdom. The scribes explain why this was okay at the time. 1 Kings 3:2 "The people, however, were still sacrificing at the high places, because a temple had not yet been built for the Name of the Lord." The condemnation of the high places in the later monarchy was about protecting the divine boundaries. Because high places were so deeply contaminated by the rebellious elohim, keeping them open was a constant invitation for infiltration and footholds into Israel. Margaret Barker takes a sharp, historical-critical view here. She argues that the "high places" actually preserved elements of the ancient, original First Temple theology, including the veneration of Yahweh’s heavenly host and the divine mother figure (represented by the Asherah). For Barker, when later reforming kings like Hezekiah and Josiah violently tore down the high places, wasn't just a cleanup of paganism, it was an aggressive political purge by a specific Jerusalem faction determined to centralize all power, money, and theology into their capital city, effectively rewriting Israel's older, decentralized religious history. Did Elijah defeat Ba'al or disprove Ba'al? The perspectives of scholars like Michael Heiser and Margaret Barker, Elijah’s showdown at Mount Carmel is understood as a defeat of a real territorial deity, rather than the modern "disproof" of an imaginary being. Look at the Old Testament through the lens of ancient Near Eastern context, rather than modern Western categories of monotheism. Elijah did not go to Mount Carmel to argue that Baal was a psychological fiction. He staged a geographical turf war near the Israel border. Baal was a real demonic and/or rebel entity. When Elijah mocks Baal in 1 Kings 18:27, "Perhaps he is deep in thought, or busy, or traveling... or sleeping", modern readers assume Elijah is saying, "He's fake." Elijah is actually mocking actual beliefs about Baal, who routinely went to the underworld, traveled, or slept. Elijah is essentially saying, "Your god is a limited entity who can't hear you right now" Barker places a heavy emphasis on 1 Kings 18:30, where Elijah "repaired the altar of the Lord that had been torn down." For her, this isn't an abstract debate about whether the gods exist, it is a physical and spiritual reclamation of the First Temple cultus against a real, rival priesthood that had successfully hijacked the nation. The notion of disproving a god's existence is a modern, post-Enlightenment way of thinking. Elijah might say rather, he defeated Baal. He proved Baal had no authority over the land of Israel, Yahweh alone is King over the council of the gods.

My sister says my proportions might be off. No need for onion powder. There is supposed to be just salt, pepper and some brown sugar.

I would, but I don't think it's in the original recipe. I'm trying to think if there is supposed to be any brown sugar, but I don't think so.