Christmas confusion: the star

Mormons believe that there really, truly was a star that appeared at Jesus' birth. They believe this partly because the Gospel of Matthew mentions some astrologers reading his sign in the sky but also because The Book of Mormon treats the star as a real thing.

It all starts out with the sun going down and "great lights in heaven" (Helaman 14:3) keeping things as bright as day. Then we get the Star of Bethlehem showing up sometime later.

The story makes wonderful sense until you stop to think about it. Why does the Bible not mention a night as bright as day? Were the "great lights" Samuel the Lamanite spoke of, like, angels acting as nightlights or something? Third Nephi doesn't say. Why would Herod's astrologers be the only assholes able to see and understand the significance of a mega-bright star showing up in the sky? Why should we believe that star-reading, horoscoping assholes had any valuable insight about the future at all, ever? Why would said astronomers need a star to travel ten miles down the road, anyway? Why doesn't Samuel the Lamanite give any instructions on how to read the "many signs and wonders in heaven" (Helaman 14:6)? Is a new savior being born every time a supernova pops or a meteor shower hits? Does God really relay messages of truth through the stars? If so, it would seem that modern-day astronomers and modern-day prophets are both having a hell of a time making heads or tails of what God's trying to tell us via astroscript.

What if it's all just a fun story? What if The Book of Mormon is just another fun story based off of a fun story or two?

Words that mean everything and nothing

Mormons believe that essentially everyone will make it to heaven, but heaven is not created equally. In fact, there isn't just one heaven, there are three, each with its own degree of glory. The highest heaven is the Celestial Kingdom, which is typically compared to the glory of the Sun; the middle kingdom is the Terrestrial Kingdom, which is typically compared to the glory of the moon; and the lowest glory, compared to the brilliance of the stars, is the Telestial Kingdom.

Let's not get too caught up with the fact that this sun, moon, stars hierarchy does not reflect the actual height or distance of these heavenly bodies from the earth (otherwise the stars like Kolob would be our heavenly goal and the moon would be the lowliest of all glories), the comparison relies more on the amount of light given off with respect to our position. Fine.

What's most bizarre and most doubt-inducing for me is the etymology of the kingdoms' names. Calling something celestial means that thing is either like or somehow pertaining to the sky. That works great for the Celestial Kingdom as long as you still believe in the idea of the Firmament and God living in the clouds, otherwise you get stuck trying to reconcile the description of Kolob with current science.

The moon, as it turns out, is a horrible symbol for a place called the Terrestrial Kingdom. Terra means earth in Latin. If you want the moon, call it the Lunar Kingdom. Anyway, just how exactly is the Terrestrial Kingdom supposed to be like or pertaining to the earth? I thought even the lowest degree of glory was supposed to blow our puny earthing minds.

The least glorious heavenly realm is special enough to get a made up name. Telestial, like curelom and cumom, didn't exist as a word until Joseph Smith revealed it to us. The word seems to come from tele-, which is a Greek prefix for distant or far away, but it could also be going back farther to the root teleos, which means the end goal of a completed cycle, so basically the idea of perfecting a circle. If we go with the first possibility we get the notion that the Telestial Kingdom is the "Far Away Kingdom." Far from what? God? Hopefully not too far. If we go with the latter option, the Telestial Kingdom would seem to mean it's the designated end of the Plan of Salvation, but we all know that's not the case - the Celestial Kingdom is where we want to be. Maybe God should have given us his divine Adamic names for these places instead of misleading us with Latin and Greek.

It's pretty confusing. The meanings and explanations of these kingdoms come across as poorly thought out. And don't go to the temple hoping to sort things out. Take the rooms of the Salt Lake temple for example. You have the Creation [of the earth] Room, Garden [of Eden, which is on Earth] Room, World [a.k.a. Earth] Room, Terrestrial [= of the earth] Room, and the Celestial [heavens/sky/clouds] room. Why are there so many rooms for the same place? Why is there no discussion of the Telestial and Terrestrial Kingdoms in the temple, just a quick entrance through the veil into the Celestial realm? I thought the temple was where we go to learn the details of The Plan, but we're only given a partial view. So much for further light and knowledge!

Shinehah, Olea, and Kokaubeam

We learn in The Book of Abraham God's name for the Sun, the moon, and the stars: Shinehah, Olea, Kokaubeam. Jah-oh-eh turns out to be God's word for the earth. Good to know, right? One might think that knowing these divinely appointed names would result in their adoption into the common Mormon lexicon. I mean, once it was revealed that God's name is Elohim and that Jesus is Jehovah, the LDS Church really latched onto that and takes care to reenforce this knowledge, and yet when you go to church and listen to your lessons or to the temple and watch the Creation film you won't hear the Sun, the moon, the stars, or the earth referred to by their true names even once! Why is that? 

It's also a little strange that God hasn't been very consistent or insistent with these names when speaking to his prophets. The scriptures are full of references to the heavens and their various features and yet they contain God's preferred names only once, in Abraham 3! The closest you get to seeing these names in other scripture is in the Old Testament where the ancient Hebrew שֶׁמֶשׁ (she-mesh) at least starts with the same consonant as Shi-ne-hah and is followed by a similar vowel,  יָרֵחַ (ya-rey-ahh) sounds quite a bit like O-le-a, and the Hebrew for star כּוֹכָב (ko-khav) is almost identical to the pluralized Ko-bau-beam (-im is a Hebrew plural noun ending). I guess Hebrew really is closest to Adamic after all! God must have been revealing bits and pieces of his native tongue to Joseph, like the whole "Pay-lay-ale!" thing. 

But I still have a nagging doubt about these divine names found in Abraham 3. Didn't Joseph start learning Hebrew just after he purchased The Book of Abraham? Oh, really? Less than a year later? And when was the translation finally finished? Not before 1838? Hm... When was the translation finally published? 1842! So Joseph had about six years to dapple in Hebrew before going public with this thing. Do you think it might be possible that he was trying to show off his newly acquired Hebrew translating skills?

Not a smart move for an abecedarian. He's left too obvious a trail.

Of course, if Joseph's freestyling Hebrew isn't goofball enough, you can still relish in the other blunderful names found in the papyri translations (Elkenah, Enish-go-on-dosh, Kolob, Korash, Libnah, Mahmackrah, Oliblish, Olimlah, Raukeeyang, Shaumau, Shulem). Hebrew rip offs, pseudo-Egyptian, and a touch of fantasy make having faith in The Book of Abraham very problematic.

Where is Heaven?

Learning a second language opens up your eyes and gives you a fresh perspective on the world. It also gives you an older, even ancient perspective, a glimpse into the past.

I was a bit startled to learn that in my new language I would literally be praying to "our father who is in the sky" or "our sky dad". Mormons don't believe Heavenly Father's in sky! Where does the word "heaven" come from anyway? Oh, it means the clouds? Shit. So "heavenly father" means "cloud dad" or "dad obscured by clouds"? No shit? That makes it sound like we're part of some ancient tribe who worships the sun or something...

I remember as a child wondering about all the depictions of angels living in clouds and Jesus coming down from the clouds and God laying across the clouds and stuff like that and wondering what it would be like to hang out on top of clouds, but to my recollection I always had the presence of mind to not let my thoughts wander too far down that path. We Mormons knew God was in Outer-space on a planet in the Kolob system! We weren't delusionally looking to the sky for God!

The people at the Tower of Babel were naive enough to try to get to heaven by building a tower, though. And our dad in the sky was mad enough he changed all their languages (and apparently no one was insistent enough to get back together to sit down and learn each other's new language). Not like that's the only time the Scriptures indicate that God's in the sky or clouds somewhere. The references are many and often strictly literal.

I couldn't help but doubt. For all I could tell human beings once believed the gods lived in the clouds beyond our vision, but as science and logic expanded our understanding of the universe God has continually been pushed to the edges of human vision and understanding. We've chased God out of the sky with telescopes, airplanes, and satellites; we've chased him from our solar system; now God hides out in a galaxy far far away where we can never find him. He's an alien and space traveler with a taste for Earth clouds. Or is he? I mean Abraham 3 sounds pretty authentic, doesn't it? Nothing about it sounds like 19th century bullshit, right? 

I'm no fan of this movie but it gets some things right.