The Seed of Abraham - the people of God whom He foreknew

[Calm]

On 6/6/2026 at 5:13 AM, mbh26 said:

The antediluvians had a far better understanding of the cosmos than we have now

How did they accomplish this?  Serious question.  If they did not have the level of technology we have, how did they learn of the physical nature of such?

[mbh26]

On 6/7/2026 at 2:45 AM, The Nehor said:

Because none of the readers back at that time thought they did.

The Israelites even at the time of Jesus had access to the book of Enoch.  The book of Enoch is quoted in the New Testament.  I find it hard to believe that people like Adam, Enoch, Noah, had no belief nor knowledge of the pre-existence.  The book of Enoch even says Noah was the angel Gabriel, an ark angel incarnate.  

[The Nehor]

3 hours ago, mbh26 said:

The Israelites even at the time of Jesus had access to the book of Enoch.  The book of Enoch is quoted in the New Testament.  I find it hard to believe that people like Adam, Enoch, Noah, had no belief nor knowledge of the pre-existence.  The book of Enoch even says Noah was the angel Gabriel, an ark angel incarnate.  

They had the books of Enoch at the time of Jesus because they were written between the 3rd century BCE through the the 1st century. They are pseudepigrapha. They were written at that time and attributed to Enoch. Even at that time the rabbis knew it didn’t actually come from Enoch. Also most of it was originally written in Aramaic which wouldn’t make sense for a hypothetical pre-flood language or if it was passed down for millenia. If it were passed down for millenia the original language (or the oldest copies we had access to) would be in Hebrew.

[Pyreaux]

On 6/8/2026 at 8:22 PM, The Nehor said:

They had the books of Enoch at the time of Jesus because they were written between the 3rd century BCE through the the 1st century. They are pseudepigrapha. They were written at that time and attributed to Enoch. Even at that time the rabbis knew it didn’t actually come from Enoch. Also most of it was originally written in Aramaic which wouldn’t make sense for a hypothetical pre-flood language or if it was passed down for millenia. If it were passed down for millenia the original language (or the oldest copies we had access to) would be in Hebrew.

You are assuming because the oldest fragments we have in the Dead Sea Scrolls are in Aramaic and date to 200 BC, that it couldn't be an ancient transmission. Well, according to Margaret Barker and several other prominent textual scholars, the Aramaic fragments we have are translations or transcriptions of a much older tradition whose roots are deep in pre-exilic Hebrew. Barker says it had to be retranslated into the living vernacular of the people who'd wanted to read it. Like the Targums. It's full of Hebraisms embedded in the text.

You overlook the reason there are three versions of the Parables or Similitudes within 1 Enoch. The community that was preserving Enoch valued oral transmission over written texts so by the time it was written there were multiple strands of ancient oral memory, which strongly implies a long, slow cook-time before the ink ever hit the parchment. Means the book was not written at that time, it's simply the era when these ancient traditions were compiled because the official temple elite could no longer keep them hidden or control them.

They didn't just invent books out of thin air after 500 BC, once Ezra's scribes returned from Babylon to Jerusalem, the scribes had memorized older books to preserve them against erasure. The variation in the parables is the fingerprint of an existing older source with three traditions finally being unified in one book.

Dr. Margaret Barker argues that the Book of Enoch is not a late, fake invention because she argues that Enoch preserves the original theology of the older First Temple before it was destroyed and altered by the Deuteronomist scribes around the time of the Exile. Barker's view is traditions in Enoch represent the oldest stratum of Hebrew religion, albeit an apocalyptic tradition centered on the Council of Heaven, angels, and the pre-existence of a "Son of Man" figure.

Barker argues that the New Testament authors and early Christians treated Enoch as completely authentic scripture because they recognized it as the original, uncorrupted theology of Solomon’s Temple. Jesus saw Himself as the "Son of Man" and like the Essenes saw the Temple as corrupted by Babylon and doomed to fall. The only reason the later Rabbis rejected Enoch after 70 AD, when the temple fell, was because the Christians were using it effectively to prove that Jesus was the Messiah.

Writing in the name of a patriarch like Moses and Enoch weren't forgeries. It was a mode used to convey either a certain theological school or oral tradition tracing back to that figure and was being faithfully represented. Saying "the rabbis knew it didn't come from Enoch" during the time of Jesus is anachronistic. The rigid, anti-apocalyptic Rabbinic Judaism we know of today didn't fully solidify until after the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD. While during the life of Jesus, Judaism was highly diverse. Thus, Essenes treated the Book of Enoch as canonical scripture, stored alongside Genesis and Isaiah.

Scribes of the Law penned books using the voice of Moses were not committing fraud. If you were a scribe in a specific prophet's school, writing your tradition down you did not write under your own name. You wrote under the name of the master who founded your order. Deuteronomy is penned late, but it was not invented then they penned and "found" it. Its frame has the distinct prose style of proto-monotheistic scribes, yet tucked inside the book are some of the oldest pieces of Hebrew poetry in the entire Bible, full of polytheistic signs.

Edited June 10 by Pyreaux

[theplains]

On 6/4/2026 at 7:07 AM, The Nehor said:

I know and you can find that reading in the D&C. I am objecting to the way many in the Church take Bible verses that weren’t intended to support a doctrine of premortal humans and retroactively saying they do. The most common one was the boast by Jeremiah about how God knew him before he was born. That was oneupmanship. Other prophets were said to have been chosen in childhood or in the womb so Jeremiah was staking his claim as a super prophet.

In Jeremiah 1:5, he is not boasting. The verse is part of God's call of Jeremiah

"Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed 
you a prophet to the nations".

[theplains]

On 6/2/2026 at 2:51 PM, Pyreaux said:

The Covenant House of Israel (by blood or adoption), and the priesthood after the order of the Son of God.

According to Abraham 2:11, the right of the [Melchizedek] priesthood is for literal (blood) 
descendants.

"And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse them that curse thee; and in thee (that is, 
in thy Priesthood) and in thy seed (that is, thy Priesthood), for I give unto thee a promise 
that this right shall continue in thee, and in thy seed after thee (that is to say, the 
literal seed, or the seed of the body) shall all the families of the earth be blessed, even 
with the blessings of the Gospel, which are the blessings of salvation, even of life eternal".

But I think the LDS Church has developed a way to alleviate this problem - patriarchal 
blessings.

[theplains]

On 6/6/2026 at 5:31 PM, InCognitus said:

He says what Paul is doing in Romans 11 is thinking about Genesis 17 and Genesis 48:19, he is thinking about the fulness of nations (Gentiles).  And "From him there will be a fulness, a multitude of nations".

The "new Eden" (as he calls it) is about one people, with no divisions, like it was originally.  "What God wants is what he told you he wanted back in Genesis, that Abraham would be the father of...  would extend not only to Genesis 48:16... the ethnic, you know, descendants of... Jacob, but also Genesis 48:19 to those who have gentile blood.... this is what [God] is angling for."

Gentile blood which supposedly changes into the blood of Abraham when a person is acted upon by
the Holy Ghost (Religion 430-431 - Doctrines of the Gospel Student Manual, chapter 21).

[Pyreaux]

19 minutes ago, theplains said:

According to Abraham 2:11, the right of the [Melchizedek] priesthood is for literal (blood) 
descendants.

"And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse them that curse thee; and in thee (that is, 
in thy Priesthood) and in thy seed (that is, thy Priesthood), for I give unto thee a promise 
that this right shall continue in thee, and in thy seed after thee (that is to say, the 
literal seed, or the seed of the body) shall all the families of the earth be blessed, even 
with the blessings of the Gospel, which are the blessings of salvation, even of life eternal".

But I think the LDS Church has developed a way to alleviate this problem - patriarchal 
blessings.

Well, officially, but before that, the law of adoption, baptism, overrides literal blood descendant with legal descendants, like the adoption of Ephriam into Israel before Moses severed their right to the priesthood and the adoption of David's house into the Lord's lineage enabled his royal decedents, and royal initiates like the Christian legal right to be Melchizedek priests.

[mbh26]

On 6/8/2026 at 9:22 PM, The Nehor said:

They had the books of Enoch at the time of Jesus because they were written between the 3rd century BCE through the the 1st century. They are pseudepigrapha. They were written at that time and attributed to Enoch. Even at that time the rabbis knew it didn’t actually come from Enoch. Also most of it was originally written in Aramaic which wouldn’t make sense for a hypothetical pre-flood language or if it was passed down for millenia. If it were passed down for millenia the original language (or the oldest copies we had access to) would be in Hebrew.

How do you know that Aramaic scribes didn't translate the Book of Enoch into Aramaic and over thousands of years the original manuscript written by Enoch was lost or destroyed?  

[mbh26]

On 6/8/2026 at 9:22 PM, The Nehor said:

They had the books of Enoch at the time of Jesus because they were written between the 3rd century BCE through the the 1st century. They are pseudepigrapha. They were written at that time and attributed to Enoch. Even at that time the rabbis knew it didn’t actually come from Enoch. Also most of it was originally written in Aramaic which wouldn’t make sense for a hypothetical pre-flood language or if it was passed down for millenia. If it were passed down for millenia the original language (or the oldest copies we had access to) would be in Hebrew.

D&C 107:57

57 These things were all written in the book of Enoch, and are to be testified of in due time.

Why would this scripture be in the Doctrine and Covenants if the Book of Enoch were fake?  

Edited June 11 by mbh26

[The Nehor]

1 hour ago, mbh26 said:

D&C 107:57

57 These things were all written in the book of Enoch, and are to be testified of in due time.

Why would this scripture be in the Doctrine and Covenants if the Book of Enoch were fake?  

That it will be testified of “in due time” suggests it is not talking about the already extant Book of Enoch. Also none of the extant Books of Enoch seem to contain what the description in the previous verse says is supposed to be in them.

Also a work being pseudipigrapha doesn’t mean it is fake. It just means it wasn’t written by the purported author. The Zohar, one of the key books of Jewish Kabbalah is purported to have been written twelve centuries earlier by another author. It wasn’t and one Jewish scholar tracked down the wife of the ‘translator’ and she said it came entirely from her husband. That scholar (and many others) accepted it as roughly what LDS would call an ‘inspired’ text.

It is dangerous to tie your faith to very dubious historical claims. Especially with something like the Book of Enoch which even contemporaries were saying wasn’t written by Enoch.

[The Nehor]

On 6/10/2026 at 1:59 PM, mbh26 said:

How do you know that Aramaic scribes didn't translate the Book of Enoch into Aramaic and over thousands of years the original manuscript written by Enoch was lost or destroyed?  

Because it is clear what the original language was by comparing the two versions. You also have to explain why this Book of Enoch was unknown for at least several centuries previously. Also some of the philosophical and theological concepts in the Books of Enoch weren’t around yet. You also have multiple books of Enoch so were they all lost?

Even if it was a lost book (very unlikely just by how it was written) that was somehow rediscovered that doesn’t show that it goes back to Enoch. It could still be something that was purported to be from Enoch or a text with no author and someone slapped the name of Enoch on there. The latter is how most scholars think the gospels got their purported writers.

[mbh26]

1 hour ago, The Nehor said:

That it will be testified of “in due time” suggests it is not talking about the already extant Book of Enoch. Also none of the extant Books of Enoch seem to contain what the description in the previous verse says is supposed to be in them.

Also a work being pseudipigrapha doesn’t mean it is fake. It just means it wasn’t written by the purported author. The Zohar, one of the key books of Jewish Kabbalah is purported to have been written twelve centuries earlier by another author. It wasn’t and one Jewish scholar tracked down the wife of the ‘translator’ and she said it came entirely from her husband. That scholar (and many others) accepted it as roughly what LDS would call an ‘inspired’ text.

It is dangerous to tie your faith to very dubious historical claims. Especially with something like the Book of Enoch which even contemporaries were saying wasn’t written by Enoch.

Jesus often refers to Himself as the Son of Man.  That title comes from the Book of Enoch.  Why would Jesus or the Apostles quote the Book of Enoch in the New Testament if it were not written by the purported author?  

My faith isn't tied to a dubious historical claim.  I enjoy being able to discuss this with you and appreciate your perspective even if I currently have a different perspective.  It's how I like to learn.  It's what I'm not allowed to talk about in Elders Quorum.  I think it's a shame when believers can't have an open discussion and even disagree without it resulting in the kind of contention that is of the devil and loses the spirit.  I hope you don't feel like I'm being contentious or disrespectful.  If I were to learn that you're right about all of this, it wouldn't change my belief in Jesus Christ, the resurrection, nor the restoration of the gospel.  How do we expect to grow in further light and knowledge if we aren't permitted to have an incomplete understanding in some of our hypothesis?  That sounds so stagnate, dark, and boring that it makes people like my Dad ask why he didn't just remain a Presbyterian his entire life.  I wish I could go to General Conferences with Joseph Smith or have an Elders Quorum class with Orson Hyde.  But in the modern LDS church we're not even allowed to talk about Kolob.  I understand why and I'm ok with that.  But it is nice when we can meet anonymously online and look deeper than just the superficial, without being called apostate or accused of rejecting the core beliefs that define us as Latter Day Saints.  It seems to me from your response to the scripture in D&C that you're still a believing Latter Day Saint.  Otherwise you'd have just dismissed the scripture as uninspired.  

But that leads me back to the original question.  We all had to memorize the scripture in Jeremiah in seminary because it gave evidence of the pre-existence in the Old Testament.  Do you really think the seminary manual was just wrong about this?  Surely Abraham understood the pre-existence according to the Pearl of Great Price.  At what point did the Jews lose this knowledge of the pre-existence?  

Case in point, Daniel had access to the Book of Enoch in 600 BC because he quotes it. He says that he saw in vision a man in descending in the clouds of heaven like unto the Son of Man. The book of Enoch talks about the Son of man descending in glory in the clouds of heaven. Daniel also mentions a watcher descending from heaven. The term Watcher originates in the Book of Enoch. 

Edited June 12 by mbh26

[The Nehor]

1 hour ago, mbh26 said:

Jesus often refers to Himself as the Son of Man.  That title comes from the Book of Enoch.  Why would Jesus or the Apostles quote the Book of Enoch in the New Testament if it were not written by the purported author?  

The title “son of man” goes back further than Enoch. It is all over Ezekiel. The title “Son of Man” used in the New Testament is a really awkward Greek grammatical construction that doesn’t map directly to the usage in Ezekiel or Enoch.

I don’t know what Jesus or the writers of the New Testament thought of the Book of Enoch.

1 hour ago, mbh26 said:

My faith isn't tied to a dubious historical claim.  I enjoy being able to discuss this with you and appreciate your perspective even if I currently have a different perspective.  It's how I like to learn.  It's what I'm not allowed to talk about in Elders Quorum.  I think it's a shame when believers can't have an open discussion and even disagree without it resulting in the kind of contention that is of the devil and loses the spirit.  I hope you don't feel like I'm being contentious or disrespectful.  If I were to learn that you're right about all of this, it wouldn't change my belief in Jesus Christ, the resurrection, nor the restoration of the gospel.  How do we expect to grow in further light and knowledge if we aren't permitted to have an incomplete understanding in some of our hypothesis?  That sounds so stagnate, dark, and boring that it makes people like my Dad ask why he didn't just remain a Presbyterian his entire life.  I wish I could go to General Conferences with Joseph Smith or have an Elders Quorum class with Orson Hyde.  But in the modern LDS church we're not even allowed to talk about Kolob.  I understand why and I'm ok with that.  But it is nice when we can meet anonymously online and look deeper than just the superficial, without being called apostate or accused of rejecting the core beliefs that define us as Latter Day Saints.  It seems to me from your response to the scripture in D&C that you're still a believing Latter Day Saint.  Otherwise you'd have just dismissed the scripture as uninspired.  

I don’t know what I believe anymore. I have a lot of doubts about scripture in general and many specific parts of scripture.

1 hour ago, mbh26 said:

But that leads me back to the original question.  We all had to memorize the scripture in Jeremiah in seminary because it gave evidence of the pre-existence in the Old Testament.  Do you really think the seminary manual was just wrong about this?  Surely Abraham understood the pre-existence according to the Pearl of Great Price.  At what point did the Jews lose this knowledge of the pre-existence?

I think the main argument against this being a reference to any kind of premortality is that none of the commentators took it as one in the ancient world. I have a lot of skepticism about the concept of scriptural “easter eggs” being inserted into the text that purportedly teach great hidden truths but no one noticed at the time. Also parts of the Torah are at least as old as Jeremiah and if there were a concept of premortality there were plenty of places to insert that in the text.

1 hour ago, mbh26 said:

Case in point, Daniel had access to the Book of Enoch in 600 BC because he quotes it. He says that he saw in vision a man in descending in the clouds of heaven like unto the Son of Man. The book of Enoch talks about the Son of man descending in glory in the clouds of heaven. Daniel also mentions a watcher descending from heaven. The term Watcher originates in the Book of Enoch. 

The general scholarly consensus is that the Book of Daniel was written between 167 and 164 BC and was an ex eventu prophecy which was a pretty common genre where the writer puts words of prophecy into the mouth of someone in the past to add legitimacy. It is also a good way to hide revolutionary though. If the Seleucids got a copy of the Book of Daniel it is old ravings of a local prophet from centuries back unless they were pretty literary and picked up that Babylon in that text was a code for them The reason the dating is so tight in terms of years is that the prophecy of Daniel in the book maps up perfectly with the lead up to and the beginning of the Maccabean revolt. Up to then the prophecy is accurate and then it stops being accurate and the revolt doesn’t bring about the messianic age or the redemption of Israel. So later Jewish and Christian scholars started coming up with much more far reaching interpretations.

Assuming all that is true the writer of Daniel probably took the term from the Book of Enoch so bringing in a Watcher more likely means the author had read what we call 1st Enoch.

The Book of Revelation is a similar composition.

[mbh26]

12 hours ago, The Nehor said:

The title “son of man” goes back further than Enoch. It is all over Ezekiel. The title “Son of Man” used in the New Testament is a really awkward Greek grammatical construction that doesn’t map directly to the usage in Ezekiel or Enoch.

I don’t know what Jesus or the writers of the New Testament thought of the Book of Enoch.

I don’t know what I believe anymore. I have a lot of doubts about scripture in general and many specific parts of scripture.

I think the main argument against this being a reference to any kind of premortality is that none of the commentators took it as one in the ancient world. I have a lot of skepticism about the concept of scriptural “easter eggs” being inserted into the text that purportedly teach great hidden truths but no one noticed at the time. Also parts of the Torah are at least as old as Jeremiah and if there were a concept of premortality there were plenty of places to insert that in the text.

The general scholarly consensus is that the Book of Daniel was written between 167 and 164 BC and was an ex eventu prophecy which was a pretty common genre where the writer puts words of prophecy into the mouth of someone in the past to add legitimacy. It is also a good way to hide revolutionary though. If the Seleucids got a copy of the Book of Daniel it is old ravings of a local prophet from centuries back unless they were pretty literary and picked up that Babylon in that text was a code for them The reason the dating is so tight in terms of years is that the prophecy of Daniel in the book maps up perfectly with the lead up to and the beginning of the Maccabean revolt. Up to then the prophecy is accurate and then it stops being accurate and the revolt doesn’t bring about the messianic age or the redemption of Israel. So later Jewish and Christian scholars started coming up with much more far reaching interpretations.

Assuming all that is true the writer of Daniel probably took the term from the Book of Enoch so bringing in a Watcher more likely means the author had read what we call 1st Enoch.

The Book of Revelation is a similar composition.

Thanks for responding Nehor.  I love being able to talk with you about things like this.  

[Calm]

4 hours ago, mbh26 said:

Thanks for responding Nehor.  I love being able to talk with you about things like this.  

I appreciate hearing about such things, so like when there is discussion here even if I don’t tend to do research in this area myself (too many other more intense interests).

[InCognitus]

On 6/10/2026 at 9:12 AM, theplains said:

On 6/6/2026 at 3:31 PM, InCognitus said:

He says what Paul is doing in Romans 11 is thinking about Genesis 17 and Genesis 48:19, he is thinking about the fulness of nations (Gentiles).  And "From him there will be a fulness, a multitude of nations".

The "new Eden" (as he calls it) is about one people, with no divisions, like it was originally.  "What God wants is what he told you he wanted back in Genesis, that Abraham would be the father of...  would extend not only to Genesis 48:16... the ethnic, you know, descendants of... Jacob, but also Genesis 48:19 to those who have gentile blood.... this is what [God] is angling for."

Gentile blood which supposedly changes into the blood of Abraham when a person is acted upon by
the Holy Ghost (Religion 430-431 - Doctrines of the Gospel Student Manual, chapter 21).

Then this goes right along with what Heiser was saying in the video.  He directly linked the blessing given to Ephraim in Genesis 48 where Jacob blessed Ephraim that he would become a "fulness of the Gentiles" with what Paul said of the "fulness of the Gentiles" that would come in Romans 11:25.  There is no difference.

[mbh26]

On 6/7/2026 at 2:48 PM, Calm said:

How did they accomplish this?  Serious question.  If they did not have the level of technology we have, how did they learn of the physical nature of such?

I believe that the Watcher's spoken of in the Book of Enoch were extraterrestrials.  They were the "sons of God" who mated with mortal women and produced giants.  They brought a lot of knowledge and technology but also evil that resulted in the flood of Noah and even Jehovah's command to destroy everything about their culture, society, etc.  There was an explosion of technology amongst mankind in the antediluvian world with the advent of the watchers.  

Think of the story in the Old Testament where Moses throws down his staff and it turns into a serpent.  Pharaoh's priests were able to do the same, but how?  IMO it was a combination of the power of the devil and also the knowledge brought by these extra terrestrials.  They set up false Pagan religions and tried to set themselves up as gods.  I think this accounts for similar Pagan myths and gods that are similar across many cultures, from Thor with his hammer to Zeus with his thunderbolt.  

But one might argue also that prophets like Abraham learned these things through direct revelation from God.  Many near death experiences have allowed people to see the cosmos as spirits, i.e. Verlin Jensen.  How did Noah build an ark if the ancients were so primitive?  

But my main point is that I believe that from Adam to Noah, the patriarchal Fathers had a much deeper knowledge of the God, the plan of Salvation, and how that relates not just to us on this planet but to the entire universe.  They clearly knew that God the Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost were 3 distinct beings.  They knew of man's potential to become like God and had knowledge of other iterations of the plan of Salvation not just our own but many others eons back.  

 

[theplains]

On 6/10/2026 at 11:41 AM, Pyreaux said:

Well, officially, but before that, the law of adoption, baptism, overrides literal blood descendant with legal descendants, like the adoption of Ephriam into Israel before Moses severed their right to the priesthood and the adoption of David's house into the Lord's lineage enabled his royal decedents, and royal initiates like the Christian legal right to be Melchizedek priests.

Paul, in Romans 15:16, uses priestly imagery, even though he does not claim a formal priesthood 
office.

The New Testament never describes a restoration of priesthood "orders" (Aaronic vs. Melchizedek)
but it does introduce a priesthood of all believers.

1 Peter 2:5 - "a holy priesthood".
1 Peter 2:9 - "a royal priesthood".

This suggests priesthood is collective and spiritual, not hierarchical or office-based like in 
the Old Testament. It applies to all believers, not specifically to apostles.

[theplains]

On 6/14/2026 at 8:36 PM, InCognitus said:

Then this goes right along with what Heiser was saying in the video.  He directly linked the blessing given to Ephraim in Genesis 48 where Jacob blessed Ephraim that he would become a "fulness of the Gentiles" with what Paul said of the "fulness of the Gentiles" that would come in Romans 11:25. 

When does the fulness of the Gentiles occur?

[Pyreaux]

On 6/16/2026 at 9:54 AM, theplains said:

Paul, in Romans 15:16, uses priestly imagery, even though he does not claim a formal priesthood 
office.

The New Testament never describes a restoration of priesthood "orders" (Aaronic vs. Melchizedek)
but it does introduce a priesthood of all believers.

1 Peter 2:5 - "a holy priesthood".
1 Peter 2:9 - "a royal priesthood".

This suggests priesthood is collective and spiritual, not hierarchical or office-based like in 
the Old Testament. It applies to all believers, not specifically to apostles.

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".

Edited June 17 by Pyreaux

[theplains]

On 6/16/2026 at 5:46 PM, Pyreaux said:

Yet, God still institutes a specific, structure of priests to administer ordinances and lead.

Based on their writings, the apostles and elders didn't refer to themselves Aaronic or Melchizedek
priests. Even with the advent of the Roman Catholic Church, this did not occur. It's also not
present in the Book of Mormon, which supposedly had a church in this New Testament period.

[Pyreaux]

On 6/26/2026 at 10:30 AM, theplains said:

Based on their writings, the apostles and elders didn't refer to themselves Aaronic or Melchizedek
priests. Even with the advent of the Roman Catholic Church, this did not occur. It's also not
present in the Book of Mormon, which supposedly had a church in this New Testament period.

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.

Edited June 27 by Pyreaux

[Eschaton]

On 6/8/2026 at 8:22 PM, The Nehor said:

They had the books of Enoch at the time of Jesus because they were written between the 3rd century BCE through the the 1st century. They are pseudepigrapha. They were written at that time and attributed to Enoch. Even at that time the rabbis knew it didn’t actually come from Enoch. Also most of it was originally written in Aramaic which wouldn’t make sense for a hypothetical pre-flood language or if it was passed down for millenia. If it were passed down for millenia the original language (or the oldest copies we had access to) would be in Hebrew.

Hebrew only comes into existence at around 1200 BCE, so it wouldn't have been the language of Enoch (who was a figure of legend to begin with). But yes the Book of Enoch was composed late, in the apocalyptic period. 

 

https://www.bartehrman.com/book-of-enoch/

Edited June 26 by Eschaton

[The Nehor]

10 hours ago, Eschaton said:

Hebrew only comes into existence at around 1200 BCE, so it wouldn't have been the language of Enoch (who was a figure of legend to begin with). But yes the Book of Enoch was composed late, in the apocalyptic period. 

 

https://www.bartehrman.com/book-of-enoch/

Yeah, that is why I said if would be the language of the oldest copies we would have over Aramaic.