https://www.youtube.com/user/ThunderboltsProject/videos

“Eternal Progression, Degrees of Glory, and the Resurrection: A Comparative Cosmology”
http://themormonbox.com/1174/eternal-progression-degrees-of-glory-and-the-resurrection/

In any case using geocentric astronomy the positions of the stars/planets can be represented reasonably good – especially if you add epicenters. I don’t know enough about Egyptian astronomy to know how that was done.

Even if one pushes fac 3 as tied to real history (and I’m not sure even historicists to the Book of Abraham need do that) I don’t think we can say Abraham couldn’t teach such astronomy. First we don’t know which Egypt Abraham is talking about as Egypt. Second by “teaching” it could just be a discussion of geeks who knew this esoteric stuff and maybe Abraham thought he had a better epicenter. (I’m obviously being a bit facetious here – but you get the idea) In any case I’m not sure fac 3 has much practical significance outside of the more apologetic/historicist question of the relationship of the papyri to the Book of Abraham.

Astronomy as such is the technical measurements of the movements and dynamics of the sky. Cosmology is the philosophical cosmovision of the universe. Astrology is High Priest Quorum :). It is probably the case that Abraham taught the Egyptians more cosmology than he did astronomy.

So, I believe that there is probably some real technical data behind the vast veil of mythological tropes used in all these rites, funerary texts, stelaes, and stories. But in the end, when we are talking about pre Greek cosmology we are definitely talking about a different kind of geocentric model because it was rooted in macro-micro relationships, and not in mechanical movements of parts (admitting that they were also aware of the movement of those parts).

A similar point gets made with other texts such as with dualism in the dead sea scrolls. Often people read everything in cosmic dualist terms when often more simple explanations are called for. Here we have a geocentric model but it seems much more a causal system of some sort rather than anything related to orbital dynamics except to the degree they constitute movement and time in some sense. So it’s not that it might not also be a more traditional geocentric system just that perhaps we should be careful to say it is.

That said, I think the issue of times and movements do suggest this is a reasonable reading to see it as astronomical. Throw in Joseph’s comment that Abraham is talking about *astronomy* and there’s some evidence to read it this way. But it’s hardly determinative I fully agree.

The difficulty I have with this is it reduces ancient oral categories into modern, literate spatial logistics. When someone hears “geocentric” they are thinking of the Ptolemaic model of all the heavenly spheres turning around the earth. Perhaps the writers of the papyri were thinking of that? But is that an accurate description of the cosmology Abraham was shown?

Immediately complications start spilling out, even within the same book. In another chapter we are shown another vision of Egyptian cosmology where ancient texts describe the universe as a great tree, whose branches are the heavens and fruits are the stars. Upon this conception we have contradictory visuals, as the author writes, “Ironically, the center of the cosmos in Egyptian belief was represented by Pharaoh’s throne, which was deemed ‘the divine throne as the pivot of society in a permanent changeless cosmic order of elemental vastness'” (52). The Pharaoh, like Osiris, is turned into a star, and his throne, whilst on earth, governs the heavens. In several Egyptian texts Ptah is the regulator of the heavens, and is identified as a northern star, but is also given the title “regulator of the circuit of the heavenly bodies.” Perhaps this is a reference to the Northern stars of Ursa Major? But it should be noted that another of Ptah’s titles was “Lord of the Thirty Year Circuit,” a clear allusion to Saturn which takes thirty years to complete one rotation around the sky as seen from earth.

Here is the problem with defining ancient cosmology. As in the case of Egypt, the entire system is shrouded underneath a vast cloud of epithets, puns, and technical titles all of which had relevant meaning within a cosmology whose center was not calculated in spacial logistics. Ancient cosmology was rooted in the miraculous observations of nature in the microcosm, where life was seen to decay in one season and reborn in another. What caused the rebirth of nature? The powers of heaven, and behind that the power of life residing in the heavens. The center was not just Pharaoh, but the celestial archetype that gave power to the whole system and opened the doors to eternal life.

So a more accurate description of this cosmology may not be geocentric after all. Profoundly, when Copernicus was looking for evidence of a heliocentric system, he scoured through every ancient text he could find. Copernicus did not come to his theory through astronomical observations (a complete fallacy printed in all our textbooks) but through the reading of ancient texts. What got him on the hunt was a passage he read from Philolaus the Pythagorean who stated that the entire universe revolved around a great Central Fire. The problem was Philolaus had the Sun also revolving around this central fire. So, this was not a geocentric or heliocentric system.

What was this central fire? It was the true center of the universe where life originated, and this was the idee fixe embedded in religious cosmology throughout the ancient world. One could say, using an Abrahamic term, it is Kolob. And if one looks at Fac. 2 in Abraham one sees that the center of the universe is God’s throne. Pharaoh’s throne was simply a reproduction of the stellar hierarchy.

Ultimately, in this three tiered system of heaven, earth, and underworld, one could also say there are three centers, one in each realm. Only in the earthly realm is earth really a center. The underworld also had a center, in the place where the secrets of eternal life were kept (the island of Utnapishtim, the Hersperides, or various other mythical locales that bear up “the midnight sun”). The true center was the heavenly one, where the gods ruled on their throne, and in Greece, called “The Tower of Cronos” (there’s Saturn again), “The Highway of Zeus,” or “The Blessed Isles.”

The tension between this ontological cosmos and the spacial geocentric or heliocentric one is actually summed up by the Roman Emporer Julian, who writes:

“Some say then, even though all men are not ready to believe it, that the sun travels in the starless heavens far above the region of the fixed stars. And on this theory he will not be stationed midmost among the planets but midway between the three worlds: that is, according to the hypothesis of the mysteries. [. . .] For the priests of the mysteries tell us what they have been taught by the gods or might daemons, whereas the astronomers make plausible hypotheses from the harmony that they observe in the visible spheres. It is proper, no doubt, to approve the astronomers as well, but where any man thinks it better to believe the priests of the mysteries, him I admire and revere, both in jest and earnest. And so much for that, as the saying is.”

So in Julian’s day there was the this competing cosmovision between the “creationists” and the “Darwinists,” or I should say between the religious cosmology of the mystery endowments and the physical cosmology of the schools. Please note that this great sun that travels through the heavens IS NOT the sun in our sky, but the celestial archetype of the system (the throne). It is the true center as it is not in the middle of the planets but in the middle of the three-tiered cosmos. Here is the central fire of Philolaus, from which the modern idea of heliocentric cosmology was born. Irony to be sure.

Your view that ‘things will become equal in the hereafter’ is an interesting one, I’m not sure where you got it. ‘Just’, perhaps. I’m happy to accept your reading of 2 Ne 2, there are, however, other readings.

The problem with the more Philo or Platonic reading (and Philo illustrates this was in mainstream Judaism at the time of Christ) is that the opposites involve a privation ultimately. (This becomes even more pronounced in neoPlatonism although that’s a bit of an artificial label) So focusing in on body is the privation from focus on true intellect. And body itself becomes a kind of privation or lack from the intellect such that body, while not strictly evil as in gnosticism, is a problem of a sort.

With Lehi I think we have to real independent objects such that one isn’t understood in terms of the other as a lack or negation. (This is the break from German Idealism too) Rather both are independent but the only way to distinguish them is to encounter them both. So it’s more Saussure than Hegel. The “all things compound in one isn’t the synthesis of Hegel but a kind of presentation of oppositions so that one could be chosen in opposition to the other. It’s ultimately a choice. It’s better seen in a kind of game theoretic model where we have to have the goal on either side of the field for the game to work as the game. It’s compound in one on in the sense both are needed to achieve anything. You can’t really score a goal with only one.

Now we can complain about whether this logic works as an argument. But as a presentation rather than an argument (which is how it’s usually taken) I think it works great. The question of purpose is purpose as in a game. In particular I think it’s hard to read 2 Ne 2:13 in terms of say Paul in Romans.

The whole argument of the natural man for Benjamin isn’t the same as the more Platonic reading of Paul (that I’d argue persists through Luther and Calvin) but is this game theoretic stance.

To tie all this back to the cosmology of Genesis this is more or less the ancient Jewish conception within Genesis 1 – at least that’s what Levenson convincingly argues in Creation and the Persistence of Evil. But for this to work the creation has to constantly be repeated. Not just by God (God is constantly battling the waters of chaos rather than creating ex nihilo with evil being privation from God). Rather each of us have to take up this work of creation. Reading say Mosiah 3 in terms of this overarching creation cosmology is quite interesting.

I think Qumran is quite interesting relative to Lehi. Exactly how dualistic Qumran was is up for debate. Some attempt to reduce it to personal or ethical dualism. While taking it as cosmic dualism as in Zoroastrianism might be pushing it, the definitely are strong echoes of Lehi. We have the evil spirit (Angel of Darkness) that arrives after the creation of humanity that exists to tempt and torment the “Sons of Light” in the present. Interestingly this tends to appear only in “The Treatise on the Two Spirits” and not in what was found in most of the other caves. Reading the dualism in The Treatise on the Two Spirits is quite interesting – reread Lehi afterwards. It’s important to note that at Qumran they make a distinction between God and the good spirit in opposition to the evil one. Within Lehi it’s possible to see a similar move depending upon how one takes the Messiah. It’s useful to reread D&C 93 as well, although I fully admit it’s much more fun to read that neoPlatonically.

Reading a bit of your Philo link, I was reminded of how Hellenistic the traditional Christian idea of spirit being good and body being bad is, and how at odds that is with what Lehi’s saying. Maybe when there was similar thought in first century Christianity, it had to be couched, maybe even conceived of, in different verbiage, in the same way Paul’s talk of us being God’s slaves tends to be softened in modern rhetoric, to more of a voluntary servant concept.

The whole point is not, at its inception, about agency, but to help a child who has had a hard life to understand the purpose of suffering. Lehi does so by explaining how necessary opposition is to reality, and why that is. Only in that context does freedom of choice become a topic; the main point is just to help Jacob understand how his suffering is beneficial, and how, in the end, it will turn to his benefit.

Lehi’s purpose didn’t seem to be to correct misconceptions Jacob had about making right choices, or an imagined necessity for their family or society to treat different parts of it differently.

Again, sorry to keep disagreeing.

Clark Goble, you provide some good examples, but there’s no need to even go outside Christianity for parallels to Lehi’s kind of dualism—the Gospel and First Epistle of St. John contain very similar themes of dueling opposites, with John using light and dark, heaven and earth, etc., as opposing, antithetical forces to one another.

While I disagree with your specific interpretation of what the creation story is really about, I agree it’s much more than God just telling the world what he did to physically create it, and in fact it may not even include that at all.

John Lundwall, I also have trouble seeing the Book of Abraham as being geocentric. There’s a passage where God talks about how different celestial bodies rule other ones, and earth isn’t one of those ruling bodies. If anything, Abraham is God-centric, placing Him at the center of creation, governing the movements of everything else, and making particularly clear that nothing compares to Him.

I had never taken the time, though, to think about whether Josiah’s reforms might not have been quite as positive or unbiased as Kings and Chronicles imply; it’s something interesting to consider.

That said I don’t find the readings of Abraham in terms of real cosmology terribly persuasive. (I know a popular one attempts to read in relativity but I just don’t buy it) Oddly though so far as I’m aware no ones really found a strong ancient or 19th century counterpart to the cosmology. I looked through most of the esoteric texts I was able from more or less the 19th century (most unlikely to be had by Joseph) but couldn’t find anything. The one everyone mentions, Thomas Dick’s, has very few real parallels. But neither did the hermetic or masonic texts I found. While I don’t know the literature that well, I also found as many things from late antiquity as I could and couldn’t find anything smacking of a parallel. No one else has found any I found compelling either including memory palaces, hermeticism of late antiquity, gnosticism, or Kabbalism. (Which, if Joseph were heavily influenced by Kircher’s egyptology speculations – and there definitely are some parallels with the Kirtland Egyptian papers – you’d think you’d see something in the cosmology but you don’t) It’s weird.

Some suggest that the JST of Genesis 1&2 adopt a more neoPlatonic conception of creation where the initial creation is an intellectual creation and the second creation more tangible. While Moses 3:4-5 sure points that way and you can find somewhat parallel exegesis with Platonic conceptions of Genesis I’m still not sure what to make of it. (An example of this reading is of course Philo’s although there are others) That whole JST of 3:4-5 makes Mormon readings tricky although I don’t think people focus on it enough. However reading Abraham in light of this style of reconciling the two creation accounts is interesting especially since Joseph has Abraham take up the Genesis 1 account and while it’s not exactly the same as the JST, Abr 5:3 also suggests Gen 1 is a planning/intellectual creation and not the physical creation.

Interestingly I just noticed the chapter headings at lds.org for Abr 4 say that too – “The Gods plan the creation of the earth and all life thereon—Their plans for the six days of creation are set forth.” and for 5 “The Gods finish Their planning of the creation of all things—They bring to pass the Creation according to Their plans—Adam names every living creature.”

I no longer have physical scriptures so I don’t know if that is new or was in the old edition from the 80’s.

It doesn’t matter, because changes in declination and ascension of the stars would still be noted when traveling far distances north and south, whether that travel was a result of sea or land migration. Though you are correct that certain heaven-earth correspondences encoded in myth and ritual would change over time as the stars changed on the horizon. This would introduce new elements, gods, myths, etc.

The cosmology in the Book of Abraham is geocentric? Several LDS scholars write this, but I am unconvinced. Certainly the papyri from which the text is supposedly taken is Ptolemaic, and therefore heavily influenced by Greek cosmology; still, it remains Egyptian cosmography through and through. Fac. 2 in Abraham is an excellent “map of the cosmos,” and it probably has more in common with the map shown above than with modern ideas of literal flat disc models or inverted globes. Flat earth cosmology was always integrated with the sky, and this remains highly problematic when developing spacial models.

Good call on Levenson, though I have only perused the book, and you just reminded me that it is in my book pile.

The cosmology of Genesis is complicated by a series of factors: 1) The Genesis text is written by literate scribes centuries after the Genesis rites were enacted. The cosmology of the creation pericope did not originate as a text, but as a dramatic liturgy associated with temple and cult and integrating several ontological factors implicit in the culture but long lost by the time it is written down. 2) Therefore, we can only admit as evidence the cosmology of the text, which is something different than the cosmology of the oral cult. 3) The text has been purged in many cases, due to scribal transcription or by purposeful addition and subtraction. 4) There are, by scholarly standards, different textual sources within the creation, and these sources may not be analogous. 5) We often assume that the temple reforms done by Josiah was a restoration of older rites and forms. I believe this might be a fallacy. Josiah may have further cluttered the temple rites and the old temple cosmology with ideas current in his time.

However this plays out, one thing is certain: I look forward to Ben’s book.