Ancient Origins Of Lds Temple Esoteric Rites?

[3DOP]

The ones I mentioned definitely were a Catholic enterprise as well, as it was so stated. I also recall my surprise at the renderings in some places. I just now remembered the title of the series. It is The Fathers of the Church: A New Translation series, published by the Catholic University of America Press. See here. Hardbound is out of print but you still can obtain both ebook and paperback versions. See volume 6, which is the writings of Justin Martyr. The specific chapter for the "shall have bliss" mistranslation was First Apology, chapter XXI. As to the other reference, the precise location escapes me at the moment. I'll have to try to remember and try to remember to get back to you on it. It would be a lot easier to remember and reference if I were home with my books and notes.

Mormon Mason!

So sorry. I misstated. "I am NOT doubting your recollection..." was what I meant to say. Leaving out that three letter word changes the meaning considerably.

Okay...I'll be checking out the links. Thanks.

[3DOP]

Thanks. Yes, I see this as the standard Catholic and Orthodox view of the development of the liturgies around the various sacraments and mysteries. So, in your understanding, is it correct to not only say that Catholics accept the development of the sacramental rites (and don't claim that the way these liturgies are celebrated is the same way they were done during the New Testament), but that many of the developments, such as the various exorcisms, anointings, and blessings pronounced during baptism, are not seen as essential to the validity of the sacraments? And that, while such additions are nice, due to the additional priesthood blessings given, they are not, strictly, part of the actual sacrament of baptism (this makes sense to me due to the Catholic acceptance of "emergency baptisms" and accepting baptisms performed in non-Catholic, Trinitarian churches, churches that clearly don't celebrate baptism in the ways that the various Catholic particular churches do))?

And interestingly, to tie it back to the OP, it seems like these developments, such as the anointing of various body parts in Chrismation/Confirmation (however that originated), are seen as clear parallels to LDS temple practices, hence why many LDS authors and scholars refer to Cyril, for example.

Hi ChristKnight. How could we possibly think that things are now as they were? A persecuted church isn't ideal. As the Kingdom of God advanced, so did the ways in which we are able to honour God in our litugical ceremonies. Would St. John be aghast at the idea that, unlike the Apostles, we now use incense as described in the heavenly liturgy in the last book of the New Testament? Or would he have been troubled because the early church did not precisely follow the liturgy he describes? No to both. The Church adapts herself to circumstances. Even in our era, in times of modern war, we hear without scandal that the mystical celebrations have been celebrated with the hood of a Jeep as altar. No one imagines that this should be normative. Likewise, what was normative during the birth of the Church should not always be understood to be normative for every era.

There is a good modern example of how the Church understands the essential form and matter of a Sacrament. The Council of Florence made an error in regards to the essential matter for the Sacrament of Holy Orders saying that it was "the transfer of the instruments". This refers to a beautiful part of the ceremony of the Western Rite in which the priestly candidate receives a chalice from the bishop. The problem with this understanding is that "the transfer of the instruments" was a development in the Western Rite only. Eastern Rite Catholics and Orthodox, whose ordinations were never questioned, never "received the instruments". In 1947, Pope Pius XII defined once and for all that the essential matter for holy orders was the laying on of hands of the bishop. Appealing to modern scholarship which had learned history that had been unavailable five hundred years before, he conclusively shows, without explicitly referencing it, why the Council of Florence was wrong.

Unfortunately, there are some Traditional Catholics who are so stubbornly attached to the beautiful ceremony that they cannot recognize the validity of the revised ordinal of Paul VI. I know a few Catholics who won't go to confessor who has been ordained in the New Rite because the New Rite has also suppressed the receiving of the chalice. I personally regret the suppression because I think it is founded on this dubious idea that primitive is always better. Of course, the essentials are maintained, and very thankfully, we can rest assured that along with the churches of the East, so those ordained in the West according to the new ordinal have received the priesthood of Christ.

This is an affirmative answer to your question about validity. Beauty is appropriate to a sacramental rite, but we must distinguish it from what is essential.

I have not read St. Cyril, but if he makes reference to practices that seem compatible with Temple ceremonies, it seems legitimate to me for Latter Day Saints to point to the parallels. It seems reasonable that an apostate church might maintain remnants of practices of valid ordinances even if they had lost the essentials.

3DOP

Edited April 13, 2013 by 3DOP

[3DOP]

The ones I mentioned definitely were a Catholic enterprise as well, as it was so stated. I also recall my surprise at the renderings in some places. I just now remembered the title of the series. It is The Fathers of the Church: A New Translation series, published by the Catholic University of America Press. See here. Hardbound is out of print but you still can obtain both ebook and paperback versions. See volume 6, which is the writings of Justin Martyr. The specific chapter for the "shall have bliss" mistranslation was First Apology, chapter XXI. As to the other reference, the precise location escapes me at the moment. I'll have to try to remember and try to remember to get back to you on it. It would be a lot easier to remember and reference if I were home with my books and notes.

Hi again Mormon Mason,

Good catch about the translation.

Very interesting about St. Justin, whose feast day is tomorrow by the way. I read St. Justin and the entire first volume of ante-Nicene Fathers before I became Catholic nearly twenty years ago. I used three highlighters, orange for Mormon, pink for Protestant, yellow for Catholic. I see I had highlighted that passage in orange. I also see that the entire context of the passage is a discussion of Greek gods. I think I would have to agree with your negative conclusion, assuming the same word is used for "become gods" as was used when he wrote "to imitate the gods" and "concerning the gods". Clearly, St. Justin is making some comparisons and these are lost if they don't trust their readers to understand the passage.

In ch. 22 we read, "...for all writers call God the Father of men and gods." One wonders if these translators would render it "men and 'those who shall have bliss'"?

Translators can have legitimate reasons for translating in less literal ways. But it seems like a literal translation would usually be preferred for scholarly literature. It seems hard to think that these patristic editions are intended for popular consumption. Although I deplore the anti-Catholic commentaries in my English set of the Fathers, I tend to trust that the translators were being fair. I say that because of the comment they make in St. Irenaeus when he implores the faithful to follow the church of Rome:

For it is a necessity that every Church should agree with this Church, on account of its preeminent authority...

---Against Heresies 3:3:2

I found the footnote to be revealing: "It is impossible to say with certainty of what words in the Greek original "potiorem principalitatem" may be the translation. We are far from sure that the rendering given above is correct, but we have been unable to think of anything better." Fair enough! They hate what it says but translate the extant Latin available accurately. That is what I want in a translation. Unfortunately, if your memory is accurate, it would seem that the Catholic translators of St. Justin were able to think of something "better".

I have been away from my books and notes when I needed them too. No worries. It seems very unlikely to me given the context, that the Catholic edition is being accurate. I will try to verify if I can access the original. I know little Greek but it should be easy enough to see if St. Justin used some variation of "theos" in the clause. He did use Greek right? It wasn't Latin?

Thanks,

3DOP

Edited April 13, 2013 by 3DOP

[MormonMason]

Yes, Justin used Greek. However, you won't find the terms theos or the Christian technical term theopoiesis in that passage. Justin used a well-known, Greek technical term (apathanatizō, "I aim at immortality") that means "deified" and "be made gods" in the Greek literature of the day, a meaning with which his intended audience would be familiar and would understand. As a technical term it is used in contexts of comparisons to gods and with reference to those who are deified in various ways. The gods, of course, are sometimes referred to in such Greek literature as "the immortals." The connotation and meaning is clear in such contexts.

See an abridged usage and definition information in an online version of Liddell, Scott, and Jones' Greek-English Lexicon, here.

Edited April 14, 2013 by MormonMason

[mfbukowski]

I have not read St. Cyril, but if he makes reference to practices that seem compatible with Temple ceremonies, it seems legitimate to me for Latter Day Saints to point to the parallels.

We are talking virtually word-perfect here- its more than "compatible". The resemblances are stunning.

[ChristKnight]

Randomly ran into this article by our neighborhood friend Will Hamblin, thought others might also find it interesting: Aspects of an Early Christian Initiation Ritual.

[MormonMason]

...

Although I deplore the anti-Catholic commentaries in my English set of the Fathers, I tend to trust that the translators were being fair. I say that because of the comment they make in St. Irenaeus when he implores the faithful to follow the church of Rome: ---Against Heresies 3:3:2

I found the footnote to be revealing: "It is impossible to say with certainty of what words in the Greek original "potiorem principalitatem" may be the translation. We are far from sure that the rendering given above is correct, but we have been unable to think of anything better."

...

A more serious problem, however, is that the Latin translation was provided by Rufinus. Rufinus was known to doctor older texts that he translated into Latin and known to rewrite them to make them more "Orthodox" according to the teachings of his own day, as well as to erase all trace of things with which he disagreed. Jerome attacks his falsifying of older texts. In one of his letters he spent considerable time attacking Rufinus' renderings of the original Greek writings of Origen.

Unless the missing Greek text has been found, there must of necessity be uncertainty at what was actually said here on account of Rufinus' known proclivity to doctor whatever he translated to agree with the stance of the teaching of his own day rather than faithfully render the Greek into good Latin that carries a like meaning to the Greek. That is the most unfortunate part of all.

[3DOP]

A more serious problem, however, is that the Latin translation was provided by Rufinus. Rufinus was known to doctor older texts that he translated into Latin and known to rewrite them to make them more "Orthodox" according to the teachings of his own day, as well as to erase all trace of things with which he disagreed. Jerome attacks his falsifying of older texts. In one of his letters he spent considerable time attacking Rufinus' renderings of the original Greek writings of Origen.

Unless the missing Greek text has been found, there must of necessity be uncertainty at what was actually said here on account of Rufinus' known proclivity to doctor whatever he translated to agree with the stance of the teaching of his own day rather than faithfully render the Greek into good Latin that carries a like meaning to the Greek. That is the most unfortunate part of all.

I would observe firstly, that there is and was no place for deliberate mistranslation. I think many non-Catholics simply assume that ancient patristic texts and even the Scriptures have been deliberately corrupted. As the translator of the Latin Vulgate, I am pleased that St. Jerome authors a writing in defense of integrity in translating. Secondly, I have seen Rufinus mentioned as a translator of Origen and Eastern Fathers like Sts. Basil and Gregory Nazianzen. It would seem like with his work being discredited by such an authority as St. Jerome, other translations would have been preferred. In any event, can you direct me to your source for claiming that we are using a Rufinus translation of St. Irenaeus?

Thanks,

3DOP

[3DOP]

There are extant Greek fragments of Irenaeus. http://www.earlychurchtexts.com/main/irenaeus/01_tradition_01.shtml

On this page can be found the Greek for the Latin translation (attributed to Rufinus) for the paragraph immediately following the one I quoted above which I cited as an example of good translating by the Anglicans who didn't really approve of Irenaeus saying that it was a necessity for every church to obey one church, Rome.

In the following paragraph, the Latin translation has Irenaeus arguing for the authority of the Roman church based on the letter sent by Clement to the Corinthians. I am not competent to translate the Greek, but it would presumably be another text rich with Rufinian corruptions, assuming that he had already inserted his own prejudice in favor of Roman pre-eminence into the previous paragraph. This passage is still the same subject and thankfully we can compare the Greek. My understanding is that the Greek fragments have been preserved from writings, mainly from Eusebius' history, that predated Rufinus. Unless there is some reason to also doubt the Greek fragments, one who has the ability to translate the Greek ought to be able to demonstrate how Rufinus corrupted the translation of Against Heresies 3:3:3 which immediately follows the one in Book Three, Chapter Three, Paragraph 2, which is quoted above, but has no extant Greek to compare.

3DOP

[MormonMason]

...In any event, can you direct me to your source for claiming that we are using a Rufinus translation of St. Irenaeus?

Whoops! I based my comment on catching a footnote making reference to a reading in Rufinus as I was scanning through my electronic copy. However, on checking the introduction, it turned out that the Latin of the translation of Irenaeus was from a period earlier than that of Rufinus, since it was quoted by Tertullian. It would seem that I was mistaken and am retracting that part of the claim regarding it being by Rufinus. However, the rest of my argument still has some degree of validity because of what the translators stated about this Latin translation in the Introduction:

The great work of Irenaeus, now for the first time translated into English, is unfortunately no longer extant in the original. It has come down to us only in an ancient Latin version, with the exception of the greater part of the first book, which has been preserved in the original Greek, through means of copious quotations made by Hippolytus and Epiphanius. The text, both Latin and Greek, is often most uncertain. Only three mss. of the work Against Heresies are at present known to exist. Others, however, were used in the earliest printed editions put forth by Erasmus. And as these codices were more ancient than any now available, it is greatly to be regretted that they have disappeared or perished. One of our difficulties throughout, has been to fix the readings we should adopt, especially in the first book. Varieties of reading, actual or conjectural, have been noted only when some point of special importance seemed to be involved.

After the text has been settled, according to the best judgment which can be formed, the work of translation remains; and that is, in this case, a matter of no small difficulty. Irenaeus, even in the original Greek, is often a very obscure writer. At times he expresses himself with remarkable clearness and terseness; but, upon the whole, his style is very involved and prolix. And the Latin version adds to these difficulties of the original, by being itself of the most barbarous character. In fact, it is often necessary to make a conjectural re-translation of it into Greek, in order to obtain some inkling of what the author wrote. Dodwell supposes this Latin version to have been made about the end of the fourth century; but as Tertullian seems to have used it, we must rather place it in the beginning of the third. Its author is unknown, but he was certainly little qualified for his task. We have endeavoured to give as close and accurate a translation of the work as possible, but there are not a few passages in which a guess can only be made as to the probable meaning.

As an aside, while some other people call the translation "wooden" others (like the writer of the article about Irenaeus in the New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia) say of its quality: "the scrupulous fidelity of which is beyond doubt."

I can attest to the fact that Irenaeus' Greek is difficult at places. The Latin also is horrendous in not a few places. Unfortunately, much of the Greek fragments as we now have them comes in the form of quotations coming to us through other, later authors.

That said, we still know that early writings were corrupted and modified for we have examples of this in the differing versions of Ignatius (the long form being a corruption of the originals), and so forth.

[3DOP]

MormonMason

Whoops! I based my comment on catching a footnote making reference to a reading in Rufinus as I was scanning through my electronic copy. However, on checking the introduction, it turned out that the Latin of the translation of Irenaeus was from a period earlier than that of Rufinus, since it was quoted by Tertullian. It would seem that I was mistaken and am retracting that part of the claim regarding it being by Rufinus.

3DOP

No worries. Thanks.

MormonMason

However, the rest of my argument still has some degree of validity because of what the translators stated about this Latin translation in the Introduction:

As an aside, while some other people call the translation "wooden" others (like the writer of the article about Irenaeus in the New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia) say of its quality: "the scrupulous fidelity of which is beyond doubt."

I can attest to the fact that Irenaeus' Greek is difficult at places. The Latin also is horrendous in not a few places. Unfortunately, much of the Greek fragments as we now have them comes in the form of quotations coming to us through other, later authors.

That said, we still know that early writings were corrupted and modified for we have examples of this in the differing versions of Ignatius (the long form being a corruption of the originals), and so forth.

3DOP

I am not following on why quotes from later authors should be deemed unfortunate. Are you speculating that Irenaeus' key passages about the pre-eminence of Rome, quoted by Eusebius of Caesaria are deliberate misquotations of the Greek? That would mean Irenaeus of Lyons (WESTERN) was against the Roman claims and the historian enjoying the favor of the Emperor of Constantinople (EASTERN) changed Irenaeus' teaching to reflect competition from Rome. Besides the geographical peculiarities of such conjecture, it would be a dangerous game. Jerome caught Rufinus revising Origen. It didn't need a thousand years or computers to discover a phony. .

As for Ignatius, we all understand the shorter versions to be "safe". I don't think we know the long versions are false. We simply don't have the same assurance that we have with the shorter texts. That is partly why I seldom quote from the longer versions of Ignatius. They are controversial and they don't add that much anyway. Impartial and reliable scholars have identified the longer texts from Ignatius as questionable. Fine. There is a reason why we distinguish between the shorter and longer versions of Ignatius. Presumably there is a reason why scholars have not made any effort to similarly discredit our text from Irenaeus' major work. I am currently unaware of ANY scholarship that argues that our text for Against Heresies is similarly unreliable. Nevertheless, I am willing to hear anything opponents of Irenaeus' Latin text might have to say. But without that, it would seem unnecessary to concede that because insignificant parts of Ignatius are questionable, that there is a reason to raise the same specter against our text of Irenaeus.

3DOP

Edited April 18, 2013 by 3DOP

[volgadon]

On the nature of the ancient liturgical church, you might want to study Eric Werner's The Sacred Bridge: Liturgical Parallels in Synagogue and Early Church (Schocken, 1970). The comparative method is not automatically bad (parallelomania), and can be very instructive. Be careful of your tendency toward confirmation bias.

Got my copy the other day. Thanks for the recommendation.

[ChristKnight]

Thought everyone might be interested in this fireside by Will Hamblin on the relationship between the ancient Israelite temple and the LDS temple Endowment.

The Mysteries of Solomon’s Temple – Esoteric Teachings of the Ancient Israelite Temple