Pyreaux

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.

Dad’s Chili *Not an actual photo, but very similar. No peppers in this. I'm sorry Texans but my Kentuckian father cooked this Chili abomination from wayback, contain everything you are not supposed to put in "real" chili. This is like a chili-powder spaghetti with pinto beans you put cracker crumbles on. Ingredients: 1/2 diced onion 1 lb ground beef 2 cans of Luck’s pinto beans (undrained) Several cans of tomato sauce (varies, like 4, enough to make it soupy) Chili powder - a lot, to taste. Or some with a little paprika and adjust. Dash of Onion Powder, Salt and Pepper. Ketchup - enough to give a noticeable sweetness, maybe around ½ to 1 cup, add gradually and according to taste, the more you cook the ketchup, the more it changes, less tart, more sweet. Cooked spaghetti (maybe a half box, enough noodles to soak up the soupiness) Saltine crackers (for serving, crushed on top to soak up remaining soupiness) Instructions: Boil the noodles in a large pot (gallon-sized). Cook diced onion and ground beef together until browned. Drain grease and return the meat and onion to the pot. Add 'undrained' pinto beans, tomato sauce, chili powder blend, and ketchup. Simmer until flavors meld and the mixture looks good and soupy. Stir the pot bottom often. Let it sit and cool for a while - it’ll thicken as it cools as the spaghetti soaks up the liquid. Serve with crushed saltines on top. Texture Note: This dish starts off soup-like but becomes chunkier as it sits. Beware tall pots, you if it boils without any stirring, noodles will sink to the bottom and burn at the bottom before it boils at the top. It should balance spaghetti, beans, and beef in roughly every spoon bite. The crackers help thicken it right in the bowl. For thicker texture sooner: Add uncooked broken spaghetti right into the simmering chili (but stir often so it doesn’t stick or burn). Add extra water or sauce if needed. If you can, use Luck’s Pinto Beans - Luck’s beans are already seasoned and have a distinct flavor and texture that made the chili what it is. I hope I'm not forgetting anything.

RIP Joseph Smith Jr, all is well.

I'm not saying to not contact the Righteous Branch, in fact, I'd be very curious to know what they would teach you, how they live, whether they're happy, if you'd keep us up to date. My cynical instincts are they'll gaslight you about what are authentic original doctrines with the Journal of Discourses. So, you know, it's not scripture, it's full of sermons by leaders, penned second hand by clerks. 10,000 talks by Brigham Young across 12 huge volumes, past the first volume, they were not reviewed or edited for correctness. And so they contain a few... anomalies I believe they'll home in on.

I have a lot of respect for his research, and honestly, I think he’s "orbiting" around the truth on a lot of this. For instance, I completely agree with his point that angels, demons, and even the human dead are all referred to as "elohim" in the Old Testament. Where I object, though, is his conclusion that elohim is just a term denoting the "other realm" they occupy. Take the Spirit of Samuel, for example. The Bible explicitly calls this human dead an elohim, but I don’t think it’s simply because he was residing in the spirit world. It’s because he was distinctly set apart from ordinary familiar spirits (obs). For anti-witch doubters, the text says, “it was Samuel” (1 Samuel 28:14), described by a witch to King Saul as no ordinary looking "ob" or ghost, she said she saw an elohim or a "god", and describes his features as an old man in a “coat", identified as a sacred robe in Jewish sources. I'm saying other dead spirits of non-priests may not be wearing those robes and therefore wouldn't look or called a "god". When he appears, he is specifically noted as wearing a robe, that's bearing the image of God. Prophets and priests wear the white temple robes and sash because they are dressing the way the angels dress and as God dresses, imitating a god. So, I don't think all dead humans are gods, as per Dr Heiser, rather just some are.

Semantics. The royal cult believed in royal king-priests who were called after Melchizedek (Psalm 110). Christians when not saying the 'Elderhood", sometimes said "royal priesthood" and "kings and priests" is referencing Melchizedek. The early Christians were stepping directly into the ancient Royal Cult. Aaron is usurped, and we LDS are just labeling what is really the lesser offices of the Melchizedek priesthood after Aaron. You are factually incorrect to say this was not a thing in the early Church or into Catholicism. The early Church Fathers explicitly and repeatedly stated that the Christian priesthood was from Christ, the priesthood of Christ and their ordinances like the Eucharists were from Melchizedek. "In the priest Melchizedek we see prefigured the sacrament of the sacrifice of the Lord... For who is more a priest of the most high God than our Lord Jesus Christ, who offered a sacrifice to God the Father, and offered that very same thing which Melchizedek had offered, that is, bread and wine, to wit, His body and blood" (Cyprian of Carthage (250 AD) Epistle 62) Augustine repeatedly turns to Genesis 14 to explain Melchizedek is manifested in the Catholic Church’s sacrifice of the Eucharist. "The sacrifice appeared for the first time there [with Melchizedek] which is now offered to God by Christians throughout the whole world." Commenting on Psalm 110, "Thou art a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek" "To change the priesthood was necessary... Aaron was cast aside, and the priesthood according to the order of Melchizedek was established... Our Lord Jesus Christ is the High Priest of this order, who offered a sacrifice to God... not of animals, but of bread and wine, which is His own body and blood." (Augustine, The City of God (Book 16, Chapter 22)) For Augustine, Christ did not just keep this priesthood to Himself in heaven. He left a functioning, structural earthly, ordained bishops and priests of the Catholic Church to act in persona Christi (in the person of Christ) to offer these very same Melchizedek sacrifices. The bishops and priests are partakers of Christ's Melchizedek Priesthood, the bishops and priests act as His literal ministers on earth to perform the Melchizedek rites. The Melchizedek priesthood is not a purely abstract, heavenly concept unique to Jesus, but the daily Mass offered by Christian priests is the literal expression of the Melchizedek priesthood on earth. Arguing this is semantics. If both Augustine and Jerome explicitly argue that the Aaronic priesthood was obsolete and had been replaced by another priesthood offering Melchizedek's bread and wine, how are they not Melchizedek priests too? Jesus introducing bread and wine as a sacrificial offering was a deliberate, formal re-institution of Melchizedek's ancient offering to Abraham. The Book of Mormon objection is a weak argument for two reasons, Alma 13 contains one of the most extensive discourses on the Melchizedek Priesthood in all of scripture (Alma 13), establishing its eternal nature, its ordinances, and how men are ordained to it. "Lord God ordained priests, after his holy order, which was after the order of his Son,... of Melchizedek, who was also a high priest after this same order which I have spoken... the holy order of God," Second, like the New Testament they simply called them the "Disciples" or "Elders" whom Jesus gave authority to baptize and administer the bread and wine, the Melchizedek offering. One more time, to argue that they didn't hold the Melchizedek priesthood just because they didn't used the title is pure semantics. When New Testament Christians used terms like 'Royal Priesthood' and 'Kings and Priests,' they were directly invoking the King-Priests of ancient times.

Nope, but I had to look into it. With 300 members they believe themselves as the true, unadulterated continuation of the restoration started by Joseph Smith. They practice polygamy as a fundamental requirement for the highest level of glory. Unlike some other "Fundamentalist" groups, they prohibit sealing women under the age of 18 into plural marriages and wear modern clothing. Attempting to live a communal economic lifestyle where resources are shared to care for the poor. They reject any modern modifications made by the LDS, practicing only the version they believe was originally revealed. My main problem is not even with their claims that those were originally thought or taught (more or less), rather it's the concept of trying to argue the Restoration was at any point complete or final. The Restoration was not a one-time event, but an ongoing dynamic process. New revelations are by nature new changes to the original. We're restoring old priestly offices but not the exact structure of the past, restoring old texts but also adding entirely new texts. Even having restored ancient scripture does not necessarily mean we must obey all ancient mandates. For example, polygamy violates the Book of Mormon's prophet Jacob's prohibition of polygamy for his people, that does not stop the modern prophet from commanding otherwise. We believe apostasy is caused by the cessation of prophetic authority to receive new direct revelations from God. These groups have entered a state of apostasy for the same reason everyone else has, they place a closed canon or a fixed tradition above the possibility of a new, contrary revelation. Read a few pages of Magaret Barker and she's constantly explaining how King Josiah’s Deuteronomic reform in the 600 BC was from discovering an old law book (Deuteronomy) Reforming the kingdom by its laws, purging the kingdom of disruptive prophet's Revelations. The law was the answer to all questions asked, forever, they locked the canon, and decided that God had finished speaking. From that moment on, if a prophet showed up with a new vision that contradicted the written text, the text won, and the prophet was stoned. An Apostacy began then because Deuteronomic editors and reformers placed the old covenant law above the living voice of a prophet. They'd kill any prophet that contradicted the law of Moses. They prioritized adherence to a written tradition over receiving an unwritten, fresh word from God, effectively setting a trajectory that would eventually resist and kill new prophets. The later Jews built a dense body of tradition that became a barrier to accepting the new revelation of Jesus Christ that was contradicting the old law. They tried to kill Jesus multiple times over it. Whether it's RLDS, FLDS, Righteous Branch, these breakaway groups commit the exact same error that necessitated the Restoration in the first place. Their modus operandi is to reject all changes as practiced by the main LDS Church in order to maintain a specific, frozen past doctrine. The early RLDS Church formed specifically to "purify" the Restoration by returning to what they saw as the original, uncorrupted doctrines of the 1830s and early 1840s, right before Joseph Smith's death. The FLDS and other groups are a mirror images of the RLDS in this way, they are just freezing at a later point in the main Church's history. You can't lock the Church into stasis. Riddle me this: How does a religious movement claiming to maintain the continuity with its founder's teachings also remain truly open to a God who reserves the right to change those teachings in the future like he has in the past?

There are a few rude commenters here. Dealing with a blatantly rude comment can trigger your stress response. So protecting your mental health is a worthy priority. Immediately pause, try not to reply hastily. Before you say anything, buy yourself a few moments. A rude comment is often intentional, so try not to let them force an aggressive counter-attack, or get trapped in the other person's negative energy. Let the provoking spike of adrenaline settle. Meanwhile, assess the intent. Was this cluelessness, or was it a deliberate attempt to hurt or diminish you? You don't need to yell (or use ALL CAPS) to be firm. If you can speak calmly and directly, you can shift your discomfort back onto the person who made the comment. Ask for clarification to neutralize passive-aggression. Forcing someone to explain their own sharp remarks usually exposes how inappropriate it was. Makes them say the quiet part out loud, which most rude people want to avoid. Strategically disengage to protect yourself. You do not owe every rube person a response. If someone wants to get a reaction, denying them that reaction is incredibly powerful. Give a calm, silent, expressionless look, completely changing the subject or leaving the room. Rudeness can reflect their lack of emotional regulation or their poor communication skills. It is almost never actually about you. After the interaction is over, do a quick check-in with yourself. If you are still ruminating on it hours later, try writing it down to get it out of your head, or talk it through with a friend to validate your feelings and let it go. But knowing more context can help us tailor more specific advice.

Well, maybe then pair this Christian scholarship with Latter-day Saint scholarship. Hugh Nibley The Message of the Joseph Smith Papyri: An Egyptian Endowment or Temple and Cosmos Hugh Nibley was top LDS scholarship long before Margaret Barker published The Great Angel, Nibley could read Egyptian, Hebrew and Greek and was scouring ancient Egyptian, Jewish, and early Christian texts to prove the existence of an ancient temple liturgy. He made an exhaustive book about early Christian and Egyptian initiation rites. Focusing on washing, anointing, being clothed in sacred garments, and passing through a veil and shows that early Christians actually practiced these specific physical rituals. David J. Larsen From Dust to Exalted Crown: Royal and Temple Themes Common to the Psalms and the Dead Sea Scrolls David Larsen is an LDS biblical scholar who explicitly specializes in the Royal Psalms and the Royal Temple Cult. He has written extensively on how the enthronement rituals of the Davidic kings tie directly into ancient temple theology. Larsen directly bridges the academic world of Raphael Patai with LDS theology. Jeffrey M. Bradshaw Temple Themes in the Oath and Covenant of the Priesthood or God's Image and Likeness Bradshaw is hyper-focused on the literal structure of ancient cosmic journeys, the Divine Council, and how humanity is invited into that council. This pairs well with Michael Heiser’s The Unseen Realm. While Heiser shows that the Old Testament is saturated with a "Divine Council" of Elohim, Bradshaw takes the next step and uses LDS scripture to show how the Temple endowment is the ritual path for humans to enter that Council, be clothed in royal vestments, and inherit seats as divine sons and daughters of God.

Those are free links, so you can start looking at pages right now. Whichever subject piques your interest the most, they are all their own "rabbit hole", though people who say "rabbit hole" use it to deter people. If you don't yet know the questions to ask yourself, there are overarching questions, like is Christianity new? Or something very specific, like how does the Masoretic Texts differ from the Dead Sea Scrolls? Does the Masoretic Jews delete Christian prooftexts concerning the Sons of God, Elyon and the Messiah? Is the Book of Enoch ancient? Who is "Wisdom" in Psalms 8, or "Elyon" in Genesis 14 and Deuteronomy 32? Who are "the gods" of Psalm 82? Why does Exodus say Israel "saw God" while Deuteronomy says they "only heard a voice"? Why didn't King Josiah ever know about Deuteronomy? Why did no king ever obey Deuteronomy before? How come when Josiah reforms the temple based on Deuteronomy promising prosperity, Josiah is killed, Jerusalem falls and the Temple razed? What is magic? Who are the sons of God? What is a Son of Man? Was Ezra a good dude, or is Malachi and Jesus critical about mass divorce and (genetically) pure priests in the temple? You'll get a different answer from these scholars than you'd ever hear from a theologian from a Bible diploma mill, I tell ya. Margaret Barker spent her entire career answering many of these. The Great Angel: A Study of Israel’s Second God by Margaret Barker addresses questions about Genesis 14, Deuteronomy 32, and Psalm 82 head-on. Barker meticulously proves that the oldest layers of the Bible didn't teach strict, monolithic monotheism. They taught that El Elyon (God the Most High) was the Father, and Yahweh was His chief Son, the "Second God" who was the God of Israel. It proves that when early Christians said Jesus was "the Lord", the "Son of the Most High God", they weren't inventing a new unique person, they were identifying Jesus as Yahweh, the Second God of the First Temple. But as female Bible fan she'll introduce you to a concept that will may blow your mind. Like the divine Lady Wisdom / Asherah of the First Temple in the Bible.

I think for an open-minded Bible-reader, the most rewarding path to a "Gold Pill" moment (a term about how one awakens to the possibility the LDS church could be right, not being converted per se) is to point to certain Christian Bible scholars you can read alongside LDS scholars. These are people who attempt to reconstruct the "Royal Temple cult", a fairly new way to make sense of some of the Royal Psalms, identifying proto-Christianity bones buried in the Jewish texts, as I feel it gives the fullest explanation of the psalm imagery, Christianity, by extension LDS, as these ideas are deeply rooted in antiquity. These studies have become in demand among Catholic, Anglican, Orthodox, and LDS audiences. So even if you never become LDS, it will not be a waste of time. In the course of studying, just ask how might the Royal Cult manifest today, you will notice the similarities in LDS and Catholic traditions you wouldn't consider if you read the Bible only surface deep. Firstly, read the Royal Psalms (like Psalms 2, 24, 45, 110, and 132) maybe using a standard commentary too, and then go back and reread them after dipping into Barker or Heiser. Once you see the Davidic King as a priest, entering the Holy of Holies through a veil, surrounded by a Council of priests, and dressed in sacred vestments, you can never unsee it. Even if you don't walk into an LDS Temple, the intellectual barrier to the Restoration will be completely dismantled because you will realize that the LDS worldview is the only modern theology that actually acts out and embodies this ancient Royal Temple cult. At the very least you'll learn the concepts of the Temple weren't invented by the LDS in the 19th century; rather, they are certainly an independent reconstruction by modern people, inspired or not. Margaret Barker - Concerning the First Temple As a Methodist preacher and biblical scholar, Barker is the top brass for this approach. The Great Angel is perfect at dismantling the monolithic view of ancient monotheism. She argues that the Jewish Scribes in a "Deuteronomic reform" during the Second Temple period actually stripped away or suppressed original elements of First Temple worship, including the heavenly Mother, the visible human manifestations of Yahweh as a secondary divine figure (the son of El Elyon), and the ascension rites of the High Priest. For an LDS reader, this fall of the First Temple reads exactly like a historical blueprint of a later Christian Apostasy. Temple Theology: An Introduction, which directly connects the ancient temple rituals to the layout, robes, and cosmic architecture that feel strikingly parallel to modern LDS temple worship. The Great High Priest: The Temple Roots of Christian Liturgy shows that early Christian worship wasn't modeled after the local Jewish synagogue (which was focused on reading the Torah), but was actually a conscious restoration of the secret, esoteric rituals of the First Temple's High Priest. Pay special attention to her chapters on "The Secret Tradition" and "The Angel Priesthood." When a Bible-reader encounters the idea that Jesus taught his Apostles secret things during the 40 days after his resurrection, they think its Gnosticism. But Barker uses the Dead Sea Scrolls and early Christian liturgies to prove that a "secret temple tradition" was widely accepted in the earliest days of the Church. It completely re-contextualizes the LDS idea of temple ordinances. She details the anointing with holy oil, the sacred vestments and the concept of a secret tradition of knowledge handed down to an initiated priesthood. It makes the entire concept of an esoteric temple liturgy rooted in the priesthood completely historical. Michael Heiser - Concerning the Divine Council Dr. Michael Heiser was a mainstream Evangelical scholar. His work is an incredible stepping-stone. The Divine Council webpage forcefully demonstrates from the Hebrew text (like Psalm 82 and Deuteronomy 32) that God rules alongside a council of divine beings (elohim: gods). He highlights that humans were intended to inherit the council seats and rule as divine sons of God. While Heiser maintains a traditional view of the Trinity, his defense of plural Elohim and human deification (theosis) completely reframes a Protestant's standard objections to the LDS doctrine of the Godhead and eternal progression. Raphael Patai - Concerning Kingship Temple rituals and marriages Patai’s focus on ancient Near Eastern folklore, myth, and ritual bridges the gap between historical text and actual practice. Man and Temple Patai reconstructs the Coronation/Enthronement rituals of the Davidic kings. He shows that the King was anointed, ritually washed, given a new name, clothed in royal/priestly robes, and symbolically adopted as a "Son of God" on the throne. Reading the Royal Psalms (like Psalm 2 and Psalm 110) through this lens shows that ancient salvation wasn't just a mental belief, it was a physical, ritual drama enacted in the Temple to bring a person into the presence of God. And The Hebrew Goddess, is the reference Barker uses in her work on a Heavenly Mother. There are like 32 other books. Howard Schwartz - The Ancient Judaism Lore The Tree of Souls demonstrates that the concepts found in the LDS Restoration are part of a massive, ancient stream of esoteric Jewish memory. When a Protestant reads about things like the garment of Adam, sacred stones (Urim and Thummim), or multi-tiered heavens, they often assume these are modern inventions. Schwartz shows that Midrashic lore is saturated with these concepts. It normalizes the specific texture of Latter-day Saint restoration theology. Michael Satlow - Concerning Polygamy Jewish Marriage in Antiquity traces the evolution of Jewish marriage from the biblical period through the Second Temple and Rabbinic eras. He establishes clearly that polygamy was entirely legal, normal, and unquestioned throughout the Old Testament era and well into the New Testament period. Monogamy only became the strict standard for Western Jews, much later, due to Greco-Roman cultural assimilation and imperial law. The Davidic King married (in the temple, I say) multiple wives and princesses (during the yearly Kingship Festival, as part of a re-coronation, I say) to build a massive, interconnected royal house that bound the kingdoms together in a web of covenant relationships. This is exactly how early Latter-day Saints viewed plural marriage, not just as modern families, but as a dynastic, dynasty of sealing, designed to link all of humanity back into a single, massive, royal patriarchal chain.

Its kind of semantics over what the Christian priesthood should be called, it's call a "royal" priesthood because it's from King Melchizedek, Davidic Kings had the right by lineage of Lord by adoption (2 Samuel 7:14; Royal Coronation: Psalm 110). 1 Peter applies "royal (kingly) priesthood" to the whole community, but Peter is referencing the Old Testament, God told the entire Israelite community, "You shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation" (Exodus 19:6). Yet, God still institutes a specific, structure of priests to administer ordinances and lead. Paul may have also said in Hebrews 5:4, "And no man takes this honor [of the priesthood] to himself," but as Aaron did. Authority required a specific call and ordination, it wasn't assumed, not even by Jesus. Just because the opportunity to be ordained to the priesthood (most often referred to as the presbytery, elderhood) was opened up to the general body of believers, rather than restricted to one specific tribe, it doesn't mean the offices like "Elder" ceased to exist as people were being formally ordained to the office of Elders. Paul in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1 give explicit qualifications for who can be ordained. If everyone was automatically an elder or deacon just by virtue of believing, Paul wouldn't have needed to give Timothy and Titus a checklist of requirements, including laying on of hands by the Presbytery. Christ is the High Priest after the order of Melchizedek (Hebrews 7), "High Priests" do not exist in a vacuum. A High Priest implies a leadership role over a body of priests who share the same "order" (taxin, succession from person to person). The Melchizedek priesthood is a shared calling and profession, his "holy brethren" are part of a functioning priestly order over which He presides. Hebrews 3:1, "Wherefore, holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling, consider the Apostle and High Priest of our profession, Christ Jesus." Acts 1:20, an office of Episkopen or bishopric passed a portion of governing and teaching authority down to the Presbyters, Elders and Deacons. Acts 6 the first Deacons were called. The Apostles needed help looking after the widows, they didn't say, "Everyone is a priest now, so everyone can go do it." Instead, they told the community to look out seven qualified men, and then the Apostles laid hands on them to set them apart for that specific work. Paul and Barnabas didn't just leave believers to call themselves, they personally, actively had to travel to install these offices, "So when they had appointed elders [presbyters] in every church, and prayed with fasting, they commended them to the Lord" (Acts 14:23). Titus 1:5: Paul leaves Titus in Crete specifically to "set in order the things that are lacking, and appoint elders in every city as I commanded you".

Not literal Gnosticism. In Catholicism, creation can become "good," like water, wine, bread, oil, and the Incarnation. Catholicism doesn't explicitly call matter "evil" like the Gnostics did, but Catholicism did also adopt the Greek metaphysical definition of God that makes a physical body metaphysically impossible for the person of God the Father. Matter is somehow fundamentally incompatible with the supreme nature of God the Father, which I understood Catholicism affirms. Thomas Aquinas and Greek philosophy, say since God is defined as absolute perfection, because material things can change, be divided, occupy space, and decay, classical theology concludes that matter is inherently a state of limitations. Therefore, God the Father cannot have a body of flesh and bone, a physical form would mean He is limited, localized, and subject to change. They absolutely maintain that a material body is metaphysically beneath the nature of God the Father. The Incarnation actually highlights this. The Incarnation is viewed as the paradox that broke these rules of God’s nature.

You are missing some Jewish literature. Mainstream Judaism completely rejects the negative view of the Fall held by Catholicism and Protestantism. Judaism does not even have a doctrine like "Original Sin." Jewish scholars on Genesis 3 do not see a story about human nature becoming permanently depraved. The Talmud explicitly taught that every human being is born pure, innocent, and clean. In the Jewish view, the Fall made life harder, but it did not taint the human soul. You are punished for your own sins, not Adam's. Jewish view is you cannot be truly holy or make morally virtuous choices unless you fully understand the difference between good and evil. By gaining this knowledge, humans stepped out of an animal-like state of innocence and into the status of agents who can choose to obey God, it made them more like God, not less as Genesis 3:22, "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil". Enochian Literature In 1 Enoch 32, Enoch is taken on a guided tour, he beholds a magnificent tree emitting a wonderful fragrance. When he asks about it, the angel Raphael responds, "This is the tree of wisdom, of which thy father old (in years) and thy aged mother, who were before thee, have eaten, and they learnt wisdom and their eyes were opened, and they knew that they were naked and they were driven out of the garden." (1 Enoch 32:6) Notice its called the Tree of Wisdom. "Wisdom" is at times defined as knowledge, knowledge normally possessed and reserved for the gods, the elohim-angels (Prov 9:10; 30:1). Knowledge thus is related to wisdom, and knowledge can be seen as destructive (1 Cor 8:1). Oil of the Tree of Knowledge came in its fruit were "pleasant to the eye" to "make one wise" granting Eve the secret knowledge of the elohim-angels (Gen 2:6-7). The Temple's anointing oil (Ex 28:41-43; 29:1-8; Ps 133:2) was a synthesized version of the fragrant oils of the Tree of Life, was applied to the head of the priestly messiahs "between his eyelids" (Talmud, b. Horayoth 12a). This was thought to open his eyes, giving sight, spiritual sight, prophecies, dreams, visions, the signs of the royal priesthood. The Rabbinic doctrine of the Yetzer Hara (the evil inclination) is viewed as a necessary engine for human existence and creation. Genesis Rabbah 9:7 (and Kohelet Rabbah 3:11) Rabbi Nahman bar Samuel says Creation was very good’ "But is the evil inclination 'very good'? Yes! For were it not for the Yetzer Hara, a man would not build a house, nor marry a wife, nor beget children, nor engage in trade." The sages recognized that the "evil inclination" encompasses human passions, ambition, sexual desire, and competitive drive. If humans were entirely passive and lacked this impulse, human progression, societal growth, and the continuation of the human race would completely freeze. Babylonian Talmud, Yoma 69b (The Day the Chicken Stopped Laying Eggs) A famous, vivid story in the Talmud where the Sages of the Great Assembly manage to capture the spirit of the Yetzer Hara and imprison it in a lead cauldron to rid the world of sin. They thought they had saved humanity. However, the text records the immediate consequence. For three days, they searched throughout the entire Land of Israel for a freshly laid egg, and could not find one. Because the inclination was completely suppressed, all impulse in the world stopped. The Sages released it. Talmud Berakhot 17a (Leaven in the Dough) The rabbis often compared the Yetzer Hara to the leaven (yeast) in dough. Yeast causes the dough to ferment and rise. If you have no yeast, the bread is flat and lifeless. If you have too much yeast, the dough spoils and goes sour. So never eradicate the Yetzer Hara as if physical desires are an inherently evil defect, but rather to discipline and channel it through the commandments of God. Irenaeus of Lyons While later Western theology of Augustine viewed Adam and Eve as perfected, fully mature adults who committed cosmic high treason, Irenaeus argued that Adam and Eve had to be created weak first so that they could learn, grow, and eventually become like God. "Man was a child, and its mind was not yet mature; and for this reason he was easily deceived... It was necessary for him first to be created, then to grow, then to reach manhood, then to increase, then to be strengthened... and so at last to see God and become immortal." (Against Heresies Book IV, Chapter 38) For Irenaeus, the deception happened because they were children, but the resulting journey through mortality was a necessary educational process designed to bring humanity to true maturity. The Felix Culpa Even though Catholic theology officially leans heavily on Augustine, the official Catholic liturgy itself features a positive statement about the Fall. Every year during the Easter Vigil, the priest chants the Exsultet (an ancient hymn dating back to the 4th or 5th century). "O wondrous condescension of your loving-kindness towards us! O inestimable affection of love: you handed over your Son to ransom a slave! O truly necessary sin of Adam, which the death of Christ blotted out! O happy fault (Felix Culpa), which merited to have such and so great a Redeemer!" It calls Adam’s transgression a "truly necessary sin" (O certe necessarium Adae peccatum). Because without the Fall, the full depths of God's love, the Atonement, and the joy of redemption through Jesus Christ could never have been manifested. The idea that the Fall was a necessary backdrop for human progression, agency, and ultimately the cause of the intervention of a Savior is woven deeply into ancient thought. I think there are Gnostic views where the entire physical world as a mistake. LDS theology views the physical world is necessary for progression. We are structurally opposites on the subject of matter. Gnosticism is anti-material and anti-body. It teaches that the world is a prison, the Creator of it is a villain, and salvation means escaping your flesh. LDS theology is profoundly pro-material and pro-body. It teaches that the world is a divine creation, the Creator is a loving Father, and salvation comes by being resurrected into an eternal, perfected physical body. All remnants of the apostasy are part true and part corruption. 2nd-century Gnosticism or 4th-century Creedal Catholicism are just two divergent, competing branches of Apostate Christianity that split off from the original root after the Apostles were killed. Anti-Fall views were late-stage innovations that scrambled the original by absorbing Greek philosophical ideas. In Neo-Platonism, spirit is inherently pure and good, while matter and the physical body are inherently corrupt, heavy, and evil. The Gnostics just took the "matter is evil" philosophy to its absolute logical extreme. The Catholic argued that God did make the world good, but for the Fall. Yet, their own definition of God as an immaterial being who cannot touch matter without being defiled is deeply Gnostic. Matter is fundamentally incompatible with the divine essence of the Father; God cannot be a material, embodied being. I think mainstream "immaterial God" is a late-stage innovation born. The Gnostics managed to hold onto a warped, mutated memory that humanity has divine potential and that the Fall was a forward step in a larger plan but they ruined it by attaching it to a hatred of the physical world. Gnostics are right to be against modern Christian Simplicity. Where the gospel is shallow and has nothing to teach beyond what base and evil men can understand. They are just wrong that it's meant only for a few.

I will. For some reason, I'm already getting a comforting feeling. My dad's company has been struggling since he got sick. So perhaps, RodheadLee, I might ask a little prayer for CSP Electronics, I guess all the Gulf boats struggling to pay them also.

Stephen Smoot often appears alongside Travis Anderson, I'm sure they have a bridge between these two views. I think he and Travis lean on the Accommodation Theory, that prophets didn't get a science textbook or a flawless historical archive from the sky when called upon. Instead, God "accommodates" human limitations, speaking to people within their own frameworks. Shifting the definitions of "inspired" texts away from "inerrant" texts. Ask Smoot if he believes there is evidence of a Flat Earth, I bet he'd say no. If he says no, did he just abandon his faith in the historicity of the Old Testament where the cosmos is consistently described that way? No. Arguing Isaiah, Moses and Paul didn't understand modern science or saying there is no evidence for Lehi in America is not the same as arguing that Adam or Lehi are purely fictional characters. Dan and Travis could always point to seeing the principles work secularly before they simply choose to believe, which is an approach embedded in Alma 32. You plant a "seed" of a principle or a belief. You nurture it and observe its effects. If it expands your mind, enlightens your understanding, and improves your life, the seed is "good." You don't need flawless archaeological records to prove to yourself that a weekly ritual of self-reflection made your life stabler and more meaningful. You experience the utility of the system in the real world, and then you make the conscious existential leap to choose faith in the divine source behind it. For those reasons, they refuse to throw the baby out with the bathwater, not leave the church. From Stephen Smoot’s perspective, I'd think he is drawing a line with saying the Book of Mormon is inspired fiction or a purely spiritual revelation with absolutely no potential for discoverable evidence, as an intellectual cop-out. He argues that you cannot strip away all historicity without completely destroying credibility. I've not heard Dan say something ipso facto like Joseph wasn't handling real, physical, artifact, golden plates. That would be weird to hold to as an active member. Of the little I've seen of Dan, I'd guess he is, to an uncomfortable degree, trying to admit the state of current archaeology and realizes that defending absolute historicity is a losing battle if people are demanding total academic honesty from him at all times.