I finished reading the first chapter in Genesis, in Hebrew.
There were several -- okay, many -- words that I still don't know and a few letters that still trip me up but when I compare where I am now to where I was a year ago, I'm getting somewhere.
This is not an easy language. There's one letter that doubles as a vowel or a consonant and also can serve as a prefix meaning "and." N and B look almost alike, as do B and C. I know what the aleph looks like but the average Hebrew kindergarten student can probably draw it more accurately than I can.
Most of the consonants change shape depending on whether they are at the front or the back of the word. The vowels are like Morse code -- and in grown-up Hebrew, they don't even bother with them.
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
China connections
I clipped a column from the paper today about historic trade relations between China and the U.S. One paragraph grabbed my attention, as it bears most interestingly upon the history of the LDS Church.
"U.S.-China trade began in 1784, when the ship Empress of China set sail from New York, bound for Canton -- now Guangzhou -- with a cargo of fur and ginseng, prized in Asia for its healing properties.
"It turned a handsome profit," said [Craig] Canning, historian at the College of William and Mary in Virginia. "And right away, other Americans went out to seek their fortune."
One of those Americans, was Joseph Smith Sr., father and namesake of the future Mormon prophet.
Writes Richard Bushman, in "Rough Stone Rolling," a biography of the prophet, p. 18:
"It was a fateful turning point in the Smith family fortunes."
The man entrusted by Smith to transport his ginseng, one Stevens, turned out to be a rascal who fled to Canada with all the profits. The Smiths, who had been getting by relatively well until this time, were unable to pay their debts and were reduced to destitution. They were forced to move several times during the next few years, finally settling in Palmyra.
"U.S.-China trade began in 1784, when the ship Empress of China set sail from New York, bound for Canton -- now Guangzhou -- with a cargo of fur and ginseng, prized in Asia for its healing properties.
"It turned a handsome profit," said [Craig] Canning, historian at the College of William and Mary in Virginia. "And right away, other Americans went out to seek their fortune."
One of those Americans, was Joseph Smith Sr., father and namesake of the future Mormon prophet.
Writes Richard Bushman, in "Rough Stone Rolling," a biography of the prophet, p. 18:
"It was a fateful turning point in the Smith family fortunes."
The man entrusted by Smith to transport his ginseng, one Stevens, turned out to be a rascal who fled to Canada with all the profits. The Smiths, who had been getting by relatively well until this time, were unable to pay their debts and were reduced to destitution. They were forced to move several times during the next few years, finally settling in Palmyra.
Sunday, March 23, 2008
On Theosis
My dear wife and I visited the local Christian bookstore yesterday, hoping to find an Easter tie for her father.
Ah, you know what's coming!
On the way out, I glanced briefly at a book about defending one's faith. I don't remember the title or the author. But of course it had the obligatory chapter about "the Mormons."
I really am not quite sure why the rest of the Christian world so vehemently recoils from the ancient Christian doctrine of theosis: becoming like God. That it is taught in the LDS church is considered by many to be one of our greatest sins, right up there with believing that God can still write scripture.
The last time I read the Bible through, it was full of statements such as the command for us to become perfect; the promise that we would be heirs of the Father and joint-heirs of Christ; that we are the offspring of the Father, and that ultimately we would become like Christ, who is, let us note, fully God.
The author of the aforementioned book said that many Mormons he met did not understand/defend/present consistent statements when asked about said doctrine.
Is that not to be expected? Could every "traditional" Christian one meets, possibly be expected to understand/defend/present consistent statements on any given permutation of "traditional" Christian doctrine, such as, say, the definition of the Trinity?
It was not one of the finest moments of the late Gordon B. Hinckley, our recently passed-away prophet, when he said, "I don't know that we teach that [that as man is, God once was, as God is, man may become]. That was during an interview several years ago with Larry King. But I understand why he didn't want to become embroiled in theological technicalities that the show's format would not have allowed him to properly explain.
We do not need to back away from or be ashamed of this doctrine. We are the children, the very offspring of God, heirs to all that He has. We certainly won't ever dethrone Him. An earthly father does not cease to be a father when his son becomes a man and begets a child.
Ah, you know what's coming!
On the way out, I glanced briefly at a book about defending one's faith. I don't remember the title or the author. But of course it had the obligatory chapter about "the Mormons."
I really am not quite sure why the rest of the Christian world so vehemently recoils from the ancient Christian doctrine of theosis: becoming like God. That it is taught in the LDS church is considered by many to be one of our greatest sins, right up there with believing that God can still write scripture.
The last time I read the Bible through, it was full of statements such as the command for us to become perfect; the promise that we would be heirs of the Father and joint-heirs of Christ; that we are the offspring of the Father, and that ultimately we would become like Christ, who is, let us note, fully God.
The author of the aforementioned book said that many Mormons he met did not understand/defend/present consistent statements when asked about said doctrine.
Is that not to be expected? Could every "traditional" Christian one meets, possibly be expected to understand/defend/present consistent statements on any given permutation of "traditional" Christian doctrine, such as, say, the definition of the Trinity?
It was not one of the finest moments of the late Gordon B. Hinckley, our recently passed-away prophet, when he said, "I don't know that we teach that [that as man is, God once was, as God is, man may become]. That was during an interview several years ago with Larry King. But I understand why he didn't want to become embroiled in theological technicalities that the show's format would not have allowed him to properly explain.
We do not need to back away from or be ashamed of this doctrine. We are the children, the very offspring of God, heirs to all that He has. We certainly won't ever dethrone Him. An earthly father does not cease to be a father when his son becomes a man and begets a child.
Monday, March 17, 2008
Re the Facsimiles
When I attended college a few decades ago, I discovered a wonderful literary invention called an anthology. Inside two covers, selections from the works of dozens of authors could be sandwiched. You might start with the Epic of Gilgamesh at one end and wrap up with the writings of Maya Angelou at the other.
So it is not hard for me to understand, although critics of the Church apparently cannot grasp the idea, how the remaining fragments of a certain papyrus roll once possessed in fullness by the Prophet Joseph Smith could contain a text different from that which he translated as the Book of Abraham.
Last night, I learned a new Hebrew word. I am working my way slowly through the text of Genesis and “firmament” was my subject for the evening.
Transliterates to “rawkeya.” Something about that word struck me as familiar so I pondered for a while, then it hit me. I opened up those curiosities of the Pearl of Great Price, the facsimiles.
Sure enough, Facsimile 3 had it. It is the scene of a person on a “couch,” with another person beside him, a winged being above him, and symbols inscribed beneath. On that, all can agree.
The Prophet declared that the person lying down was Abraham, about to be sacrificed on an altar by the person standing up. The winged being was the angel of the Lord. Beneath him, the crocodile represented the god of Pharoah, and the four jars represented the nations surrounding Egypt, Canaan, Libya, Cush and Anatolia. A series of small rectangles represented the pillars of heaven, above which was, of course, rawkeya, heaven, or the cosmic expanse, the firmament, in which the crocodile god of Pharoah was wont to swim. (The Prophet wrote the firmament word as “rawkeyang,” for some reason.)
Traditional Egyptologists declare that the person on the altar was Osiris. But Osiris and Abraham both were messianic figures and one could quite comfortably stand in for the other in the bounds of Egyptian religious ritual. Standing in for a god was a basic part of those rituals.
The winged being, they state, was Horus, the hawk god who protected Osiris. The Prophet does no violence to the text to call him the angel or messenger of God.
It annoys me when people who know nothing at all about Egyptology simply shrug off the Prophet’s work in this field because the name Abraham doesn’t appear in big Hebrew block letters on top of these facsimiles or in a fragment of the papyrus that once accompanied them. It would be different if we still had the whole papyrus that Joseph Smith once owned. It would be different if the ancient Egyptian language lent itself more easily to translation. And it would be different if his translations weren’t quite so plausible.
So it is not hard for me to understand, although critics of the Church apparently cannot grasp the idea, how the remaining fragments of a certain papyrus roll once possessed in fullness by the Prophet Joseph Smith could contain a text different from that which he translated as the Book of Abraham.
Last night, I learned a new Hebrew word. I am working my way slowly through the text of Genesis and “firmament” was my subject for the evening.
Transliterates to “rawkeya.” Something about that word struck me as familiar so I pondered for a while, then it hit me. I opened up those curiosities of the Pearl of Great Price, the facsimiles.
Sure enough, Facsimile 3 had it. It is the scene of a person on a “couch,” with another person beside him, a winged being above him, and symbols inscribed beneath. On that, all can agree.
The Prophet declared that the person lying down was Abraham, about to be sacrificed on an altar by the person standing up. The winged being was the angel of the Lord. Beneath him, the crocodile represented the god of Pharoah, and the four jars represented the nations surrounding Egypt, Canaan, Libya, Cush and Anatolia. A series of small rectangles represented the pillars of heaven, above which was, of course, rawkeya, heaven, or the cosmic expanse, the firmament, in which the crocodile god of Pharoah was wont to swim. (The Prophet wrote the firmament word as “rawkeyang,” for some reason.)
Traditional Egyptologists declare that the person on the altar was Osiris. But Osiris and Abraham both were messianic figures and one could quite comfortably stand in for the other in the bounds of Egyptian religious ritual. Standing in for a god was a basic part of those rituals.
The winged being, they state, was Horus, the hawk god who protected Osiris. The Prophet does no violence to the text to call him the angel or messenger of God.
It annoys me when people who know nothing at all about Egyptology simply shrug off the Prophet’s work in this field because the name Abraham doesn’t appear in big Hebrew block letters on top of these facsimiles or in a fragment of the papyrus that once accompanied them. It would be different if we still had the whole papyrus that Joseph Smith once owned. It would be different if the ancient Egyptian language lent itself more easily to translation. And it would be different if his translations weren’t quite so plausible.
Monday, January 28, 2008
We mourn
Our beloved prophet and president of the Church, Gordon Bitner Hinckley, has passed away.
We mourn because we will miss him. For him, it is surely a joyous event, passing into the arms of the Lord whom he served all of his life, and to the presence of his dear wife, who preceded him in death.
He has gone the way of all the earth and has "left a fame and name" that will long be remembered.
Pres. Hinckley took up the prophetic mantle the year that my wife and I were married.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22873523
We mourn because we will miss him. For him, it is surely a joyous event, passing into the arms of the Lord whom he served all of his life, and to the presence of his dear wife, who preceded him in death.
He has gone the way of all the earth and has "left a fame and name" that will long be remembered.
Pres. Hinckley took up the prophetic mantle the year that my wife and I were married.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22873523
Sunday, January 27, 2008
The Lady is a recommend
In Commentary, Part 2, (pp185-186) of the late LDS apologist Hugh Nibley's "Message of the Joseph Smith Papyri," we are introduced, albeit briefly, to Maat.
This chapter, and the book itself, is a subtle and appropriate comparison of the revealed LDS temple doctrines with the ancient, rather garbled Egyptian equivalent.
Maat is an Egyptian goddess but not really. Like so many of the earliest deities in myth, she is more concept than a specific being. She is truth, justice and order.
I remember encountering this phenomenon in Hesiod's "Theogony" and in the "Enuma Elish."
Justice, Victory, Wisdom, Discord, even Vengeance all had quasi-divine or anthropomorphic status among peoples of the ancient world -- perhaps this was the missing link between the original religion revealed to Adam and the degenerate, pagan theologies which ruled the world by Abraham's day.
Wisdom is even personified within the pages of the Bible.
Writes Nibley: Maat's presence [with the initiate in the temple] signifies that all is correct and in order -- the equivalent of a temple recommend. Maat herself is not a regular deity: she has no temple, cult [reader, please understand this term in the classical sense, not the modern notion of a"spurious religion"] or mythology of her own.
This chapter, and the book itself, is a subtle and appropriate comparison of the revealed LDS temple doctrines with the ancient, rather garbled Egyptian equivalent.
Maat is an Egyptian goddess but not really. Like so many of the earliest deities in myth, she is more concept than a specific being. She is truth, justice and order.
I remember encountering this phenomenon in Hesiod's "Theogony" and in the "Enuma Elish."
Justice, Victory, Wisdom, Discord, even Vengeance all had quasi-divine or anthropomorphic status among peoples of the ancient world -- perhaps this was the missing link between the original religion revealed to Adam and the degenerate, pagan theologies which ruled the world by Abraham's day.
Wisdom is even personified within the pages of the Bible.
Writes Nibley: Maat's presence [with the initiate in the temple] signifies that all is correct and in order -- the equivalent of a temple recommend. Maat herself is not a regular deity: she has no temple, cult [reader, please understand this term in the classical sense, not the modern notion of a"spurious religion"] or mythology of her own.
Monday, January 14, 2008
Should Mormons learn philosophy?
I am in my mid-30s. I have been an LDS missionary, a graduate of LDS seminary and later of Brigham Young University. I am active and participatory in Church, including Sunday School. I seek learning out of the best books, as the Lord advised in revelation.
So what to make of the fact that, until 20 minutes ago, I did not know the definition of "ontological?" I had to lean on my dictionary.
It's probably a basic word for a "traditional" Christian. Refers to being. As in the Trinitarian "ontological" unity of God. God is one in being.
I still don't understand how this concept is understood. What is the traditional Christian concept of "being"?
We are told as Latter-day Saints that the early Christian Church stumbled when it stepped off the rock of revelation and attempted to engage its intellectual tormentors in their own philosophical language. Thus words like "homeostasis," "essence," and the aforementioned "ontological" came into play, to try to make primitive Christianity agree with the Hellenic notions of a passionless, bodiless Prime Mover.
The Church does not want to make that mistake again. So the learning bloc on Sunday is kept as simple as possible, bereft of such terms. Every official Church gathering that I know of, keeps to those same rules.
But shouldn't the average Latter-day Saint at least be able to understand the terminology of his or her modern colleagues in Christianity? At least be able to say, "Here's the LDS response to the doctrine of one divine essence"?
We need to learn the words and how to respond to them. That is my opinion. We may find that we agree with other Christians more than we thought in some areas, and they might be able to realize that as well. We will find other areas in which we still sharply disagree. But at least we will be able to understand each other.
So what to make of the fact that, until 20 minutes ago, I did not know the definition of "ontological?" I had to lean on my dictionary.
It's probably a basic word for a "traditional" Christian. Refers to being. As in the Trinitarian "ontological" unity of God. God is one in being.
I still don't understand how this concept is understood. What is the traditional Christian concept of "being"?
We are told as Latter-day Saints that the early Christian Church stumbled when it stepped off the rock of revelation and attempted to engage its intellectual tormentors in their own philosophical language. Thus words like "homeostasis," "essence," and the aforementioned "ontological" came into play, to try to make primitive Christianity agree with the Hellenic notions of a passionless, bodiless Prime Mover.
The Church does not want to make that mistake again. So the learning bloc on Sunday is kept as simple as possible, bereft of such terms. Every official Church gathering that I know of, keeps to those same rules.
But shouldn't the average Latter-day Saint at least be able to understand the terminology of his or her modern colleagues in Christianity? At least be able to say, "Here's the LDS response to the doctrine of one divine essence"?
We need to learn the words and how to respond to them. That is my opinion. We may find that we agree with other Christians more than we thought in some areas, and they might be able to realize that as well. We will find other areas in which we still sharply disagree. But at least we will be able to understand each other.
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