Great question. Actually ancient cosmology was not just about the afterlife. The template of the celestial journey was used not just for the afterlife, but especially for the present life. The only surviving fragment of the writings of Parmenides (founder of the school of Elea) is a poem called “On Nature” where he describes his ascent into the astral world to find the realm of pure forms. This journey gave him the authority to teach. The School of Pythagoras shares in this same mise-en-scene. Plato uses cosmic archetypes to describe the ideal city. Cicero does the same.

More important, the oracle center at Baia, in Cuma Italy, was built as a scale model of the underworld. The oracle center at the Trophonian was the same. Mystery initiations took place at both. Which means that the oracles for the living shared the same cosmography as the eschatology for the dead. The cave at Charonium, Greece, which was a healing center or hospital, was said to have direct access to the underworld. Mystery initiations also took place there. The ancient Greek theater shares the same imagery. In other words, the cosmography told by the Orphics and used for the journey of the dead held very similar themes and tropes to the cosmography used for all the civic processes of the living, including the early Greek schools, the oracle centers, the healing centers, and even the theater.

There are differences between these models, of course, but they all align along a backbone of a cosmology where the eternal world held all the real forms and ideals from which the material world was to draw. This cosmovision underwrites astrology, which was practiced throughout the ancient world for thousands of years.

In fact, I would assert, that any founder of a city-state had to make a symbolic journey through the sky to bring down the appropriate cosmic powers from the heavens. This was his source of his authority to lead. Please note that this is exactly what Gilgamesh does. He founds the city of Uruk, but only after taking a celestial journey through the underworld. In fact, after his celestial escapade, he brings Ur-Shanabi, the underworld boatman, to his city to measure out all of its dimensions. Only the underworld boatman could do this. Which tells us that the city was predicated upon not only celestial measures, but also a radically different cosmology than we generally assign to ancient peoples. The Egyptian Pharoah re-enacted such a journey during the various Egyptian festivals, and the Chinese Emporer was said to be the divine steward who carried the Mandate of Heaven and who made the empire a model of the heavens’ itself.

This deals with a previous discussion on Walter’s thread on Abraham. When Jacob founds the nation state of Israel what do we find? We find him at the ladder of heaven, having a vision of heaven, until he sees the very face of God. The imagery in the Old Testament is muted, but it highly suggests that the early Israelite nation was predicated on a very similar cosmography as we find with Gilgamesh or the Pharaoh. This should not surprise anyone, as in fact the ancient city-state could only be predicated upon the erection of a sacred center (the temple, or tree, tent, cave, or rock) which was a model of the cosmos and which imprinted eternal cosmic processes upon the civilization.

So Nephi is a founder of an ancient state. He is building a new kingdom. His vision qualifies as the authority to make such a state, and aligns in similar themes and tropes with the celestial escapades of other kings and rulers in the ancient world.

There are lots of differences. I am going over similarities. Nephi’s vision is actually very similar to that of Enoch (a late text, but drawing from a much earlier cosmology). Enoch sees all his progeny to the end of days. It should be noted that Jacob probably did the same, for the covenant Jacob makes upon the ladder of heaven deals with all the seed of Abraham (who are likened unto the stars, but in late and extra-canonical sources Abraham actually must make a journey through the stars to obtain the covenant–no surprise there.) Nephi’s vision of the Tree of Life is intimately connected with his vision of his seed. Our chapter breaks interrupt the sequence, and we tend to divide the vision of the TOL from the prophecies of the future generations, but the two are the same vision. The TOL is an introduction to the cosmic template of the generations of the living.

As far as I know, no LDS scholar has written on this. Too bad, because there is a gold mine hear of potential connections that have yet to be probed. In any case, Nephi’s vision, in an ancient context, provides a template for the organization of the community and provides his claim of kingship. Of course, Nephi does not want to be king, but his vision is the metaphysical crown upon which leadership was bestowed. In this strict sense, he is a Gilgamesh, or a Heracles. We don’t generally associate these figures together, but there is a common cosmology that unites them.

At the same time Nephi’s theology is not orthodox Judaism. Nephi and Lehi represent a very different view, and one can only speculate on what kind of sub-culture they belonged to. (They were the Essenes before the Essenes sort of thing.) Further, what kind of influence did Joseph Smith have in translation, or in other words, is the theology of Nephi also heavily influenced by the cultural prejudices of Joseph Smith during translation? There are lots of issues in play.

Lehi’s Dream, in my view, is much closer to pagan eschatology. When you compare it to features found in Egyptian funerary texts or the Orphic gold tablets you find far greater parallels than in reading anything in the Old Testament or in early Christian writings. To take as an example, in Orphic eschatology, (1) the deceased descends to the underworld which is a place of darkness. (2) The deceased sometimes needs a guide. (3) The deceased often passes through all the elements (fire, water, and air). (4) The deceased is on a great path that splits in two, one which leads to a fount of memory and the other to a fount of forgetfulness. (5) The founts are often next to a great tree. (6) Those who know the proper knowledge and drink from the correct fount travel the sacred road to immortality.

Meanwhile, (1) Nephi finds himself in great mists of darkness. (2) Nephi has an angel who is his guide through the vision. (3) Nephi does pass through the elements, if we consider the great and filthy river the element of water, the fire that ascends from it the element of fire, and the mists themselves as the element of air. The parallels are sufficient for the comparison. (4) The straight and narrow path leads to a great tree. There is another path that leads to a great and spacious building. (5) The great tree itself is actually equated with the fount of living waters. (6) The rod of iron fills in for those who have the proper knowledge, and those who hold to the rod are promised immortality.

There is no Hell in Nephi’s vision, in the Christian sense. There are souls who are lost on a myriad of dark paths. There are souls who are drowning in the filthy river. But the spotlight is actually on the souls who dwell in the great and spacious building, which is a palace. People appear to be having a great time. And while it’s all a fraud, it certainly is not an image of eternal hellfire. In other words, there are several alternative states for the ones who do not partake of the tree. Virgil’s Tartarus and Dante’s Inferno are similar, and it should be noted that the Christian Hell is a late conflation of an earlier and highly developed cosmography where the souls of the dead often faced two or three roads which led to different states of being generally called Heaven (the Blessed Isles, Aperion, Realm of Fixed Stars, Tower of Cronos, etc.) and the Underworld which contained a realm of punishment like Tartarus, but in point of fact all souls had to journey to the underworld in order to find their way to the Upper world. The Hesperides held the secrets of immortality and were located in the underworld. Jason and Heracles descend upon the Eridanus into the underworld to find the same secrets. The Egyptian dead do likewise. Utnapishtim, who hold the secrets of immortality, dwells in the underworld.

It is quite a nice parallel to Nephi’s vision, which never shows a heaven, but only a great tree at the end of a path through darkness. I could go on, but these few comparisons show us (well at least me) that Nephi’s vision belongs to a different kind of cosmovision than that which developed throughout Christianity. Interestingly, Mormon eschatology is closer to the pagan cosmovision than to orthodox Judaism or Christianity (three kingdoms, guides, special cultic knowledge, etc.) Still, Mormons generally treat Heaven and Hell like orthodox Christians.

Personally, I hope there is a Hell, so at least my mother in law has some place to stay …. “)

What time frame did you find Joseph looking at Origen?

The influence of Origen and other non-orthodox (often Platonic) ideas was pretty interesting. In the pre-Renaissance the enemy was typically Aristotle with varying attempts at bringing just parts in (such as with Aquinas who was seen as more orthodox than others of his time). Then interestingly with the rise of the Renaissance you switch the opposite way. Aristotle and the Scholastics become the enemy (at least in the big less orthodox thinkers usually focused on in the era by philosophers). Suddenly platonism becomes the foil for Catholicism and to a certain extent Protestantism. Then you get a shift again in the 19th century. Platonism still remainds a bit, but the main drives are empiricist idealism, Kantian idealism and then Hegelian idealism. Of course the Scottish realists are in there too – and they influence Mormonism via Orson Pratt who starts from a more platonic position and moves largely to be a Priestly atomist with a weird more stoic take on his earlier beliefs.

The back and forth often fascinates me.

The bit about the Restorationists is interesting. There’s an article on them that’s worth contextualizing for Mormons.

The Cambridge Platonists really liked Origen and started to write about universalism anonymously, the most important of which was A Letter of Resolution Concerning Origen and the Chief of His Opinions (1661), which embraced universalism. The first work that embraced universalism non anonymously was Jane Lead’s Enochian Walks with God (1694) which also happens to be chuck full of Mormon-sounding stuff. “The Restoration of all things” was a popular universalist phrase based on Acts 3:26; Jeremiah White wrote a universalists book by that name in 1712.

So lots of talk about Origen, and lots of influence by him. Charles Buck’s Theological Dictionary entry under Origen said, “That, after long periods of time, the damned shall be released from their torments.”

I argue in my diss that Smith was very interested in Origen and seemed to be looking up lots of information on him. I’ll talk a little about that in my MHA paper.

1. That all things had, from eternity, a real existence in the mind of Deity. 2. That angels, human souls, and demons were of one uniform, equal substance, and originally of the same rank; and that their present diversity is the consequence of their former deserts. 3. That this world was made for the punishment and purification of the souls which had sinned in the pre-existent state. 4. That the flames of future torment are not material fire, but only the remorse of conscience. 5. That they are not endless; for, although they are called everlasting, yet that word, in the original Greek, does not, according to its etymology and its frequent use, signify endless, but answers only to the duration of an age; so that every sinner, after the purification of his conscience, shall return into the unity of the body of Christ. 6. That the devil himself will, at length, be saved, when all his wickedness shall have been subdued. 7. That Christ had employed, before his advent on earth, in preaching to hte angels and exalted powers. 8. That the sun, moon and stars are to be reckoned among those intelligent rational creatures who, accord to St. Paul, were made subject to vanity and likewise to hope.

Again though Origen is more complex I think than the Universalists necessarily treated him. Perhaps given how quoted he was at Joseph’s time I should include him in the discussion after all when appropriate. (Please chime in if you think I’ve missed something) The main reason for limiting it to Gregory, Iraneus and Augustine was they just make for a nice table on key features that I think apply to Joseph’s revelations. They also are really nice as a foil regarding assumptions people often make about the universalist context of the Book of Mormon.