Heavenly fatherliness #18 - Exemplary behavior

According to popular wisdom, a good father leads by example and stands true to set principles and values he would like his children to follow.

At face value this appears to be God's exact nature and attitude: He's perfect and requires us to try to be perfect like Him.

Then again Heavenly Father turns out to be a very mobile target.

Let's start with God's standard for the family if only because a couple of recent posts mention a husband's attitude and behavior toward his wife. His standards for the family are all over the place. Adam gets it on with his own rib, Abraham sires children through a servant, Lot had children with his daughters, David has a shitload of concubines, Jesus says divorce is adultery, Paul says marriage is for the weak, and Joseph says let me fuck your wife/sister/daughter/mother.... So what's the standard? What are we supposed to do exactly? Whatever it is, you won't figure it out from the scriptures. Or from semi-scripture either.

The easiest example of a broken standard is God's disobedience to the commandment to not kill people. He kills selectively at times and at others indiscriminately, sometimes with natural disasters, other times with is chosen people, like when he ordered the Israelites to kill all the Canaanites - men, women, children, and livestock - and then there was that one time he used bears. Children and livestock? These are beings who cannot think critically and don't know any better (it's not like the Canaanite children had any opportunities to learn about and worship the One True God of Israel), so why should they die? Where is God's understanding and mercy? Who cares? Fuck 'em all! He even orders the killing of unborn babies and their mothers. The only thing more vile would have been if he had ordered his murderers to defecate into the victims' mouths or something like that. Then again he once wanted to make children eat shit pies. Jesus didn't exactly set things straight either. He gave us a pretty weird example to live up to when he cursed that fig tree for not having figs out of season. Are we supposed to be like that?  

When it comes to owning slaves the Bible's pretty clear. You can have them! Hooray!

Marriage, killing, and slavery only make up three examples but they're pretty heavy issues, aren't they? Just think how confusing things get once you get down to the small stuff. 

*These attributes represent the popular thoughts of Ask Men’s Jullian Marcus, examiner.com’s Tanya Tringali, and Open Talk Magazine’s Glenn Silvestre as per their respective articles on what makes a good father. 

Whittling our wicks

Even though Jesus supposedly fulfilled the Law of Moses and the uncircumcised have been initiated into God's covenant people since the days of Paul, Mormons in the United States still think it's a very good idea to have their newborn sons' prepuce paired down a tich.

I'm really can't imagine why God thought circumcision was a good practice in the first place. Or why it would be necessary. Didn't God create our bodies just the way he wanted them? So why'd he come back at us with a design adjustment?

 (Circumcision comes at the end...)

For some strange reason, God thought circumcision might be an effective sign of fidelity to him even though the only people who would see this physical sign were the circumcised men and their wives. It would have made more sense to trim down earlobes or something more visible and less functional. Oh well, God's not exactly known for his logic - mystery is more his game.

Let me ask you this: WHY WOULD YOU WORSHIP A BEING WHO SAYS "IF YOU LOVE ME  CUT YOUR PENIS!"? That's pretty messed up. If this reminds you of any of your intimate relationship I recommend you get out of them before you incur any further abuse.

Moving now to modern Mormonism, why exactly it is that members are so okay with this painful and presumptuous practice puzzles me. My guess is that it has more to do with being a part of American culture than than it does God's culture. (Then again, maybe God's insecure enough that he requires all his boys' penises to look like his.)

Mormons (and Americans in general), please stop cutting your sons. If they want the snip they can decide for themselves later. InthenameofOiledJoshua,Amen!

Wives #37-#49 and beyond

In addition to the 36 known wives of Joseph Smith, there are thirteen more known possible wives:

#37 - Mary Houston
#38 - Sarah Scott
#39 - Olive Andrews
#40 - Jane Tippets
#41 - Sophia Sanburn
#42 - Phoebe Watrous Woodworth
#43 - Vienna Jacques
#44 - Clarissa Reed Hancock
#45 - Mrs. Blossom
#46 - Mary Huston
#47 - Cordelia Clarista Morley
#48 - Nancy Maria Smith
#49 - Sophia Woodman

Yes, these marriages are not widely accepted, but neither were the other 36. ALL OF JOSEPH'S MARRIAGES WERE OFFICIATED IN SECRET, BEHIND SOMEONE'S BACK. Typically it was behind Emma's back.

Why should we not believe that Joseph married more women than we now know of?

We do know that Joseph propositioned men for their wives. Sometimes he told them it was an Abrahamic test (which was really quite shitty of him, if you ask me, partially because the proposed sacrifice of Isaac was such a horrible thing in the first place). Obviously he propositioned a number of women without their husband's knowledge or consent. Even his marriage to Emma took place against Isaac Hale's wishes.

How many women did Joseph really marry? Why did he have to marry so many? Why did none of his plural marriages conform to the rules he received? Are we honestly to believe that the angel commanding him to start polygamy showed up with a flaming sword but not a simple set of rules?

In addition to Fanny Alger, how many women did Joseph seduce without using the whole plural marriage scheme? It's no secret that he deeply enjoyed the company of women. Who else succumbed to his charm and power?

What are we to believe is godly and right about any of this? Is this how God works? Is it not clear why so many people find out about these things and begin to seriously doubt?

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.

Kolob

I know the LDS Church doesn't like to emphasis this bit of doctrine and generally members don't feel much of a need to bear personal testimony of it, but that's no excuse for not acknowledging one of the most absurd aspects of Mormonism: Kolob, the star or planet nearest God's throne.

 God is no longer hiding among the clouds, but somewhere out beyond the nebulae of space! And yet Abraham and Methuselah saw this place thanks to the Urim and Thummim. So spare me all this modern science mumbo jumbo.

Oh yes, we also know that the Sun gets its light from Kolob, not from nuclear fusion. Thank God for modern revelation.

Sure, we haven't found God yet, but we can at least say we know what we're looking for.

Abraham and Sir Isaac

If Abraham really wrote the Egyptian papyri that Joseph Smith translated into The Book of Abraham, how the hell did Newtonian ideas end up in there? Were Abraham and Sir Isaac on the same wavelength? Did Joseph maybe sneak a little something into his translation that wasn't exactly in the words of Abraham but more in his thoughts? Or was it all made up post-Newton and have absolutely nothing to do with Abraham at all?

Whatever the case, whoever let Isaac into The Book of Abraham should have passed him up for a German fellow named Albert.

Sacrificing Abraham

For many doubters the smokiest of Mormon guns is The Book of Abraham. At this point I would imagine that most Mormons are aware of the fact that there are a few problems with Joseph Smith's translation of the scrolls. If you are unaware, you absolutely must watch this video:

I've been waiting for the Church to release a more in depth defense of The Book of Abraham like it has recently done for several other sticky issues, but obviously the folks over in the PR department are taking their time with this one.

How can they possibly set this mess straight? We can only wonder. Can Mormonism simply throw Abraham to the dogs?

It's all Greek to us

Joseph Smith had a very difficult time distinguishing Hebrew names from Greek and Latin ones. One of his biggest blunders shows up in Doctrine and Covenants 110, which reccounts the supposed visitations to Joseph and Oliver Cowdery in the Kirtland temple. In verse 12 Joseph says "Elias appeared, and committed the dispensation of the gospel of Abraham, saying that in us and our seed all generations after us should be blessed," which sounds totally cool and only slightly confusing (why's Elias officiating for the gospel of Abraham, and what the hell is Abraham's gospel anyway?). The problem occurs in the next verse when "Elijah the prophet, who was taken to heaven without tasting death, stood before us." The problem is that Elias is the Romanized Greek version of the Hebrew name Anglicized as Elijah. In other words Elias and Elijah are the same person, the former spelling of his name appears in the New Testament and the later form is found in the Old Testament.

LDS Church leaders have since decided that (1) there must have been some other prophet out there during Abraham's time named Elias (a Greek dude was hanging around with Abraham?) and that (2) Elias is probably a title for a forerunner prophet. I'm not making this shit up.

The more likely possibility seems to be that Joseph just didn't know the difference between Hebrew and Greek versions of the name in question.

Corroborating evidence to this latter theory is found in The Book of Mormon when Nephi uses the terms "Messiah," a Hebrew term, and "Christ," a Greek term - both literally meaning the anointed - in the same verse. Twice. Isn't that amazing? Nephi, a Hebrew is using messiah correctly (as a title) but using the Greek word Χριστός as Jesus' proper name. Nephi and Joseph need some serious help with their Greek.

Not that their Hebrew was any better. In 3 Nephi Jesus gives the Nephites chapter four of Malachi and the Nephites write down that "the Son of Righteousness" shall arise whereas Malachi wrote about "the Sun of righteousness." Now unless Jesus was speaking to the Nephites in English, it would have been very difficult for them to hear shamesh (Hebrew for sun) and then write down ben (Hebrew for son). What are the chances that Joseph's scribe screwed things up and the mistake going uncorrected all these years? What are the chances that Joseph thought he was being clever and screwed up?

The Book of Mormon also inserts the use of synagogues "after the manner of the Jews" in Nephite America even though synagogue worship did not exist at the time Lehi left Jerusalem. So where did the Jewish synagogue practice come from? Might Joseph have imposed New Testament era Jewish worship on people who would have been entirely ignorant of those practices?

"Just because we'll be living in the New World without any kind of telecommunicative technology doesn't mean we won't know exactly what our fellow Jews are up to in several hundred years."

Well how about Jews going to church? Laban and Zoram, two Jews living ca. 600 B.C.E., apparently were church goers, if that makes sense at all. It seems as though Joseph really liked Hellenizing his Hebrews.

Believing blood

One of the stranger beliefs of Mormonism postulates that the more Hebrew blood you have the more receptive to the truth of the Gospel and authority of the LDS Church you will be. Apparently belief is genetic and the Hebrews hold the majority of shares when it comes to believing... that they're the awesomest, most chosenest people of God.

Even awesomer than believing in the truth because you've got a lot of Hebrew is that if you're of the tribe of Ephraim you won't rebel!

"And the rebellious shall be cut off out of the land of Zion, and shall be sent away, and shall not inherit the land. For, verily I say that the rebellious are not of the blood of Ephraim, wherefore they shall be plucked out." (D&C 64:35-36, emphasis added)

So Ephraim just might be the least rebellious of all the believers of Israel. Very cool stuff (even if it's total nonsense).

It really gives you a sense of what the world lost when the blood of Joseph Smith, a pure Ephraimite, a pure non-rebellious believing blood type, was spilled at Carthage. What a fucking waste of the "best blood of the nineteenth century" (D&C 135:6)!

Joseph Smith III, half Ephraimite, half Moggle.

What's worse is that obviously Emma contaminated that blood because otherwise Joseph Smith III would have surely reunited with the saints in Utah. If only we could once again breed the purest of believers...