Traditionally, we have thought restore implies it existed in the past, was partially compromised and then returned to the original condition. We think of the restoration of the gospel as if it involves only the LDS church, when in fact a much larger restoration movement transpired around that time.(see wiki article on “restoration movement”)

I can think of many topics in the LDS pantheon where this definition of restoration was once accepted but further light and knowledge has forced a refinement of the definition. One example should suffice.

The 10th article of faith indicates a restoration of the ten tribes of Israel. What happened to the 10 tribes? In the early 19th century it was thought they were carried away into captivity but were able to preserve some sense of identity over generations and centuries the same way the children of Israel reportedly survived centuries in Egypt before being led to the promised land by Moses/Joshua. It was imagined that a migration of 10 large groups of people with Hebrew heritage and likely calling themselves the names we know would appear and greatly strengthen the LDS faith. A better understanding from the studies of antiquity of what the Assyrians did to captive people has emerged.

From the Ancient History Encyclopedia:
The Assyrian war machine was the most efficient military force in the ancient world…. The secret to its success was a professionally trained standing army, iron weapons, advanced engineering skills, effective tactics, and, most importantly, a complete ruthlessness which came to characterize the Assyrians to their neighbors and subjects…

A phrase oft-repeated by Assyrian kings in their inscriptions regarding military conquests is “I destroyed, devastated, and burned with fire” those cities, towns, and regions which resisted…

In some cases they carried away a few captives but they wanted to instill absolute terror in their enemies and were not foolish enough to allow their captives to retain any sense of a former identity. In most cases they completely exterminated their more stubborn enemies and the Israelites were among their most stubborn. A couple of tribes never did surrender. Can you image the anger and the violence they would have inflicted on the other captured tribes? Today we might call it ethnic cleansing and the Assyrians were as thorough as it gets.

It is unlikely that any of the undoubtedly rare Israeli captive survived Assyrian slavery to reproduce children, let alone a community, except perhaps a few young women as sex slaves. Even then they would not be pure seed of Israel but polluted genetically like the Samaritans who were rejected as part of the House of Israel when the children of Israel returned from Babylon. The Babylonians were relatively nice in comparison to the Assyrians and I refer the reader to the Book of Lamentations for what “nice” meant in that ancient world.The 10 tribes are lost, completely lost and gone in every sense of the word.

Today satellites have scanned the entire surface of the earth to the resolution of being able to read license plates (when I was in the military in the 1980’s, probably better today) and there are no intact tribes of people anywhere with a preserved identity as the original children of Israel. National Geographic writers and adventurers of every sort have visited and explored and stumbled over every acre of the earth.No 10 tribes of Israel have turned up. Soon almost every person on the globe will be on the Internet and if anyone seriously refers to themselves as a member of some lost tribe of Israel they will probably be in need of psychiatric care.

Genetic tests also confirm migrations of people and exclude any large tribes of Hebrews waiting to be restored. An example of how powerful genetic tests can be are the Ethiopian Jews who claimed to be people of the book but were initially rejected by modern Israel until DNA tests show that they are probably about 50% Jewish, as their legends indicate. Their legends even claim they have the Ark of the Covenant. We have no other similar examples even close to this group of people.

In desperate attempts to preserved the possibility that the 10 tribes could return, some Mormons have proposed that they will come back from other planets on space ships or that they live beneath the earth or the ocean. How they got there in the first place is left unexplained. These theories are not thought to be worthy of serious consideration, unless I am mistaken.

So the restoration of the 10 tribes has been abandoned or rather taken on a new meaning. It will be a complete, new creation on an entirely different level. It might be happening right under our noses as the LDS church continues to grow and diversify. I think of it like the restoration of the body or the resurrection of a body that has been cremated and the ashes scattered in the ocean, 100,000 years ago. It is a physical impossibility. The Lord will call forth the elements and they will come together in some yet to be understood way to form a new body.

The Restoration of the Aaronic Priesthood is a relatively small, simple matter. I check yes to all the possibilities.

PS. My wife is completing a Masters Degree in Theology in a Conservative Protestant Seminary. Not very many Protestants think there was an apostasy even though they reject the excesses of the Catholic church. She and the majority of Christian historians think you must be more than careful with Hugh Nibley when it comes to the early history of Christianity. He got the Book of Abraham wrong too. He and a host of other LDS writers on the topic are about as reliable, in her perspective, as our friend and her cousin Rod Meldrum. Just saying…

There are other ambiguities I didn’t get to such as whether there will be a single blood offering by the Levites or whether it will as a practice be restored. Various GAs have differed on that point.

That ambiguity means a critic can always point to things like the Gospel of Philip with its sacred marriage in a mirrored room off from the Holy of Holies as a purely gnostic/platonic allegory and only accidentally the same as our temple marriage. Ditto with other secret teachings. It’s made complex simply because many breakoffs of Christianity tended to claim to have secret teachings the main body didn’t. Often they mixed in more Platonism of various forms combined with denial of key doctrines like the resurrection. So there are reasons it’s not as clear as it might seem.

I think the answer to (a) is yes although some might disagree. It’s a bit moot given how Jews view the temple at present – awaiting the Messiah.

The answer to (b) is more ambiguous and probably relates more to functioning within the church. For instance technically a descendent of Aaron can officiate in the Aaronic priesthood duties of a Bishop. Joseph Fielding Smith, whose writings I unfortunately have in storage after a basement flood, wrote on this. So I’m just going by memory there. Also there are other interpretations but I’d assume were the issue to pop up his opinion would count for a lot.

For (c) I think that’s made explicit by Joseph Smith. “All priesthood is Melchizedek; but there are different portions or degrees of it…” (Jan. 5, 1841, William Clayton Account) So when we function in the Aaronic Priesthood it’s via the Melchezedek. The bigger question is whether this is temporary or not. I think D&C 13 can be read as saying it is. But again who knows for sure.

There are hints that allow one to speculate that there was something akin to a school of the prophets ala Elijah and Elisha that perhaps Jeremiah and Lehi belonged to. Perhaps it’s through that tradition rather than the central levitical tradition in Jerusalem that they drew their authority. Again Alma 12-14 is interesting here. But at a point one quickly realizes how speculative one has gotten. Adding to this is that Jeremiah’s and thus possibly Lehi’s connection to the Deuteronomists tradition is a tad more complex than it appears at first glance.

The reality is we don’t have a clue what’s going on with Nephite priesthood either during the time of Nephi or centuries later at the time of Benjamin or Mosiah. Maybe the Nephites had levitical priests and we just don’t have it mentioned in our text. Maybe the people of Zarahemla despite having no records did have priests leading to changes in Nephite cultic practice. Maybe the Nephites functioned as priests the way Joseph and Oliver did. The best we can say is that Alma seems closer to our OT view of levitical priesthood than what Joseph setup.

And thou shalt gird them with girdles, Aaron and his sons, and put the bonnets on them: and the priest’s office shall be theirs for a perpetual statute: and thou shalt consecrate Aaron and his sons.

“Perpetual” means forever, not until the law of Moses is fulfilled. The firstborn descendant of Aaron still has the right today to preside over the Aaronic Priesthood, if he is worthy. D&C 68:16, 17 states:

16 And if they be literal descendants of Aaron they have a legal right to the [presiding] bishopric, if they are the firstborn among the sons of Aaron;

17 For the firstborn holds the right of the presidency over this priesthood, and the keys or authority of the same.

D&C 107:16 reiterates this right…

16 No man has a legal right to this office, to hold the keys of this priesthood, except he be a literal descendant of Aaron.

It goes without saying that the identity of the firstborn of Aaron has been lost to history since Onius III was slain. Fortunately, the First Presidency can identify this individual if it is the Lord’s will.

I think this lends credibility to the Mormon interpretation you propose, Clark, of the Aaronic priesthood never having really been removed completely. I suspect this may not be the only case of its type, either, where such a credible claim could plausibly be made within the frame of Mormon theology.

Of course I’ve been so swamped I’ve not been able to keep up on historical writings the last 10 years. (Small kids do that to one) So I’ve managed to embarrass myself several time missing prominent books I somehow forgot about or missed.

The basic idea was the conflict between family authority with institutional authority. That said, the Smith’s continued to be pretty darn significant in LDS circles up through the early 70’s as did many other families. But that actually made the tensions perhaps a bit more significant especially in the era of correlation. There’s a lot going on in that era and the other problem was that the second to last patriarch had been in an ongoing homosexual relation with a young man in his 20’s. Eldrid Smith who actually was next linearly but was considered too young at the time. He was then call after Joseph Fielding Smith requested release. He was still single and held it until he was made emeritus in 1979. He actually lived to 100 and died only relatively recently in 2007. The Church (then still under Pres. Hinkley) never called anyone new to the position. Admittedly Hinkley died not long afterwards but Pres. Monson never called anyone either.

How much of this is actually institutional conflict is up for debate. There definitely was conflict but I think there was also a bit of a mystery of what to do with the office. Eldrid basically gave patriarchal blessings to people where there weren’t stake Patriarchs. But at a certain point the institution became organized enough that was less of an issue. As you note the Church was so big that it didn’t make much sense. However given how significant Joseph treated the position in 1843 calling Hyrum’s position with it “the highest office in the church.” (Minutes of a Meeting, held May 27, 1843, MS. in Church Historical Department, as quoted in Quinn, “Mormon Succession,” P. 202) Of course this was partially so Joseph could step aside and set up the high priesthood with the temple and a political order with the Council of 50. The former is of course still with us with the temple ordinances and in a far more limited way second anointings. The latter just isn’t part of the church at the moment. (And was a quasi-secular organization) But even there things were a bit messy since D&C 124:124 blurs those two somewhat. Also entering into temple marriage was seen as entering into a patriarchal order.

As I said there are these aspects of priesthood that don’t get talked of much. First natural heirs to the Levitical Priesthood. The Patriarchal Priesthood both through the line of Hyrum Smith but the more broader issue of Patriarchal Priesthood. There’s conflicting statements even in Nauvoo let alone in the early Utah period and then the 20th century. Throw in other things like the second anointing, and things get confusing fast. There are some excellent historical papers on this and I think things have gotten less tangled the last years. But I think there’s still a lot of mystery around all this. The best seeming theories aren’t necessarily correct in all this.

Jonathan Stapley’s written some interesting stuff on all this trying to clear its all up. He’s very persuasive but I’m still not 100% sure he’s right event though he’s done the best job on the history IMO. His post on cosmological priesthood over at BCC from a while back is worth reading for a theoretical scaffolding to some of this.

Anyway the patriarchal issues get really complex as you can tell. It’s not 100% clear how to interpret the various texts from the last years of Nauvoo here. You then have continuing evolution of the temple under first Brigham Young and then after the end of polygamy and the united order and the begging of correlation under Heber J. Grant. You have the various apostate groups claiming extra-institutional authority. You have correlation trying to reign in extra-institutional authority. Then you have the gay issue with the lineage based authority and it’s more limited tasks ceasing to make much sense.

That complexity (which I’m barely touching upon) is why I didn’t get into those issues. I also didn’t get into the fact scriptural phrases like “heir according to the flesh” or other descriptions of lineage based priesthood are still common in Patriarchal Blessings. This was wrapped up in the idea popular at points in the 19th century of some people being descendants of Christ or being natural seers. Again that gets complex fast and I suspect the concepts are more than a little muddled.