Great Apostasy revisited

[Nofear]

Jacob Hansen presents an alternative or modified narrative of the Great Apostasy. Loss of priesthood authority, sure. But he points to something deeper: the Hellenization of Christianity.
 

 

[Eschaton]

John's gospel is full of middle Platonism. The idea of the pre-existence of souls is also straight from Plato. 

 

[Pyreaux]

10 hours ago, Eschaton said:

John's gospel is full of middle Platonism. The idea of the pre-existence of souls is also straight from Plato. 

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.

Edited July 7 by Pyreaux

[Eschaton]

12 hours ago, Pyreaux said:

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.

 

Jewish apocalypticism arose precisely in the Greek period of Israel's history. Greek theological ideas and Platonism generally entered Judaism during this period. The idea of "souls" to begin with as something other than simple "life-force" isn't present in the oldest Jewish texts. Of course the oldest Jewish texts didn't arise out of a vacuum either. The oldest threads of Israelite religion are derivative of the beliefs of the Canaanites. Judaism itself we might understand the term, with its strict adherence to the law of Moses, doesn't really arise until pretty shortly before the time of Jesus. Prior to then it's more of a culture with certain feast days and an allegiance to the national god or gods. 

Johannine Platonism is basically just drawing from Philo, a middle Platonic Jewish writer. The logos was created to give God platonic distance from crude matter and creation, after all. 

All Judaism, Christianity and ultimately Mormonism is a mix of all of these influences (not just Greek and Canaanite, but also Persian, Edomite, Babylonian, etc). If you want to identify Greek ideas as apostasy, then you'll need to cut out the pre-existence and afterlife rewards and punishments from your belief system. Or I guess you'll do as you're doing here - pretend the Greek theological ideas in Mormonism aren't Greek, somehow. 

[telnetd]

Worshipping an exalted man is a Great Apostasy.

[The Nehor]

16 hours ago, Pyreaux said:

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.

Uh, nope. The Books of Enoch have all kinds of Platonic flavor and do not go back beyond the first few centuries BCE. The Book of Enoch is almost certainly not a much more ancient tradition that was suddenly rediscovered.

[Pyreaux]

13 hours ago, Eschaton said:

Jewish apocalypticism arose precisely in the Greek period of Israel's history. Greek theological ideas and Platonism generally entered Judaism during this period. The idea of "souls" to begin with as something other than simple "life-force" isn't present in the oldest Jewish texts. Of course the oldest Jewish texts didn't arise out of a vacuum either. The oldest threads of Israelite religion are derivative of the beliefs of the Canaanites. Judaism itself we might understand the term, with its strict adherence to the law of Moses, doesn't really arise until pretty shortly before the time of Jesus. Prior to then it's more of a culture with certain feast days and an allegiance to the national god or gods. 

Johannine Platonism is basically just drawing from Philo, a middle Platonic Jewish writer. The logos was created to give God platonic distance from crude matter and creation, after all. 

All Judaism, Christianity and ultimately Mormonism is a mix of all of these influences (not just Greek and Canaanite, but also Persian, Edomite, Babylonian, etc). If you want to identify Greek ideas as apostasy, then you'll need to cut out the pre-existence and afterlife rewards and punishments from your belief system. Or I guess you'll do as you're doing here - pretend the Greek theological ideas in Mormonism aren't Greek, somehow. 

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.

[The Nehor]

3 hours ago, Pyreaux said:

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.

Dr. Margaret Barker’s work is fringe at best and is more guesswork than substantiated.

The alternative to her radical and largely rejected model is not an “outdated, cynical evolutionary model”.

[Eschaton]

13 hours ago, Pyreaux said:

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.

 Not outdated at all, it's mainstream Biblical scholarship. Barker is outside of the mainstream on many of her theories. You seem to be using her because it suits your theological bias

You've kind of moved the goalpost here. I'm saying the pre-existence of spirts comes from Plato, which it does. Some ancient Israelites did have the idea that the "shades" of the dead would have a shadowy half life in the underworld.  I don't think "shades" are coterminous with spirits exactly, but that's really a different topic. Israel didn't spend 400 years in Egypt, although of course Egypt still had some influence.

You won't find the pre-existence of spirits in pre-hellenistic Judaism.  You found it in apocalyptic literature precisely because it was developed during Israel's Greek period.

Edited July 8 by Eschaton

[3DOP]

When LDS apologists accuse the early Church of "hellenizing", it makes me wonder if you have been taught that every school of Greek thought is wrong about everything.

Is non-LDS Christianity apostate because non-LDS agree with some  Greek schools of thought, or all of them in some pernicious fashion?

Do LDS disagree with only some Greek thinkers, or all of them? 

It seems to me that it is possible that Greek philosophy covered so much subject matter that whether we know it or not, all of us are touched by, or agree with, one or another school of thought. It seems possible to me that LDS are no less "hellenized" than a Catholic like me.

I would just ask my LDS friends to consider how this charge of being hellenized seems so vague. I wouldn't even know why I should be concerned about it if I hadn't seen that it proves to LDS that everybody else is apostate.

 

 

 

Edited July 8 by 3DOP

[Kevin Christensen]

See the important collection of essays edited by Noel Reynolds, Early Christians in Disarray, which demonstrates the loss of covenant very early.   They make a strong collective case that Hellenization was not the cause but a consequence of the apostasy, and that Hellenization made the survival of Christianity possible, after the loss of priesthood and covenants, and various plain and precious things.

Barker's The Older Testament and Nibley's "The Enoch Figure" in Enoch the Prophet" argue, in different ways, for the antiquity of the Enoch tradition.  Barker points out in her "The Fragrant Tree' essay in "The Tree of Life"  conference proceedings the geography of Jerusalem in 1 Enoch  predates Hezekiah's tunnel. Which suggests that the traditions it reports have roots that predate Isaiah.

And Barker has essays in the Great High Priest and Temple Mystism that make a case that Platonism imported Temple ideas from Ezekiel via Pythagoras.

I find specificity in details makes stronger arguments than abstract labels and blanket dismissal.

FWIW.

Kevin Christensen

Tooele, UT

Edited July 9 by Kevin Christensen
Details

[3DOP]

Kevin Christensen, hi.

Thank you for...

"I find specificity in details makes stronger arguments than abstract labels and blanket dismissal.

FWIW."

FWIW.

Edited July 8 by 3DOP

[Stargazer]

On 7/6/2026 at 10:24 PM, Eschaton said:

John's gospel is full of middle Platonism. The idea of the pre-existence of souls is also straight from Plato. 

 

No doubt Plato felt that theft and murder were wrong, too. Doesn't mean that Jewish and Christian thought borrowed that from Plato. Marcus Aurelius was a Stoic philosopher as well as a Roman emperor. He once wrote: "The things you think about determine the quality of your mind. Your soul takes on the color of your thoughts." Sounds like something Jesus might have said, doesn't it? It's doubtful that Aurelius was a student of Jewish or Christian literature, so it was probably independently arrived at.

Jeremiah was told by God that he pre-existed his conception. Jeremiah predates Plato by a few hundred years. Maybe Plato was studying Jeremiah? Jesus's disciples asked Jesus if a man who had been born blind had sinned before his birth and his blindness was a punishment for that. Jesus did not correct them. Clearly the Jews already believed in pre-existence.

 

 

 

Edited July 8 by Stargazer

[ZealouslyStriving]

3 hours ago, Eschaton said:

Not outdated at all, it's mainstream Biblical scholarship. Barker is outside of the mainstream on many of her theories.

Ad populum. 

[3DOP]

53 minutes ago, Kevin Christensen said:

See the important collection of essays edited by Noel Reynolds, Early Christians in Disarray, which demonstrates the loss of covenant very early.   They make a strong collective case that Hellenization was not the cause but a consequence of the apostasy, and that Hellenization made the survival of Christianity possible, after the loss of priesthood and covenants, and various plain and precious things.

Barker's The Older Testament and Nibley's "The Enoch Figure" in Enoch the Prophet" argue, in different ways, for the antiquity of the Enoch tradition.  Barker points out in her "The Fragrant Tree' essay in "The Tree of Life"  conference proceedings the geography of Jerusalem in 1 Enoch  predates Hezekiah's tunnel. Which suggests that the traditions it reports have roots that predates Isaiah.

And Barker has essays in the Great High Priest and Temple Mystism that make a case that Platonism imported Temple ideas from Ezekiel via Pythagoras.

I find specificity in details makes stronger arguments than abstract labels and blanket dismissal.

FWIW.

Kevin Christensen

Tooele, UT

What you say above makes so much more sense to me. I don't know what you are talking about. I haven't studied these things. But I have studied a little about my own early church, and I cannot believe that the bishops at the Council of Nicea were a bunch of philosophy driven apostates who didn't care about what Scripture says. If we are apostate, by that theory, there is no room for anything but contempt.

I do not know the scholarship, and naturally I do not accept the theory that you propose, but it has the advantage of actually having respect for the members of the apostate church. It is much more consistent and believable for those of us who have gained a deep admiration for the fierce and even heroic faith of many souls in the first three centuries after Christ, who lived and sometimes died for His name.

Regards, 

Rory McKenzie  

[Eschaton]

7 minutes ago, Stargazer said:

No doubt Plato felt that theft and murder were wrong, too. Doesn't mean that Jewish and Christian thought borrowed that from Plato. Marcus Aurelius was a Stoic philosopher as well as a Roman emperor. He once wrote: "The things you think about determine the quality of your mind. Your soul takes on the color of your thoughts." Sounds like something Jesus might have said, doesn't it? It's doubtful that Aurelius was a student of Jewish or Christian literature, so it was probably independently arrived at.

Jeremiah was told by God that he pre-existed his conception. Jesus's disciples asked Jesus if a man who had been born blind had sinned before his birth and his blindness was a punishment for that. Jesus did not correct them. Clearly the Jews already believed in pre-existence.

 

 

 

 

Correct, not everything comes from Plato, but the pre-existence of human souls in Jewish and Christian thought does. 

There is no pre-existence in Jeremiah - instead that refers to the foreknowledge of God. Jesus inherited the apocalyptic tradition, which already had baked-in Hellenization, having arisen during Israel's period of Greek occupation. Without the Greeks a figure like Jesus wouldn't have arisen. 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellenistic_period

[Eschaton]

9 minutes ago, ZealouslyStriving said:

Ad populum. 

Why do you suppose Margaret Barker has been unsuccessful in convincing the vast majority of critical scholars to her views?

It's not rational to shop around to find fringe scholars to tout just because they say the things you want to hear. That's practically ad unpopulum. 

[Stargazer]

12 hours ago, The Nehor said:

Dr. Margaret Barker’s work is fringe at best and is more guesswork than substantiated.

Joseph Smith's work is fringe at best, too, I imagine?

12 hours ago, The Nehor said:

The alternative to her radical and largely rejected model is not an “outdated, cynical evolutionary model”.

Just curious who rejects her radical model? Would it be the same people who reject Joseph Smith? 

The problem with radical models is that sometimes they turn out to have more relevance than the mainstream models. The history of science, for example, is littered with discredited false theories which at one time were accepted and considered mainstream, but which were replaced by formerly rejected radical models, laughed at by the prevailing authorities. 

[The Nehor]

25 minutes ago, Stargazer said:

Joseph Smith's work is fringe at best, too, I imagine?

Joseph Smith was not an academic.

25 minutes ago, Stargazer said:

Just curious who rejects her radical model? Would it be the same people who reject Joseph Smith? 

The mainstream academic historians. Most of them don’t care one way or the other about Joseph Smith and it is weird that you are comparing an academic point of history with faith based religious truth claims as if they are somehow analogous or equivalent. 

25 minutes ago, Stargazer said:

The problem with radical models is that sometimes they turn out to have more relevance than the mainstream models. The history of science, for example, is littered with discredited false theories which at one time were accepted and considered mainstream, but which were replaced by formerly rejected radical models, laughed at by the prevailing authorities. 

They aren’t laughing at Margaret Barker’s theories. They are waiting for evidence to back up the conclusions. That is how academia works. Margaret Baker is generally respected for her knowledge. This specific conclusion isn’t accepted because there isn’t enough backing it up.

Trying to turn it into a brave revolutionary fighting the smug entrenched naysayers fearful of change is ridiculous. This isn’t an equivalent of the caricature many make of Galileo. Academics generally LOVE seismic changes. It means a lot of new stuff to investigate and write about.

[Calm]

43 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

Academics generally LOVE seismic changes. It means a lot of new stuff to investigate and write about.

And reputations to be made.  

[ZealouslyStriving]

2 hours ago, Eschaton said:

Why do you suppose Margaret Barker has been unsuccessful in convincing the vast majority of critical scholars to her views?

Because scientists in general have immense scholarly pride and are very slow to adopt new ideas. 🤷🏻‍♂️

[Calm]

2 hours ago, ZealouslyStriving said:

Because scientists in general have immense scholarly pride and are very slow to adopt new ideas. 🤷🏻‍♂️

CFR please.  For the in general….

Anecdotally, the scientists I know are usually nice guys pretty typical overall if intense when it comes to their area of study.  They love talking about innovations.

I can see arrogance perhaps in the scholarly elite, but there are far fewer of those than the up and coming ones who want and need to establish reputations to get grants, good teaching positions, book deals, etc. 

Of course, there are the inherent evidence requirements for the scientific method.  Do you really want to compromise on that?

Edited July 9 by Calm

[Calm]

Lazy today….I don’t think scientists are any more inherently conservative than nonscientists outside of the requirements of the scientific method, which requires a higher level of evidence than casual investigation (and thank goodness or we would have more disasters imo), but not willing to do the research today, so resorted to AI to summarize research (my bold):

Quote

The general population is often more willing to accept or reject ideas based on personal experience, intuition, authority, or anecdotal evidence.

 

However, if you mean open-mindedness in general, the evidence is much less clear. There is no broad consensus that scientists are more closed-minded than non-scientists as people. In fact, some personality research has found that scientists score relatively high on traits like intellectual curiosity or openness to experience. Those traits can coexist with skepticism toward claims that lack evidence.

 

So a careful way to put it would be:

 

Scientists are generally more conservative than the general population in accepting new scientific claims because they require stronger evidence before changing their views. This does not necessarily mean they are more conservative or closed-minded as individuals.

 

It’s also worth remembering that there are two different stages:

 

1. Considering an idea. Scientists often examine unconventional ideas if they are testable and supported by evidence.
2. Accepting an idea. Scientists typically require much more evidence than the general public before concluding that a new idea is likely to be true.

 

 

That distinction helps explain why science can appear resistant to new ideas while still being capable of major revolutions when compelling evidence accumulates.

 

[Calm]

2 hours ago, ZealouslyStriving said:

Because scientists in general have immense scholarly pride and are very slow to adopt new ideas. 🤷🏻‍♂️

Wait, do you mean scholars or scientists as they are not the same?

[Pyreaux]

8 hours ago, Eschaton said:

 Not outdated at all, it's mainstream Biblical scholarship. Barker is outside of the mainstream on many of her theories. You seem to be using her because it suits your theological bias

You've kind of moved the goalpost here. I'm saying the pre-existence of spirts comes from Plato, which it does. Some ancient Israelites did have the idea that the "shades" of the dead would have a shadowy half life in the underworld.  I don't think "shades" are coterminous with spirits exactly, but that's really a different topic. Israel didn't spend 400 years in Egypt, although of course Egypt still had some influence.

You won't find the pre-existence of spirits in pre-hellenistic Judaism.  You found it in apocalyptic literature precisely because it was developed during Israel's Greek period.

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.