{"id":48912,"date":"2025-01-16T05:49:40","date_gmt":"2025-01-16T12:49:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=48912"},"modified":"2025-01-16T08:21:59","modified_gmt":"2025-01-16T15:21:59","slug":"but-what-is-contained-in-the-bible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2025\/01\/but-what-is-contained-in-the-bible\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cBut What Is Contained in the Bible\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cI sup[pose] I am not all[ow]d to go into investing[atio]n but what is cont[aine]d in the Bible & I think is so many wise men who wo[ul]d put me to death for treason,\u201d Joseph Smith declared in the King Follett Sermon.[1]<\/a> Smith then went onto make a claim about the first phrase in Genesis, a claim that Lance Owen noted was in line with the Zohar\u2019s (a Kabbalistic text) reading of Genesis 1:1. Owens also noted that a Nauvoo tutor of JS, Alexander Neibaur, showed knowledge of Kabbalah.[2]<\/a>
\n
\nI note in my dissertation, that the reading JS and the Zohar gave of Gen. 1:1 was in line with Plato\u2019s creation story, the Timaeus<\/em>, as is Abraham chapter 3. Kabbalah was Jewish Neoplatonism.[3]<\/a> Joseph Smith referenced a lot of Plato and Platonic ideas throughout his theology and likely drew on such ideas in the KFD. (See this video<\/a> for a BRIEF discussion of Platonic ideas available to the Smiths early on. He asks me some questions at the beginning and I get to the presentation a little before minute 23. So the presentation is shorter than the video).<\/p>\n

The point I want to make here, is that in this statement, JS looks like he\u2019s saying that he wanted to discuss a text or texts other<\/em> than the Bible to make this theological point in the KFD, but that he felt \u201cso many wise men\u201d would strongly object. Exactly who those objecting wise men were he didn\u2019t say, but considering the setting, it would seem had some or perhaps many of his followers in mind.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve long noticed that arguing for Smith being influenced by sources outside the Bible can make Mormons uneasy. My sense is that many find claims of such influence invalidating or calling into question Smith\u2019s claims of revelation: if he could get the idea out of some book, does that mean he didn\u2019t get the idea from God?<\/p>\n

Yet, I\u2019ve also noticed that such attitudes seem to exempt the Bible. Smith\u2019s next line in the KFD was, \u201cI shall turn commentator today\u201d as he discusses \u201cIn the beginning.\u201d Apparently, JS felt that the only written source that many in his audience would accept for his theological claims was the Bible.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve noticed this tendency in abundant conversations over decades when I tell fellow members about my research or present at MHA: it\u2019s common to get the pushback of Mormons arguing that JS would have gotten idea x from the Bible and not some other source.<\/p>\n

No doubt the Bible WAS very important to Smith\u2019s theology (and in early American culture generally) but were some of JS\u2019s ideas novel? Where do his novel ideas come from? Members often point to revelation\/God [4] for JS\u2019s unusual ideas, but when I or others find JS\u2019s unusual ideas in other sources, it\u2019s common for apologists to argue for that disputed ideas actually really come out of the Bible.<\/p>\n

Which makes me wonder: would pushing that tendency to its logical end mean that JS simply read the Bible and come up with every Mormon idea? If so, wouldn\u2019t THAT call into question JS receiving revelation if every idea was in the Bible?<\/p>\n

This reminds me of a conversation I had with Ryan Mullen (who\u2019s commented on a few of these posts) over a decade ago when we were both in student housing at UC Santa Barbara. I brought up some source for some Mormon idea(s), and Ryan pushed back with a biblical claim (can\u2019t remember the exact ideas I\u2019d brought up). I responded, \u201cWhy is it okay for Joseph Smith to get ideas from the Bible and not other sources?\u201d (I should have explained my thoughts better than I did). Ryan responded, \u201cbecause the Bible is a fundamentally different source.\u201d (again, this was a while ago).<\/p>\n

And yet, the Book of Mormon (and JS) specifically said the Bible is missing truth (1 Ne 13:24-26) and <\/em>that there there is divinity in other sources<\/a> as well. Again, 2 Nephi 29:12: \u201cI shall speak unto all nations and they shall write it.\u201d In the KFD, JS wanted to refer to extra-biblical sources but felt his followers would not allow it. The idea that he then shared was Platonic.<\/p>\n

So can we be okay with JS getting ideas from extra-biblical sources? Can Plato and Platonic ideas be among such sources? \u00a0(Again see the link<\/a> above for a brief overview).<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Smith, April 6, 1844, Thomas Bullock, 17. josephsmithpapers.org<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Lance S. Owens, \u201cJoseph Smith and the Kabbalah: The Occult Connection,\u201d Dialogue <\/em>27, no. 3 (1994): 117-94; The Zohar, Pritzker Edition<\/em>, trans. and comm. by Daniel C. Matt, 6 vols. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004) 1:110.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Stephen J. Fleming, \u201c\u2019The Fulenss of the Gospel\u2019: Christian Platonism and the Origins of Mormonism\u201d (PhD Diss. University of California, Santa Barbara, 2014), 413-15, 398-429, 62-64.<\/p>\n

[4] I don’t reject God and revelation as influencing Smith, but think that Smith took a “study and faith” approach to learning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cI sup[pose] I am not all[ow]d to go into investing[atio]n but what is cont[aine]d in the Bible & I think is so many wise men who wo[ul]d put me to death for treason,\u201d Joseph Smith declared in the King Follett Sermon.[1] Smith then went onto make a claim about the first phrase in Genesis, a claim that Lance Owen noted was in line with the Zohar\u2019s (a Kabbalistic text) reading of Genesis 1:1. Owens also noted that a Nauvoo tutor of JS, Alexander Neibaur, showed knowledge of Kabbalah.[2]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10406,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48912","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latter-day-saint-thought"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48912","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10406"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48912"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48912\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48920,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48912\/revisions\/48920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}